My Five Pillars of Hormonal Recovery

Self Care

This pillar comes first because caring for yourself must be the top priority. None of the other pillars are possible without this pillar firmly in position. Women typically put everyone else first, often at their own expense. I learnt this the hard way when I was 33 and raising a young family. I exhausted my inner resources by aiming for perfectionism in my roles as mother, wife and employee. This led to a hormonal train wreck - no periods, low thyroid, weight gain, depression, no energy - that took me the next couple of years to recover from. The silver lining to this was that it sparked my passion for nutrition as medicine, gut health and female hormones.

Successful self care means putting yourself first, like when the air steward tells you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others with theirs. If your health is in the gutter you're no good to anyone else anyway so being selfish is actually the biggest act of love you can give to anyone who relies on you. You can only be your best in all areas of your life if you pay attention to what your body needs.

And paying attention is how it begins. Paying attention to you and the signs and signals your body is trying to give you. This will vary for each woman, as will the methods of self care that work for her. As well as listening carefully to your body, the commitment to self care needs to be cultivated. This takes practice. It typically involves learning to say 'no' more often, firming up your boundaries, and asking for help more often - all very difficult for some women, especially the people-pleasers out there! You may need to carve out time for yourself, spend some money on yourself or simply do what your body needs you to do that day, rather than 'pushing through'.

Real Food

Eating real food is essential for great health. By real food I just mean the old-fashioned kind - home made from whole ingredients, with love. This excludes almost all modern food products which are highly processed to make them shelf-stable, cheap to produce and hyper-tasty. My Nutritional Therapy background supports my real food recommendations.

As well as eating in a way that aligns with your menstrual cycle, I focus on three main things within the realm of real food - protein, healthy fats and fibre.

Protein

Eating enough protein is crucial for good health. Typically women don't eat enough protein, especially as they get older (when we need a higher dose to trigger the same effects as before).

Protein helps you feel full for longer and can crowd out less helpful foods, helping you to maintain a healthy weight and body composition.

Animal protein is superior to plant protein because it's more easily absorbed by the body and includes all the essential amino acids (essential meaning we can only get them from food). Many people have compromised digestion so eating animal protein is the most reliable way to absorb it. Animal protein also contains countless other very important vitamins and minerals.

Healthy Fats

Eating the right fats is essential for good health. My go-to list is relatively small because most fats found in modern food are harmful because of the harsh industrial processes used to extract the delicate unsaturated oil from the seeds. Damaged oils create damaged human cells. Stick to the good stuff which is butter, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and the fats naturally found in animal foods and fruits like avocado.

Fibre

Fibre is plant carbohydrate that your body can't digest directly. It mainly functions to attract water into your gut (allowing healthy bowel movements) and feed your gut flora. Keeping your gut flora well fed and balanced allows them to serve you well by creating micro-nutrients for your gut to absorb. Our gut bugs should be seen as our best friends who need nurturing! Most people don't eat enough fibre. Good sources are non-starchy vegetables and low-sugar (non-tropical) fruit. I recommend eating the rainbow, but also what's in season. This honours the cycles of nature - more on that in the Primal Reconnection pillar below.

Gut Healing

Gut health is all the rage at the moment. And for good reason - it's essential to good overall health, and science has learnt a lot about it in the last decade.

Real food can facilitate healing the gut - the pillars are all connected! Most people with health issues have gut issues, even if they never experience digestive symptoms. Good gut health means having a gut lining that's fully intact and functional, keeping undigested food within the digestive tract but allowing digested nutrients through into the blood so they can be circulated round the body and used. It also means having high microbial diversity and a helpful balance of gut flora. Modern life can compromise gut integrity - think of antibiotics, sugar, food additives, agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals and stress.

Our gut does many jobs, not just digesting food. Our immune system resides in the gut and most of our serotonin (the happy chemical) is produced there. It is a conduit for detoxification and escorts waste products from the body. Our gut has a direct connection to the brain so a poorly functioning gut can lead to a poorly functioning brain. Gut health can also be reflected in your skin. Food intolerances or allergies often show up as skin issues. Having good gut health is also central to having balanced hormones at any age.

Restorative Sleep

We all feel best after a good night's sleep. Good quality sleep matters for every cell in the body. The brain's waste is cleared out during sleep. Our memories are sorted and catalogued. Healing of wounds and damaged tissues happens as we sleep - the list goes on!

Our circadian hormones need to be aligned for our sleep to be at its best - cortisol should be highest in the morning to keep us alert and melatonin should be highest in the evening/night to make us sleepy. Unfortunately, modern life can really interfere with our sleep quality. Not enough outside daylight during the day, too much screen time and artificial light, being sedentary, eating late and stress can all negatively influence the release of these hormones and lead to circadian dysregulation, thus impacting sleep. This then has a knock-on effect on other hormones like leptin and insulin.

My Restorative Sleep pillar is about creating an environment and a behavioural routine that promotes deep, rejuvenating rest. For example, I recommend keeping your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet, with no electronic devices - think cave! Getting time outdoors, with natural daylight in your eyes (no sunglasses!), especially first thing in the morning can help you sleep well. Regular movement like walking (see below) can also be very beneficial. Small, but stacked changes are the best intervention for poor sleep because they are cumulative, plus my recommendations each have other benefits as well - a win-win!

Primal Reconnection

Modern life has distanced us from the natural rhythms our bodies are perfectly aligned to. Our ancestors would have been outside most of the day, with their bare feet on the ground, walking around hunting and gathering seasonal food. They would've carried heavy things and had a small tribe around them. They would've risen at dawn and slept during darkness. Our modern world is a far cry from this, with our indoor, sedentary, food-abundant lives. Our biology is still what it was 100,000 years ago though - aligned to an environment we no longer live in. Our cells still yearn for all the natural signals they evolved with, therefore I believe we must simulate these conditions as best we can in order to give ourselves the best chance of great health.

As mentioned in the Restorative Sleep pillar, not enough daylight and too much artificial light disturb our circadian rhythm. Most of us feel so much better in the summer because we're outside much more, often with bare feet. It's harder to connect with nature in the winter, especially in the UK, but it is doable.

Walking is a big part of Primal Reconnection. We evolved to walk, in nature. Walking pumps our lymphatic system, uses up stored glucose, and calms our brain (by lowering the 'stress hormone' cortisol). Possible bonuses to walking are time outside in daylight, socialising (if you walk with a friend) and weight-bearing exercise (if you wear a weighted vest). And the best thing - it's free! No gym membership required!

Eating seasonally ensures your body is receiving the correct information about where you live and the current light levels. Food is information for your body. For example, eating a banana in winter in the UK tells your body you live in the tropics and light levels are high, but this is not what your body is actually experiencing in winter in the UK. Therefore this is confusing information for your body.