Episode 42: Why Chronic Inflammation is Likely Quietly Stealing Your Energy in Midlife

You're eating reasonably well. You're trying to move your body. You're getting to bed at a decent hour. And yet something still feels... off. Not sick exactly. Just not right. Achy. Foggy. Puffy. Exhausted in a way that rest doesn't seem to fix.

If that sounds familiar — this episode is going to connect a lot of dots for you.

Because everything you're feeling may be linked by one common thread: chronic inflammation. 

And once you understand what it is, where it comes from, and what it's doing inside your body right now, you'll never look at your symptoms the same way again.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• What chronic inflammation actually is — and why it's nothing like the inflammation you can see or feel
• Why perimenopause dramatically reduces your body's natural inflammatory protection — and what that means for your symptoms
• What inflammation looks like in your bloodwork — including the five key markers to ask about at your next appointment: CRP, fasting glucose and insulin, triglycerides, homocysteine (the one most doctors overlook — and the one that matters most), and ESR
• Why homocysteine may be a more important long-term health indicator than cholesterol alone
• The specific foods and compounds that drive inflammation — including some that may surprise you
• The specific foods that actively cool inflammation down — and the science behind why they work
• Why a nutrition plan built from your actual bloodwork produces results that generic advice simply cannot match
• Three things you can start doing this week to begin shifting your inflammatory picture

If you've been told your bloodwork looks "normal" but you still feel terrible — this episode is for you. If you've been struggling with fatigue, weight that won't shift, joint aches, brain fog, or digestive issues that seem to have no clear cause — this episode is for you.

Chronic inflammation is not inevitable. It is not just "part of getting older." It is driven by specific, identifiable, addressable causes. And when you know what they are and you address them — through the right nutrition, built around your specific picture — the body responds. Faster than most women expect.

This is not about another diet. This is about finally understanding what your body has been trying to tell you.

 🔬 Article referenced in this episode: 

 🔗 Women's Health Network — "Inflammaging: The Hidden Aging Accelerator and What You Can Do About It"

Ready to get clarity on what's going on inside your body?

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Transcript

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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 is 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.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Alright, ladies, in this episode, we are going to be talking about one of the most common underlying root cause issues of so many symptoms that we are struggling with in midlife, and we often don't realize that it's at the basis of everything that we're struggling with. Now, if you listen to last week's episode, we talked about why you're still exhausted even after a full night's sleep, and that was the kickoff for our month of May, where we are really diving into how we can help you to address all those underlying issues that are affecting your energy specifically, because we're at that point in the year where if you're not already feeling this that spring is in the air, it's gonna be coming fast and furious real soon. I have every hope this is weather where we are here in Ontario. It has been a bit of a teaser spring so far. We've had some really beautiful days, but then we've also had snow flurries a couple of days later, so we're not quite in spring yet, or at least it's not ready to settle. But I'm hopeful it is coming, and when we feel that way, I literally you see people bouncing out of the woodwork, they're outside, they just can't wait to be cutting their lawns, they're out jogging again, and that is truly what so many women want to be doing, and they feel in their minds that they want to be out there doing more, but sometimes the body is struggling to catch up. We've been hibernating all winter, probably putting some more weight on, as we've been more sedentary, and in general, our energy can take a bit of a beating in the winter. So, this is the perfect time. That's why in May I wanted to really kind of dig deep into all of the reasons that don't get talked about enough about what it is that's dragging our energy down. Now, I have done previous podcast episodes where we've talked about um your energy in general and other things that play into that. We talked about liver support and we talked about how blood sugar imbalance plays a big role as well. But we're gonna go even deeper in this month because I want you to truly understand why your energy might be tanking in midlife and how you can finally pull it back out of the trenches in a natural way that makes sense and is gonna fuel you to have an amazing summer and not tank again when fall and winter starts to come around the corner again. So, when I talked last week about that exhaustion that happens after a full night's sleep, I gave the science behind what is actually happening when it comes to our cortisol spiking and crashing, which is a big part of it, cortisol being our stress hormone. I talked about blood sugar and how we need to keep our blood sugar levels balanced because if blood sugar tanks at night, that then activates our cortisol to rise, and that's typically that cortisol that wakes us up between two and four in the morning. I talked a lot about your what I call your sleep architecture, so how you build, how you actually build a deep quality sleep. And I talked about the mitochondria, which is those energy, like the engine rooms, I guess you could say, in your cells where energy is produced for the rest of the body. And I genuinely hope if you listen to that episode that it did start to connect some dots for you. If you didn't, I recommend that you go back to that, especially if you are struggling with sleep as well. And that genuinely does seem to be a factor in your energy day after day. So today we're going one level deeper because there is something else happening underneath all of that in so so many women, something that is very quietly and very persistently making everything harder. Your metabolism, your digestion, just your day-to-day movement, and the ability to just keep your energy level sustained. And most women have no idea what is actually going on. So let me ask you something, and let's see if this is resonating with you. Have you ever had one of those days where you you just feel off and there's no other real way to explain it? You don't feel sick exactly, you just don't feel right. And you might think you're coming down with something like a flu bug or fighting a virus or something like that. Maybe you just feel achier or a bit more foggier, and you just don't seem to be thinking clearly. Maybe you look puffier, you wake up in the morning and you can feel puffiness in your fingers. Maybe your rings are too tight, or you can see it in your face. Maybe you're a bit more irritable than you'd like to be. And trust me, I have been that woman, so I know what the irritability thing feels like. Are you sitting there wondering why everything just feels harder than it should? If you are, then this could be the issue that's plaguing you, and I'll get to that in a minute. Maybe you're struggling with bloating, that's another sign of this uncommon underlying issue, and it seems to happen regardless of what you eat. And you could be experiencing joint aches that come and go, and there's no real reason why they should. Or it's the fact that your brain just will not cooperate in the afternoon, no matter how much coffee you throw in it. And yes, I've tried that too many times, not my finest moments, I have to say, but again, I think so many women can relate. Maybe it's the weight. Again, this always seems to come into the conversation when we're talking about perimenopause, specifically that weight that comes out of nowhere and sits around our middle. It's sitting there refusing to budge, right? No matter what you try. And you're absolutely doing all the right things. I'm sure you are. You're trying to eat better, you're trying to move and get a bit of exercise in your day. The majority of us are because they're the basics, right? We know that's where we need to start, but instead the weight isn't shifting. Now, these are a lot of different things that happen to many women. But here's what I want to say to you about all of this. Every single one of those things the aches, the fog, the bloating, the weight gain, the exhaustion, the moods, they are all very likely connected. We often feel overwhelmed when we seem to feel new symptoms coming out of nowhere, and we can't connect the dots, and it feels like our little body is literally breaking down. But when we realize that they're actually all connected, it's like a domino effect. There's a thread that kind of weaves in between them all and keeps them all connected, it can actually start to give you that clarity, and it all of a sudden feels doable that there's something you can actually do about it, and that's what we're talking about today. So the underlying imbalance that we're discussing is chronic inflammation. And I know I know that that word gets thrown around a lot, and I know it can sound a bit clinical, a little bit abstract, like what does chronic inflammation actually mean? So today I want to make it more real for you and add some context around what it really means, because it really is a buzzword or two buzzwords, I should say, popping up all over. I want to explain today exactly what it is, where it comes from, what it's doing inside your body, probably right now, what we can actually see in our blood work when it's present, because yes, it does show up, and most importantly, what you can actually do about it. So let's get into this a little deeper. Here's what we're gonna cover today. I want you to know first and foremost, this is going to be one of those episodes where things will start to click. First, we're gonna talk about what chronic inflammation actually is in plain language. So we're not gonna get old textbooky on you because I think a lot of women have heard the word but have never really understood what it looks like inside the body. But trust me, once you understand it, you will start to see it showing up everywhere. Then we're gonna talk about what it looks like in your blood work because this is something that I feel very strongly about, and it's something that I think is so valuable for women to understand. Because your blood is essentially your communication system, right? Your blood doesn't lie, and when we know which blood markers we should be looking at, we can then actually see inflammatory activity happening before it becomes a bigger problem, and that's pretty powerful. We're gonna talk about the main drivers of chronic inflammation, the you know, the things that we probably don't even realize we're doing that are feeding the fire, and some you may already know are feeding the fire, but we're gonna discuss them all. We're gonna include some things that might genuinely surprise you because some of them are things that are otherwise considered healthy, and this is where it gets interesting. We're gonna talk about why food choices matter so much in all of this, specifically which foods are inflammatory, pro-inflammatory, and which ones actually actively cool the fire down, so anti-inflammatory. And I'm gonna go deep on the nutrition side of this today because that is genuinely where the biggest levers are that we have to play with. And then I'm gonna give you some clear, practical things that you can start to do right away, even after you finish this episode, so that you can start to move the needle in the opposite direction and start to calm those flames a little. Okay, you ready? Alright, let's dive in. Now, there's a concept, first of all, that I want to introduce you today that I think is going to reframe everything for you. And you might have heard this word floating around, but it's a word called inflammaging. That's I N F L A M M A G I N G. Inflammaging. Now, I actually kind of love this word, it's like discombobulated. That's another one of my amazing words, but I digress. I love this word because it perfectly does capture what's happening. Inflammaging is the combination of inflammation and aging, and it describes the scientific understanding that low-grade chronic systemic inflammation is one of the primary mechanisms that accelerates the aging process inside our bodies. Now, I'm not talking about aging just as how we look on the outside, more what aging looks like on the inside at a cellular level, inside our tissues, inside our organs and our brain, and in our hormonal systems. Now, I recently came across a really brilliant piece of research on this topic, and I'm going to link to it in the show notes below. I always like to share. I do a lot of reading, do a lot of research. I'm always wanting to learn. I'm like my brain is like a sponge when it comes to nutrition and our health, and I will always share these additional pieces with you because if you find if you're intrigued as well and you like to learn, then it's some additional, genuine uh reading that I think uh you'll benefit from. So I'm gonna link it in the show notes below because it genuinely is worth reading if you want to go deeper. But what really struck me when I was reading this research was that inflammaging is not inevitable, it is not just what happens when you get older, like so many women in midlife have been told is just something we have to get used to. Instead, it's driven by very specific factors, and many of these factors are things that you have a genuine influence over, like you can actually make change, and that's the whole point of today's episode. Because right now, in perimenopause, in midlife, our bodies are already under significant hormonal and metabolic strain. And when we add chronic inflammation into that mix, it's literally like pouring fuel on a fire that's already burning. And once you understand what's fueling it, then you can start to take the fuel away and calm the flames. So before we go any further, let's clear up one of the biggest myths around inflammation. And it's that if you had a significant inflammation problem, of course you would know about it. And here's the thing: that may be true for what we call acute inflammation. That's the obvious kind. This where you sprain your ankle and it swells up. You get a cut and it goes red around the edges. That's your immune system doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Your blood rushes to the area carrying all of your white blood cells so that it can help start the repair work, and then it resolves the issue. But it's loud, it's obvious, and it's very temporary, or at least it should be. And it's actually a pretty beautiful thing when you think about it. When this is happening, as itchy as it might be, if it's a mosquito bite that's healing, as painful as it might be, if it is a genuine injury, if this wasn't happening, we it means that our immune system isn't functioning as it should. So acute inflammation is something that as much as it's not fun at the time, it's a sign that our system is working exactly the way that it should. But the opposite side of this is the chronic inflammation. And unfortunately, this is quiet, it's not as loud, it's low grade. In other words, it kind of hums along under the surface, it's not shouting loudly, it just sits there in the background, smoldering away, like a slow burning fire that you can't quite see, but you you can feel the effects of it slowly over time. And here's what makes it even more frustrating: your standard blood tests often won't pick this up. Not because chronic inflammation isn't there, but because the markers of chronic low-grade inflammation they often sit within what's considered a normal range on a conventional blood panel. So women many times will go to the doctor, maybe you're one of them, and you're told when you have your genuine, your general blood work done, maybe as part of an annual physical, that everything looks fine. When in fact, there is a very real inflammatory process happening that is quietly contributing to how they feel every single day. And you wouldn't be imagining it. Your body is not overreacting, it's actually responding, and we're gonna talk about what it is that it's responding to. So we're gonna start at the beginning, what inflammation actually is at its core. By now, you've probably figured out it's your immune response, it's your body's defense system essentially activating. And in the short term, it's absolutely necessary, it's a good thing. It's how your body fights infection, it repairs damaged tissue, and it keeps you well. It's pretty remarkable, really, when you think about it. But when that immune system stays switched on, when the inflammatory response never fully resolves, it starts to consume enormous amounts of energy. So think about it, think about it this way. Your immune system running in overdrive would be similar to leaving every single electrical appliance in your house switched on all day, every day, running in the background, even when you're not using them. Imagine the energy drain, it's going to be constant and it will leave very little left over for anything else. Now, remember I mentioned those mitochondria that we talked about last week, the little engine powerhouses inside our cells that generate energy. They are working overtime, trying to meet the demand that chronic inflammation is placing on them, and they simply just can't keep up the longer chronic inflammation is left to fester. So, our energy production, what we call ATP, it drops, and of course, then your energy crashes, and your brain gets foggy, and you just can't function very well, and you feel exhausted, your body aches, and it's that exhaustion in a way that sleep and rest just cannot fix because the problem isn't lack of rest, it's the underlying fire that's consuming all the fuel. Now, here's where this gets really specific and quite important for us women in midlife, because there is another hormone at play, and it's good old estrogen, which most of us tend to think of purely in terms of our reproductive health and the fact that without it we have hot flashes, right? It's actually one of the body's most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agents, and we often don't think about it in that way. But you're probably now starting to see how these dots are connecting. So what when estrogen starts to decline in perimenopause, and it doesn't decline, as we know, in a nice, smooth, predictable, linear way. Instead, it does its yo-yo whack wacky up and down roller coaster ride, we lose a significant amount of that natural inflammatory protection along the way. The brakes essentially are kind of coming off, the wheels are falling off, and the body's inflammatory response becomes much more reactive and much harder to regulate. So, this is why so many women notice that things they've been able to tolerate for years, certain foods that were never an issue before, maybe certain levels of stress that they were always able to manage, that those nights of disrupted sleep that, yeah, they may not feel great the next day. They can tell they're tired, but they can otherwise pull their socks up and pull on through. All of a sudden, these things feel like a much, much bigger deal. And it's not that you've become more sensitive all of a sudden, it's that the buffer that estrogen used to give you against inflammation has now gone, or it's been slowly reducing over time. And so your body is responding exactly as it should to that change, and that is not a weakness, it's just simple biology that so many women in midlife have to deal with because we're all dealing with declining estrogen as well as other hormonal havoc. So another section I want to spend some real time on because I think it's incredibly valuable and is something I genuinely wish that more women understood, is how this ties into your cholesterol and your blood sugar levels. Now, when I work with my clients, one of the first things that we do together is we look at their blood work. And I'm not just talking about standard cholesterol and glucose checks. We look at 36 specific blood markers, and each one tells us something specific about what's happening inside the metabolism, inside organ function, the nutrient status of an individual, whether there's nutrient deficiencies, for example, and we look at the inflammatory picture as well. Now, here are the key markers that I want you to know about when it comes to knowing if inflammation is at play, chronic inflammation specifically. Because if you've had blood work done recently, or if not, when you hopefully do it in the very near future. These are the ones worth asking about. So this is going to be your little chi-chi guide that you're going to want to either take to your doctor or your naturopath or whoever, whatever practitioner you're working with, to make sure that these specific levels are being looked at. So the first one is called CRP, C reactive protein. And this is produced by the liver in response to inflammation in the body. So it's probably one of the most direct markers of systemic inflammation that we have. Now, a standard lab result might tell you that your CRP is normal. But here's the thing: a result that's within the conventional normal range, in other words, it's nothing that a doctor would be concerned about where they need to intervene. It can still be elevated enough to indicate low grade chronic inflammation. And that could be anywhere between one and five in your blood work. Typically one in three would be low grade chronic inflammation. Anything over three to five, now you know we're starting to see it as a significant, you know, more of a significant issue. What we're looking for is the high sensitive, high sensitivity CRP, which is a much more sensitive version of the same test and far more useful for detecting that quiet smoldering inflammation. Now, if your CRP is even slightly raised, then again it's a signal just worth paying attention to. Ideally, we'd be below one. A lot of us tend to fall in that one to three range, one to five, anything over that, again, we would want to take a closer look at. So think about your CRP next time you're getting your blood work done, and definitely keep an eye on this. The second thing you need to look at in your blood work is fasting glucose and your insulin levels specifically. Now we talk a lot about blood sugar, and I talked about it quite a bit last week, but I want to connect it here to inflammation specifically. The chronically elevated blood sugar levels that a lot of us struggle with is profoundly pro-inflammatory. So the more glucose that we have swimming around in our bloodstream that isn't being absorbed by the cells for energy, it's it's creating more and more inflammation. So every time your blood sugar spikes and then it crashes, it triggers an inflammatory cascade in the body. And when we look at our fasting glucose levels and our fasting insulin together in our blood work, we can get a very clear picture of how well your blood sugar is being regulated and whether insulin resistance is starting to develop. And as we talked about in the episode on metabolic syndrome, which I believe was episode 439 or 39 or 40, insulin resistance is one of the most significant underlying drivers of pretty much every midlife symptom you can think of. Number three in your blood work, you need to pay attention to to understand if there's an inflammatory issue going on is your triglycerides. So triglycerides, this is your blood fat level, and most people think about triglycerides purely in the context of heart disease risk. But elevated triglycerides are also a very reliable marker of metabolic inflammation. They tell us if the liver is being overburdened, it's having to work harder than it should to do its day-to-day tasks of regulating everything in our liver and doing its detoxification jobs, supporting the gallbladder in creating and storing bile. So it tells us what how the liver is doing, often from excess sugar and processed carbohydrates. This is why the liver would feel overworked. And that fat is accumulating in the bloodstream at a rate that the body isn't able to manage well. So high triglycerides showing up in your blood work, if you combine that with a high fasting glucose and a high or an elevated CRP, that C-reactive protein marker, now we're starting to see a picture that tells us together a great deal about what's happening in the body from a state of inflammation. Now, number four, which is worth asking to check into, is something called homocysteine. And this is an interesting one because homocysteine is a marker that is so often overlooked, and yet it is one of the most important ones that we can look at, in my view, because well, first of all, what is homocysteine? It's it's an amino acid. Amino acid is like it's a amino acids are what are strung together to create different protein chains, and different types of protein chains in our body do different tasks. So homocysteine is an amino acid and it's produced naturally in the body as a byproduct of protein metabolism. Now, in a healthy, well-nourished body, it's converted and broken down efficiently. But if it builds up because it isn't being broken down efficiently, which happens when there are deficiencies in B vitamins, for example, specifically B6 and B12 and folate, folic acid, it becomes toxic to blood vessels and to the brain tissue. So elevated homocysteine, if it shows up in blood work, this is telling us that there is an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and osteoporosis. Now, in fact, I go as far as to say that for many women in midlife, homocysteine is a more meaningful indicator of long-term risk than cholesterol alone. So many of us just focus on the cholesterol number, but that's why it's worth considering asking specifically what your homocysteine levels look like. So if you've ever had a blood test done and cholesterol was the main thing discussed, then definitely bring up homocysteine next and see if you can have that discussion with your healthcare practitioner. The great news is that elevated homocysteine can be addressed through targeted nutrition quite easily when we know that it's an issue. What we do is we make sure that you're getting adequate B vitamins through the right foods. And this is exactly the kind of thing that would show up in a personalized nutrition plan that is built from your blood work. Your homocysteine levels will come down quite measurably and relatively quickly if we ensure that there is plentiful foods in your specific plan with a wide variety of B vitamins. There is one other that I wanted to mention that is also worth considering when you're looking at your blood work, and it's an acronym you might see as ESR, and this this stands for erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Don't worry about that so much, but ESR, what it basically measures is how quickly your red blood cells settle to the bottom of a test tube. Now, you might that may sound strange, you might think, why does that matter? Why does that matter at all? But here's why it matters. When there is inflammation present in the body, certain proteins will attach to the red blood cells and make them heavier so that they will settle faster. So a raised ESR level is a non-specific but quite useful indicator that there is inflammation present somewhere in the body. It doesn't tell us exactly where it is or why, which is why it's always looked at kind of alongside other markers like CRP, but it's a valuable piece of the overall picture. So again, if you're if you can go in and have that conversation with a doctor or with your naturopath when you're talking about getting your blood work taken and say that these are markers that are important to you, you want to really get a detailed understanding. I would like to think that they would be willing to support you in that and have a look at those levels themselves and have that conversation with you. Now, why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to understand that chronic inflammation is not invisible. We typically think of it when we have joint aches or we have joint pains. We might consider inflammation, of course, if we have any type of injury or swelling. We may notice it if we have some genuine like gut flare-ups or we have an autoimmune condition and we have a flare-up. Flare-ups of any kind we do typically associate with inflammation of some form. It's leaving evidence. But your blood markers will be able to tell you if you're not necessarily experiencing those, or even on a consistent basis, whether there is chronic inflammation at play. So when you have that inflammation at your fingertips, now you can see exactly what your body is dealing with, and you can be much more precise with your approach, with your nutrition specifically, rather than just focusing it on guesswork. So now we need to think about what is it that's causing this chronic inflammation. Hopefully, by now you've got a better understanding of the set the signs and symptoms, as well as the blood work markers, that will let you know if it's a problem. But what why is it happening in the first place? Because this is going to be where your power lies when you understand the causes. Again, everything that we do should focus on identifying the root cause of our symptoms because our symptoms, remember, are just your body's way of trying to shout at you that something's wrong. They're like the glaring red lights. So when we understand the drivers, we can address them. And there are several ones that I do see quite regularly when working with clients. So the first one is blood sugar dysregulation, and you will hear me talk about blood sugar until I'm blue in the face, because it is such a big underlying issue in so many symptoms and health issues, specifically with women in midlife. So blood sugar regulation, we've covered it at length already. I'll keep weaving it in because it truly is central to everything. But every blood sugar spike will trigger inflammation, and every blood sugar crash will trigger a cortisol response, which triggers more inflammation. So essentially, it's this loop, and it's one of the most common drivers that I see. The second is gut what we call permeability, which sometimes called leaky gut or leaky gut syndrome. Now, what this means is that the lining of your gut, well, first it's designed to be what we call selectively permeable. So the lining of your gut is intended to be like imagine a bunch of guards lined up against a wall of a fortress, and their job is to decide who is allowed in and who must stay out. That's what we mean by selective permeability. So your gut lining acts that way, or at least it should. The right things are allowed to get through, so from our gut, whatever we eat, whatever's in our gut, whether that's nutrients, good bacteria, bad bacteria, parasites, undigested food proteins, whatever it is, your gut lining should know if it's in a healthy state, what is allowed through into the bloodstream, ideally, nutrients, amino acids, all those types of things, and that the wrong things, back bad bacteria, undigested food proteins, they should stay out because they need to go, get flushed out through the bowel. But when that lining, that gut lining becomes compromised, and this can happen over a long period of time when you're under chronic stress or you're taking long-term medications, some very specific medications, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, sometimes called NSATs, those types of medications, for example. Um, a lot of medications can cause gut irritation, and the longer you're taking them, they will kind of wear away at that gut lining. Processed foods, hormonal changes, even these are all things that can start to break that gut lining down, so it's not as good at its job of knowing what should be allowed through and what absolutely should not be going through. So, as I said, partially digested proteins, bacteria, toxins, they should not be going into our bloodstream. They should not be getting through that gut wall. And your immune system will react to every single one of those that isn't intended to be there. So, this is one of the most significant and underappreciated drivers of chronic inflammation. And it's something that can be directly addressed through what you eat. Now, here's something I find really fascinating from the research that I was looking at the other day, and it's where it gets a little more nuanced. Even some whole foods that we eat that are considered clean and healthy, even they can contribute to gut irritation if we consume too much of them or too high quantities, or if the gut is already compromised in some way, it's out of balance, maybe there's too much bad bacteria, there might be a yeast overgrowth, there could be a parasitic infection, there might just be too much or too little stomach acid, an enzyme imbalance, whatever the case may be, if the gut is already struggling a little, then even some clean, healthy whole foods can contribute to gut irritation. Now, the ones that I'm going to specifically call out here are what the con are foods that have what's called lectins in them. Now, these are proteins that are found naturally in many plant foods, particularly grains, legumes like your beans and your chickpeas, nightshade vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant. Plants, they basically produce these lectins as a natural defense mechanism. So it's essentially a built-in pesticide to protect themselves. And in a healthy gut, if we eat them in you know reasonable amounts as part of a balanced diet, they're typically not a problem. And we get lots of benefit from them. They have lots of nutrition nutrition in them themselves, which is beneficial for us. But when the gut lining is already compromised and you're consuming large amounts of these foods that are rich in lectin, especially wheat-based products. If you think about wheat, a lot of people know that they just genuinely don't do well with wheat products. And let's be honest, they're found in almost everything. What can happen is they bind to the gut lining and just cause further irritation. And that then is going to break down that gut lining even further. It's going to impair our ability to absorb healthy nutrients from the foods we're the healthy foods we're trying to eat, and it's going to contribute to that inflammatory cycle. So you are in this vicious loop that just keeps going round and round and round. Now there are some other compounds in grains, and these the short form is called ATIs, alpha amylase trypsin inhibitors. We just call them ATIs for short. And these can activate immune cells in the gut and again trigger low-grade inflammation. So this is sometimes what we will call a wheat sensitivity, and it can go completely undetected for years because the symptoms are so nonspecific. So you might get bloating, and again, there's that fatigue and exhaustion that pops out of nowhere, the brain fog, the joint aches. Now, this is probably all sounding familiar because we associate a lot of these symptoms with just being in perimenopause, right? And as a result of estrogen and progesterone issues. When in fact, if we reduce the amount of grain-based and ultra-processed foods and increase the variety of clean whole foods that are more anti-inflammatory, then the inflammatory load will reduce significantly, and the bloating, the fatigue, the brain fog, and the joint aches will actually subside. And in this instance, it had nothing to do with estrogen. So the third major driver is chronic stress. We can't have a conversation about this without talking about that awful word. And stress seems to get thrown around so much as the problem that we're all dealing with, but in all reality, it is such a big problem, a big epidemic. We've talked a lot about cortisol, the primary stress hormone, and what's important to understand is that initially, cortisol, when it's nicely balanced, it's actually anti-inflammatory. Your body is pretty smart. It releases cortisol partly to suppress inflammation in a time of crisis. But over time, what happens is when cortisol is chronically elevated, the immune system becomes resistant to those regulatory signals. And when that happens, inflammation will just become progressively harder to control. So chronic stress and chronic inflammation are very closely intertwined. The fourth driver is all about what you eat, and specifically the quality and the composition of that food of your diet. So if we think about a diet that is high in ultra-processed foods, the ones that are loaded with ingredients that will directly promote inflammation, these are going to be the foods that have refined seed oils like canola oil, for example, emulsifiers, artificial additives, added sugars. And what about fructose specifically? Now, this is something that does surprise women. I've had this conversation with a few when we talk about the fact that fruit is considered to be very healthy for us. Of course it is, it's got all those bright skins with nice bioflavonoids and vitamin C and lots of other healthy nutrients in there. But here's the issue the natural fructose from whole fruits, consumed in appropriate amounts, is absolutely fine. And your body can handle, you know, a certain amount of natural fructose per day without any issue. But processed foods, they're also full of added fructose, often in the form of, and this is going to sound familiar, high fructose corn syrup, or is often disguised in what are sometimes called sweeteners, healthier sweeteners like agave, for example, agave nectar, which is actually very high in fructose. So what happens is if we end up in a situation of fructose overload, then it's going to go straight to the lever, the liver, where it then gets converted into, you guessed it, triglycerides. And then we start to create uric acid in the body, which is a driver of inflammation and gout. So if you know anybody or maybe you yourself have struggled with gout, this is an abundance of uric acid. So we really need to be conscious of how much fructose is being put into our body. The natural forms of fructose on their own would be okay, but if they are in addition to these other high fructose corn syrups or dis sweeteners like agave, too much of it, now we have an uric acid issue. And over time, this is what can contribute to fatty liver disease and insulin resistance, all of which will continue to feed that inflammatory cycle. So even seemingly healthy sugar swaps, they could be working against you if you are not aware of just how much fructose you might be taking in. Lastly, the fifth driver, and this again, unfortunately, is an epidemic because so many of us are office-based. Um whether you work from home or not, you know that a lot of people have sedentary jobs. So we have to think about our sedentary behavior. And if we combine it with the wrong type of exercise, we have an issue because both extremes are considered inflammatory. So that's not. Moving enough or moving too intensely. So too little movement is going to allow inflammation to accumulate, but too much high-intensity exercise, like those jumping around step classes, especially on top of an already stressed, inflamed system, this is going to spike inflammation further. And this is when, ladies, we start to talk about our adrenals. The adrenal glands being your stress glands, this is where adrenal fatigue can really start to get become an issue. Gentle, consistent movement is genuinely anti-inflammatory. Just remember that not all movement is bad, a lot of movement is good. We just need to be very intentional about the type of movement, and we'll come back to that. Now, I want to spend some time on the nutrition piece, a little more on the nutrition piece. That's of course my specialty, because this is where I see the most dramatic and fastest shifts in the women that I work with. And it's an area where I think the right understanding can make such a difference. We're going to talk about foods that are genuinely anti-inflammatory in nature. So, first and foremost, I'm sure you've heard of omega-3 fatty acids. So, omega-3s, these are genuinely one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory tools that we have in our nutritional toolbox. Specifically, what we call long-chain omega-3s, which are the ones that we find in the fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, as well as the coal-pressed flaxseed oils, coal-pressed oils like flaxseed and chia seeds and walnut oil. And these types of oils they work by actively reducing the production of inflammatory compounds in the body. Now, in my personalized nutrition plans, if we see elevated CRP, that's C reactive protein, and we see elevated cholesterol alongside joint pain, skin issues in someone's health history, then omega-3 rich foods will 100% be prioritized because they would genuinely move the needle just on their own. Another food considered anti-inflammatory is extra virgin olive oil. Now I know most of us know olive oil is good for us, but do you know why specifically? And here's why. The olive oil contains a compound, and here's the part that genuinely blew my mind when I learned this myself. This compound follows the exact same biochemical pathway as ibuprofen, so ADVIL. It inhibits the same enzyme, so it stops the same enzyme that triggers the inflammatory response. So if you take a good quality, even a teaspoon of a good quality extra virgin olive oil daily, it's literally working in your body in a way that's comparable to taking a natural anti-inflammatory painkiller. Pretty extraordinary, right? Just how much nature can do things that we so often rely on medication for. Now, olive oil, it also contains a polyphenol. Again, we're not going to get too much into the science, but what you need to understand is it's a powerful antioxidant. So olive oil contains a powerful antioxidant that is again anti-inflammatory in nature. And it also has what's called an antihistamine effect. So if you've been using olive oil and then you switch to something else to cook with, I really urge you to come back to using your olive oil because it really is that good. Histamine, people, you will know histamine if you struggle with any type of allergic response. So, absolutely, extra virgin olive oil, ideally from a clean, natural, organic source, is your best choice. Another food we need to consider that is anti-inflammatory is actually a category of foods that are high in fiber. And I want to talk about this because I think fiber is wildly underrated as a nutrient that's considered anti-inflammatory. Now we're supposed to be getting around 30 grams of fiber per day from a variety of sources, but to be honest, most women we're not getting anywhere near that. We might, if we're lucky and we're making an effort, be getting 15, maybe 17 grams a day. So we're roughly half where we should be. Now there's different types of fiber. Soluble fiber is the kind that is found in oats and beans and chickpeas, your legumes, it's found in apples, it's found in flaxseed. And this type of fiber is what feeds the good bacteria in your gut. And when these bacteria then ferment, so they basically digest the soluble fiber, they produce something called short chain fatty acids, specifically one called butyrate. And there are others as well, but butyrate in particular is extraordinary and worth mentioning. Again, I don't want to talk too much in science terms, but this is something that I do want to talk about. Because butyrate is the primary energy source for the cells that line your gut. It promotes that regeneration of the gut lining. So if you are having any kind of histamine reaction or allergic reaction or food intolerances that indicate there might be an issue with how strong your gut lining is and how whether it's letting things through that shouldn't be getting through and causing inflammation, then this is definitely something that you want to think about. So every time you eat a fiber-rich meal, you are literally feeding the bacteria that produces the compounds that will heal your gut and reduce inflammation. And honestly, like that's pretty incredible, right? Number four, high quality protein. Can never say enough about high quality protein. Now, this might seem like an unusual one in an inflammation conversation, but just hear me out. Because systemic inflammate inf systemic inflammatory conditions can increase protein breakdown in the body. And this then leads to loss of muscle mass. And here, ladies, is why this matters. If you haven't already understood, I talk a lot about the importance of muscle density as we go through midlife and beyond menopause. Skeletal muscle actually releases certain compounds which also have a direct anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So maintaining good muscle mass through adequate high-quality protein intake is genuinely part of your anti-inflammatory strategy. At least it certainly should be. So it's not, we're not just talking about looking good and feeling strong. Your muscles are actively fighting your inflammation. And this is a good reason to make sure that you're eating enough protein at every meal, not just once a day. Number five, we have to talk about those deeply colorful vegetables and berries. They are rich in antioxidants and polyphenols, which are naturally anti-inflammatory as well. So if you think about the darker leafy greens, the bright blueberries, the bright red beetroot and red cabbage, the orange and turmeric and ginger, these shouldn't be considered optional extras in our diet. In fact, I want you to start thinking about them as foundational. And the variety, the more variety you get, this matters as much as the quantity that you get. Because the more variety of the rainbow, I always say eat the colors in the rainbow, and you can't go wrong because different colors will provide different nutrients that work on different inflammatory pathways. Now, here's the part that I think is really important to just land this point because everything I've described so far, as we've gone through this episode, the inflammatory markers, the food drivers, the nutritional solutions, they play out differently in every single woman. And this is not a small thing. That is, in fact, that's that's everything, and this is where personalized nutrition really needs to be something that all women start to think about instead of these one-size-fits-all generic fixes, diet fixes. Think about the woman whose chronic inflammation, and maybe this is you, is primarily driven by blood sugar dysregulation. So you know you have blood sugar issues, you're spiking, you're crashing, you have a lot of the symptoms of that. Maybe you've been told by your doctor you're insulin-resistant, prediabetic, maybe you already have two type two type 2 diabetes. If this is the case, then you are going to need a different nutritional approach to a woman whose primary driver of chronic inflammation is related to her gut and how well her gut is controlling what foods are getting through the gut lining and how sensitive they are to lectins. So the woman with elevated homocysteine levels, remember, we talked about homocysteine being a very important marker, probably even more so than just our cholesterol reading. This woman will need very targeted B vitamin-rich foods in her personalized meals, in her diet, in her meal plan. The woman that has high triglycerides will need a very different approach to the types of carbohydrates that she is able to take in and just how much fructose is getting in the body. So there's so many different approaches that need to be taken to address the same situation. It all comes down to our unique physiology. This is why the approach that I use with my clients, which is grounded in analyzing 36 specific blood markers alongside a detailed health history, this is why it produces amazing results that actually are sustainable. And we're not just talking weight loss, although that's a glorious side effect that many women love. We're talking about the fact that their health just gets a complete overhaul. It produces results that generic advice simply cannot do because we're not guessing anymore, we're not going on the law of averages, we're looking at your actual internal picture, and we're building a plan that speaks directly to your specific drivers. And this is the difference between a plan that's based on what works for most people or may work for many, but then doesn't work much for longer, and a plan that's based on what your body is actually telling you that it needs. Now I want to pause here and be very real with you for a second because I do want you to feel the weight of what happens when chronic inflammation goes unaddressed. And this is not a scare tactic in any way, but you absolutely deserve to know the honest picture. When you are chronically inflamed, every other health challenge will become harder to resolve. The weight will not shift because that tissue, the adipose tissue itself, the fat around your belly especially, it's producing inflammatory compounds that then create this cycle of fat storage and more inflammation and more fat storage. So the harder you try to lose weight without addressing the inflammation issue, the more you're fighting against your own biology. The fatigue it will compound. The brain fog will deepen over time, and the mood becomes harder to manage because those the inflammation directly interferes with the production of your serotonin and your dopamine. These are your happy-feel good neurotransmitters in your brain. And we create a lot of that in our gut, which means you're not just physically exhausted, you are neurologically depleted. And I have been there, and it is not a pleasant place to be. So here's the long picture I want you to be aware of because it absolutely matters. Chronic low-grade inflammation is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, some cancers, and cognitive decline, including dementia. And the research on the connection between chronic inflammation and Alzheimer's is quite compelling and it shouldn't be taken lightly. But here's the big but, and it's what I also know from working with women all the time who need help with their chronic inflammation situation. It's that inflammation responds quite quickly. It will respond faster than you might believe is possible when you change the inputs to make sure you are giving your body absolutely what it needs to target the right drivers of that inflammation. You will feel the difference within days sometimes. The energy will lift, the bloating will ease, the brain fog will clear, and that joint pain will reduce, and your long-term health is looking a lot brighter. So here is the reframe that I want you to take away today. And that's that chronic inflammation is not something that just happens randomly, it is your body responding to specific inputs in your food, your stress, your gut health, your nutrient status. And that means that you have far more influence over it than anyone has probably told you. Now, here's some action steps I want you to take away with you that you can start to implement right away to turn this ship around. Action step number one, just start to think about adding a new anti-inflammatory fat to every meal. This is one of the simplest and most impactful shifts that you can make. Think about extra virgin olive oil, drizzle it over your vegetables, your salads, your proteins, have it raw where possible so that you can preserve those polyphenols. Use cold-pressed flaxseed oil on your salads, you can stir it into yogurt, you can add a small handful of walnuts as a snack, or you can eat some fatty fish if you like sardines at least twice a week. They aren't complicated changes, but they will work wonders. Action step number two, focus on fiber and diverse fiber, different types for fiber from different sources. So, in other words, aim for five different plant foods in a day, and you're going to get a diverse fiber intake. So, not five different meals, just five different plant foods. So that could be an apple, it could be some broccoli, it could be a handful of lentils and a soup, it could be some oats at breakfast, it could be some berries as a snack. Every different plant food feeds different beneficial bacteria in your gut, and that will produce different anti-inflammatory short chain fatty acids. And this is what gut diversity looks like in practice, and it is probably one of the most powerful things that you can do to keep your inflammatory inflammation levels in check. Action step number three, ask for your homocysteine levels to be chest checked the next time you have your blood drawn. Just write it down and ask your doctor if you wouldn't if you wouldn't mind looking into it along with everything else. And specifically ask to look at your B6, your B12, and your folate status as well. Last but not least, I want you to think that about these three things as a genuine great starting point. And often it's just small things practiced consistently that start to add up to some real great results. If you implement them consistently, not just for a week, but I mean continuously, you will start to notice a difference, even with just these three things. But here's what I also want to be really honest with you about, and that's that if you have been living with chronic fatigue or stubborn weight gain, joint pain, brain fog, digestive issues for months or even years, general changes, however good they are, they will only get you so far. Because remember, the drivers of inflammation are different for every woman, so you need to understand your unique picture instead of just making educated guesses. So I would love to work with you and help look at your blood work, your CRP levels, we could look at your glucose markers, your triglycerides, how your liver's working, and help you to stop guessing. I would love to be able to help you with that. So if you've been listening to this today and thinking, oh my gosh, this absolutely sounds like me, and it makes so much sense now, and you realize that you have been living with so many of these things for so long, and up until now you didn't know really what was driving it, then I would love to offer you a complimentary health audit. This is exactly what they are created for. It's an opportunity for us to sit down, have a chat virtually or in person if you're local. It's no obligation for us to continue working together. Honestly, it is a real conversation where we can just take a quick look at what's going on for you specifically, your symptoms, your history, your patterns, your blood work. If you have it, we can have a look at that together. And we'll identify where your key imbalances are likely sitting. And then we can talk about what it would actually look like in your life, not in theory, to address them. And yes, there may be an opportunity for us to work together. If not, then I will at least be able to give you some clarity on where to go next. So I will drop the link to book your complimentary health audit in the show notes below. And I really just want to encourage you to take that next step, whether it's with me, whether it's with another practitioner that you trust, because you deserve to feel genuinely well, not just better than before, but actually vibrant and clear-headed and energized and finally back in control of your own health again. And that is absolutely possible for you. I know because I have done this with my own health, I see it happen time and time again. Okay, well, that is a wrap for episode 42. I hope this one opens some real interesting doors for you. And if it did, please share this episode with someone else that you think would benefit. And I also very much appreciate your feedback on what you found helpful because that and what you would like to hear more of, because that's what's going to inform future episodes that I release here on the Mid Life Vitality Project podcast. Now, next week in episode 43, we are going to be talking about the lymphatic system. And I know that this might sound a bit unfamiliar because honestly, it is one of those systems that doesn't get nearly enough airtime. But I promise you, once you understand what your lymphatic system is actually doing for you, or at least what it should be doing, and what happens when it doesn't do its job well, you will wonder how you never knew about this before. And you will also be able to fill in what is often the missing link when it comes to getting your health completely back in balance and supporting yourself through perimenopause and the years beyond. Thanks so much for being here. Take care of yourself this week, and I hope you will join us in the next episode.

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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.