The Over 40 Mental Health Crisis No One Is Talking About in 2026
6/10/20261 hr 7 min
It's 3:14 AM. Eyes wide open. Heart already racing. And the spiral begins.
If that sounds familiar, this episode is going to feel like someone finally said out loud what so many women have been quietly carrying alone.
Chalene Johnson breaks down the seven overlapping forces that are quietly dismantling the mental health of midlife women right now. And no, it is not just hormones. It is not a character flaw. It is not a lack of discipline or a better morning routine.
It is a load that would break the most resilient nervous...
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First 90 secondsChalene Johnson· Host0:00
Hey, before we get too far, I know I've talked a lot about the supplements that I take in powder form. There's a lot of them, and there's, of course, the things I take in capsule form, but I also take a few things in gummy form. And one of the things that I started taking about a year ago, actually when we were in Europe last year, is saffron. And I started taking it because I heard about quite a few studies that demonstrated that saffron made significant improvements in people's, their ability to reduce their anxiety, to feel more relaxed, to have mental clarity, and of course, that's gonna improve your sleep, right? Because that's one of the main reasons why so many of us [laughs] struggle to sleep at night. You lay down and your brain just doesn't stop spinning. So anyways, I looked into it. You know me, I love to see a good study, and there's been a ton of them. In fact, April through July 2025, this is brand new, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study looking at the impact of taking saffron daily for just three months, and the results, I can tell you, were pretty astonishing. A marked decrease in depression, anxiety, and stress. 72.3% of the participants in the saffron group achieved significant improvements on their mental state. So