Okay, hi everyone good crowd here today, I’m, excited to see you all and it’s week. Five of the midlife woman’s. Author series. It’s gone really. Well, I’m, really glad i did it. It was so nice to hear all of these different voices.
I’m excited about today’s guests and for anybody who doesn’t know me. I think most of you do i’m amanda. I’m hosting it today. Amanda Thieb, I’m, the author of men apocalypse how i learned to thrive during menopause and how you can too, and i decided to do this series, because it was just a really good opportunity for me to get other authors on who released books At all, almost the same time as me about the same topic, and so this is just really good information, literally from the horse’s mouth.
Sorry, ladies no offense, okay, i’m gonna. Do a quick introduction, a quick introduction to our guest today and then um. We’ll, get to hear from them and we’ll. We’ll. Get to your questions. I and thank you, everyone for the questions that were sent in so first of all, is liz.
What give us a waveless um registered dietitian with more than 30 years of experience, counseling patients and writing about nutrition and health. She is an experienced recipe developer and food photographer and the author or co-author of several books, including expect the best your guide to healthy eating before, during and after pregnancy, um and you’re.
Also, a blogger, hey the better is the new, perfect website. So welcome liz and we’ll, go over to hillary hi hilary hillary wright. These two guys are best buddies. We’ll, find out how they met um in a minute, but it’s.
Also a registered dietitian and author and she authored the peacock, do you say: pcos or pcos yeah, pcos diet plan and the pre-diabetes diet plan. She is the director of nutritional counseling for the dum dum center for mind body health, um at boston, ibs and a harvard affiliated fertility treatment center.
She also works part-time as a senior nutritionist at the dana farber cancer institute in boston, and she is the founding member of the nutritional technology company good measures um. These are hardcore nutritionist.
Ladies, i’m, so excited to have you here. We’re gonna. We’re gonna hear all about this, so thank you both for coming to the show this is so exciting. I’m glad. We’ve connected over the last few months.
Yes, it’s been great me too. So let’s start. How do you two guys know each other? Where did this all come from? How did you start writing? The book is like give us the foundation. The story of our lives together starts in a laboratory really liz.
Clearly i love liz. She loves me why she didn’t. Remember that i met her. We were lab partners at umass, amherst and organic chemistry as undergrads when we were both about 20. um. So we just hit it off.
You know we were probably messed up lots of experiments, but we got to know each other. We’re, both nutrition majors, and so we’re, both registered dietitians and stayed connected and had a lot of parallel life experiences.
Yes, she was in my wedding. I was in her wedding. We both have three children of the same gender. So i have three girls. She has three boys boys and they were born like this yeah. They’re, pretty much yeah.
They’re, pretty close together forever forever um. They’re, really good, kids yeah. We love them yeah and that’s, how that helps yeah, and so oh, we both live in the towns that we grew up in mm-hmm yeah.
So we’re, counting which are close to each other too, which is really funny like. We only live about 15 minutes apart right, but we all you know we both had really varied uh work. Experiences but included in that were.
Uh was a lot of writing a lot of freelance writing initially and then writing books and liz, and i had been talking about forever. You know when our kids were little. We’re, like ah someday. We’re, going to do a project together and when we first started talking about it, we talked about having a radio show that’s, how old it was too much work and then i was like we should do this.
We should do that and then you know when it came to the point where, like she had finished her pregnancy book um, you know i don’t know a couple years prior to this and i had written my last book a revision of my Pcos diet plan and we both were like.
We should, you know, write another book and they’re like wait. Maybe this is the time to team up, because at the same time we started talking to each other about menopause related stuff, because we both hit menopause on the later side and we were trying to figure out like what is normal.
You know like um, we just started looking into it a lot ourselves and we started to realize that there wasn’t enough information about what’s typical, like how soon does this start, this stuff started, because i know i you know, I started to notice stuff.
You know in like my middle mid 40s mid 40s, even though i didn’t hit menopause so 55, like i’m like if all my friends weren’t telling me that their mind feels like it’S going to mush, i think i have a serious other things.
Yeah right i mean, like you, know there’s, just a lot of um kind of turbulent changes in so you so you as registered dietitians weren’t privy to this information. Either it’s really interesting. You know.
I’ve spoke to gynecologists. I spoke to nutritionists, registered dietitians and like loads of different experts, and they’re like yeah. The information wasn’t there for us, so so you had to do. You had to dig deep as well, then we had to write a book so that now everyone knows how they should be eating these women um.
So this is the book guys. You know the operative word in. There is plan because um we want women in their 40s to start thinking about the next phase of their life. So you know, statistically speaking, a woman can live up to 40 percent of her life in the postmenopausal state.
That’s. A good chunk of your life if she’s very lucky if she’s lucky right now, my mother, i calculated the other day. My mother lived 57 percent of her life in a post, menopausal wow wow. It is amazing, so so anyway, the point is, is that this is another phase of a woman’s life and they need a playbook.
You know when it comes to diet and lifestyle, and you know we think we wrote it well and we’re interested in women like navigating this phase of life and beyond, largely to preserve quality of life. For as long as as you’re here, you know i’m.
I’m. I know we ‘ Ve talked about this. I’m, much more interested in the quality of my years as opposed to the quantity, because we know that medicines and procedures can keep you alive for an awful long time, but that doesn’t mean your quality of life is good.
So the book everyone – and i mean i’ve – spoke about it before the show is called um, the menopause diet plan and um. I really love the book. I i’ve dog-eated it as well, and i like it because, even though i’m, not a registered dietitian, i have nutritional training and i feel as though we were so aligned in our writing that and i think the main point That we we both agree on is that it there is a very um, simplistic, non-dyna, non gimmicky approach to our health and our weight management.
If that’s, a problem and all of the other aspects of menopause, that don’t require any restrictions and don’t require any food groups disappearing and all of these things, and so that’s. What i’d, like to dig in with you like, let’s, just get down to the meat and bones that was a food point.
I’m, probably going to do loads of food. A lot of my anecdotes have got food in them. Okay, so let’s just start with um. I’m gonna, like we have the questions laid out, but i actually want to know like what, after all of your research and years of experience, did you come up as the foundational way that women should eat through menopause, like what’s, the foundational plan that you both are sort of like trying to promote for women.
So i always think of it as a mash-up between the mediterranean style of eating, which isn’t exactly a diet per se and the dash diet, which um is a diet that helps to control high blood pressure but also encourages bone health.
And you know overall wellness and that’s for men and women too, but then in our research and in our professional experience like we didn’t feel that either one of them was was perfect um. So we did a lot of research about protein.
We did a lot of research about carbohydrate and what we did was come up with a plant-based approach that has enough protein for women over 50, and i know that you’ll. You’ll, be um. You’ll, probably like that topic amanda, because yeah yeah and um muscles, probably a little bit lower in carbohydrate than what um most people are eating, but not at all a low carbohydrate diet.
It’s, actually just at the low end of the recommended range. You know: um yeah, roughly 45 yeah carbohydrates and there’s, nothing that’s sacrificed, and there are reasons for everything that we did in the eating plan.
There’s there’s. There’s, a reason, and there’s research to back it all up. So, first of all, then let’s. Talk about those reasons, because i think that’s, what people want to know if people are being told they have to eat keto, because there’s like messages in in you know in the weber sphere, that we’re In um, because it’s, the best thing to support our body in menopause and often they can’t back up the research with menopausal data that’s.
What i find that it’s, just generic information, that’s been put out there, that doesn’t isn’t nuanced, towards the way our bodies are physical, physiologically adapted. So can you explain to us um? Why protein and why protein intake needs to increase? Why we need to be mindful of our carbohydrates but not eliminate them? Could you just talk about those and then, if you want to smatter in some fats in there, that’s? Mine too, i’ll.
Take the protein piece and hillary can do the carbs, because that’s. We each have our pet right nutrients um. We did a lot of research on protein and you know you could fill um this hillary’s house with all the research that says, which is where we are right now, um, which says that you know the current recommended uh dietary allowance for protein Is inadequate for um women over 50 because it doesn’t help women preserve and build muscle tissue as we go on through life, all of us men and women.
We lose lean muscle tissue and we do not want to do that for a number of reasons. One is it diminishes your strength, it diminishes to tone um. It also may actually contribute to type 2 diabetes because muscle uses a lot of insulin and we and glucose – and we want to keep those nor those levels normal.
So we want to keep the muscle that we have and potentially build more muscle. So the research says older people can do that they can build as much muscle as younger people, but they need more protein to do that.
So there are, you know, european organizations, that we quote that say that you know, if you do the calculations um, a woman really needs about 23 to 25 grams more protein a day than the current us recommendations, and you know we feel, like the protein recommendations, are Outdated in in the united states and that you know around the world, they’re, different and um.
So so that’s, why we went with a a higher protein intake and a lower carbohydrate intake, so hillary can take it yeah. Just um can, i just add, a quick question onto the protein. So what are your recommendations like volume, again so 1 to 1.
2 grams per kilo kilogram? And if you need to get your weight in kilograms um, you just divide it by 2.2. So if you weigh 150 pounds, i think it’s 170 kilos. So it would be 70 to i. Don’t, know 80 grams of protein a day, something like that and that’s, going to be your minimum requirements minimum right.
Yes, we also um, so we you know again. We believe that uh, based on the research that they don’t, take into account enough that we’re not as efficient as utilizing protein as we get older right.
So you have to pad the recommendations a little bit um. We also encourage women to you know, spread that protein out, because that may optimize your ability to hold on to your lean body. Mass plus protein is satiating.
It helps people feel fuller and women can be notorious grazers on carb things so to kind of segue to that um. We’re constantly on our soapbox, that carbs are not evil there’s, a huge quality difference between fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and we always pick on scales cookies and what we call foods for fun yeah.
So we’re very much. You know the 80 20 people in terms of we care about what people do. Eighty percent of the time much more than twenty percent carbs. Yes, you’re right are not evil, they provide. You know beyond vitamins and minerals and um, you know, calories, carbohydrates are fuel, they are an essential source of fiber.
Dietary fiber helps us feel full feeds. The healthy bacteria that’s in our gut slows down the digestion of carbohydrates into glucose in your blood, as opposed to refined carbohydrates that have been stripped of the elements that actually slow down blood sugar rises after a meal.
So if you’re eating healthy carbohydrates, you’re. Getting all those advantages, plus you’re, encouraging your blood sugar levels to roll like hills kind of over the day and where your blood sugar goes, your insulin levels go, and we now understand that as we get older, you know we’Re higher risk for developing insulin resistance, which means this hormone, that your body uses to regulate your blood sugar.
Again, we’re, not as efficient as utilizing it. So we don’t want to be constantly pushing our body to work too hard to regulate our blood sugar, so spreading out carbs trying to get the fiber in there and pairing them with protein and healthy fats and healthy fats and make a meal Feel more satiating, so if, at the end of the day you want to be mindful of how much total food we’re eating right, it helps if you eat things that actually stick to your ribs for a while, and do you have a recommendation For carbohydrates, i mean i’m, not doing this, so that people have to start tracking or anything, but just like an idea and like of the volume they should be consuming.
But the other thing i wanted to say is like: can you sort of? I know you touched on it, but can you be completely explicit about the different type of carbohydrates? Because the reason i think people have like labeled carbs as bad is because they simply think carbs are cakes and bread and they don ‘
T truly understand that carbohydrates are your vegetables and your fruits and your grains and everything and and to lump a whole food group as evil it’s. Just it blows my mind. Actually, so can you sort of like just touch on that? A little bit so carbohydrates come from plants.
Are the primary sources of carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, grains, you know preferably whole grains, more often beans. You know, legumes soy things yogurt, you know, and milk contains carbohydrates as well, and so those are carbohydrates that are you, know less processed and provide bring along with them a lot of good nutritional attributes, as opposed to the carbohydrates that are foods for fun.
You know again, you take a carbohydrate from nature. You process it into cookies, and things like that. It’s, not that they’re evil. It’s just that they are truly calories for fun, not for nutritional value, calories.
For fun, i love that that’s like such a simple way to think about it right it talks about. It also takes away the morality around food and that’s, something i wanted to touch on as well. We seem to have come to a place in the world where we have good and bad foods, and it drives me crazy that we have that.
So i know you guys are all about moving away from that message and taking away the idea of cheap days and things like that. So judging well i mean, if the eating plan that you follow is so horrible. You know get another one like if you need a cheat day or a cheat meal or a cheat week.
You know you’re, not following a sustainable, uh, long-term, healthy uh approach to eating that’s. That’s. The way we figure it plus it’s. Just i mean cheating, it just sounds so bad. It’s, just something nasty.
When there’s, so much judgment involved in you know am i you know good foods, bad foods. I was like eating healthy and then i cheated or you know again, i was doing so good and then i you know and something horrible happened as if it defines your um you morally, who you are whether you can stick to some often over-restrictive plan that’s doomed to fail anyway, and if i had a time for every time somebody told me i was doing so well and then i went away for the weekend with my girlfriends and i ate so much.
I drank too much and i flew away. You know blew off my diet, so i came home and i said why bother and then they end up in what i call the z curve of failure where you’re like in a diet, thought something happens and you get out and it just Doesn’t last and whereas, if people truthfully went away for the weekend, ate too much came home got back into their own plan, anything they gain is going to go away, but the judgmental name, you know nature, is you’re either In or you’re out um, which is sets an impossible standard yeah for human beings.
We don’t. We’re, not either in or out of our marriages. There’s. A lot in between you know. We’re, not out either in or out of work. You know i mean but, like you know, we have a bad day at work. We don’t quit.
You know. If we have a fight, our partner, we don’t get divorced every time we try to just regroup and get on with it. You know yeah, you know we, we don’t, take an all or nothing approach. I mean you know.
We we like hillary’s, saying um, we roll with it. She was talking about insulin and blood glucose levels. You have to roll with it, it’s, your life, and if you start that black and white thinking it’s, it’s not going to work.
You’re, going to be in that constant cycle of you know. Failure and moderate success, failure, moderate success, failure and you’re just going to feel horrible about yourself, and it could hurt your health too.
Well that’s. What leads me on to the next question as well, because i mean one of the things i have a facebook group and i actually have to pull away from messages that say how do i lose weight because and tammy’s going to start laughing? Probably because we both get triggered and end up doing like loads of messages outside of the group, because, inevitably someone’s going to say i quit sugar and that’s, how i lost weight and then instantly they do that, like sugar’s, inflammatory and therefore it’s addictive and – and i’m like i’ve, never gone to the lot like the larger and like pod, pure cocaine, sugar down my throat like it’s.
We it’s just so it i think it’s, so damaging to have those type of like messages out there um, and so i wanted to sort of talk to you about that. So there’s, messages out there that i hear all the time – and i mean i know the answers to this, but i’d love to hear your opinions like.
Why should we do keto for menopause? Why should we quit sugar? Why should we do intermittent fasting for menopause and why shouldn’t we yeah why shouldn’t? We is more like it right. I think that you know that the simplistic nature of all of, like those kinds of statements, suggest that if you eat like a little bit of anything, it’s, going to turn your health on and off, like a switch and it doesn’t the only time that ever happens is if somebody has a horrible allergy, then yes, a small amount of something might get you in a bad place, but, like i quit sugar like as if any amount of sugar has a health risk and it doesn’t um, you know for me and i know liz, and i we talk about this all the time, keto and all that stuff.
It ends right here. You’re, not going to live like that for the rest of your life. In all likelihood, the other thing too is that most people who fall in my experience, most people say they’re on keto.
They’re, not really. They’re, not a carb diet. That’s unsustainable and it probably is not going to last so people lose weight as a result of what they’re doing. There is no golden ticket at the end of a period of suffering that says.
Okay, you did this over-stricted thing lost weight, but now i know you’re sick of it because it’s, a terrible diet and you can go back and do whatever you were doing the weight’s not coming back. We have to focus on sustainable change.
Well, it’s, interesting that you said that, and i like that, because i hear the message well, i’ve done keto and it worked for me. So i’m going to do it again and then i’m going to do it again and i’m like well.
Did it work then? Did it really work? If you happen to do it four times five times, yeah sustainable change is is clearly the way we have to to do things and and again removing the morality around it like in the restrictive nature, because it literally is something you can’t keep Up right, so we know that so um and i also wanted to touch on the veg, the vegan sort of diet, and now i don’t believe veganism should be spoken as a way to eat, because to me it’s, a It’s, a moral choice.
It’s. It’s more than food. It’s about like a a thought process as well right about your morals and your ethics as well. But i know a lot of people will say. Well, i’m, going to go veganish veganish, because i want to have more plant-based eating in my life and i wholeheartedly support people eating more plant-based food and you ‘
Ve obviously touched on that hillary that’s like so important. But can you talk about like the missing elements of like taking on a vegan diet from menopause, because i think that people don’t always look at what the flip side could be? Like the you know, the the bad traits of it? I don’t, really say bad, but then not so great traits.
So um we’ve, had many vegans and vegetarians come to our practices and they they come to us because they don’t feel good. So they’ve given up. You know meat and they’ve given up dairy and they’ve. Given up this and that and then you know they’re eating things like french fries.
Well, french fries! Are you know potentially vegan or vegetarian, but you know that doesn’t cut it. So it you mean what we call mainstream eaters yeah. They have to have balance, but vegans have to have even more vigilance when it comes to their um eating plan, because animal foods have certain elements in them.
Certain compounds that we need such as choline right, which is what we need for our brains. It’s very concentrated in in animal foods. Um. Vitamin b12 is a huge issue um and if you’re, you’re, cutting out all the animal foods.
You need to be taking a supplement to make sure you’re. Getting you know your your vitamin b12, but i think in general um, if you’re still having your period. Iron is an issue as well, because if you’re in your 40s and you’re, you know you’re, not quite to menopause yet, which is 12 months without a period um.
You still need iron, so there’s, a good chance that you wouldn’t be getting enough iron. So you need a lot of vigilance. We have no problem with people eating. You know that a vegan lifestyle or vegetarian um, that’s, fine, just make sure you know you know what might be missing from your foods and how to supplement them.
I mean there’s. A there’s, a right way to do it in the wrong way to do it and the wrong way to do what is done is to just say i’m, not eating meat, poultry, seafood, dairies, eggs and i, but i don’t like tofu beans, hummus or anything else.
You really have to be it’s, a commitment right now. You have to say: okay, you can be a vegan there’s, plenty of ways to be healthy and be vegan, but you have to be mindful of getting the volume of food that you need from the right sources right to piece things together, but I mean, i know it’s, a separate environment, but in my cancer um my dana proper cancer institute job many times i’ve had people they get a cancer diagnosis.
They get totally freaked out. They go on. Google got ta, be a vegan; they don’t know what they’re doing by the time i get my hands on them. They’ve lost 20 pounds at a time where i don’t want them to lose right, so it’s.
Just it just requires a commitment and a degree of focus that people have to educate themselves on and that could be one or two visits with a registered dietitian. You know and just to figure out what’s going on with you.
If you’re menopausal, you’re in the perimenopause transition up to menopause or you postmenopausal. How are you going to get your calcium? How are you going to get your vitamin d? You know let’s, work it out, because period could be a massacre in the perimenopausal phase.
I mean periods can get very heavy. Did you say a massacre? Sorry. I spoke over you. Yes, yes, she did. She’s on fire. Today. I actually i used to refer to mine as like alien birds, because i i think it’s snuffly.
So, yes, that’s, how they were you so being a vegan on top of that, well, even being a mainstream eater that doesn’t eat enough iron-rich foods. You can be in the same predicament. What i was going to ask – and i’m sorry for speaking of you um so do registered dietitians know enough about menopause.
I mean i still feel as though it’s, an evo yeah. Look at tammy tammy’s. A registered dietitian and she’s like no. I mean it’s. Yeah. We’re learning on the job, aren’t we yeah yeah, oh yeah, we’re all on the job um.
You know you’re on the job we’re on the job. Anybody who deals with um women um, you know, needs to be on the job and needs to educate themselves. I mean you know. If you look at the amount of education that doctors get about menopause in medical school right, even obgyns, it’s, not a lot.
No, nobody seems to want to talk about it. It’s really kind of funny. So if they’re, not getting anything dietitians, really aren’t getting anything either so yeah. But the thing is, the thing is about dietitians, of course, is you do have the educational? You do know what the body needs, and so you come from it from such a different place to the job logs on the street right.
You know it is a beneficial thing to do. Absolutely dietitians also know um a lot about chronic disease management, which is it becomes more of an issue as people get older. But the other thing that we talk about as well is that when women do read about menopause, when they do go to look it’s, all negative yeah, it’s like oh, it’s like it’S the end of the world.
You’re gonna dry. Up, like you know, we have to just embrace different phases of life right just differently. It’s happening there’s, a lot of great stuff about getting older and not caring about certain things.
As much – and you know, yeah kids getting older and i’m like so. We need to stop making menopause talk. Something so negative because you know if you look online, you you know everything’s. Menopause causes everything and everything negative is due to menopause the jokes, the jokes about hot flashes, the jokes about this, the jokes about that i mean we just we don’t deal with that in that we don’t that’s not the way we appreciate it’s, a dismissive and narrative out there and it’s, not well balanced.
Very we’re into empowering people that you know this is something you can handle. You just need a little more awareness about this. Yes and you need it earlier in life than you think right. You don’t like once, you hit 50 51.
52 53. You wake up, and you say what what happened to my body? No women should know about this during their 40s. It’s. Coming it’s like puberty, you know it’s. Coming yeah, you know you, you educate girls about their child bearing years and what’s going to happen when they get their period? Nobody’s.
Talking about you know this other phase of life and it’s just swept under the rug. The tides are turning. I’m, hoping i feel like this. We’re starting to get traction and then these type of conversations are pivotal to us.
Okay, let’s, move on, because i we have someone some other questions and i want to try and get through as many as possible um. I want to ask quickly about supplements and two in particular um. I want to talk about um collagen, i’ve.
Had a few questions about collagen and i am a like. I want to talk about collagen from helping us from like a joint perspective, and you know what the what the body needs from there, but i also want you to like touch on it from like why women are all taking these vital protein.
Collagen supplements every day for their wrinkles and how the body actually processes collagen. Can you talk about that, and can you also just dip into the hyaluronic acid supplement as well, because they were the two supplement questions i got sure.
So it’s, important to understand what collagen is, and i like to think of it as like the glue that’s holding the body together, i mean it’s, a very prominent tissue in the body and as we Get older it breaks down faster than it gets replenished just like every other.
You know tissue right, [, Laughter, ]. You know, i think we’re generally kind of um helpful. We have a healthy skepticism about collagen supplements um, just because there’s, not a lot of data um, but we also feel like as long as something is safe um and you feel like you’re, getting relief from it and it’s, not a problem in terms of safety, then go ahead so um.
You know we, but we have to say that you know. Quality control in these supplements is an issue um we just don’t know what’s in some of them. Just because i don’t, think kind of the industry or the policing of this has caught up, and what do i mean by that? Well i mean collagen is a protein right, so it comes from animal foods right.
So it’s. They can be collagen. Supplements can be made of ground up fish. You know ground up animal parts, um yeah, i mean just you know animal products like what what was that animal exposed to i don’t know so um that’s.
Why i get i get a little wary. I don’t know how you feel. Well, i mean. I also think that we, you know there’s, some interesting research on this uh and kind of intriguing stuff, but there’s. Not we can’t find volumes of research that says absolutely you eat.
Collagen supplements it’s, going to rush to your joints, skin and joints, and it’s, going to fix everything, but it’s, also, not something that we have a lot of concern about. So, aside from what liz is you know, talking about, like people have to regulate, uh realize that supplements are largely unregulated, so you know whether you’re.
Getting what you think you’re. Getting is a whole other issue, but it is one of those things that there’s, some intriguing studies, but there is not a huge volume of research that tells us exactly what to do with that information.
So um, i noticed there was one question about: we can’t recommend specific brands. There’s, just no yeah and it’s because they’re, not regulated you just you just don’t. You just simply don’t know, but i do know that, like um in the sort of research, i did it’s like women.
Well, i hear them recommending it and it’s. Definitely something that’s in these multi-level marketing schemes. You know everybody wants to sell you them for your hair or for your skin and you simply don’t.
You can’t target where the collagen is going to go in your body. You can’t just say: okay, you’ve got wrinkles. If you take collagen, it will go directly to your wrinkles. It doesn’t work like that right now, just here in here.
Can you just get me in there right here, um yeah, true, i mean it’s like you said it’s. Not it’s, not problematic, so maybe maybe a vegan diet, though, can you go back to would vegans be um lacking in i, don’t know why they would kind of use collagen versus like another protein yeah and just enough protein.
Some source, wouldn’t, give your body what it needs to make. Collagen right, collagen is going to be made with an ecological. It’s, going to be made with amino acids that can come from any place right and that’s.
Why again, we’re, pushing the pro not pushing the protein. We’re, not drug dealers, pushing it. People need to realize that you know it’s, a lot more effective to wear sunscreen eat an overall healthful diet drink enough fluid, like all of those things can from your skin.
For yourself that’s. What we can do for our skin right, it’s, more synergistic than targeted, just take collagen and then and the the other question i don’t know if you would have a thought on that for the hyaluronic somebody asked if a Hyaluronic supplement would be good for the skin, i mean well, we’re, not skin health.
Actually, you know, we do know that h, a which we’ll, call it for sure cause it’s so hard to say um. You know um it. It helps the skin to hold on to moisture, and you know, as we get older, we’re aging from inside.
Just like our whole body is so is our skin, which our skin is like one of the biggest organs um. You know in our body, so it’s very, very important um, so we’re aging ins from inside, but we’re. Also.
We also have the external um issue of you know what’s aging, our skin. So too much sun, smoking um. You know not enough phytonutrients, possibly in our diet, that’s, protecting our skin cells. So we we don’t know much about the supplement we couldn’t.
You know really find a lot of research about it and again, if it’s not going to hurt you um it’s. Probably okay, i’m going to eat. Well, i think it falls into that category like this. Some interesting research um they put it in topical stuff because it makes your skin like tighter, hold on to fluid yeah, so that that i know that there’s.
Uh seems to be some efficacy to that. What we don’t know again, we you know a study here and there doesn’t say: oh, i found a study on this on hyaluronic acid and sometimes it’s, also incorporated in multiple like there’S a supplement that has hyaluronic acid and and this and that and the other thing – and maybe there’s, some um little change that you can see with a microscope, but is it what did they so one of the things you read? Is it cosmetically significant yeah? Oh my gosh, you decide you try to find a good product to the best.
Your ability, you decide. You’re. Okay with spending money on it. You take it for a period of time. All i hear is kaching. Okay. Okay, so i want to go to some more. I’m, going to go to some meaty questions now, like so.
First of all, one of the questions i get asked a lot and it was brought up in um in the poll i did was about phytoestrogens and actually about how there’s, a narrative out there that it, which frustrates me a little bit how, Unless you can sort of like skip the the problematic side of menopause by just eating enough phytoestrogens or getting your hormones naturally from food and and it, and i think that it’s, just not clear to people what that.
Actually, the actual message is so: can you just touch on um phytoestrogens and how the diet can impact or can’t impact, our sex hormones so um? The thing about phytoestrogens is that they are found in high concentrations in soy foods flaxseed.
I think yams have a certain amount and they are weaker forms of estrogen that the body produces. So you know we’ve, had reports that you know asian women say they have fewer hot flashes than let’s, say women in the u.
s um, and maybe that’s because they eat a lot of soy foods. But it’s, really not clear and i feel like if you could just add phytoestrogens to your diet. Um we wouldn’t, you know we we may you and i we’ve been hillary.
We probably wouldn’t be having this discussion, because we could um actually help people help. Women to you know alleviate the side effects of of just by giving them food or phytoestrogens, but if they’re so much weaker than the estrogen.
That we form um in our in our body. However, some people, some women, do report that they have relief from their menopausal symptoms by adding soy to their diet and that’s, a good thing anyway. It’s very healthy.
Yes, that’s. Fine, you know, go ahead and do it, but don’t expect. You know, uh really significant results. You know the other. The thing that people need to keep in mind is that the phytoestrogens and plants are biochemically, not the same as estradiol, which is what we make.
They’re, a hundred to a thousand times weaker, so again that that weaker aspect to it made for some women and who knows maybe years from now, will be scratching people’s cheek and say: oh, your hot flashes are going to Get better if you eat tofu, you know the inside of their cheek.
I mean, if yeah dna for their dna. The thing about following the evidence is, we have to admit what we don’t know. Yes, that can be a novel thing when you’re looking online with people seem to be so sure about so much.
What we know is that soy foods are helpful um. We know that they are safe, uh. Even for women who have had estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, there’s. A huge thing online. You can’t eat soy. It’s, going to give you cancer, it’s.
Actually it’s. Actually believed to be somewhat protective against recurrence of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. But i’m talking about soy, milk, tofu tempeh. When you take plant estrogens and you super concentrate them into something else, pills powders bars.
They may behave differently, so they may behave differently in a way that shows benefit, but also that is you know not yeah, so um. You know we have to understand that there’s, probably reasons that nature wants our estrogen levels to go on a little bit over time, yeah um, and so it’s, not always the best thing to i mean.
Certainly, there are times when people’s. Symptoms have to be relieved by things like estrogen, supplementation and so forth, but there’s. No don’t downside to eating soy foods. Just don’t. You know overdo what i would say on pills and powders and bars, and you know it’s a whole other category of, and i also.
I also think that there’s. A little part of the whole thing that the people that are pushing these supplements, don’t. Think about. Like the we know. The asian population have got a different genetic makeup towards it.
It’s, a huge, a huge part of the topic so that that’s great and also like, if you like them, eat them because they’re nutritious. They’re good for you and they’re, usually quite tasty, but there’s. Also the placebo effects as well.
Right, like i mean it, could go on okay, so you ready for the fat question. We’re, going to finish on this one. Then we’re, going to open it up. Why do we get fat in menopause? And what can we do about it? Well, it’s complicated, but simple.
You know it’s, you know they’re, they’re, it’s, progressive it’s. Not like you hit menopause and you get fat. You know starting the perimenopause phase, um our estrogen levels decline, which tends to relocate some fat to our belly, which we hate that’s like one of those things.
Women also gain weight overall during their forties like a pound and a half and a half a year, yeah that’s a lot, but you know again there’s, so much going on energy in there. Now you have lots of lean body mass unless somebody’s acting actively trying to hold on to their muscles, which you have to get serious about now.
If you’ve, never gotten serious about it before you may be in a different place in your life, where you’re under pre on, you know, pre-pandemic traveling for work. You know eating out more going out with your friends caring for your aging parents, uh dealing with your kids, who aren’t launching out of the house the way you know like there’s, so many things going on in those years That you just say it’s menopause and in fact, when i was doing the research for the weight management chapter, that’s.
What all the research was saying? Is it’s very hard to figure out how much is light stage changes versus just declining estrogen levels? So we know declining estrogen levels like to relocate fat to your abdomen um, and that is not avoidable.
For the vast majority of people, the degree to which you accumulate, it is certainly something you can mediate, but again there’s. Gon na be some acceptance that bodies change over time as well. I know the research that, like i i found as well when they like done this with lots of women.
They see our activity level can decline because our symptoms are so bad. Our quality of life is um, is altered and we literally don’t. Have the energy to do as much as we did, and we tend to also maybe overeat like compensate as well and and it’s, a really hard conversation to have, while still being respectful and strong and still trying to sort of like empathize.
With the fact that there’s, so much change happening, our stresses or everything like fall to the top, and i realize it’s complicated. So so how do we? What do we do? What’s? The first thing we need to do about that stress thing, because that was a real, interesting finding.
Yes, some research suggests that um, peri and post-menopausal women may be more prone to stress eating than women who are not menopausal, so that’s. Probably a brain body kind of something like that um, which, which would obviously advocate for trying to find some ways to manage stress in ways that aren’t related to food like exercise, and you know meditation yeah good point good point yeah when you, When you ask your, what can you do with all of this going on? We call it well, we do call it the storm.
You know sometimes um shitshow, the perfect storm of all things kind of coming together. What do you do? Um? You start where you can and you do what you can so you know we’re saying you know in the book we say: oh, you should be getting 150 minutes of exercise um every week.
Well, that is the recommendation, but that doesn’t mean it applies to you, because you can’t. Do that much or you can’t do 30 minutes in a row. Well, what can you do? You know you have to be able to work with the recommendations that are out there um and when we deal with people we you know are considering everything about their lifestyle and you know: where can you make small changes that maybe you know we’Ll sustain you for a little while and then, when you have more time and energy, you make some more small changes.
We’re, always in a hurry right. Yeah we’re, always in a hurry to get that scale down or like there’s, something out there that we just can’t wait. We know that that’s, not the way to approach this right and your your plan.
The idea is, though, that this is what you’re, always going to do now. It’s, not just like this isn’t the fix for you. This is how you need to eat as you as you get older right. It’s very fluid. You know your situation is fluid during your 40s.
During your 50s, this is a time of a lot of change and you know learning how to roll with it is going to be good. I do, i do think it’s, a point worth making, though that self-care does take some attention to time.
So if we all, you know, made a pie chart out of our life of all the important things we clearly have a space for family and friends, job hobby. You know we really need to. I call it healthy selfishness.
You know there’s. Only 24 hours in a day, no matter how much you want there to be 25 or 26 is 24., so you know we have to budget in time for self-care, just like anything else that’s important. I i saw a webinar recently on exercise and cancer survivorship, and this this uh researcher said physicians should dose prescribed physical activity like they do.
Medication like we need to. You know, look at our calendar and say you know to liz’s point. Sometimes you have to redefine your definition of exercise is something that you only do if you have 30 minutes, whereas i read, i watched a ted talk recently.
That said just set one better than nothing goal a day and be okay with being bad at it. Sometimes. So, like just do a little stuff, you know ten percent of something is better than zero percent of nothing right, but you know try to like wash.
Your brain of exercise is only worth doing if i have an hour, because you might not have an hour that’s, the approach to exercise too, you know yeah and then you don’t.
