Welcome to How Humans Heal! In this episode, I’m excited to share my conversation with my guest, Shira Averbuch, a naturopathic practitioner based in Israel, founder of ShiraMed Center, and author of “The Moon Within: A Journey of Discovery and Connection to Menopause”.

Her book offers a new perspective on menopause as a time of renewal, growth, wisdom, and reconnection to the body. She’s also an artist and host of the podcast “Inspired to Be Higher”.

Menopause as a Gift, Not a Punishment

Shira built her book around the four seasons, with three chapters in each season, and every chapter opens with a new month. She explained that a woman’s life isn’t linear the way our culture pushes us to believe. Instead, it’s cyclical, like a spiral, connected to nature. That’s why she called it “The Moon Within”. 

In many cultures the moon represents femininity, and the lunar cycle mirrors the female fertility cycle, both roughly 28 days, with the same rhythm of emptying and filling. When we reconnect to that rhythmic living, we find the light that’s always been inside us.

Shira is clear that she isn’t dismissing how harsh, and sometimes dangerous, menopausal symptoms can be. She experienced them herself. But she believes we get distracted by symptoms and start seeing ourselves as victims, when really nature doesn’t make mistakes. 

Symptoms are a signal, not a flaw, and they’re asking us to look deeper and understand why we’re suffering.

Her Personal Story and the Root-Cause Approach

Shira’s own menopausal symptoms intensified after the death of her father, a deeply important figure in her life, from cancer. The grief and chronic stress pushed her into night sweats and sleeplessness. Her first instinct as a naturopath was to reach for herbs and supplements, but she realized that was just a band-aid. 

She needed to understand the underlying cause. That search led her deeper into the metabolic approach: looking at blood sugar, insulin, cortisol, inflammation, sleep, nutrition, and the nervous system as one interconnected terrain. Quieting symptoms without addressing what’s underneath is, in her words, dangerous. 

The drop in sex hormones isn’t really the cause of suffering; it simply unveils problems that were already there.

Shira illustrates the book herself, personifying hormones. Cortisol is a tired woman working around the clock; oxytocin is a woman caressing a cat; insulin tries to move sugar cubes through a blocked cell door.

During fertile years, the HPO axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, ovaries) and the HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenals) play together like an orchestra, one soft and outgoing like ballet, the other tense and urgent like a thriller soundtrack. 

Sex hormones act as a buffer, keeping cortisol and insulin balanced. When they drop, the orchestra turns into a cacophony, and no single fix, including HRT alone, is enough to restore harmony, because estrogen receptors touch nearly every cell in the body.

Fasting, Ketones, and the Hybrid Body

Estrogen responds well to fasting, and fasting means much more than intermittent eating. It’s giving the whole body a rest from constant food availability, information overload, negativity, and a sedentary lifestyle, when nature built us to move. 

Our bodies are a hybrid engine: we can run on carbohydrates or on fat, but as long as carbohydrates are available, the body will always prefer them and store fat instead. This constant carbohydrate reliance exhausts the system, leading to insulin resistance, cellular starvation despite eating, and fat accumulation around the midsection. 

Ketones, produced when we lower carbohydrates and shift to burning fat, offer real relief: they’re anti-inflammatory, stabilize energy without crashes, and clear brain fog. Shira emphasized this isn’t about permanent restriction but about restoring the flexibility to move between fuel sources. For her personally, adopting a low-carb, ketogenic approach dramatically calmed her symptoms, though she notes results vary and each person needs individualized support. 

Beyond what we eat, when we eat is critical. Eating after sundown confuses the body’s circadian signals, since melatonin and other hormones are tied to light exposure. Getting sunlight in the morning and stopping food intake once the sun goes down helps the body rest properly at night, allowing the liver to do its essential nightly work rather than digest.

Cycles, Culture, and the Jubilee

Shira connected this to broader cycles: the seven-day week, the Sabbath as a day of rest, and in Jewish tradition, the 49th year leading to the Jubilee year, when debts were forgiven and freedom restored. She sees the transition around age fifty as a woman’s own Jubilee, a chance to let go and ask what she truly wants. 

She also pointed to nature: humans and four whale species are among the few mammals that experience menopause, and after their fertile years, whales often live for decades more, leading their pods. Nature isn’t making a mistake; it’s positioning women to become leaders and storytellers, sharing accumulated wisdom.

One of her most vivid images: if your shirt catches fire, you don’t finish your emails first, you stop and address it immediately. Menopause works the same way; the body forces you to stop and pay attention, unlike the “boiling frog” pattern of numbing symptoms while deeper problems worsen unnoticed.

Community and Connection

Shira also spoke about oxytocin, the bonding hormone that regulates women more than dopamine does, and how modern life, full of scrolling and dopamine-seeking behavior, works against our nature. She stressed the importance of women supporting rather than competing with each other, building community, and sharing knowledge openly.

Shira’s book, “The Moon Within”, is available on Amazon, and you can find her through her podcast, “Inspired to Be Higher”. 

If you want to learn more about Shira you can also find her on Instagram @shira.averbuch and Facebook @Shira Averbuch. 

A Note from Dr. Doni

If you would like to learn more about how you can navigate through menopause, address symptoms using natural approaches, the importance of recovery from stress to minimize symptoms and prevent future health issues, and all you need to know about choosing bio-identical hormones and having conversations with your practitioners about all this… 
you can learn more in my Mastering Menopause Masterclass here for free.

What I find in my practice – helping women for over 26 years – is that with proper support, beyond the standing testing to identify underlying causes and exactly what your body needs, you can maintain your health and vitality throughout menopause and beyond. 

Remember, investing in your health is not selfish – it’s necessary. Women often arrive at mid-life having spent most of their time taking care of others and realize it is time to take care of you!

It is also important to know that it is possible to recover from stress and trauma and truly heal, because you’re not likely to hear that from your standard doctor’s office. Keep in mind, they are not educated about diet, exercise, supplements, or stress recovery. 

I am living proof that it is possible to heal holistically and naturally. It’s possible to balance your hormones or to use bioidentical hormones safely and effectively, as well as to clear HPV and get a normal pap result, and to eliminate the effects of stress, trauma, anxiety and depression. I help patients with to do this in my practice every day – by phone and zoom, anywhere in the world. You can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

Once I meet with you one on one, we will create a strategic plan based on your health needs during menopause, including sessions with the health coach on my team to help guide you to implement my proprietary C.A.R.E. and Stress Mastery programs. 

If you’re dealing with persistent HPV I welcome you to join my next FREE How to Get Rid of HPV online workshopwhere I help you to create a plan to get HPV out of your life for good. From there, you might choose to join the Heal HPV Kickstart Program, for the initial steps of my protocol, including diet changes and supplements, over the next 30 days.

Or you can begin with the comprehensive Say Goodbye to HPV Program, which is 3 months and includes everything you need to implement my full protocol and address all eight susceptibilities with live, group support, and access to testing and vaginal suppositories.

You can also go to clearhpvnow.com. There, you’ll find lots of resources and stories from women who’ve followed my protocol and cleared HPV to negative. 

Thank you for joining me today for this episode of How Humans Heal and learning about how to reframe menopause as a gift with Shira. Make sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode! You can access it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you prefer. You can also watch at doctordoni.com.

I look forward to connecting with you soon! 

Dr. Doni

Disclaimer: This specific article and all other Content, Products, and Services of this Website are NOT intended as, and must not be understood or construed as, medical care or advice, naturopathic medical care or advice, the practice of medicine, or the practice of counseling care, nor can it be understood or construed as providing any form of medical diagnosis, treatment,  natural HPV cure, or prevention of any disease.