Episode 33: Why Some Women Age Faster Than Others After 40

Many women in midlife start to notice changes in their appearance that seem to happen almost overnight — dull skin, dark circles, sagging around the jawline, deeper wrinkles, thinning hair, or hair that simply loses its shine and vitality.

It can feel frustrating, confusing, and even a little alarming when the reflection in the mirror suddenly looks more tired than you feel inside.

In this episode, we continue our March theme of reclaiming your energy and vitality in midlife, but this time we shift the focus from how you feel on the inside to how your body reflects that health on the outside.

You’ll learn why these changes are so common during perimenopause and menopause, how fluctuating hormones like estrogen impact collagen production, skin hydration, and hair growth, and why the real driver behind accelerated aging is often metabolic stress happening beneath the surface.

We’ll explore how factors like blood sugar imbalance, inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, liver overload, and chronic stress can influence how quickly our skin and hair appear to age — and why supporting your metabolic health is the most powerful strategy for restoring your natural glow.

You’ll also learn:

• The key nutrients your skin needs for collagen production and elasticity
• The foods that help support radiant skin and healthy hair
• Common foods and habits that accelerate premature aging
• Natural topical ingredients that support skin health
• The supplements that may help support skin and hair — and when they’re appropriate
• Why many popular “anti-aging” treatments only address the surface rather than the root cause

Healthy skin truly does come from within, and when the body is properly nourished and supported, your skin and hair often begin to reflect that internal balance.

To help you put these strategies into practice, I’ve created a Complimentary Skin Health Guide that outlines the best foods, topical ingredients, and supplements that can support glowing skin from the inside out.

You can download the guide here.

Looking for personal guidance to help navigate your own midlife metabolism?

Let's talk about what's going on inside YOUR body and life and I will give you some clear, tangible steps to help you move forward in your health journey.

Book your complimentary discovery session here.

Want to learn more about The Metabolic Balance Program? 

Discover what everyone is talking about! The world's leading personalized nutrition and hormone-balancing system with the highest global success rate for sustainable weight loss and health transformation without pills, shakes or expensive proprietary foods.

One nutrition plan based on YOUR bloodwork. No deprivation. No one-size-fits-all diet. Just real food matched to your own biochemistry for real, lasting results.

Watch the information video here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey there! If you're exhausted, foggy, or stuck in a body that just does not feel or look like yours anymore, you are in the right place, my friend. My name's Joanne Willis. I am a registered holistic nutritionist, cancer survivor, and fellow parametopause warrior. And I am here to help you understand what's really going on inside that body of yours so you can finally figure it all out, put the pieces together, and feel better again naturally. Every week on the Midlife Vitality Project, we'll dig into the real reasons behind midlife weight gain, fatigue, mood swings, and all those other weird and wacky symptoms of perimetopause and all the things your doctor might have told you are just aging. We'll explore how to rebalance your metabolism, support those hormones, and bring your blood chemistry back into alignment so you can feel vibrant, clear, and confident in your body once again. Because midlife isn't the end, my friend. It's the beginning of your strongest, healthiest, most powerful chapter yet. Are you ready? Let's go. Hey, hey there, and welcome back to the podcast. Now, if you listened to last week's episode, you know that we are kicking off our March theme, which is all about getting that midlife mojo back. We're talking energy, we're talking vitality, and how you can finally break through that wall of exhaustion that just seems to come out of nowhere in midlife. And sometimes it can just feel like this is the way it's gonna be. The good news is, ladies, it doesn't have to be, but we need to understand why this is happening to us, and we just naturally assume that it has to do with estrogen and progesterone, and therefore it's an inevitable thing that we're all gonna go through, and there's no way out of it. But that is not the case, my friends. So I hope you're gonna stick around for this episode. Last week we talked about something that so many women struggle with, and it's that very deep exhaustion, that specific type of fatigue that seems to just completely take over, and you are dragging yourself through every day, no matter what your sleep was like the night before. So, even if you think you actually had a good night's sleep the night before, the fatigue never fully leaves you. It almost feels like it's rooted in your bones. That's the type of exhaustion that we're talking about, and we talked about that in detail last week. We unpacked why it happens, and we talked about the fact that it isn't just because of these hormonal shifts that are happening in midlife, but more so because those hormonal changes that are happening with estrogen, progesterone, testosterone specifically, they amplify deeper metabolic imbalances that have often been building quietly inside our bodies for years. So essentially, those fluctuating midlife hormones that get all the attention, what's happening is they're shining a light on issues that are going on inside our body and probably have for a long time, as a result of our habits, years on years on years. And so, where we had a buffer zone before, because estrogen and progesterone kind of acted like cushions and softened symptoms that we would typically feel when there is a metabolic imbalance, now all of a sudden it's wide open for the world to see because we don't have as much stabilization of estrogen and progesterone, and over time, of course, it's declining completely. So, today, in this week's episode, we're gonna continue the conversation about how to get your midlife mojo back, how to break through that exhaustion and fatigue. And but this particular week, we're gonna shift from how you feel on the inside. We talked a lot about that last week, and we're gonna come back to that next week. But in this week, I want to also focus on how fatigue and exhaust that level of exhaustion shows up on the outside. And the reason I think it's important that we do this and talk about this is because for so many women in midlife, the fatigue it doesn't just show up as internal exhaustion, we see it in the mirror, and this is a big deal for a lot of women. It was for me when I all of a sudden noticed I felt like I had aged five years overnight. This one particular day where I caught myself in the mirror. I tried to convince myself it was just the lighting, but at the end of the day, I was starting to show real signs that things were changing in my body and not for the better. My skin was looking quite dull, and I just looked tired again. No matter how good I may have slept the night before, my skin still started to look exhausted. The dark circles, the bags under my eyes, they seemed to be more pronounced than they'd ever been before. I was starting to see signs that my skin was sagging, kind of around the jowls, around the jawline. Deeper wrinkles were starting to ingrain themselves in my forehead, a little bit beside the eyes, and they were happening faster than I would have expected. Sunspots. Now I spent a lot of time in my younger years in the sun before we really knew just how damaging that could be. And the sunspots now that I always expected would catch up with me one day, all of a sudden, there they were staring me in the face, more visible than ever. And then let's talk about hair. My my hair specifically was thinning, definitely in the hairline. All of a sudden, I could see more of my scalp. I seemed to be receding, and I never had thick hair to begin with, but I had a lot of it, and now I was starting to see it shedding a lot faster than it ever had before, finding these clumps in the shower in the in the plug hole, and just in general, my hair looked like it was losing its shine and its volume. And I know after working with so many women in midlife that this these types of changes are really, really awful for women to have to deal with. Now, what as I said, many women that I work with, one of the things they tell me is that they suddenly feel like they've aged 10 years overnight. So that's how I described it myself. But again, it's how a lot of other women describe it too, because it comes out of nowhere. And for the women that are taking good care of yourself, you might be eating reasonably well, you might be using good skincare products and genuinely think that you're doing all the right things, it can be even more confusing and frustrating if your skin is starting to show signs of aging or your hair just starts to feel different. And in general, just that glow that you might have had about you in your younger years just no longer seems to be there. And that then impacts how we feel in ways that we don't often talk about, right? And it can have significant impacts on our health mentally and emotionally as well. Your confidence is going to be affected, how you feel when you actually get dressed, how you feel when you look at yourself in photos, how you feel, even just showing up socially. A lot of women talk about how they tend to recluse in these mid-years, they become more antisocial because they're noticing these changes and they're just assuming that everybody else is noticing them too, and they're not feeling proud of how they look or how they feel. So today we're going to unpack what's really happening beneath the surface, and most importantly, what you can do to support your body so that your skin and your hair begin to reflect the health and vitality that you can get back working from the inside out. So, first and foremost, let's start with something important. We need to address the big elephant in the room, which is of course those midlife hormones. Absolutely, estrogen, progesterone, they play a role in how our body changes and quite significantly for a lot of women in our 40s and our 50s. So if we talk about estrogen specifically, it plays a huge role in our skin and our hair health because when we have plentiful amounts of estrogen, it helps to support how our body produces collagen. So we have plentiful amounts of collagen, it keeps our skin more flexible, we have more elasticity in our skin, it helps to keep our skin more hydrated, we don't dry out, our skin doesn't dry out as fast, it helps to keep the circulation within our body more optimized, so our skin is getting more oxygen, it's getting more blood flow, and it also helps with the growth cycles of our hair. So when estrogen begins to fluctuate quite rapidly and quite aggressively for a lot of women with the ups and the downs, as it's on its inevitable decline, we often see the collagen production slowing down, and we see the skin starts to it appears thinner in some ways. The dryness factor starts to increase, and those wrinkles do appear more easily. And what happens to the hair follicles is that they start to weaken because they are not as estrogen again among its many, many roles, was able to help keep our hair follicles more tight and strong. So it is a lot easier for our hair to fall out when estrogen starts to plummet. But here's the key point those hormones, the fluctuation and decline of those hormones alone does not determine how quickly we age. If that was the case, then every woman would feel this way, every woman would look like they are struggling through perimenopause. But we all know those women, those women that move through midlife with glowing skin, thick hair, vibrant energy, while others feel like their body suddenly begins to deteriorate. And the difference between these women is metabolic resilience, and that's why we need to do the deeper work to understand what's going on inside your body, what is the state of your metabolic health right now, because that is the true deciding factor as to how you are going to navigate perimenopause in general and how you can get that glow back on the outside as well as on the inside. So, what you need to understand about your skin and your hair is that they actually reflect what is going on on the inside, they have they reflect what's happening internally. So if the body is struggling with inflammation, if it's depleted of minerals and other nutrients, whether that's because we're just not eating a healthy diet, or maybe you are, but you're not your body's not able to break down the food quickly and effectively, and so you're not absorbing the nutrients of the healthy food you're eating, maybe your body is just under significant stress, or you're where your nervous system is in a state of dysregulation, and so your cortisol levels are spiking and crashing. If this is going on inside your body, and these are all elements of the state of your metabolism and your metabolic health overall, your skin and your hair will start to show it. And some of the biggest metabolic drivers of accelerated skin aging are, and pay attention to these because if you see yourself in a lot of these and you're noticing that you're you appear to be aging faster in your skin specifically, then hopefully it's gonna help you connect some dots. So, any issues with blood sugar imbalance, so whether that means you're pre-diabetic, type 2 diabetic, or maybe you haven't even had conversations about that, it's not even on your health radar, but you know that you go through these cycles in your day where you get really hangry, that hungry, angry feeling, and you're irritable between meals, and you can sense that your blood sugar is crashing, and then you feel it spiking and crashing throughout the day. These are all symptoms of a blood sugar imbalance. You don't have to be pre-diabetic or have type 2 diabetes to have blood sugar issues. So if you're noticing those types of symptoms and you're also experiencing issues with accelerated skin aging, then absolutely you need to pay close attention to this. If you are showing signs of chronic inflammation, and obviously we can feel that in our joints, in our muscles, a lot of women experience increased joint pain or muscle fatigue or must deep-rooted aches, liver overload. And again, not a lot of women will un will know if they have liver overload unless they have had blood work done recently and seen some elevated liver enzymes. That can be a sign. But in general, when our liver is overloaded, in other words, it's having to process and detoxify so many things that are in our body that our body isn't benefiting from, it's having to do more work than necessary, our body's gonna be exhausted. If your liver is exhausted, you're gonna be exhausted. There's a very clear indicator. I'm gonna talk about the liver more next week, in next week's episode. If you are struggling with nutrient deficiencies, again, you may not know that you are unless you've had blood work done recently. There is um specific test you can have taken to check your B vitamins, your vitamin D levels, for example, maybe your minerals, maybe you've had your hair tested for um to see whether you are mineral deficient. And a lot of women in midlife struggle with mineral deficiencies, magnesium being a key factor. Again, these are all going to accelerate skin aging. If you know you struggle with sleep, if sleep is becoming something that is just the bane of your existence right now, you can't seem to get a good night's sleep to save your life, or you know that you aren't drinking enough water, or even if you feel you are, but your skin feels dehydrated, there's a good indication that you are dehydrated. All of this is going to show inaccelerated skin aging. And these factors are all going to influence then things like how well your body produces collagen, how hydrated your skin actually is, and how it looks and feels. It's gonna they're gonna influence how well your body circulates oxygen and circulates blood and circulates nutrients through the body. It's gonna affect how well your body detoxifies, so how well your liver is able to break down all the things that are necessary to then either be absorbed through into our body where it's a pot has a positive impact, or it gets things ready so that we can then eliminate them through our elimination organs like our bowels or our kidneys, for example. It's also going to affect affect your hormone balance. So if you are struggling with other symptoms that we associate with perimenopause beyond just how you look in the mirror, but if you're struggling with the night sweats or you're struggling with mood swings or anxiety, these are other signs of hormonal imbalance, and those conditions we talked about before, those underlying deficiencies and imbalances that are linked to our the state of our metabolic health, they are going to have an impact on those hormones as well. And of course, they're going to affect the strength of your hair follicles without estrogen being able to help in that area anymore as it's fluctuating and declining. If we also have a lot of metabolic stress going on, then there's nothing to kind of help with that. So the hair follicles essentially become even weaker and hence hair loss. So the way I explain it to women is think of your metabolism like the soil in a garden. So your skin and your hair, they are the flowers that grow from that soil. So you can water the flowers all day long, but if the soil is depleted of minerals and nutrients that are needed, then the flowers will still struggle. They won't grow effectively, or they won't grow tall as tall as they should, or they won't last as long, or they will not be as vibrant. And that's why so many women try countless creams and serums and treatments and still feel frustrated. Because at the end of the day, ladies, the real work has to start from the inside. So I want to talk now about some of the nutrients that play a major role in our skin health. So we talked about the fact that nutrient deficiencies are a huge key player when it comes to how our skin looks on the outside. So let's dig into this a little more. One of the most important nutrients is vitamin C. Vitamin C, of course, helps our body produce collagen, and that's the protein that keeps our skin firm, helps with sagging, and keeps our keeps our skin more flexible. So it gives it a bit more elasticity. So foods that are rich in vitamin C, we all know citrus fruits like oranges and lemons and limes, of course, but also berries, kiwis, bell peppers. Think of colors of the colors of the rainbow. So the bright colors, the reds, the yellows, the oranges, broccoli as well, your greens, tomatoes, another red. The more vibrant the color, the likelihood there is an abundance of vitamin C and also bioflavonoids, which are anti-inflammatory properties that come alongside, uh come inside those fruits and vegetables as well. Now, another important group of foods is the essential fatty acids, especially omega-3s. So these healthy fats they help your skin to retain moisture and maintain elasticity again. So they work alongside the other nutrients, specifically your vitamins, vitamin C. And you can find these types of essential fatty acids in salmons and sardines and mackerels, like the small, what we call microfishes, and they are loaded with omega-3s. You can also get them from walnuts, flaxseeds, chia seeds. So you want to try and weave those types of foods into your diet as much as possible because the omega-3s they have an anti-inflammatory effect and work famously alongside vitamin C to really shift how your skin looks quite quickly when we are consistent. Then we can look at some foods that are rich in beta-carotene. So these are the types of foods again, but think of think think of the color orange, so carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and then obviously your greens like kale. So beta-carotene-rich foods, that they are the foods that will convert, help your body to convert beta-carotene into vitamin A. And vitamin A is a key nutrient as well, alongside vitamin C for the renewal of our skin. And last but not least, we can't talk about our skin nutrients without talking about vitamin E. So vitamin E is what protects your skin barrier. So any stress coming externally, so any damage that impacts our skin externally, we have a skin barrier, and that is kept intact if we have plentiful levels of vitamin E. So foods that are rich in vitamin E, for example, include almonds, sunflower seeds, spinach, avocado. So we want to try and work those into our diet as well. Now it's important to remember that when your body consistently receives these nutrients through whole foods, and that's where we always want to focus is on foods as your foundation. It's going to then over time create the internal conditions for healthier skin. The more variety of these types of skin-supporting nutrients we are getting on a consistent daily basis, the healthier your skin will start to look quicker and sustainably. Now, on the flip side, there are obviously foods that we may be taking in that are accelerating skin aging. And sometimes it's not always the food you would expect. So we need to talk about this. Obviously, one of the biggest, and most people know this, is sugar, so excessive sugar. So sugar is going to trigger a process in our body with that's called glycation. And essentially, what this does is damages collagen and damages elastin. So we've talked about how we need to have a collagen and we need to have elastin to keep our skin firm and to keep it flexible so that it doesn't sag over time. But of course, we are losing our body's ability to produce collagen as we are losing estrogen as well. So when we lose collagen and elastin, as I mentioned, this leads to wrinkles, it leads to the sagging skin, it leads to your skin losing its glow. It looks more dull. So sugar, we really need to pay attention to how much excess. Sugar is in our diet. Also, take a look at the foods that you might be eating that are highly processed because they are going to drive inflammation in the body. And as we mentioned before, chronic inflammation internally is going to show on the outside. It's going to contribute to skin problems, it's going to contribute to premature aging in general. But absolutely, we're going to see chronic inflammation on our skin. Now, if you are an alcohol drinker, again, this probably goes without saying, but alcohol is a factor because it dehydrates the body in general, and so it's going to therefore dehydrate the skin. Also, alcohol disrupts sleep in many women in midlife. And if you are one of those women that used to enjoy having wine or beer, and you never it never really bothered you before, you might have felt a little groggy the next day, but you would bounce back pretty quick. Many women report that, and I was one of these women, that even late 30s, going into their 40s, all of a sudden they can't tolerate alcohol the way they used to, and it really is an impact on sleep. There is this myth that alcohol relaxes us and de-stresses us, so we use it often as a tool if we've had a stressful day to help us relax in the evening. And one drink may do just that for a lot of people. The problem is that then we assume that by if we have another one or maybe another one after that, it's going to help us relax even more when in fact the opposite happens and it will disrupt our sleep. It affects our melatonin levels, which are we need plentiful amounts of melatonin to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep. And it also affects how our body regulates cortisol in the night. If you're one of those 2 to 4 a.m. wakers and you drink alcohol before bed, then there is a high likelihood that this is a cortisol issue. And so reducing alcohol significantly, eliminating it if possible, is not only going to help you with sleep, but it's also going to hydrate the skin. And of course, sleep is when our body repairs itself. So if we're not getting enough sleep, then we are reducing our body's ability to repair the skin. And for some people, even dairy, so dairy products can trigger inflammation or acne as well. Some people know that they struggle with dairy, they may have been diagnosed as lactose intolerant, but there are a lot of people that aren't lactose intolerant and still struggle with their skin because of dairy. Remember, lactose intolerance is only a result of having a deficiency in a specific enzyme called lactase that breaks down lactose, the sugars in milk and dairy products. So if we push that aside, there are a lot of people that still struggle with dairy because they may have sensitive, may be sensitive to casein, which is a specific dairy protein. And this can be a trigger. So if you are struggling with inflammation or acne, it might help you to reduce or try to eliminate dairy for a period of time and see if things improve. Okay, so we're gonna move from the nutrients into talking about a lot of the treatments that women kind of turn to initially when they start to see their skin is becoming a little challenged in this area. We're gonna talk about all those topicals. The topical care. Now, of course, how we care for our skin does matter. And so there are some topicals out there, some creams, some serums that have natural ingredients that can be incredibly supportive, but then there are others that aren't. So we need to break these down. So the natural ingredients I'm talking about that can be incredibly supportive are those that, for example, that include coconut oil. Coconut oil is a natural saturated fat and it helps to moisturize and reduce inflammation. Then there's aloe vera. Aloe vera, especially if taken naturally from the plant itself, soothes and hydrates the skin. If you haven't already used aloe vera on a sunburn, for example, you must try it. Especially if you if you have a if you're lucky enough to be somewhere where there is an you have an aloe vera plant either in your backyard or you have one in your house that you're nurturing. Next time you have any type of burn, just take a piece of that plant, open it up so you have access to the natural gel inside, and rub that on the burn. Instantaneously, you will feel the reduction in the inflammation and it soothes and hydrates the skin. So imagine if you're taking that internally as well. But obviously, if it's in a lot of topicals that you're putting on your skin, then it's going to help if inflammation is a factor. Another great natural ingredient is shea butter because shea butter is loaded with vitamin E, and we talked about vitamin E before, which supports the skin barrier, so it's our first defense against stressors that are coming externally from the environment. And also tea tree oil. Now, tea tree oil is a natural antimicrobial, an antiviral, antiparasitic, it's an anti-everything essentially. But tea tree oils, they if you could put it on your skin in a carrier oil or in another in a in a cream or something that has other natural ingredients in it, then you're gonna get the benefit of those antimicrobial properties. It helps to kill any bacteria that is causing havoc on the skin. But it's also important to be mindful that there are going to potentially be ingredients in these products, even though they may try to advertise the beneficial ingredients like the ones we just mentioned, they may be quietly silencing that there are other ingredients in there that are going to actually disrupt hormones or irritate the skin. And these are where we see the words like parabens or phthalates or PEG. So basically, if you see on a label any type of topical cream that has more words in it with more syllables than you can easily pronounce, then that is something I recommend you stay away from. The shorter the ingredients list on your skincare products, the better. And as ideally, the ingredients that are on that list, they are things that you recognize and are similar to the things we just mentioned before that have a natural benefit to our skin. Parabens, phthalates, PEGs, we want to avoid. If you see numbers, you see letters, acronyms, these are all short forms of chemicals, and they ultimately are going to dehydrate the skin and cause inflammation over time. Also, anything that has alcohol as a base, which a lot of skincare products do. Alcohol again will dehydrate the skin on the outside the same way it does when we in when we when we intake when we drink alcohol and it um causes issues on the inside. So there is actually a great resource that I've shared with clients over time for checking the safety of some products, and it will kind of go into detail about what is in the labels and whether it's worth you using on your skin or probably parking, and it's called the EWG Skin Deep Database. So if you Google that, it is a really great place where you can look at different evaluations of thousands of different skincare products. So I recommend you go and check that out if you haven't already come across this really great database. Okay, so I also now want to acknowledge something and be completely honest about this. This is we're gonna go deeper into other treatments that women often turn to in their 40s, in their 50s, because they really are starting to think that nothing else is working. So we've talked about creams in general, but some women will be looking specifically at collagen creams. Maybe you've also looked at expensive anti-aging products, maybe you've looked at laser treatments or fillers or even Botox. These are becoming more and more common because, again, understandably, women are not enjoying the reflection that's staring back at them in the mirror. And the more we learn about what why this is happening, and that our body is losing collagen, of course, it makes sense that we're going to go out and look for a cream that has plentiful amounts of collagen in it. Now, while some of these treatments can temporarily improve the appearance of the skin, the problem is they're not addressing the underlying metabolic environment that ultimately ultimately is what determines the state of our skin health long term, how it looks now and how it's going to look for years to come. So think of it like repainting the outside of a house. If the foundation still needs repair, then it doesn't matter how many times you paint the outside of the house, eventually those walls are still going to crumble. And these treatments are kind of like the paint that you're trying to repaint your house with. They may smooth out some wrinkles initially, they may plump the skin temporarily, but if there is chronic inflammation underlying, if there are deficiencies in specific skin supportive nutrients, then it will this is why these results will only be temporary. You're either going to have to continue these treatments long term, which can be very expensive, and often they come with other side effects, or you're going to just still have issues with other symptoms and other health issues because you're not addressing the metabolic imbalances going on inside. That is not only supporting the health of your skin, but so many other elements of your health. So if inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, metabolic stress, if they continue inside your body and aren't addressed, then the skin will continue to age faster. You're either going to continue to have to spend more or more on these types of skin treatments long term, or you're going to start to see when you stop using these treatments that the aging of your skin will accelerate even faster. Now it doesn't mean that you shouldn't explore different types of cosmetic treatments. If that's something you're interested in, again, I am supportive of whatever helps women to feel their best. So if it is helping you to feel better about yourself, then that has to be taken into consideration. All I'm suggesting is that you also pay attention to what is going on inside your body and do the work because that is where the real anti-aging strategy begins. And that, of course, is my expertise, and that's where I like to help my clients and maybe help you as well. Okay, so another area we need to talk about is supplements. I get a lot of questions from clients that are curious about all the different types of supplements that are touted as being the next best thing for their skin health, and which ones are worth the money and which ones aren't. So we're going to talk about a few that really pop up. So first and foremost is collagen peptides. These are getting a lot of attention right now, and they can support skin elasticity and hydration as long as it's a high quality product, and they work better than collagen in a cream because, again, it's being taken internally. Now, you do have to typically take collagen long term to start to really see results. A hydrolyzed collagen would be your best bet, and ideally, you want it to be a marine collagen as well. That tends to have better results quicker. Vitamin D. Vitamin D is, of course, a supplement that plays a role in skin repair, but also is huge when it comes to our immune system. And I talk about vitamin D a lot. Certainly, those of us living in the northern hemisphere, which is probably 99% of you that are listening right now, we really need to consider vitamin D deficiency. We are getting very little exposure to sunlight, certainly six months of the year at least. And so, unless you are eating a lot of oily fishes, for example, which are where the vitamin D really lies, and unfortunately, even if you do eat them, we don't typically eat enough. Vitamin D is definitely a supplement that I strongly recommend. I myself I take 5,000 I use every single day, that's international units, every single day throughout the winter, safely. Now, obviously, the level that you may need will vary, of course, on what your body needs. I know I get my vitamin D tested every year, and obviously in the summer I do spend a lot of time outside, and that's another reason why vitamin D is deficiency is becoming such an issue, is because there's been so much um attention paid to obviously skin cancer, and more and more people are using a lot of sunblock as a result. And although, of course, we don't want to burn our skin because that does increase our risk of skin cancer over time. If we're constantly burning our skin, we do need skin exposure. So if we're constantly blocking it out, we are contributing to a vitamin D deficiency issue. So definitely, I can't say enough about vitamin D as a supplement. If you have never been tested for vitamin D, I strongly recommend you ask your doctor to test you for that. Number three supplement that I always suggest for people that want to improve their skin health, is fish oil. So we talked before about nutrients that we want to look for in foods, and we should always focus on food as the foundation. But additional supplements would be an omega-3 fatty acid supplement found from fish oil. Flaxseed oil is a vegan or vegetarian source for those of you that don't want to do the fish oil. But fish oil does, if you can tolerate it, then it does tend to be more beneficial faster. We absorb it better, it converts into the active ingredients much quicker. Another supplement that gets a lot of airtime, certainly in the years when I was working back as a general manager in nutrition stores of what 20 years ago, is biotin. So biotin is something that will support healthy hair, skin, and nails, and it often comes in a in a dropper form, and we can get biotin from eggs as well. If you do eat plentiful amounts of eggs, then that's a good sign that you're getting biotin in your diet. But again, it's something that a lot of people do benefit for if they're noticeable their hair, their skin, and their nails are all brittle. It would be worth looking into a biotin supplement. And ideally, in a liquid form, because we absorb it better, we don't have to worry about digesting it in case there's issues in the gut. But it is important to remember that all of these supplements they are intended to supplement, they are supplements for a reason, they're not intended to replace the foundational nutrition. So we always want to look for the foods and incorporate those into our diet consistently that include those types of supplements naturally, and then adding a supplement for a while a period of time until you start to see things improve is definitely something you can consider. Now, also remember that not every supplement is appropriate for everybody. Some supplements, for example, high dose B vitamins or uh whey protein or excessive iodine, they can actually trigger skin issues in certain individuals, and that is why I am a big advocate for personalization of any nutrition plan, any supplement regime, because we all have different toxicities, deficiencies, and imbalances in our body. Ideally, you will have blood work informing your decisions, and that way you know if your body is going to benefit from specific supplements or whether they may actually hinder your health. So, definitely, personalization is something that I support. And if you ever want to have a conversation about how your blood work may look and how you can use that to your advantage to design a nutrition plan that's supportive of you and your health issues and get you to your health goals, that is my strong point, and that's what I love to talk about. So please feel free to reach out to me. You can always send me an email at Joanne at Clean LivingNutrition.com. There's always a link at the bottom in the show notes as well for you to book a complimentary call where we can have a chat about your situation specifically, and I can give you some pointers on what may help you in your next steps, whether that's working with me or not. It's a clarity conversation that I strongly recommend you take advantage of if you haven't already. Okay, so if we think about the long-term strategy, so women who age most gracefully, they're the ones that tend to focus on a few key habits consistently, and they are the ones that support the foundational health. So they may tinker around with some supplements, they may also experiment with some of those treatments and creams that we talked about before, but they don't just stop there. The women that are glowing, the women that seem to have all that vitality in abundance on display on the outside long term and seem to defy age and the test of time, they are doing the work to support their metabolic health from the inside. What are they doing? They are making sure that they are eating nutrient-dense whole foods, so they're not focusing on ultra-processed foods, they are conscious of the amounts of excess sugar that they are putting in their diet, and all of their meals are based around whole foods and a variety of them so that they're getting a variety of those nutrients. These same women are prioritizing protein. Protein must always be a cornerstone of every meal. If we are deficient in protein, then our body is our muscles are going to break down, our health in general will break down, our blood sugar will not remain stable. And as we talked about earlier, blood sugar imbalance is a key factor in how well our skin looks and feels. Balancing blood sugar in general. So it's not just what we eat that helps to balance blood sugar, but also how we eat. So in order to keep our blood sugar balanced, we need to make sure that we are not constantly snacking all day because that spikes and crashes our blood sugar levels. Instead, you want to focus on three well-balanced, protein-rich meals per day. And ideally, you leave yourself four to five hours in between those meals where the blood sugar can stay stable. You don't want to typically go longer than that before you have a meal because that's when your blood sugar will start to decline and you'll start to get that hangry, irritable feeling, and we don't want that either. So three meals well balanced, ideally four to five hours apart, is an ideal way to fuel yourself for balanced blood sugar. These vital, vibrant-looking women also, as I said, they they reduce the processed foods, they reduce the sugar in their diet, and they make sure they stay hydrated. So they are very conscious about how much water they are drinking. They also pay attention to their stress. When they feel it, they don't just let it take over, they take action to manage that stress. The faster you can reduce any type of stress response that you feel, and most of us by now know when something stresses us out. We physically feel it, like a live wire running through us. We want to make sure that we are blunting cortisol. When we respond to any type of stress or cortisol spikes, the longer we leave cortisol to keep spiking and crashing, the more dysregulated it becomes over time. And this affects our sleep, of course. And that is another reason your skin is going to suffer. Because remember, your body heals, including your skin, while we're sleeping. Those vibrant looking women are also going that extra step to make sure they're supporting how the well their liver detoxifies, or how healthy their liver is. So they look at their lifestyle habits, they look at the types of foods they're eating, and they may focus on some supplementation initially. Things like milk thistle are really great, dandelion, burdock root. These are very supportive herbs as well that help with liver detoxification in the early stages. If there is an issue with elevated liver enzymes, for example. But again, these women are in tune with their body. They are doing the work to identify where they have imbalances, they're working closely with a practitioner, they're getting their blood work taken, so they have an informed, they can make informed decisions about what they're eating, what lifestyle habits need to be tweaked, etc. So when all of these systems are functioning well, then you start to see it on the outside. These are those vibrant women whose skin looks clearer and has that youthful glow. Their hair just becomes stronger and actually shines probably even more than it did when they were younger. Maybe they weren't focusing so much on their diet when they were younger. And again, we all know these women that seem to glow more as they age. And that's because now they are really paying attention to what matters. Now to make it easier for you to make some transitional changes, hopefully you've seen in this episode where you might need to do a bit of tweaking yourself, whether that's to nutrition, whether that's to lifestyle habits, whether that's managing stress, whether that's focusing on your sleep quality. What I hope you got from this episode is that there is foundational work that is so, so important that we can't ignore just for the sake of taking a cream or a Botox treatment or a filler, for example. Again, no judgment if they are things that you have tried or are thinking of trying. If it's going to help you feel better about yourself, then that is what's most important. But promise me that you won't do it in isolation. Promise me that you will take the time to want to explore some real foundational habit changes. And to help you with that, I'm including a free skin health guide here. There is a link below the show notes. Feel free to go down and download it. It's free. And what it will do is just walk through many of the foods, the supplements, and the topical strategies that we've talked about today. We'll talk about the foods that support collagen production just as a reminder, nutrients that protect skin elasticity. We're going to talk about natural topical ingredients in that guide, supplements that may support the skin and the hair health. So it should be a great summary of everything we've talked about today. And I'll also remind you of the things you might want to park or certainly not make your primary focus. So you can download that guide using the link in the show notes below. And I'm going to leave you with hopefully, if there's nothing else, one important takeaway, and that is that aging, of course, yes, it's natural, it's inevitable. We all are going to age, but please know that accelerated aging is often a signal from your body that it just needs some metabolic support. You don't have to struggle with rapid aging and signs of rapid aging, inside or outside. When the body is nourished with a variety of nutrients that it needs to thrive, when inflammation is reduced and when the metabolism itself is balanced, your skin and your hair are going to reflect that. And your glow will come back and your vitality will return. And that's exactly what we're going to be focusing on throughout the month of March. So next week we're going to be diving deeper into one of the most important systems for your energy, for your skin health, and hormonal balance overall, and that's the state of your liver and how well you support your body's ability to naturally detoxify. We're going to talk about that in a lot more detail next week. So whether you already are aware that your liver might need a little bit of TLC, or whether you just want to make sure that you are doing everything you can to maintain a healthy liver and make sure that your body is efficiently getting rid of things it doesn't need that hinder our health inside and out, you're going to want to tune into next week's episode. So make sure you come back for that. Until then, I hope you take care of yourself. I hope you have learned some interesting tips and strategies from this episode. Don't forget to download your guide and remember that your body always, always is looking to find ways to move back toward balance. Naturally, instinctively, that's what it wants to do. We just need to give it the support it needs to do just that. Thanks so much for joining us today. Enjoy the rest of your day, and I look forward to you joining us in the next episode. Bye for now. Thanks so much for listening to the Midlife Vitality Project podcast. If today's episode spoke to you and you're ready to take the next step in transforming your midlife experience, I would love to connect with you. Click the link in the notes below this episode to book a free discovery call and learn more about how I help women just like you to redefine midlife with clarity, balance, and confidence. And let's see if we're a good fit to work together. Or if you'd like to learn more about the Metabolic Balance, the personalized nutrition program I use in my practice to create nutrition plans based on your unique blood work, you'll find a second link below with all the details. Now remember, your body is not betraying you. It's simply asking for balance in a new way for this stage of life. You have so much more control over your health than you think. And this next chapter truly can be your most vibrant one yet. Until next time, take care of yourself, be kind to your body, and trust that change will begin from within. Bye for now.