Transcript

#89: Inflammation SOS: Your Guide to Hormone Friendly Solutions

[00:00:00] Welcome back to episode of the Hormone Hub Podcast, where we talk all things perimenopause, menopause, and have the conversations no one else is having. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode.

Hello, hello, ladies. It is Kylie Pinwill here, your host of the Hormone Hub podcast. And today we’re going to talk about chronic inflammation and, how that can impact us our health, how it can impact our energy, the way we feel about ourselves and, why we kind of need to pay attention, particularly as we hit sort of perimenopause and menopause.

So inflammation is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, and there’s a lot of words when it comes to health that get, or a lot of terms that get thrown around and you think, what does that mean exactly? So today I’m going to break it down for you, what it means, and also probably more importantly, what we can do about it.

So,[00:01:00] our inflammatory response is our body’s natural way of healing, from injuries, from wounds, from illnesses and things like that. So, that acute inflammation you know, when we have physical, injury damaging our cells, or we have, a virus or a bacteria that’s got in our immune system swings into action.

So it releases antibodies and proteins, it increases that blood flow to the area. So this is all part of that normal, healthy inflammatory response, which allows us to heal quickly. So, that acute inflammation generally lasts. So things like redness, that heat feels hot, swollen, it’s pussy, it’s painful, you know, and we might not be able to move as well.

So all of that is part of that healthy immune response. So we want that. And that’s a good thing. But the trouble is when we can’t see it [00:02:00] when we get that persistent, that chronic inflammation that constantly leaves our body in that sort of state of attack, and this can go on for months or even for years.

And like I said, the problem is we can’t always see it. But how it might show up is, it might show up as, ongoing fatigue and feeling lethargic. It might show up as a digestive disorder, so bloating or IBS or reflux. It might show up as, a skin condition. So we might sort of get a weird rash or eczema or psoriasis, rosacea is another one that’s really common, during perimenopause and menopause having trouble losing weight. So, when we’ve got inflammation in our body, our body just stops. So weight loss is not a priority. So it makes it really hard, you know, to, to lose weight. Just box that weight loss.

It can also trigger things like fatty, fatty liver, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes. They’re all inflammatory [00:03:00] conditions. Just I have ladies say to me all the time. Oh, I just feel. Inflamed, so those aches and pains in your joints particularly when you get up in the morning inflammation shows up as ongoing headaches or migraines.

And then of course, heart disease, like that’s an inflammatory condition. So you can sort of see the difference there between, that healthy immune response that sort of heals, heals a wound versus that chronic inflammation that can go on for a long time. And then, we’ve got autoimmune conditions. So autoimmune conditions are always inflammatory driven. So MS rheumatoid arthritis psoriasis IBD, so Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, Hashimoto’s and Graves disease, all inflammatory driven. So there’s a lot we can do. So, you know, so that’s kind of like the. The what it is.

So inflammation is that [00:04:00] immune response that, recovery response that we can’t see. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t work as effectively as it could do. So what we need to do is work on inflammation, overall. So, and this will help reduce the inflammation and also prevent it from reoccurring as well.

So, the top ones are, really. Quit smoking, it would be probably my number one. The second one is, learning to better manage stress. So 100%, so stress drives inflammation. We need to make sure that we’re, sleeping and getting, good quality restorative sleep every night.

Moving our body daily in a way that feels good. So even though we might feel tired, even though we might feel inflamed, we might not feel like moving, just moving. It gets everything flowing, your blood flowing, your heart flowing. It’s, it’s good for us. Reducing our alcohol [00:05:00] consumption and I think for women sort of in our age of stage of life this is a big one because, I’ve got a lot of women who, and I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about women who are just, they’re drinking as a coping mechanism, so there’s a lot of self medicating going on.

So, what I would suggest here is, you know, just catching yourself and just first of all, first and foremost, be aware of, how much alcohol are you consuming? Then we want to re evaluate your diet. So we want to have a look at, things like sugar, processed foods, refined grains, trans fats so all your fried foods and things like that.

So obviously, eating a fresh whole foods diet is going to be less inflammatory. You know, than anything. And then including, sort of some anti inflammatory sort of supplements. So, you know, and you need these in a therapeutic dose. It’s not, you know, you can’t just go to the chemist or the supermarket, get these off the shelf because it’s not going to be in a big enough dose to make a [00:06:00] difference.

So things like curcumin your omega threes, antioxidants, vitamin D is a big one for that immune response. And that inflammatory response as well. So when we kind of like get down on the nitty gritty of, things like that, if you want to reduce your overall inflammation, obviously diet plays a huge role.

So we want to focus on, whole foods that contain a wide variety of nutrients. So, think about foods that give you the best bang for your buck. So. Things like berries, avocados, apples, cherries, citrus, all good for fighting inflammation. Our leafy greens, our, cruciferous veggies, which are our broccoli, our Brussels sprouts, kale our beautiful healthy fats.

So our fatty fish like salmon, sardines, nuts, seeds, avocados, olives, olive oil throwing turmeric, cinnamon, fenugreek it’s a really good place to start. rather than going straight to supplements is how could, [00:07:00] how can we bring these food elements into our day to day life at dark chocolate.

Ah, see, you can get dark chocolate in there, green tea. And then, I really suggest identify Any foods that are causing your, inflammation to your body. And I’ve spoken before on previous podcast episodes about doing food sensitivity tests, if you can’t, nail exactly what is triggering that inflammation for you, food sensitivity tests I use with every single one of my clients and every single time we get amazing results.

And then, Obviously there’s, yeah, sugars, refined carbohydrates. So anything out of packet or anything processed even natural sweeteners. What are they called? Artificial sweeteners. We want to stay away from those. I want to call them Franken fats, process fats like margarine, vegetable oils, canola oils, sunflower oil, safflower oil.

All [00:08:00] highly processed and sort of on the inflammatory side soft drinks and sodas. Definitely. We want to get rid of and, (alochol) and then, there’s also inflammatory medications, which, and they’re, they’re sort of anti inflammatory medications in the short term, but when we sort of like use these things ongoing, so your non steroidal anti inflammatory, so ibuprofen, aspirin, your cortisones.

Prednisone, all your corticosteroids, things like that. They can actually cause inflammation when they are used ongoing. Another one that can be quite inflammatory to your body is statins. So things that are normally prescribed for high cholesterol, again, you know, short term benefits, but you know, there’s a long term flip side to that.

So should you be concerned with inflammation? [00:09:00] So if you, are striving to keep yourself healthy, in the longterm, you want to know what’s the one single thing you should be paying more attention to, I would say it’s inflammation. So there’s no question that, persistent chronic inflammation is not good for us.

It can lead to disease. And it’s shown to be an underlying, like a common denominator in a lot of serious health conditions you know, working with women in this perimenopause menopause state, the reality is that your diet and lifestyle is either helping to keep inflammation at bay or your diet and lifestyle is driving your inflammation.

Okay. So that’s why popping a magic pill is not going to work. We need to, be realistic and kind of go, Hey, are we helping or are we hindering with the choices that we make on a daily basis? So this is why, yeah, include as many anti inflammatory foods. In your diet as possible. So I hope that helps.

[00:10:00] So if anyone is wondering, how can we do it? How can we lower stress? How can we make dietary changes? How can we, make better choices? This is where I am here to help. So ladies reach out. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will see you in the next one. 

 [BALI 2024]

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See you there. . ​Thank you for taking the time to listen today. You can head on over to the show notes at kyliepinwill.com/podcast where you’ll find all the links. Now, before we go, it would mean the world to me if you’d head on over to your favorite podcast channel, subscribe and leave a review. Don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Then stay tuned for next week’s episode and I can’t wait to see you then. [00:12:00]