Transcript

Hello, hello, and welcome back to this week’s episode of the Hormone Hub, where I put it out to our Facebook community, the Hormone Hub nPerimenopause [00:01:00] Menopause Support Group. If you are not in there, make sure you jump in. And I said, what would you like me to answer on the podcast? So here we are.

So I’ve broken it down into sort of categories so hopefully it flows well and makes sense. Okay. Alright. So of course we had a ton of questions about weight gain, how do I lose weight? All of those things. So let’s talk about that. So some of the questions we had, Jill asked me, how do I stop the weight gain? It just keeps coming and coming. Irene said, what is your best recommendation for weight gain? I’ve been working out the same for the past one and a half years and started gaining weight. I’ve managed to stabilize it with strict diet, but cannot lose. Amanda said, same. I’m in pretty good shape, but the area above the belly button doesn’t seem to want to lose that last bit of belly fat.

No kids eat, well exercise hardly any alcohol. And Belinda said, I’m hungry all the [00:02:00] time. What can I do to stop me eating so much? Okie doke. So there’s a few things going on here. So definitely when we hit perimenopause and menopause, what worked in our twenties and thirties does not work any longer, and I doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

So, you know, we’re sort of conditioned by the diet industry, eat less, cut your calories, exercise more, and when we’re stuck in that kind of Paradigm, it doesn’t work without changing hormones. So what we need to do is work with our hormones. Now, what happens if we think of our hormones as our chemical messenger, that signals our body to do certain things. So when we’re younger in our twenties and thirties, estrogen signals our body to store fat around our thighs and around, you know, on our bum because that then gives us a good, healthy, fat store if we fall pregnant and, you know, we [00:03:00] need to breastfeed a baby. So then when, as we start to sort of lose estrogen and our estrogen levels drop as we hit our forties and fifties, other hormones start to kick in. So what we need to consider is stress. So is cortisol playing a big role in your weight gain?

So, cortisol is a big, fat storage hormone. Okay. So that’s gonna come in and it’s gonna go, you know what, she’s under stress. She’s on a calorie restricted diet. She’s starving us, so we better hang on to what she, you know, had for breakfast this morning. Bang, if you are doing long fasts, your body is under stress again because you know, it doesn’t know where the next meal is coming, so it hangs on to what you ate for dinner.

So that’s why fasting can backfire for a lot of women. Insulin is another fat storage hormone that, you know, really starts to impact us, particularly the [00:04:00] closer we get to menopause and through menopause. Because if we sort of think estrogen protects us against excess e insulin then we become, as we lose estrogen, we become more susceptible to insulin resistance, more susceptible, which is sort of leading us down the path to type two diabetes.

So we need to really focus on that insulin response and both cortisol and insulin are, you know, responsible for that fat, particularly that belly fat around the middle. So we really need to, to kind of keep an eye on that. And again, Belinda sort of saying, I’m hungry all the time now that, you know, is sort of a blood sugar issue.

So what we need to do is, you know, make sure that we are having good, solid meals. So, Protein at every single meal. Healthy fats at every single meal, making sure we’re getting enough fiber and also making sure that we’re getting enough of the right types of carbs. And then that, you [00:05:00] know, protein, fat, fiber combo will help keep us full, give us the right nutrients and, you know, will help balance that blood sugar and therefore that insulin response as well.

So it’s not about when we are putting on weight, it is not about dieting, it is not about being strict, it’s not about restricting calories. It’s about supporting our hormones. Okay, so, vaginal dryness came up of course, so this is a big one. So what happens again, when we lose estrogen, we lose our, our lubrication, if you like.

So lubrication can impact our joints. So a lot of women tend to get, you know, frozen shoulder. Some women experience dry eyes, dry skin, dry hair, and of course dry vaginas. So, Brenda’s question was, if you increase in essential fatty acids, does that help reduce the hormonal effect causing vaginal dryness?

[00:06:00] And look, it, it certainly can to a point. But that vaginal dryness is quite specific, so that is directly linked to low estrogen. Now, certainly there are, you know, Bioidentical estrogen, pessaries. So it’s, you’re effectively, inserting a pessary and you are applying bioidentical estrogen to that area.

So it’s quite, you know, localized to the vagina. So that that helps a lot of women. If you can’t have an estrogen treatment or a hormone treatment, or you do want to choose something that is a bit more natural, On my website and we’ll pop it in the show notes. I do have a product called, V for me smooth.

And what this is, is it’s olive oil based and it’s infused with fennel and sea buckthorne and a few other things. And this has shown to help regenerate the cells of the vaginal wall. I use it with a lot of my clients who’ve been [00:07:00] through hormone or breast cancer treatment who can’t have HRT. And we’ve had some really great results. So I’ll pop those, the link to that in the show notes. But as far as increasing your essential fatty acids, I don’t think it’s going to be enough. But certainly increasing your essential fatty acids is a good idea at the best of times because it has a ton of other benefits, for us as well.

Okie doke. Cherie has said her doctor wants to try her on antidepressants before she, he tries or she tries her on HRT. Okay. This is a doozy, so antidepressants have been shown to help with like night sweats and, you know, improve sleep as well. But you know, it, they also come with a raft of other side effects and you can’t just stop.

You need to, you know, wean yourself off. [00:08:00] And it’s quite a process. And, I think, you and certainly if you are suffering from depression, antidepressants have a place but not as a go-to in menopause. So before, depending what your menopausal symptoms are, there is a lot we can do to support your hormones with the right nutrition, supporting your stress response supporting, you know, The way you are, and I, I kind of think of those as the foundations.

If you don’t get the foundations right and you just sort of jump into some kind of medication, you are just putting a bandaid on top. You still need to do, get the foundations right. So work with your nutrition. Get your mindset, get your lifestyle, get, you know, good sleep hygiene good stress relief habits, and support your body with the right kind of nutrients and foods.

Be kind to yourself. Then there’s a lot of bioidentical HRT options around these days, which are low [00:09:00] dose, they’re body identical, so you are, they’re not being processed through your liver. And they’re much gentler than the old form of synthetic h r t and certainly much gentler than an antidepressant.

So antidepressants for menopause would not be my first, uh, go-to. Are you depressed? Sure. If not, not so much. Okay, so Julie has asked about bloating and gas. Okay. So definitely as we, you know, our hormones change, our body changes, and we don’t have the stomach acid. We don’t have the digestive enzymes that we used to, to break down our food and eliminate it properly.

If we’ve had, you know, a processed diet, if we’ve had, you know, our diet hasn’t been all that good, if we, you know, drink regularly, drink alcohol, you know, Things like that, it can affect our [00:10:00] digestive system. So, yeah, so what we wanna make sure, we wanna make sure that we are well hydrated. So water is everything, you know, it’s amazing how many digestive issues we can improve just by increasing water.

Are we getting enough of fiber? Are we getting enough of the right types of fiber? Do you have food sensitivities that we need to be addressing? Are you, are you getting prebiotic fibers, so the fibers that feed your good gut bugs? So that’s really important too. But certainly you do not have to put up with bloating and gas.

Uh, that just means that something’s not right and we need to get the bottom of what it is. Okay, so the next one, Renee has asked a question. She said, is rage anger linked to menopause? She’s 44 years old. She has two kids, a two year old and a six year old. She has less tolerance for things and gets angry really easily.

[00:11:00] Okay, Renee, first up, big hugs and be kind to yourself. You have a two-year-old and a six-year-old. You have a lot of things going on, okay, in your life right now. It is a busy time for you. And certainly the change in hormones affect us physically. Like we always think, oh, the hot flushes, but there’s so much more, it can affect us mentally and emotionally as well.

So, yeah, and things that did, and we lose that resilience to the way we respond. So things that never used to bother us and we would never have reacted to in the past, we can react to. Okay. And it happens to all of us. We can, and I sort of speak to women who fly off the handle at work because they just had enough.

And I think there’s a few things going on. I think our tolerance level changes as well. Don’t you worry about that, but definitely, it can be hormones. And again, you know, by supporting your hormones, there’s a lot [00:12:00] we can do just to calm that mood, support your blood sugar, support your hormones, and, and bring back into balance that ratio.

Because if we think of progesterone as our happy calming, you know, keep us even, and sweet and lovely hormone. If we get that big drop in progesterone before our cycle, yeah, it can make us angry for sure. So, but Renee, be kind and give yourself a big hug. All right. You got a lot going on. Okay, so anxiety is another one.

So Eva has said she’s anxious all the time. Her doctor said that being on H R T alone may not be enough due to the level of anxiety she has and she would need to go on to, I think she means serotonin for a year. Is there anything else I can do to reduce anxiety? Absolutely. Okay. So there’s a lot, you know, if we sort of think anxiety and [00:13:00] stress are, it’s the way we are responding to things and a lot of, look, I’m not a psychologist, but what I do with my clients and what we do inside, you know, the well balanced woman program for instance, is we, we break it down. So what are the things that we are anxious about? And if we sort of write like a big list of, you know, and just almost like a brain dump, get out of our head all the things that we are worried about, alright, all the things that are causing us grief, all the things we’re concerned about.

Then the next step is to, okay, well what’s the worst thing that could happen if that really bad thing was to happen? So for each of those bad things that you’re worried about, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Then the next sort of step is, okay, if that worst thing was to happen, what would we do about it?

Like what would our plan [00:14:00] be? And then what this is doing is it’s basically giving us an action step for those things that we worry about. And nine times out of 10, the things, when we are feeling anxious, the things that we worry about don’t actually ever happen. But, you know, we kind of preempt that all of these bad things are gonna happen.

But if we’ve got, if we’ve sort of mapped it in our head and often in our head, we get, we get in this loop that just goes around and around and around, but if we take that loop out of our head, put it onto paper, map out all the things, then map out what could go wrong or what’s the worst case scenario, and then what would we do about it.

We automatically have sort of like a, a to-do list or a, a combat list in reverse. And just even having that can help reduce that anxiety. So certainly, you know, there’s a place for [00:15:00] anti-anxiety medication, there’s, a hundred percent. And I’m not, not saying that there’s not, H R T can certainly help, but also, you know, those behavioral things.

Now it’s also worth noting, like what else is going on for you health-wise, because certainly, you know, if we have certain health conditions that can trigger anxiety. So for instance, IBS, like if we have Bad digestion and we need to think, plan ahead when we are going out, where that next toilet is, where our toilet stops are, you know, that in, in itself is stressful, so that can create anxiety.

So working on supporting that digestion and addressing those digestive issues can help alleviate some of that anxiety. And this is something I see a lot with my clients, so certainly it’s something that we can certainly help you with. So hopefully [00:16:00] that helps and you know, let me know.

Okay, so we’ve had a couple of questions also about skin. Now there is a lot that can happen and can be triggered by our [00:17:00] hormones. There is no doubt. So Melissa has asked, you know, is eczema connected to hormones? It can be 100%. So what happens when we hit perimenopause, we have higher levels of circulating estrogen. We have low progesterone, and those, we sort of think of that all of those estrogen receptors that are floating around, they lock onto histamines which are those allergy reactive little particles that float around in our blood. So definitely some women notice an increase in eczema, increase in sinus, in increase in allergies.

 People who’ve had preexisting conditions, all of a sudden they might get worse in perimenopause. People who’ve never had allergies, things can get worse in perimenopause. And definitely, you know, there’s a lot we can do with diet. So the first thing I would do with clients is a food sensitivity test.

 That also looks at, you know, [00:18:00] things that we use every day that we don’t think about. So it could be toothpaste. It could be deodorant, it could be washing powder. So we need to have a look at the food we’re eating and also the products that we are using on our body. So for skin things, my first step would be food sensitivities. Then, you know, again, how are you digesting your food and are you eliminating properly? Because that whole digestion absorbing the nutrients, breaking it down and pooping it out, that needs to be working well because if we’re absorbing toxins, we’re, we’re absorbing histamines.

If we’re absorbing, you know, cholesterol, estrogen, all of those things back into our body because our system isn’t working properly, it’s gonna exacerbate all of those symptoms for sure. Okay. There’s a few questions here about, you know, does not having children impact perimenopause and any changes.

Look, [00:19:00] they, there’s not a huge amount of research on this. A lot of it is sort of anecdotal and in my experience, I don’t think it makes a huge amount of difference if you’ve had children or not. What we do tend to see is women who’ve always had trouble with their cycles will have a harder time through menopause.

Women who’ve always sort of sailed through their cycles are more likely to sail through menopause. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot we can do to support your cycles and you know, so you do have an easier time of it because we can 100% do that. But certainly, if you haven’t had children versus if you have had children, you know, it doesn’t really impact your experience through menopause. Unless of course you’ve had, you know, trouble with your cycles all through. So hope that helps.

[00:20:00] Leah has asked, she’s been diagnosed with migraines by her neurologist. Her headache started about two and a half years ago. She’s on norgesics. She’s recently had Botox in her head and she’s 53 years young now. What can be done at a hormone level to help manage her migraines and headaches? This is a great question, leah, and we did a whole podcast on migraines. It is something that we see a lot in perimenopause for sure. And again, it’s got a lot to do with that imbalance in the ratio between estrogen and progesterone. So at a hormone level, what we would do is, you know, and again, I would probably go back to a food level first.

Like, do you have food sensitivities? Do you have, you know, High histamines, do you have high glutamate in your diet? So what can we do from a diet point of view? And then, how do we support, ’cause it’s that drop in [00:21:00] progesterone, and that higher circulating levels of estrogen that, that can potentially cause those migraines.

So how do we lift your levels naturally of progesterone and then how do we get your detox pathways working better so you’re clearing out that excess estrogen. So that’s, that’s a really good one. And it’s actually something that I’m seeing more and more often with my clients who are coming into the Well-Balanced Women program for sure.

And then Glenda has asked, she just needs an answer to all the heat waves through her body, especially at night so she can sleep instead of sweating all night, throwing off the covers as no thermostat is working in her body anymore. And boom. I think Glenda, that is sort of the, the, the big, and probably the, I guess most synonymous with, with menopause is, you know, those hot flushes and certainly those night sweats can start early in perimenopause too.

[00:22:00] Okay. So what we want first up, like have a look at your bedroom, let’s control the environment. So do you have sort of layered bedding and you can buy, now you can buy cooling mats that can go under your, and you know, that can, you can get a single one. So it can just go under your side of the bed if you’re sharing a bed.

 Do you have natural fibers for your bedding, like natural sheets, do you have layers of blankets instead of a big thick doona? So a big thick doona that’s on, that’s off. You know? Whereas when you’ve got layers you can sort of peel them on, peel them off. Do you have a fan in your room or are you able to run air con.

 Just to keep that, that air circulating and keep that temperature down or opening a window can all help as well. You know, natural sort of light pajamas in a light cotton, not something, not anything too hot and thick. Certainly reducing or cutting out alcohol. Alcohol can be a big trigger.[00:23:00] 

 Caffeine for a lot of women can be a big trigger. Spicy foods. Things that can help are staying hydrated, drinking plenty of water, putting sage leaves in your water bottle or in your tea, and drinking a cooler, sort of like a, an iced sage tea that can help as well. So, there is a lot we can do, a hundred percent. So anyway, ladies, I hope this has been helpful. If you have any more questions, let me know in the Facebook because I, yeah, this has been fun. So I think I’ll do these episodes on a more regular basis so, you know, you can get all your questions answered for sure. Alright, everyone. Thanks for listening, and I will see you in the next episode of The Hormone Hub.

Bye for now.