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Far 2 Fabulous
Join Catherine & Julie, your feisty hosts at Far 2 Fabulous, as they lead you on a wellness revolution to embrace your fabulousness.
Julie, a Registered Nutritional Therapist with over 20 years of expertise, and Catherine, a former nurse turned Pilates Instructor and Vitality Coach, blend wisdom and laughter seamlessly.
Off the air, catch them harmonising in their local choir and dancing to 80's hits in superhero attire. Catherine braves the sea for year-round swims, while Julie flips and tumbles in ongoing gymnastics escapades.
With a shared passion for women's health and well-being, they bring you an engaging exploration of health, life, and laughter. Join us on this adventure toward a more fabulous and empowered you!
Far 2 Fabulous
Unlocking Hormonal Health: Embracing Oestrogen's Vital Role in Women's Well-being
The episode explores the crucial role of oestrogen in women's health, its implications during different life stages, and how fluctuations can affect well-being. From reproductive functions to impacts on mood, bone health, and metabolism, the conversation highlights the importance of understanding and balancing this key hormone.
• Discussing the importance of oestrogen in the menstrual cycle
• Exploring the connection between oestrogen and bone health
• Examining oestrogen's role in cholesterol regulation
• Understanding how estrogen impacts mood and cognitive function
• Addressing changes in skin and hair due to fluctuating oestrogen levels
• Highlighting the link between stress, anxiety, and hormonal balance
• Offering lifestyle tips for balancing oestrogen levels naturally
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Welcome to Far Too Fabulous hosted by Julie and Catherine.
Speaker 2:Join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some feistiness, inspiration, candid chats and humour as we journey together towards empowered well-being. Let's dive in. Hello, hello and welcome back to Far Too Fabulous Yay, julie and I have been talking lots about hormones. We are doing a whole series on hormones at the moment, and so today we thought we would go for the big hitter hormone. When it comes to us women, we're going to talk about oestrogen.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are. So in our previous episode we were talking, or the episode where we were explaining the cycle, we discovered that estrogen is very present in our entire cycle, but it's dominant in the first half. So from when we bleed it starts to increase and rise up until ovulation, and then it starts to decline and progesterone takes over. And then we learned that in perimenopause our levels fluctuate and go crazy, and in menopause they reduce down to a baseline, but we've still got some, because estrogen is vital for so many processes in the body. So when you start to think about some of the symptoms that you may have, I think it starts to make sense. Estrogen is involved in all of these things, and so you can have an understanding of what's going on.
Speaker 2:I think it's the one that everybody thinks of, isn't? It's the first hormone that people think of when you're thinking about female sex hormones yeah, I think you're right um.
Speaker 2:so when we're just thinking about the reproductive system, which is what we've been talking about, so it stimulates growth, thickening of the uterine lining in that first phase, it helps create the hormone conditions necessary for egg release and it also helps in general things like vaginal health, maintaining elasticity, lubrication and the ph of vaginal tissues. And I know all the girls know that that's very, very important because we know when that's out of whack yeah, we certainly do so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, straight off, as a sex hormone, it's really involved in that first phase and it's leading up to putting the environment in your body it well, making it correct for the egg to be released and then be embedded. Basically, that's what we're looking for. So that's the I think, like you said, when we think about estrogen, the main role, that's where we kind of go to, I think yeah but that's really it's not.
Speaker 2:It's only a job, is it so?
Speaker 1:the tip of the iceberg. It really is, and when you start to see what else it's involved in, it makes so much sense. So, bone health yeah, did you know that you need estrogen for your bone health? You might well know, but you wouldn't.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't necessarily think straight away about that, would you?
Speaker 1:I don't think so, other than the fact that a lot of women know that they're at a higher risk of osteoporosis, it's true, once they've lost their periods. And also women generally know, if they've had a hysterectomy, for example, that they, within their treatment. Afterwards they often have that checked. You know, their bone density is checked because it's so, so important. So estrogen is very much involved in how the body regulates bone absorption.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, absolutely. It keeps those bones strong by maintaining the calcium balance. I mean, again, you're going to have us talking about balance all the way through. Calcium's a tricky one to balance and I mean that's a whole podcast on its own, isn't it? Calcium? There's so many things that calcium plays with that you need to balance with and it's not just about drinking your milk, it's like calcium within your cardiac health and all that sort of stuff. It's huge. So muscles.
Speaker 1:It's in used in the digestive system, the thyroid. Yeah, that is a massive nutrient. It's one of the biggest top four in the body and, yeah, you could do a whole episode on that. I'll tell you an interesting fact about oestrogen and bones and that link with calcium is that when oestrogen starts to go down if we haven't got the nutrients that we need to maintain bone density, and we start to lose calcium from the bone starts to um, demineralize and we lose calcium.
Speaker 1:In the hair test, I see very high levels of calcium in the soft tissues, which is not where it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be in the bone, yeah. And so people think, oh, I've got high levels of calcium. No, your calcium's in the wrong place. And when you've got soft tissue calcification, that impacts joints, that impacts cognitive, cognitive no, cognitive, there we go. Should we do a hair test on you? Yeah, I have actually got high calcium levels. That I'm also addressing. It impacts your brain. There's so many things. It impacts how your muscles feel, your ability to have a regular bowel movement are all impacted by this. So when your hormones change, it can cause this calcium to be released from your bones and you can end up with calcium where you shouldn't have calcium.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's interesting what you said. So it's not necessarily that you've got high calcium now. It's probably that you've got something lower. I can't think what it is. What is it that puts the calcium into the bones?
Speaker 1:so you need boron, you need vitamin d, you need magnesium, you need phosphorus, you need certain level of nutrients to keep the bone where it should be, or the calcium in the bone where it should be. Yeah, otherwise it gets lost when the oestrogen starts to decline, because oestrogen helps to keep it where it should be. Yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It is complicated, it's absolutely crazy complicated. However, if we are saying something that you just suddenly think, oh, hang on, that's me. This gives gives you the opportunity to start looking to that part of your story. It doesn't mean that you need to know all of what we're saying, but if something just triggers you, you can then come into the Facebook group and have a chat with us about it. Yeah, and it's the awareness part of it, all of this that we are talking about. With estrogen, you were saying this is the, this is the hormone related to growth yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you think about it, when we are young girls and we're going through that puberty stage, what happens is estrogen starts to go crazy, a bit like when we're in perimenopause. The craziness of estrogen it's trying to build its levels and it and it gets a bit confused when it first starts, so it's all over the place, but it's all about growth. Estrogen is a growth hormone. It gives us our womanly shape, which is why men have less of it, although if you see men who have got the boobs and they're overweight, a lot of them are estrogen dominant, which is a problem in our society, isn't?
Speaker 1:it. It is anyway. Yeah. So growth when you're 12 years old and you want that, you know that womanly shape to come in is fine. When we're going through those later stages, we don't want to be estrogen dominant. Or you're a 40 year old man yeah, I don't want that. Then no, because it does. It does change your body shape and this, I think, is something that well I've certainly come to terms with myself, is my body shape has changed because of the change in these hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure I've accepted it yet we were talking about this before and if these hormones are not quite balanced, still having that huge amount of growth hormone within you at our stage of life, it should be depleting and we're still growing in the middle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it doesn't just grow. You know our womanly shape shape. We have estrogen dominant cancers. You know we don't want too much growth at this stage of our life, but when we're 11, 12 years old, we do want that. So, yes, it is a growth hormone and we've got to be careful with high levels. But at the same time, because it's involved in lots of these positive things that we need, we need it. We also don't want levels to be too low, which comes back to this whole balancing act. The hormones is a huge balancing act which we can influence through our diet and lifestyle and our mindset to some degree, yeah, which we will come on to yeah, so all right, here we go.
Speaker 2:It's involved in another big hitter cholesterol, so it increases your good levels of cholesterol and it decreases your bad levels of cholesterol. And then you know all the all the benefits of sorting out your cholesterol to do with heart disease and things. But that's huge, isn't it it is.
Speaker 1:So oestrogen directly encourages high density lipoproteins, which is your good cholesterol, and it decreases the low density ones.
Speaker 1:Whenever anybody comes to see me and they've got a high cholesterol, I never take that number as meaning anything, that total number, because you've got to know the breakdown, you've got to know what the hdl level is, the ratio, the triglycerides, but estrogen. When levels are starting to decline or they're incredibly high, it's going to impact the cholesterol. So if suddenly and I see this again with my clients because we do testing and things we look at where they were before and a lot of the time they've been to the GP and they've had some tests done and then they've been sent away and they may come to me like a year or so down the line as a bit of a last result. And then we look at the changes in their blood results for things like cholesterol and they would have been people that had never had an issue with this before. And now suddenly it's one thing after another. Now my blood sugar's all over the place, I put weight on, I'm having anxiety, my cholesterol's gone up high.
Speaker 2:All of these things are all linked, yeah absolutely, and here's a really hugely important one is that it's involved in vasodilation, so it promotes the healthy blood flow by supporting the flexibility of the blood vessels.
Speaker 1:And ironically I was interestingly I was looking at face dilation and flexibility of blood vessels to do with going between the sauna and the cold plunge and how customizing your body to be able to do that kind of like, almost giving your vessels a bit of a workout yeah, is really, really important, and this flexibility within your whole body is directly linked to longevity, so that was really interesting yeah, you want the flexibility there, because if, if you don't have that flexibility and those vessels get hardened and stiff, then what what happens is the blood flow through that is restricted and then that pushes up your blood pressure and also you start to have circulation issues. Yeah, and then the narrower these things get, the more likely you are to get things like clots, so it increases your risk of strokes and things, strokes and heart attacks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, tenfold. So that's really really important. What's next? What else is it involved in the brain and mood no shit, sherlock. Yeah, both of these both estrogen and progesterone.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk separately about progesterone, but both of these hormones are directly involved in the neurotransmitters. So when we're looking at oestrogen, it's doing a lot with serotonin and we've also got to connect that with the gut because there is an impact with the gut and oestrogen and serotonin, which is where we make our serotonin, is in the gut and serotonin is so important for us to feel good. So if our oestrogen levels have plummeted or they're really high again so it's one extreme or the other and we've got an imbalance in the neurotransmitters, then we're not going to feel very balanced emotionally and that's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Even if you are doing everything that you possibly can do to feel good, if you are not maintaining your balanced levels of oest estrogen, it won't make much difference, because you haven't. Again, you haven't got that other part of the seesaw to play with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it literally comes down to the chemicals in the body, and so, yeah, you can't influence that without having those chemicals balanced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and here's another thing skin and hair. And we know this, don't we? We know when we're a bit out of whack, we're a bit out of balance, that our skin looks a bit dry, a bit grey, our hair's all limp and you just don't look or feel good, do you no?
Speaker 1:And then the impact that estrogen has on elasticity and collagen means that joints become stiff and you really notice that change, I think, in your flexibility. I was saying to you before that, um, I'd gone to gymnastics and I was looking at my cycle time and I said that my wrist and my ankles were hurting, and so I know that that is because my estrogen within my cycle was low at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes you just don't have that protection. No, and then that impacts things like the membranes. So when we're looking at things like UTIs, there's an impact there. So suddenly this is another one that comes up quite frequently when I speak with my clients is that they're suddenly getting recurrent UTI and they never had them before. Yeah, and they're like saying to me what the hell is going on here? But that impact of estrogen controlling the ph balance, the elasticity, it puts it in an environment that can encourage bacteria that we don't want the bad bacteria, and I can't remember if it was this episode or ones before that.
Speaker 2:We were talking about these imbalances still going on past the uh, magical 365 days of menopause, and it's quite common in in elderly women to still suffer these imbalances, and urine infections being the thing that you can spot, yeah, like that's like that's where it really goes wrong, and suddenly somebody somebody else maybe notices that something's gone wrong here. But that could be the clue to there still being these imbalances still going on into into old age and there's a huge link with hydration levels as well.
Speaker 1:So at the point where estrogen levels are dropping off, we actually need to hydrate more. So when you feel those joints feeling more stiff or creaky and you're noticing that you've got more dryness, your hair's, you know, a lot more length, that's when you need to focus on drinking more water as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely and then I think probably the one that women notice the most is your metabolism and fat distribution. So when everything is working as it should, that it supports healthy fat distribution patterns, uh, particularly around the hip and the thighs, where you were talking about that earlier on, about that womanly sort of shape yeah, absolutely, and influencing with metabolic rate, influencing your energy expenditure and your glucose metabolism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're back to glucose again yeah, the blood sugar regulation really gets impacted by an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, but estrogen itself, because it's the growth hormone as well, is, when we're in that phase of estrogen's gone crazy. It literally is putting the body in a fat storing mode. It's like every time you eat something, even if that hasn't changed, it's just laying the fat down in those areas in the breast, in the thighs, in the buttocks, in the you know, your tummy, the belly area is really, really sensitive to this laying down, that protection and that growth coming in. So, yeah, you can literally be doing nothing different and suddenly you notice, geez, these trousers are a bit tight.
Speaker 2:I haven't changed I don't know what you're talking about, julie. Yeah, so it's not your fault?
Speaker 1:no, it isn't. It isn't. It isn't your fault.
Speaker 2:So we have to look at the mechanisms behind this and support the body so that it can rebalance these things yeah, so I think we we are heading this direction now, how estrogen changes during perimenopause and menopause and how that affects us. Yep, okay, what have you got? So irregular periods there's our sort of a shiningly obvious one.
Speaker 1:Well, I say that, but, like from our last conversation about, about cycles and knowing your cycles, it might not be an obvious one no, it's just that again when, when we're looking at that estrogen going crazy, we then could get into a pattern of oh, one month I've got a 21 day cycle, the next month it's 35 days and you've got that hit and miss on that cycle time and it can increase the amount of blood so you can get flooding. When you've got this situation, with oestrogen being very dominant and fluctuating, you'll get heavier periods. Yeah so yeah, periods all over the place, heavy period, I know it's.
Speaker 2:I know it's annoying, but it is interesting to know that if you are having a heavier or a prolonged period that there is more estrogen about, and if your cycles are starting to stretch out or you've missed periods, that's the estrogen has done one, it's gone. Yeah, and it's interesting to know that. And again, there's like an empowerment element around it that maybe you can start to think oh, am I balancing these things out and being able to do as much as you can to a certain degree?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with oestrogen if it's very low, and we might see this in young girls like late teens, early 20s, that are very, very controlling about what they eat. We see this if someone's on a very low fat diet. We see this if someone's exercising to the extreme. Yeah, you need fat to to help produce oestrogen and you need oestrogen for fat. They work again together.
Speaker 1:So if you've got, you're missing periods, then you've got to look at levels of oestrogen in the body you know that we are both super fans of dr stacy sims and she works very much with active people and she's really highlighted this as particularly in young active people that and almost they're encouraged to reduce all of that and sometimes with a view to stopping the periods if you think about, as you know, people that are regular listeners, that I do gymnastics when we look at gymnastics, and those girls, the young girls that are competing at high levels, that were pushed into that state of not having periods that directly impacts their bone health, so then they suffer injury and they suffer bone breakages and ligament issues because they've lost that elasticity and that you know that hydration and and fluid in the in the joints. It's ridiculous that we would encourage that or that was encouraged yeah, yeah, I think that we can see a difference.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're watching the gymnastics, I think that the female gymnasts look more like women now. Now, yeah, and they look strong. So hopefully we're seeing a change within their coaching, that they're being encouraged to embrace their superpowers as women and that there's more an emphasis on being strong rather than so so lean, like they were yeah, I know that one of the first things that dr stacy sims does working with athletes is to work to get their periods back, doesn't she?
Speaker 1:yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, very interesting. So again, another sign that people really associate with perimenopause is night sweats and hot, so flashes or flushes. Hey, is this? I've noticed. I've always thought they were hot flushes because your cheeks flush, yeah, but I think the Americans say flash.
Speaker 1:I think it's. Yeah, I've noticed it can be used either way.
Speaker 2:I've noticed it more and more that people say hot flashes now yeah, I always would say hot flush?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would too. Yeah, because of that flushing impact on the body. But yeah, oestrogen is involved in body temperature regulation Because these hormones are all part of this orchestra. Where the thyroid is connected and the stress, the adrenals, the stress hormones are all connected. The thyroid really gets impacted by estrogen levels and the thyroid is like the body's thermostat. So when that goes out of control, then, yeah, you get these hot flushes yeah, and night sweats. The other thing is the sweats yeah, and I've watched.
Speaker 2:I've never experienced them, but I have watched that heat literally rise up somebody's body and I've watched the redness, yeah, rise up through their body. Hideous, absolutely. I mean incredible, but yeah, no, horrible to experience. Interesting. You talked about the thyroid. I'd be interested to know if there was any research to do with cold water therapy, sauna therapy and that its relation that would be interesting.
Speaker 2:You should have a look at that and see what you can come up with, but and it would be also be interesting, and I'm pretty sure there is no research on this at all but since I've been doing cold water swimming, my temperature regulation, whether it's hot or cold, has been much, much better, yeah, and so I imagine that that would be something that would help yeah, what's interesting about hot flushes and night sweats is, in the nutrition therapist world, that is a red flag for significant hormone imbalance.
Speaker 1:So if you're someone that is suffering from these, it's not just a case of slotting in one hormone at this point. This is a very complex hormone imbalance.
Speaker 2:If you're someone that's getting that as your symptom, yeah, and I think, because it's it's almost like the uh, the flagship symptom of menopause. I think that people just put up with it and they, they all expect it. They just think that that's something, that that happens and you have to put up with it, and maybe many people don't think that there are things that they can do about it that is the body's way of really signaling that it's got an issue when it puts you in that, in that state again.
Speaker 2:Another thing, I think, that people now associate with perimenopause is anxiety. I think mood swings were were there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that was expected, certainly as they tied us to stakes and burnt us in the middle of ceremonies but anxiety, and I don't know whether it's because there's more of an awareness around it because of I think it's all of these things because everybody's lives is more stressful. But certainly loads of people of a certain age have suddenly thought, oh my god, I'm actually losing the plot, and that is what then triggers them to start actually. But so some people don't associate it with menopause symptoms, and so they do just think they're losing the plot yeah, that's so true, but there is a huge impact with we look at progesterone as well on the neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1:But you cannot. It's impossible in your body to have balanced neurotransmitters when your oestrogen and progesterone are crazy, too high, too low, out of balance. It directly impacts estrogen, will directly impact serotonin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're saying about your happy hormone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and, of course, because of those two being on a seesaw. When you have got high estrogen and you've got low progesterone, progesterone is the calming. Got high oestrogen and you've got low progesterone, progesterone is the calming hormone. It controls the neurotransmitters that allow you to feel calm. So, serotonin, you feel happy, but you also want to feel calm and content, yeah, and if oestrogen is high, you get that anxiety because you've got no calming and balancing the impact of progesterone as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's like a day when you've not eaten anything and you've had about 50 cups of coffee. Yeah, it's no fun at all.
Speaker 1:Speaking about no fun breast tenderness that's no fun no, and I think a lot of people will be aware of that symptom as a general kind of period. Yeah, symptom definitely breast tenderness, and that is again influenced by oestrogen because it's that growth side. So when we're looking at that connection with the bone and calcium and we're looking at breasts and and that growth side of things, breast cysts that are benign, that are full of calcium, are also involved in this whole picture it's.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's so clever, isn't it? And then and then things like because we were talking about how estrogen plays a part in your vaginal health. So when it's not there or when there's too much of it, things like vaginal dryness and discomfort, which then add to things like UTIs, and infections and things.
Speaker 1:It's such a massive problem, this, and it's a horrible problem to have to discuss with anyone. I don't think it's kind of mentioned enough, but this is a really common symptom of oestrogen starting to change and you might notice if you are in perimenopause, and sometimes you've ovulated, everything's fine and in balance, and then you've got other times where you've got that erratic oestrogen you might notice things like you're suddenly more itchy down there, yeah, and you and you're like what's what's going on there? And then it goes because oestrogen's gone. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I'm back again, you know. So that is a really super common symptom and it is horrible.
Speaker 2:And it's the not knowing, for instance the dryness causing discomfort during intercourse. And so one day it might not, and then I don't know about you the next month it might, and it's just yeah, it's riding that roller coaster, knowing that there are things that you can do about it, also knowing that it's not your fault, and yeah, and just sort of feeling your way through it yeah, I think it's a case of being in awareness about your symptoms and then looking at what can be the cause of these symptoms.
Speaker 1:And when we're looking at hormones I'm going to keep going on about this, I'm going to become annoying it's not just looking at this one hormone, yeah, it's looking at the whole picture. And when we start looking at okay, how can I help myself? We're not going to be helping ourselves just looking at estrogen. We're going to be helping ourselves by looking at everything, because this whole orchestra of hormones needs an equal amount of support across the board. You can't just go dominant on one and think that's going to solve the issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. I think we probably when we were looking at what estrogen does in a normal quote-unquote cycle, I think we kind of touched on these. But just very briefly. So if your estrogen levels are very, very low, it has a massive impact on bone loss and osteoporosis risk and we, we said you, we see that and things like when they, when, when we go in for hysterectomies. We were talking about that on the last episode yeah, so when we're in that menopause phase.
Speaker 1:So we haven't had a period for at least a year. We're not having periods anymore or we're even significantly past that. You know you may be listening to this and you may be in your 70s. You know you're done with that, but you've still got to support the baseline levels of your estrogen and progesterone. You still have some. You're going to be relying on your adrenals to help you with some of these, because your ovaries are not going to be producing this anymore. Supporting the balance between these two is going to have an influence on things like your risk of osteoporosis, your risk of cognic I can't say that word today, ironically your risk of cognitive or cognition cognitive function function yeah, do you know what's funny.
Speaker 1:I know we're having, like I'm. I think I think we might keep this in instead of editing it out me tripping over this word Because, if you remember, I'm on my day one of my period and what have I got Low levels of estrogen and progesterone and I'm asking myself to recall facts, to have a detailed conversation about things that are in my brain somewhere when I haven't got the hormones to support it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely, we're just doing this to prove a point. So I'm going to be kind to myself and say I might be tripping over these words, but I'm still doing it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so true. So when we're thinking about bone loss, osteoporosis risk, can I say Pilates, pilatesates. Can I please? Yes, please do. Can we talk about? Can we talk about, weight training, even if you're in your 70s? Can we talk about strength? Can we talk about weight bearing, exercising? Can we talk about jumping, please?
Speaker 1:all right, you've become obsessed with jumping lately, haven't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:but mainly because somebody said we shouldn't, and so that annoys me.
Speaker 1:Who was it who said we shouldn't? This is so important because when we get that shock through the feet into our body, actually tells our body to um, strengthen our bones, yeah it's massively important and we get a bit afraid, and I think it's.
Speaker 2:It's all about this time in our life when our body has suddenly it's suddenly doing something so completely different, partly to do with maybe we don't, we haven't got enough information because we maybe we've not tracked our cycles when we were younger.
Speaker 2:We're not tracking what's going on now. We've not been educated as to what's going on in our body, and so we we have this huge amount of distrust in what's going on, and we live in a world that it's very medical and it there's lots of litigation, and so there's lots of protecting going on, and so we get information that isn't actually designed for us. And so I don't want you to be afraid of your bodies, because your bodies are still strong, they are still absolutely magnificent, and if you can educate yourself and help yourself with this balancing act, you can still jump, you can still run, you can still weight lift and in fact, you should be doing all of these things and not only and again, it's this whole cycle. It will help you, it will support you in your balancing of all these hormones. Do you feel better for that?
Speaker 1:Thank you. You got that out of your system, didn't you jump? Yeah, I think. I think both of us could easily just be kind of almost shouting down this microphone, just because we know that the things that we teach other people and the things we do for ourselves are going to give us a protection, a level of protection, and help support these balances of our hormones, which is why I'm sat here at 53 saying I've only just started to experience some symptoms, but they're not horrendous.
Speaker 1:I haven't got hot flushes, I'm not suffering from anxiety and I might have some kind of genetic help there. I don't know, because I don't know what happened with my mum and my mum's mum, but we both know and this is where our passion comes out. I think we both know that if you support your lifestyle and your diet and you do these things, then there's no reason why you can't continue to do gymnastics when you're 60, 70, whatever run marathons do, whatever you want to do it, you know it's we just want you to stand in your power, and I think we're coming into an age now where it is no longer accepted.
Speaker 2:We women are no longer accepting being dictated to by what was decided many years down the line, and it just doesn't serve them. Not necessarily just by men, however. What, what was researched and what was normal years ago is just not the case anymore.
Speaker 1:It's not the case anymore, and you're quite right. And there's a almost like a I can't think of the word. Now you know, when you're kind of champion something, what's the word for it?
Speaker 2:a movement, there you go, I've got there eventually again low estrogen and progesterone at the moment.
Speaker 1:A movement towards empowering yourself yeah, to look after these things, so that you don't go oh, my estrogen levels are low. So you go to the doctors, oh, take this, um, this medication for osteoporosis. I'll take this medication for cardiovascular issue. Oh, you need a statin because your cholesterol is high.
Speaker 1:You know, go away and lose some weight, or take this medication for cardiovascular issue, or you need a statin because your cholesterol you know, go away and lose some weight or take this anti-anxiety medication all because that balance has not been addressed. And you can address that balance through your lifestyle and your diet and knowing what supplements are going to work for you.
Speaker 2:I feel better now I've got that's good, well done, and work for you, as in a female, not work for you as in lots of research is done on on men, yeah, so, yeah, that's better. Yeah, I feel much better for that. See, we don't need to talk about the next bit. Let's talk about stress. We don't need to talk about that now. We feel much better we do.
Speaker 1:Just to say, and we will bring this up when we talk about progesterone, I think that stress directly impacts the sex hormones. It can't not impact them.
Speaker 2:I think that women in this, this day and age, must feel that and know that they must know it.
Speaker 1:They must know it and life is very stressful and things that are the norm now in our, in the way that we live, is really having an impact on our hormones and our liver health and our digestion and all these things have got to go together but we can just stick our middle finger up to these things because when we're in awareness and we know I'm not going to buy into this rubbish, I'm not going down that route, I'm going in the other direction and I am going to do knowing how stressful life is, knowing what, how food is produced, etc. I'm going to do the things that I can control and manage for myself and I'm going to take the other path yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I love going in the other direction.
Speaker 1:I like going and doing something totally different to what everybody else says I should me too, which is probably why we get on so well, why we're doing this yeah, so we were talking about stress.
Speaker 2:You know that the big hormone to do with stress is cortisol, and it has a horrible effect on our sex hormones, does it not, julie?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the thing about the adrenals is that because they are the boss of the endocrine system I love that they're the boss of the endocrine system they are the boss of the endocrine system because they are dealing with our survival, and so if we're under stress and our body thinks that we need to run, fight or freeze, then the adrenals are going to take over.
Speaker 2:It makes sense though, doesn't it? If it thinks we need to run, fight or freeze, it's not going to prioritize having a baby.
Speaker 1:It's not going to prioritize having a baby. It's not going to prioritize, oh, I need to eat now. It's not going to prioritize, oh, I need to feel happy and content. None of these things are. You know, when you're in that state and that adrenal response is supposed to be short, intense, yeah, and then it's dealt with. But we don't have that type of stress anymore. We have long-term chronic stress and the impact on the sex hormones is huge. So when, when we've got a decline in sex hormones, the adrenals will pick up the slack under normal circumstances, but for pretty much all the women I see in my clinic, it can't do that because they they're running off their stress response yeah, and I think I think everybody feels that in this life it's exhausting yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's not the end of the world, though, because we can't just say to someone you know, just don't be stressed, just don't be stressed. But there are things that we know that that instruct the body, that the threat has gone away, yeah, and you can minimize your exposure to stress. I mean, I do not listen to the news because it's negative and it's stressful. I start my morning in a very intentional, specific way yeah, in order, so that I've not filling up my stress bucket within the first hour of the morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're in charge, rather than things coming in and just setting you off course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and also I've said this to lots of my clients and sometimes it gets forgotten is that if your diet is poor, that is a stress on the body. If your diet is devoid of nutrients or you've got a nutrient imbalance, that is a stress on your body. So it's not just about the emotional stress, it could be physical stress. If you sit all day and you don't move, that is a stress on the body. If you've not had enough sleep, you've not drunk enough water, we've got to the four legs of a chair that is a stress on the body.
Speaker 1:We can control those. We can't control some of the other stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and your first port of call is a great big, fat belly breath. Just let go of the tummy, take a big breath in and just let it out, nice big long. You could make a noise with it. You could just do any of that. Just breathe. Let go of the tummy and just breathe, and that's. There are so many things that happen in your body just from that one super, super simple thing you cannot be in parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest.
Speaker 1:That's where you should be most of the time, when your breathing is right, you know if. If you just said it around the right right the wrong way many random.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, you cannot. Yeah, again, low hormones going on. What I'm trying to say is that if you're, if you're, stressed, your breathing is going to be off. Yeah, if you intentionally take a moment to do what you just said, take a deep breath in and let it out and make that out breath longer, you cannot stay in stress. Yeah, because you're stimulating the vagus nerve and therefore the parasympathetic nervous system, so you can't be in both at the same time you cannot.
Speaker 1:You can only be in one or the other. Yeah, so, and you can choose to be in the other once you've clocked that. You're hang a minute. I'm very stressed here. I'm in fight and flight. This is not good. You can take a breath and you can control that and change it.
Speaker 2:Great work, yeah. So just use that and then just know that all that magic happens in your body that you don't even have to think about. So when we add stress and estrogen and perimenopause into the mix, what does that equal? That equals an intensity or a densifying of all of these symptoms yeah, all symptoms will be highly magnified.
Speaker 1:So if you've got, if you're someone that is suffering from hot flushes, then you do need to look at stress, but, like I said before, because that's that's signif we're signaling a huge imbalance across the entire endocrine system. At that point, then you've got to look at everything, starting with ways to manage stress.
Speaker 2:It's like adding, it's like pouring petrol over all of these symptoms. Isn't it Stress that?
Speaker 1:is a great way to look at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly what you're doing, and this fire just absolutely rages. So your normal impact on mood and brain health, without fluctuations in your oestrogen and without stress, are enough, but then so you put both of those together and absolutely sets on fire the same with things like cardiovascular health and bone health, everything that we have said about them, about the normal ways that they work, and then about the changes when oestrogen either rises or decreases, and what that does is then tenfold when you add stress into the mix yeah, it's a massive, massive problem.
Speaker 1:Just remember that when your body is doing that, it's doing what it's supposed to do. It's trying to help you. It's telling you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the big thing that women come to us about is weight gain, and it almost makes for a I was going to say a perfect storm of not being able to lose weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tell my clients, you cannot let go go of weight, release weight if you're stressed, because your body's gone into protection mode at that point and it is not going to want to let go of anything, and that includes the foods that you eat. So anything you eat because the body thinks that there is a major incident going on. I may need this fuel. Yeah, I better hold on to it. Let me just convert all this into fat, let me just park it up there, because I don't know what's around the corner. And that could happen day after day after day yeah, compounded with maybe raised estrogen levels, that's.
Speaker 2:You know, the body's merrily doing that as well yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you then try and eat less, your body's going to slow down the metabolism even more and it's going to go into fat storage even more, and it's stressed even more, because you're not getting any of the fuel that it needs to. Yeah, so you cannot lose weight. Release weight, let go of weight. If you're stressed, it's impossible.
Speaker 2:Amen. So if you've been listening to us for a little while, you probably will have heard all of these things, but, as we know, you don't necessarily take on board everything that we're saying all at the same time. So how do we sort out this stress to be able to then deal with things that are sort of normal processes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, at least let's take the petrol off the fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Let's take the petrol off the fire, we're left with the fire. Then we've got to deal with the fire, which we will come on to later in another episode. But by removing the petrol which you can do by doing various things, at least you've just got back to the fire. Now, it's small. It's not taking over the whole house, is it?
Speaker 2:no, absolutely, I'm living. I'm loving this visualization we've got here. So we've talked about breathing, so there, and then taking that big breath, but incorporating and don't like the word but and incorporating things like mindfulness and meditation into your daily practice, so that one it helps you to just remain cool, calm, collected most of the time I don't know if you've got teenagers, but uh, doesn't work all the time and when you need it you're good at it, kind of. I know so many people that will say to me I can't meditate because I haven't practiced, because, and yeah, and just because it's sitting still and breathing does not mean that it's easy. It requires you to practice. I mean, it's at one point you couldn't walk, at one point you couldn't talk. You practiced and most of you could do that. So it's just the same, it needs to be practiced and it doesn't have to be like.
Speaker 1:You don't have to set aside a time to sit cross-legged in a quiet space or with the right music on or whatever it is. With a candle lit, you could practice meditation when you're folding the washing. Yeah, it's about being present in it absolutely. You know, it's about being present and not being thinking about a million other things that you've got to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, feeling the feeling the texture of all the different textures on your hands, of all of the things that maybe you're folding up. One of the examples that, when I was having counseling, when I was very anxious, she used to talk about washing up, which probably was a really bad example for me, because I don't do washing up, I just I just don't. But she was talking about, you know, like feeling the bubbles, feeling the warmth of the water, feeling the cloth and and the smoothness perhaps on the what I I believe would be the smoothness on the plate and all that stuff. But, yeah, just being really mindful. If you can do this walking, go out and don't take a podcast with you, don't take a phone with you and just go on ear things in oh my god, have you noticed how many people walk around now with earbuds in?
Speaker 1:they're so disconnected, aren't they? You can't even say good morning to someone now, because they're like they haven't even realized you're there, no, no, it's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 2:and that is a direct reflection to how disconnected they are with themselves. I mean, I know it's a gross generalization, but I think in society they're just it's. You're always looking for that outside source, it's never within. And so when you're walking on the beach, just with yourself, I've said on the beach, just because I'm looking at the beach, right?
Speaker 2:now but you can walk wherever you like. You could walk in a cityscape, that would be absolutely. There's so many things to look at when you're walking around the city and look up and look at the buildings and look at the sky and just be totally, totally present. There is then no space for all of the other noise that goes on in your, in your life and you just you need that time. You need to to allow your system to just settle back down again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got to empty the stress bucket right. Oh, without a doubt, your favorite one. What's my favorite one? Sleep. Oh yeah, do you know what? I always feel a little bit concerned about talking about sleep, because I know that people that struggle with sleep it's not their fault, yeah, and it's not something that can be easily controlled. So if you've got someone you know talking to you now, like I am going on about sleep and you're someone who can't sleep, then you're going to get angry at me, and I don't want you to get angry because you'll be in fight and flight then and that's not good. There are lots of people that know that sleep is good for them. She's looking at me again but they can't even look at her in the eyes.
Speaker 1:They don't prioritize it, do they? No, no, they don't, no. I mean, I had a client recently who was absolutely adamant that they are a night owl. They are not a night owl met very few people are a night owl very few. Yeah, it's because they've conditioned themselves. That's how they are, yeah, and actually we've got more of a normal sleep routine going on, and guess what their symptom was was tired. Yeah, really, really. What time do you go to bed? Well, 1am, because I'm a night owl. Do you know? Can you see?
Speaker 2:yeah, mine is a lot of nurture. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a pattern that me and my mum and my sister all share. You can guarantee we could, we could text each other at 11, 12 o'clock at night and we'd all be awake. Wow, yeah, and now I think I've just I've just sent your system into a sympathetic nervous system there?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely it's just it's so important for supporting your liver and your liver when we start talking about how you can help balance your hormones, etc this bit of information that you're about to tell them about the liver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually makes a huge difference. Yeah, about the timing.
Speaker 1:Okay, carry on I've lost my train of thought. Now, look, come on, I'm operating on low hormones, sorry, you would.
Speaker 2:You were telling us about what the liver does, why it's important to sleep for the liver, yes so when at a certain time yeah, so our liver is going to kick in.
Speaker 1:It is working all the time, takes a lot of energy and it needs certain conditions within the body and so, generally speaking, the liver wants to kick in about 11 pm and it needs you to be asleep for a certain amount of time before it goes. Okay, the coast is clear. We can come out and get on with what we need to do. Yeah, and it is cleaning and it is processing things out of your body. It is going to.
Speaker 1:It's the main place that your body is recycling and clearing hormones, and if you're not asleep and you're not supporting that and your liver is impacted by other things that you do drinking alcohol, putting too much sugar through, whatever it is medicines have to go through the and you're not supporting that and your liver is impacted by other things that you do drinking alcohol, putting too much sugar through, whatever it is medicines have to go through the liver and then that's without all the pesticides and the plastics in our environment and the hormones. Yeah, so it's so, so important when we're looking at how can we help ourselves no, but that it was that 11 o'clock.
Speaker 2:You me thinking that I need to be in bed by 11 o'clock or before 11 o'clock for my liver to be able to do what it needs to do. I found it really like helped get me into bed a bit earlier. Good, I'm glad it did. Grey's anatomy counteracts counterbalance is that unfortunately, but no, I it really really helped yeah.
Speaker 1:So if, again, if you are someone that's listening and you're like I try, I really try, I get to bed, I just can't sleep. There are other things going on that is causing that imbalance and the hormones again are going to play a key role.
Speaker 1:But it's about coming at it from a different angle so that we can help support your sleep and obviously your other or your main superpower really impacts on stress is your diet, yeah, I feel like I want to do this in a separate section, um separate episode, because we've been talking for quite a while now about estrogen and I think once we've gone through progesterone as well, we can kind of pull it all together because you won't want to do one without the other.
Speaker 1:But it goes without saying that the quality of what you put into your body is going to have an impact on what you get out of it. Yeah, your body is basically just a load of chemical reactions that are happening and they need certain ingredients, and those ingredients are only coming from your food. Yeah, and so if you've got problems with digesting and absorbing those nutrients, if those nutrients are low, if you're putting too much processed foods in or too much sugar, not enough fiber, not enough colorful foods that you're going to get your vitamins and minerals from, then you can't expect things to be regulating properly in your body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no absolutely I know. I know we're going to round off, but I just want you to very, very. Then you can't expect things to be regulating properly in your body. Yeah, no, absolutely I know we're going to round off, but I just want you to very, very.
Speaker 1:And she's going to roll her eyes when I say quickly touch on things like the whole soy story when it comes to oestrogen and all that sort of stuff. Okay, so when we've got oestrogen circulating in our bloodstream, that is on its way to go and do something. So the oestrogen, if we've got high levels, it's looking for its receptor site that it's going to bind to to then go off and do what it does. We can use foods that are called phytoestrogens to help balance oestrogen levels. So if we haven't got enough oestrogen, we can put phytoestrogens directly into the body, and soya foods are a phytoestrogen. So what happens is those are weaker oestrogens, so they will bind to the receptor sites and if there's not enough oestrogen, they give it a little boost because they're a little weak oestrogen and they're giving it a little boost If there's too much. They replace the more potent form that our body's produced and therefore it can bring the oestrogen level down. So does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, so we can.
Speaker 2:It helps with that balancing act a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we can use phytoestrogens, and phytoestrogens in supplements are often a key ingredient to help support hot flushes.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, yeah, because I just I wanted to say something like that because often it gets a bad rap and I know from from days when I used to work more with, like protein shakes and things like that, the company that I worked with took them out, but only because they had a bad rap, it wasn't, and actually them being in there probably would have been much more beneficial but it was like purely a marketing thing and I think that it generally got a bad rap and I and I believe that it was unfounded, like lots of this research, and that it actually does more benefit for you yeah, so the trouble is is that a lot of soya, in particular, is highly processed and it's been genetically modified.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're magically modified.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the word and so when we're looking at the process forms of soya that we would have in our diets and then we look at soya in its natural form in cultures like japan, yeah, they're having the benefits of the phytoestrogen through their menopause journey. I think it's japan that doesn't even have a word for menopause, I, I think. But in the Western world, the former soya that we were getting was messed around with Much more processed. Yeah, so just trying to keep it more in its simple form. If we use it in its natural form and we're using edamame beans and natural tofu, oh, I'm hungry now. And what's the other? One Begins with T. Forgot the name Tempura. I'm hungry now and um what's the other?
Speaker 2:one begins with t. Forgot the name tempura. Yes, yes, yes. No, that's fried stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 1:the oh my god, I can't think of the word the fermented soya you know what we mean. I want to say tempura, but I don't know if that's now the right way.
Speaker 2:I think it is anyway that was like fried stuff, but that's very good too. Eat that too. No, don't eat that too.
Speaker 1:But yeah, soya milks and soya products that are manufactured are not going to be good. So that's where I think it came from. Temper, temper, yeah, you're right, or is that a mattress?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Don't eat those. Perhaps you're having a low Hallman day even though you've got your damn coil in I know I need to rev it up. I'll wind it back up again later anyway, we will come on to what you can do to help yourself. We just wanted you to have an understanding of what's oestrogen's role in the body and how symptoms that you may be experiencing could be driven by that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic. I am loving all this hormone talk. I am hoping that you are too. Come and tell us in the Facebook page. Thank you for keeping us company today. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
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