Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast.
Speaker 1Today's episode is kind of an odd one in that normally I do a fair amount of preparation for each episode, a little bit of research, making sure that I'm putting together the episode in a structure of sorts, but I'll have to be honest with you. I have not done that today. I have been sitting thinking, you know, what do I want to talk about and what is coming in? I guess strongly as something I want to talk about is the power of food as medicine, and so I just thought I would jump on and I can always delete this recording if I decide I don't want to publish it. But I just thought I'd just come on and talk about my passion for nutrition and why I have such a passion for nutrition and particularly why I think it's so important for women in perimenopause and postmenopause. In fact, it's absolutely critical. What I find when I'm working with women, or even just talking with women generally, is that there seems to be this perception that when our hormones start going haywire with our perimenopause and menopausal transition, that one of the few things we can do is HRT or MHT. Menopause hormone therapy, as it's now called, is the big one that I have a lot of conversations about with people, and I'm pretty supportive of MHT, to be honest, and herbal medicine. Herbal medicine can be incredible, also for helping manage hormones through this time, so that's great. That's another thing, another tool I guess in the toolbox, and the thing is, these two things are not magic If you are not addressing lifestyle and what you're putting into your body, whether that is food, whether that is water, whether that is other beverages which we'll talk about today. It really is a holistic approach. You can't just take the magic pill, whether that be MHT or herbs, and expect that that is going to control everything that's going on in your body and that you're going to magically feel better. Absolutely, you can get quite a bit of symptom using those things. But ultimately we are designed to take in food to make our body work optimally and that is our gut microbiome, feeding our gut microbiome, the best foods for brain to work optimally, for our muscles to maintain and grow, for everything in our body. We are designed to take in food and specific nutrients that do specific jobs and it's not just as simple as food as fuel, which I think certainly for me.
Speaker 1Before I became a nutritionist, I very much saw food as fuel. I had for a long time a mentality of food as fuel and that very much is rooted in the calories, in calories. Out model, which, as you know, I really kind of detest, is our model, which, as you know, I really kind of detest. It set up a lot of really bad mindsets around food and ideas around food and weight in particular, and that is sort of what food as fuel that philosophy for me anyway, came into as just eating to fuel the body from an energy point of view. I had no idea about, certainly not the gut microbiome. I mean, a lot of people didn't know much about the gut microbiome back then and I think we still are only scratching the surface with it. But also, yeah, we didn't have.
Speaker 1I certainly didn't have that thought, even of the quality of the food, and I looked at macros. I used to use MyFitnessPal a lot and it was all about calories and macros and nothing to do with the micronutrients. So, am I getting enough selenium? Am I getting enough iodine? Am I getting enough manganese? None of that and, to be honest, I don't want any of you guys to be stressing out over oh my gosh, now I've got to think about the micronutrients. No, the thing is, that will take care of itself. If you are eating widely, if you're eating lots of different colored veggies and fruits and having good quality proteins from a multitude of different sources, that will take care of itself. You don't need to sit out and work out how much of these things you're having.
Speaker 1Okay, so I didn't want to open up that Pandora's box, but what I did want to just mention that the food actually talks to our genes. Right, that's so cool, don't you reckon Food actually talks to our genes. Every single mouthful of food that we eat on a daily basis initiates this complex conversation at a cellular level, at a genetic DNA level. These conversations determine whether our DNA or our genes get switched on or off. I haven't probably talked about this for a long time.
Speaker 1I used to talk a lot about this in when I used to teach a lot of meditation and I've done quite a number of podcasts talking about this how, even though we may have the genes for certain diseases, it doesn't mean those genes will be expressed. And lifestyle has a lot to do with how those genes are expressed and whether or not those genes are going to be expressed. And this is really important because I think a lot of people, when they find out, for example, that there is I don't know a lot of cardiovascular disease in their family and they think, oh well, my mother has diabetes, my father has diabetes, my grandparents on both sides of my family have diabetes. Therefore I'm going to get diabetes. Therefore there's nothing I can do about it, so I might as well just eat all of the things now, because later in life, when I have diabetes, I'm not going to be allowed to do that. And having a mindset like that will almost guarantee that you get diabetes later in life. And so I guess what I'm saying when we're talking about these the genes, sort of switching on and switching off, and this is the science of nutrigenomics, if you want to learn more about this. Just pop nutrigenomics into your search and look at go nutrigenomics actually pubMed and that will actually get you proper research rather than blogs and that will actually give you the right information. But anyway, I'm digressing a little bit. But yeah, what we know now is that just because you have the gene doesn't mean you're going to get the illness, and you can do so much to help maintain a healthy DNA by using the right foods for you, by having the right lifestyle modifications in there, and I'll talk about food first.
Speaker 1When I talk about the right foods for you, there's a few different ways we can approach this. Firstly, it's looking. When I'm assessing a client, it's like what is going on in the body? Are there any actual symptoms there that may be signs of food intolerance that perhaps the client hasn't considered, like, for example, skin rashes? And this is my personal story, which you've heard if you're a long time listener, you've heard this before is that when I hit my kind of mid forties, I developed eczema on my hands in particular, but then it actually went into my face, around my eyes. It was like getting worse and worse, and I hadn't really changed anything much in my diet or my lifestyle. I couldn't work out what was going on and I actually just thought I was allergic to those a few things. I thought it was dairy, because dairy is a really common food intolerance, and I was a nutrition student at the time. This was going on, so my stress level from my corporate job had gone down dramatically. But I guess there's quite a bit of stress that goes on when you're a student because you're constantly being assessed and, yeah, your time is not your own and so.
Speaker 1And then I learned about menopause and perimenopause and realized, even though I didn't know, I was in perimenopause I would have been, and definitely we see an increase in skin rashes, itchiness, all sorts of skin conditions when we're in perimenopause because of the drop in estrogen which helps support our skin barrier. So we get a dryness in the skin, we get the cell walls aren't as what's the word? Not as strong I guess it's probably not quite the right word, but let's just use that and so they break down more easily. They're more responsive to allergens that might be around. And there were certainly things for me, like I know I'm allergic to cooch grass, for example, and you know, when you have dogs and you walk them, they're always going to be walking in cooch grass. So I knew that was a thing. But yeah, they can't.
This itchy skin can be from hormones, it can be from food intolerances and it can be a combination of both. So I know, for me personally, I thought it was dairy. I dropped out a lot of my dairy at the time and didn't really see that much of an improvement, to be honest. And then when I ran, did my training for metabolic balance and got my program, it said no tomatoes. And I'm like what. I have tomatoes every lunchtime, every dinner, pretty much Loved them. I removed them. All of my skin condition went away within like two to three days and I thought this can't be right. This cannot be right. So I reintroduced the tomatoes Bang Skin terrible. Off the tomatoes, again skin great. So now I know, I know that I can't have them every day anymore and that's fine, I've learned to live with that.
Speaker 1But it's just this example of how you don't necessarily understand or know that certain foods are causing problems, inflammation, whatever in your body. And so when I'm assessing clients for their symptoms, I'm looking for these signs of inflammation. I'm looking for gut health issues such as bloating, reflux, excess burping, excess flatulence, chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, floating stools, yellow stools, excess smelliness, all that sort of stuff to look at. What is the gut health like, what is the inflammation like? And this can be addressed with food, and this can be addressed by having foods that are going to be having these conversations with your DNA in a positive way, so that we're reducing inflammation. Remembering inflammation is the root cause of every single mental health condition, physical health condition pretty much, and so reducing inflammation is super important and we can do that with food, having foods that are high in antioxidants, that are high in polyphenols, that are going to help support our gut health, because there's a huge interaction between our gut and our immune system. So when we are choosing foods, we don't have to go into MyFitnessPal and look at what are the calories? No. Or how much selenium does this have? No, no, no.
Speaker 1Just have a broad variety of beautifully multicolored whole foods, ideally chemical-free, if you can get it pesticide-free, organic, chemical free, if you can get it pesticide free, organic, or just wash them really, really well. The other thing you can do is go to the EWG website, which is the Environmental Working Group. Every year they publish the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen, and they are the foods that are using the most pesticides that year in North America, which is usually very similar to Australia. So that can be really handy because you can look at that and go well, these are the Clean 15. I can get away with not getting organic or pesticide free with those. I'll just wash them. But the Dirty Dozen you really, if you can afford it, get the organic version or at least the pesticide free if possible. Otherwise, really wash them extremely, extremely well, just to get rid of all of those chemicals and pesticides, because we know that they have not so great effects on our gut health, amongst many other things.
Speaker 1So, yeah, I think I'm going off track, which is why I usually plan my podcast, so that I can keep myself on track, but that's okay. So, yeah, what am I wanting to say with that? Yeah, lots of brightly colored fruits, veggies. I mentioned, I think, last week in the podcast, the five and two, if you want to, if you need some sort of structure around it. So two pieces of fruit, five pieces of vegetables, To me that doesn't seem enough.
Speaker 1I know from a lot of the gut health studies that I've done, if you're looking at having a really healthy gut microbiome and I'm struggling to remember whether it was 20 different plant foods a week or 30 different plant foods a week. Aim for 30. If you have 30 different plant foods a week, that is extremely helpful to fostering a healthy gut microbiome. So when I'm talking about different plant foods, I'm talking All those sorts of things Anything that had its origin in a plant food that is fairly unprocessed. So if you're drinking a lot of wine, that doesn't really count as grapes Okay, it's got to be the actual grape. So, yeah, 30 different plant foods a week, aim for that.
Speaker 1That will really help in terms of getting the variety of micronutrients that your body needs to function well, so that when you're eating your food and you know that every mouthful of food is having a complex conversation at a cellular level with the DNA, like, really think about this. This is not science fiction, this is actually what happens. So if you think about well, I'm having a green smoothie with, you know, coconut water, kale, flaxseed oil, avocado, some nuts, some seeds, all that sort of stuff versus having uh, nearly said a brand name, I won't say that a hamburger from a fast food chain that might have a limp bit of lettuce, a slice of tomato, a meat patty that's probably full of actually definitely full of preservatives and additives on a pretty low nutrition level bread. It's not ideal, right? I don't want that having a conversation with my cells. I don't want that having a conversation with my DNA and influencing my DNA, do you? I don't.
Speaker 1So that's kind of how I like to think about food when we're looking at the health of the body. And that's not saying I never have treats. My friends know, and I know a lot of my friends listen to the podcast. They know that I like to have a drink, I like to have dessert, I like to, you know, eat out. But I also balance that out by eating at home as often as I can during the week in particular, always having breakfast at home, pretty much, even if I, you know I do have a regular breakfast club with some beautiful friends and I will generally still have my green smoothie or I'll have something that's more whole food based before I go and I'll either have a coffee and a sweet treat or, if I do have breakfast, it would be the most whole food breakfast I can possibly order off that menu. So that includes not ordering things like scrambled eggs, because that's going to be full of cream, butter, dairy salt, all of the things poached egg way better choice. So it's just thinking about your food like that.
Speaker 1Because, getting back to my original topic, having, when your hormones are kind of out of whack and your body is really struggling and I know that for many of my women that are listening to this podcast their bodies are struggling, your minds are struggling. That's probably why you're listening to the podcast. It's because we're all going through this together and you think well, you know, at least I've got MHT up my sleeve if I really feel like I want to do that. But it is not the magic pill. If you don't have the right foods on board, then those hormones they're only going to do so much. And believe me I've worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 16 years and even our most well-researched drugs, they don't work 100% on 100% of people. There's some things these drugs can do, but they're not a magic pill. And any of you that might have, for example, high blood pressure, it's very common to have two or three different medications required to get that blood pressure under control. It's not just having one pill and then you're done for most people. So you know these drugs aren't just a magic cure.
Speaker 1So really look at no matter what sort of medical condition you might have currently or if you're just trying to stay healthy for your future and for your current situation, really look at. Okay, what am I eating on a weekly basis and is it really the stuff that I want to be having complex communications with my cells and my DNA and influencing that DNA for my future health? Really have a think about that. So that, from a food point of view, I guess is probably all I want to cover. But there's more, because there's lifestyle obviously. Now, when I'm talking about lifestyle, it's pretty much everything else, it's the mind-body stuff. So what is your stress level like on a daily basis? And that's not to say that, oh well, I've got a lot of stressors in my life, so there's nothing I can do about that. You can learn to regulate your response to those stressors. Now, you can learn to regulate your response to those stressors and often when you have the right food on board, that helps as well.
Speaker 1And I see this a lot in clients in the first few weeks of their program. They go gosh. I just feel so much calmer. And there's probably a number of reasons One, the inflammation will have gone down. We know when you have gut issues, you have brain issues. I don't know if that's quite the right way to describe it, but if you have gut inflammation, it's likely there's some low-grade inflammation going on in the brain. Now that is not something you need to be scared of and going to the doctor and getting antibiotics or anything like that. That's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1But we know with, for example, brain fog, which a lot of women have in perimenopause and postmenopause, that it's just what we call this leaky brain or this low-level brain inflammation, and absolutely we can fix that just with the right food choices. And also the other thing that we need is good brain chemicals, such as our serotonin, our dopamine, our melatonin, all of those sorts of things, and food has a huge influence on that as well, as well as your breathing techniques, as well as spending time in nature. We know that spending time in nature has a profound impact on our DNA, has a profound impact on our ability to handle the stressors in our lives. So spending a little bit of time in nature, whether that's walking the dog, whether that is going for a swim, whether that's just standing with your feet on some grass, whether it's looking out the window at the blue sky or whether it is feeling the sunlight on your skin. Spending time in nature is a profound way to impact your DNA and therefore your experience of perimenopause and menopause and your health ongoing. So I mentioned breathing. Obviously, other things, like I mean meditation, is great if it suits your mind. For some people, they just can't get their mind to settle, and that's where breathing can be amazing, because we all have to breathe.
And also, of course, movement. That's probably the last thing I'll talk about in this podcast and finding movement that you love, whether that's dancing in your living room, finding movement that you love, whether that's dancing in your living room, whether that is walking, doing a HIIT class, cycling, swimming, reformer which, as you know, I love yoga any of those things where, when you're doing those activities, it's bringing you joy. Also, it is moving your body, so improving your flexibility. It will be helping to flush out toxins. It will be improving your muscle mass, your strength, your ability to move and maintain Movement is such an important part of many people's lives, even just to deal with things in daily life.
Speaker 1Being able to lift, being able to move things is actually, you know, I was thinking about on the weekend because I was moving around some plants and things like that and picking up my dogs and picking up their dog bowls, and you know, it's just all these little things that you do on a daily basis that require your body to be in a pretty reasonable state. Like I've got, as I've mentioned many times, a chronic neck shoulder issue. So I'm always very mindful of that, and when I'm going through periods where it's not feeling good, then it really impacts my ability to do all of those everyday activities which are necessary. So it makes those simple things really difficult. But I know that if I continue my gym, if I continue my reformer, if I am well hydrated, if I'm eating well, then all of that settles down. That inflammation, that tightness, that pain settles down, my sleep better and everything in life feels better when all of that is in balance, including hormones. So I think that's all I'm going to talk about today.
Speaker 1I know I've been a little bit all over the place, but I just wanted to kind of freeform it today and I hope that that has been interesting. If you've got any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I always love getting little messages. It just really makes my day Because, as I've often said, I'm just standing in my office with my three doggies just recording this thinking is anybody listening? I mean, I know people are, but it is really nice to get that feedback. So I hope you're having a great week so far and I'll be back on Thursday with Q and A.
Speaker 1Thanks so much for joining me today on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you liked today's episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple podcasts, or little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every week. If you like free stuff, then head to the show notes and click the link to receive my free Radiant Reset Hormone Detox Guide for Perimenopausal Women. Or, if you'd like to continue the discussion, head over to Instagram and DM me at SusieGardenWellness. I'd love to connect with you.