Transcript

Hello, everyone. It is Kylie here, and we are back for part two of our hormone series. So, just to quickly recap, we talked about [00:01:00] hormones. We talked about the profound effect that they can have on us mentally, physically, and emotionally. Now today we are gonna have a look at what some of those drivers of how we end up with a hormone imbalance.

And we’re also gonna have a look at how stress impacts us. And we’re also gonna have a look at our poor little thyroid and how that impacts us as well. 

All righty. So the thing is, you know, with today’s busy lifestyles, you know, we, and I think women in general have this extraordinary capacity just to push through. We are very capable and we just take on more and more on our plates and it’s not until the wheels start falling off that we start to pay attention.

Okay. So today I’m gonna sort of talk you through why you need to start paying attention and also some of the things you can do as well. All right. So what does stress look like for you? Okay. So [00:02:00] is stress, so we think of stress and we think of big things. We think financial stress, divorce, death, moving house, moving country, pandemics, you know, all of these things.

These are big life stresses. But our body can’t tell the difference between the big stuff and we’ve forgotten our car keys. We’re running late for work. The kid forgot his library books or his footy boots. The dog needs to go to the vet. The, you know, what the hell are we gonna have for dinner tonight?

Oh God, my mother-in-law’s, you know, I’ve gotta call her back. You know? So all of these things, you know, are also stress and it’s not that they’re big life stresses, but it’s just the little things that we deal with on a day to day basis, pretty much 24/7. Okay. It’s, there’s always stuff going on for us.

So what happens is when we, you know, are under, have our stress response. So say we’re sitting in [00:03:00] traffic, the car in front of us stops and we automatically, you know, put our foot on the brake to stop running into them. So that’s that surge of adrenaline. So that is what keeps us safe. So it’s that big rush of adrenaline, slam on the brake.

That instant moves come in and you know, and then we can go, whew. Okay. Few deep breaths to, to get that down. So we get this surge of adrenaline. And then if you sort of think of cortisol then comes to mop up the adrenaline. All right. But when we have, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work, it’s healthy and it keeps us safe.

Now where it starts become unhealthy is when we have this stress response constantly because we can’t find the keys. The kid needs the footy boots, the mother-in-law needs a call back the, this, the, that, the, that the dog, blah, blah, you know, it’s all happening. So we’ve constantly got cause the adrenaline’s worn off a long time ago, you know, but we’ve constantly got this flood of cortisol hanging [00:04:00] around our body. Now to put it very simply cortisol is a fat storage hormone. I’ll say that again, cortisol is a fat storage hormone, namely, around our waist. Okay. So if we have, think of estrogen as being the hormone, that puts it on our bum and our thighs, cortisol, and you know, we’ll get to insulin in a couple of days, but cortisol is the one responsible for that role around the middle.

Okay. So up under your bra line, cortisol. Okay. So, you know, so stress can be big stress. It can be little stress, but you know, when we, when these simple things in life are causing us this, and to put us in this chronic state of stress, you know, this then has, it catches up with us. It causes fatigue, cravings, mood swings, hormonal imbalances, weight gain, you [00:05:00] know, and this is all without us even realizing. We don’t pin this back to stress and stress isn’t necessarily going away.

This is, this is our life. This is what we do. But unless we learn how to, you know, get a handle on our hormones and change the way our body responds to stress, it’s always going to impact us in some form or another. Generally I see it in energy levels, weight, you know, inability to lose weight, cravings, not being able to sleep, you know, mood swings.

This is where I see it in the clients that we work with. So, you know, we need to learn how to support our hormones. We don’t need another diet. Okay. And you’re gonna hear me say that 600 times. Okay. So when we are in that constant fight or flight mode, because of stress, what happens is our body, to make all these stress hormones, it needs progesterone.

And if we think of it, we [00:06:00] talked about yesterday, that progesterone is our happy, calming, lovely hormone. Now, if our progesterones being shunted off to make our stress hormones, we’ve lost that beautiful calming, you know, protective layer of progesterone. Then we’re gonna have low progesterone and it’s gonna shoot our, you know, our estrogen ratio is gonna be even higher.

So it’s gonna throw our cycles out so you can sort of start to see how it’s, how it impacts. Now, traditionally, you know, stress a hundred percent is designed to keep us safe, that stress response. But if we are running from a tiger, so think of it. We’re out in the field. We need to run from the tiger. Okay.

So we don’t need to stop and do a poo, so our digestive system is going to shut up shop. Okay. So hello constipation. If we are running from the tiger, we don’t need to sleep, lie down and have a good night’s sleep. No [00:07:00] one needs that you gotta keep one eye open for that tiger. If we are running from that tiger, you know, we don’t need to get frisky with the first guy we see, because the tiger, you know, so hello, goodbye libido.

If we are running from that tiger. And we don’t know what’s on the other end. Is there gonna be any food there? So let’s just hold on to every single mouthful of food that we’ve eaten in the last few days, let’s just store it around the middle in case there’s a famine coming up. So you can kind of see, you see where I’m going with this, right.

So we need to, you know, learn for our body to function well, we need to get on top of our daily stress. Remove some if possible. And also more importantly change the way we respond to stress. Okay. So every single hormone in every single system of our body is impacted negatively by stress. So that’s our nervous system, our digestive [00:08:00] system, our immune system, our reproductive system. Stress management needs to become a priority. Okay. So I am really big on this. And you know, when I, I start to work with women, you know, they come into the, the well balanced woman program. We chat about what they’re doing, you know, and it’s not uncommon that they’ve been, you know, they’ve tried all the things.

 So when we are doing, you know, things like fasting, it’s another form of stress for our body. Fasting can be great if you are, you know, in a non-stressed state, you know, there can be some good benefits to it. But the problem I see with a lot of women is, you know, they jump in and they start skipping breakfast, you know, so fasting is, you know, just that, oh, well I don’t need to have breakfast, so I won’t need until lunchtime, but I’ll have a cup of coffee, black coffee, cuz you know, that counts as the fast.

So, what we are doing is when we wake up naturally in the morning, our cortisol levels are naturally higher in the morning. Now this is to get us up out of bed. And likewise, our cortisol levels should be [00:10:00] lower at nighttime because that helps us wind down and go to sleep at nighttime. But when our stress hormones are on the go 24/7, you know, we lose that, that rhythm that they’re supposed to be in. So you might have heard me talk about the circadian rhythm. So that’s our sleep wake cycle. So if we’re stressed, that’s out. If we’re fasting, you know, our body kind of that stress exacerbates because it doesn’t know when the next meal is coming from.

So, you know that it goes into a heightened stress. So again, you know, women who’ve been fasting and it’s not working. It can actually backfire because you know, your body’s in that stress state. So it’s hanging on to everything else you eat. Likewise with exercise, you know, you need to find exercise, or I prefer to call it movement, movement that works for you.

So if you are doing a workout that leaves you falling asleep on the lounge, you know, in the afternoon, or needing a Nana nap later on in the [00:11:00] day, it’s not the right exercise for you. So we need to kind of get out of our heads that we need to do this high intensity exercise. Now, if you can do high intensity exercise, you feel great afterwards and you have all day long lasting energy after that.

Fantastic, you know, keep going. But if you don’t, you know, we need to wind it back. Now I am a big advocate for moving your body, but you need to move it in a way that’s not gonna put it under more stress. So, yeah, so we’ve, you know, stress is a big part of the program, the well balanced woman program.

And because we can’t always control the amount of stress that we have in our life, but we can control the way we respond to it. And unless we learn to, to manage this and change this, our body is programmed to protect us. It’s programmed to store fat, not burn. So some of the things, so what can we do? So [00:12:00] some of the things that we do is, you know, get outside in nature, you know, it’s a natural, de-stressor take your shoes off, put them in the grass, put them, you know, in the sand, put them, you know, on the, on the earth. We can dance, like dancing naturally gives us our good endorphins, you know, makes us feel good.

If you wanna kill two birds with one stone, put on some great eighties music. Teenagers gone, just like that, every time, especially if we start singing. So, you know, we wanna start dancing and, you know, feel good. Cuddling pets has been shown to reduce your stress levels and increase your endorphin levels.

 Chatting with a good friend, you know, that friend who makes you laugh, you know, that those friends are gold, you know, get on the phone, call those friends, your stress levels will reduce a hundred percent. So we really need to, to make it a priority. And you know, it’s also, you [00:13:00] know, part of that is like finding you again, like what brings you joy?

What lights you up? And this is what I work with with a lot of the women, in the program is what lights you up. And, you know, quite often like women will sit there and just go, I don’t know. I go to work. I look after the kids, I do my things and you know, and I’ll be like, what’s your hobby? And then I just get this blank face and it’s like, I don’t have any hobbies.

It’s like, okay, well, what did you do, what were your hobbies before you had kids? Oh, well I used to paint. I used to dance. I used to swim. I used to, you know, all of these things start coming out. So tap back into that, because that makes up and I mean, we sort of lose our identity along the way, because we’ve got the role of mother, partner, dog mother, friend, daughter, sister, you know, all of these labels that we do, employee, worker, coworker, colleague, you know, all of these labels that we’ve got on ourselves and we become those labels. And we [00:14:00] forget those pieces inside of us, of who we are. So, yeah, we wanna definitely tap back into that.

So looking after our stress is a big one. Now another sort of hormone that I really, really wanna talk about is our thyroid. So our thyroid is a little tiny gland at the base of our neck and it controls our metabolism and every single cell in our body has thyroid receptors. So it’s kind of like a big deal.

So if you are gaining weight, if you feel the cold, if you, if your hair is falling out, if you have really dry skin, if you feel constipated, if you feel, you know, just slow, tired, fatigued, you know, these are all signs that your thyroid impacting your metabolism. So even if you don’t have a diagnosable thyroid [00:15:00] condition, if you are in premenopause or menopause, let me tell you, your thyroid is 100% affected, and compromised, no matter what your doctor said.

Okay. So your test might be normal. GP might have said, oh, that’s fine. Nothing’s it’s all good. You know, it’s a bit low. We’ll wait and see, like seriously, what are we waiting for, a diagnosable condition? No, thank you. So the problem with thyroid and when they measuring thyroid bloods is a, they generally only do one thyroid marker. So they’ll do TSH. And that just tells us like one piece of the puzzle. We wanna know what your T4 is doing. We wanna know what your T3 is doing. If you’ve got family history of autoimmune conditions, you wanna be checked for a thyroid autoimmune condition.

This is really important and definitely worth pushing for now the problem with thyroid results is [00:16:00] if you sort of think of the bell curve when we are feeling well and being well, we are in the optimal level. So that’s sort of like really not a narrow range, but a really sort of tight range. That’s where your thyroids functioning well, you feel well, you’ve, you’re energetic and everything is going well and healthy. Now the normal range is super wide. So if you think of the bell curve, and then if you were sitting on the outside of that bell curve, still in the normal range, but on the outside, you are gonna be told that everything is normal, but let me tell you, it’s not, if you’re on the outside, it’s not optimal and you’re gonna feel like rubbish.

This is where women get so frustrated because we are told, oh, don’t worry, everything’s normal, but it’s not, it’s not optimal. So what we wanna do, you know, and you’re not necessarily at the point of needing a prescription, but unless we do the work to support and balance your thyroid, it’s going [00:17:00] to be an uphill battle for you, you know, you’re working against your metabolism.

So, so what do you think, you know, causes an underactive thyroid. Okay. So if we sort of think definitely 100% affected by stress every single time. Okay. Just being a female, just being a woman, going through perimenopause, like I said, we’ve got these fluctuations and these decline in our hormones, our hormones are all linked.

It impacts our thyroid. Genetics can play a role. If we’ve been exposed to heavy metals, like mercury, fluoride, chlorine. These can play a role. If we have any nutrient deficiencies. So iodine, zinc, selenium, iron, vitamin D, that can impact our thyroid. If we have any inflammation in our body and remember back to estrogen, too much, estrogen is inflammatory, so that inflammation is gonna impact our thyroid.

 If our digestive [00:18:00] system’s not working well, you know, we’re not absorbing the nutrients from our food. You know, it’s those essential nutrients for our thyroid. Not gonna work properly. If our liver function’s not working properly. If we are not clearing our excess estrogen, if we’re not clearing our excess cholesterol, if we’re not, you know, if things are a bit sluggish, our active thyroid hormone is converted in our liver.

If it’s a bit sluggish, it’s not gonna happen as effectively as it should be. So these are like big juicy pieces. So today, yeah, we’ve covered stress. Why stress is such a biggie when it comes to hormone imbalances and also our thyroid. So how, you know, does the hormone imbalance impact our thyroid? Yes.

Does our thyroid potentially create a hormone imbalance? Also yes. So we need to take this holistic approach and, you know, look at, it’s not, if you think of diet and exercise are a surface level solution. We [00:19:00] need to go deeper. And this is what we do with our clients. We go deeper. How are you responding to stress?

How well is your thyroid working? We need to start supporting these. Absolutely. All right. So thank you for listening today. Take care. And I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.