Latest / THE PERIOD WHISPERER PODCAST - Perimenopause, Menopause, Cortisol, Weight Loss, Hormone Balancing, Insomnia, Hot Flashes, Night Sweats, Libido, Your Guide To Thriving In MidLife / Eps 459: 3 Free Ways to Support Bloating in Perimenopause, From a Functional Nutrition Practitioner

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Eps 459: 3 Free Ways to Support Bloating in Perimenopause, From a Functional Nutrition Practitioner · THE PERIOD WHISPERER PODCAST - Perimenopause, Menopause, Cortisol, Weight Loss, Hormone Balancing, Insomnia, Hot Flashes, Night Sweats, Libido, Your Guide To Thriving In MidLife

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the signals are incredibly obvious, right?
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your belly feels relatively comfortable when you wake up, but by 7pm you kind of look six months pregnant.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is called growing bloat.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't someone who had a horrific digestive symptoms, but when I started looking deeper at my own gut health, I realized I had what I now jokingly call a desert gut.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I look at the bacteria in a gut, there are very key markers that show us why it would be hard to lose weight.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's gut health debt.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might be doing more for your health but getting less in return.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to give you three steps.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I deliberately don't want step one to be go spend $500 on a test.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's up, Sister?
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the period whisperer podcast.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The show, helping pairing menopause and menopause women destress your body and decode what it's saying to you so you can hone your own health, energy and weight loss again.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're new, I'm so happy you're here.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Greya, I'm your host, a recovery people pleaser and hustlatic, turn functional and holistic hormone specialist.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's lean in and learn what your body is saying to you.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: their sister.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you are eating more protein, taking your supplements, trying to build muscle, doing all of the things you have been told to do in Perry Menopause, some of them we talk about that on this podcast.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if your body can't actually use what you're giving it?
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what we're going to talk about today.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the period with spur podcast.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Greed Gad, your period with spur, you know, women in Perry, menopause and menopause understand what the heck is actually happening in their bodies so that they can stop trying harder and start giving their bodies what they actually need.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've been listening lately, you know I've been talking a lot about this concept of health debt.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Health debt happens when the energy and resources available to your body consistently don't meet the demands being placed on it.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course we know the shifting of our hormones puts a big demand on our body.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over the next several weeks, we're going to take that concept a little deeper, because health debt doesn't just show up as one thing.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can show up in your gut.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can show up in your nervous system, in your immune system, your detoxification pathways, your energy production, and of course, our hormones.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the really important part.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: These debts, all of these little debts that can happen from things not functioning properly in the body, they don't live in separate bank accounts, right?
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got impacts to your hormones, your nervous system, impacts to your digestion, your liver impacts to your hormones, your immune system, impacts to energy, all of it is connected in one orchestra, not individual instruments.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of us have won area where the debt starts screaming a little louder, and today we're going to talk to you if this is you, although if you don't feel like you're having any got issues, I still want you to listen to this episode because I was one of those people that wasn't having presentable gut issues, but that debt showed up in other areas of my body.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're starting with the gut today.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before we dive in, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast because you're going to want this entire series.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I have two things for you at the end of today's episode.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, I'm going to tell you how you can figure out where your biggest area of health debt might be.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And second, I have a brand new way for you to actually leave me a voice message and tell me what's going on in your body.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I want to use your questions to help shape the upcoming episodes.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So stay with me.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This episode right now that we're diving into actually came from one of you.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I recently received a message from a listener who essentially said, I'm increasing my protein Brea because I know I need more protein, right?
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the whole world knows that because it's all over social media.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: In some ways I feel better, but I'm now having all of these digestive issues and immediately I thought,
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is such a beautiful example of gut health debt.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because protein isn't necessarily the problem, right?
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body's ability to handle the protein maybe the problem.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're constantly telling women in midlife.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eat more protein.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I agree.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need protein to help preserve and build lean muscle.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: we need amino acids, we need adequate nutrition to support metabolism and healthy aging.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if you go from eating 60 grams of protein a day to 100 or 120 grams?
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly you are bloated, you are gassy, you are burping, you are uncomfortable or feeling like your food is just,
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: sitting in there.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want you to immediately decide protein doesn't work for me.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to start asking a better question, right?
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is my body having trouble processing this meal specifically?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's going on?
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because eating the protein is step one, but breaking down the protein absorbing and actually using those nutrients is the rest of the story.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's bring this back to our definition of health debt.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Health debt is when the energy and resources available to the body are no longer keeping up with the demands being placed on the body.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now apply that to your digestive system.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: your gut has an enormous job.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to break down the food you eat, help absorb those nutrients, interact with your immune system, maintain the intestinal barrier.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to support communication with your nervous system.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: How is this enormous ecosystem of microorganisms and help move waste out of your body?
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, our body is a miracle when you really think about it.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's a big job.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want that job.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Too stupid for me.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet we're asking it to do that job while we're stressed eating at our desks, sleeping poorly, taking medications or supplements, changing hormones, traveling, drinking alcohol, eating quickly, increasing our protein, and sometimes throwing 17 different wellness products at it, because Instagram told us too.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no shame there.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have definitely
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: simply because of marketing.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's try to bring this down to what the body needs.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I want for you.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to start to know, do I need this?
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does my body need this and not be like, oh, I'll just spend this $45 and see if this is the thing.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I have done that way too many times.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why for a long time I had a supplement graveyard in my house and I'm sure you do too.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I had three.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, your gut may essentially say, I don't have the resources to keep up with this workload, kind of like a midlife woman, we're like, I'm already doing all the things I've been doing all the things forever, but doing all my things, I'm doing all your things, all the kids things and then we get kind of frustrated, this is why we get cranky, it's not because of our hormones, I think we're just over it, that's really what it is.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's gut health debt, right, and there's something I want to make really clear.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't necessarily mean that you did something wrong.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: We live in a world where digestive system is constantly interacting with our food environment, with our medications, our infections, stress,
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alcohol, changing hormones countless other exposures, then perimenopause gets added to the equation, right?
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Estrogen and progesterone don't exist in isolation from your gut.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So changes in sex hormones can influence gastrointestinal function and the gut microbiome.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: While your gut is also involved in the metabolism and elimination of those hormones.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So suddenly an ecosystem that may have been keeping up reasonably well for decades,
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: has another changing variable.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's when we sometimes start to notice the debt, however, what I will say is that I often when I pop on free calls with those of you who want to consider doing functional lab work and we just talk through some things often asking like even if you don't have a period anymore, how were your periods?
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hear a lot of very heavy.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hear a lot of fibroids.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hear a lot of cysts, things like that.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But these very heavy periods really bad PMS to me is a very key indicator that we have a slow drain, liver gut, liver gut.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They act as a key part of the drainage system of our body to get things out.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So even if you haven't been presenting with GI issues, if even if you don't have a period anymore, if you used to have really heavy periods, we've got to consider what's happening in the liver and your detox pathways, what's happening in your gut.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the signals are incredibly obvious, right?
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of us can recognize like, I'm bloated, maybe you're gassy, maybe you're burping, you're having reflux or heartburn, your stomach kind of hurts after you eat, your constipated, or you're having loose stools, your belly feels relatively comfortable when you wake up.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But by 7 p.m., you kind of look six months pregnant.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is called growing bloat.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are your body's messages.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And constipation definitely is a big one.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not having regular comfortable, complete bowel movements, I really want you paying attention.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if coffee is the only reason you poop, meaning you have to have a coffee, and then you can actually poop.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't consider that your digestive system is giving us a standing ovation here, right?
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's information.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should be able to poop unassisted.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe just with some hydration.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Usually when I wake up in the morning, I make my greens.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I go for a walk, and by the time I come back, I got to go.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So within an hour and a half, waking, we should be able to have a nice full of an actuation.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, we are going there.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I get on calls with a lot of you, and you're like, sorry, TMI.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, no TMI.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about your periods, your libido, your poop.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about all of it.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no TMI here.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, this is information, right?
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's where this gets really interesting, though.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Got Health debt doesn't always look like digestive symptoms.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I was talking about earlier.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was me.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't someone who had her rithic digestive symptoms, but when I started looking deeper at my own gut health, I realized I had what I now jokingly call a desert gut.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think of the gut like a garden and right in the garden, we need to have like we don't want too many weeds, you know, we need to have the right nutrients happening the right bugs going on in there do in their job we have too many weeds that's a problem of too many bugs that's a problem.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we have nothing and it is like trying to grow flowers in sand you have a desert gut.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was not necessarily this dramatic invasion of cold and cold bad guys.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was just not enough diversity and resilience in the ecosystem.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I see versions of this all the time incredibly health conscious women.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, you, you who are eating well, who are watching what you eat, who are working out every single day, you who are have exercised forever, right?
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You eat well, you take supplements, you're doing the things, and yet something isn't working.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're noticing that you're getting sick more often or maybe you catch a cold and things take forever to recover.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe your skin doesn't have the same brightness or your brain feels a little bit foggy or maybe your periods have become heavier.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or just your energy wasn't what it used to be.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your weight is getting harder to manage.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know that there's actual indications like when I look at the bacteria in a gut,
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are very key markers that show us why it would be hard to lose weight.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we need to correct those in balances.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to correct those.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That can come just from the gut, although again, nothing works in isolation.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this is exactly why I want you thinking about health debt because you might be doing more for your health but getting less in return.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the symptom is happening in three intersections, away from the actual traffic jam, right?
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's happening.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I really want you as a midlife woman listening to.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you are thinking, Priya,
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care about my microbiome.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to lose 10 pounds.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to sleep through the night and build some freaking muscle totally fair.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate that your gut is a big part of that conversation, right?
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's go back to the protein.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're spending all this money on high-quality food and supplementation, but you're struggling to properly digest and absorb what you're consuming, you may not be getting the full benefit from those inputs, those deposits into the body, right?
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our nutrition is one of the biggest ways we get salary energy into the body, just like sleep and pleasure.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But nutrition is some of the easiest one I think we can
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: sleep can get a bit dodgy and it's really hard to control sleep.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to just hold space for sleep and work on it.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nutrition we have full control over and of course if you're really stressed like if you're going through a tough time in life it can be hard to have a good time and have pleasure and reduce that stress.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nutrition is always going to be the quickest win.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're not getting the nutrients from all that effort that you're putting into your nutrition
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then we want to be looking deeper because nobody wants to waste time.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you, I think I am one of the laziest non-lazzy people.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm always looking at how do I do things together?
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a bit of an efficiency genty.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not getting the benefits especially from your protein, but from all of your nutrients in the body, that really matters when we're trying to put on muscle which matters when we're trying to burn fat, right?
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It matters for energy production.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It matters for thyroid function, right?
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we're not breaking things down properly and getting those minerals, then you can take all the supplements you want, but it's not getting in through the gut into the body.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need it for immune function, for healthy skin care and nails, right?
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need it for recovery.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, it matters for hormones.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need the raw materials to run the machine.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So simply putting them in your mouth, unfortunately, doesn't guarantee that they're getting
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I actually saw clues to this in my own testing, right?
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: One marker I've looked at and this gets run on a Dutch any time I run a Dutch for a client, which is a dried urine test of comprehensive hormones is urinary indicate, which can give us information about the bacterial metabolism.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: of trip to fan in the intestine and can be another clue that digestion or the gut environment deserves a closer look.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a diagnosis by itself, but this is what functional testing can sometimes help us to follow the breadcrumbs.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, my indican was quite elevated in
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I was not breaking down and absorbed my protein properly.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was off-gassing, creating this into kin.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we can measure that in your urine.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So right away, that was I was having this growing bloat kind of happen where I was flying in the morning and not to that after breakfast, but by dinner time I was like, why am I going to see like every single night?
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: What did I eat and like looking through my food?
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it was because my gut wasn't functioning properly.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your intestinal barrier is incredibly important as well, right?
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: When that barrier and the gut ecosystem aren't functioning optimally, the effects aren't necessarily confined to your belly.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one reason I pay attention when a client tells me, I'm getting sick all of the time, or I used to bounce back from things and now everything knocks me out.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't automatically mean the gut is the cause, but it absolutely makes me curious about what is happening there, because remember,
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Health debt rarely exists alone.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gut debt can overlap with immune debt.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Immune debt can overlap with nervous system debt.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: nervous system debt can affect digestion, hormones, and around and around we go right each of the systems of our body, our hormones, our immune system, our digestion, our detoxification, touching around my body as they start, this is our energy production, our nervous system.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are all working together.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So often when one goes off, now another one goes off and all of a sudden we're playing a different tune than we should be.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not as easy to just correct one and assume everything else is corrected.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: We often need to look at all of the systems and understand where is the loss of function, but even working a little bit on digestion alone can improve things for you.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We sometimes talk about the collection of gut microbes involved in estrogen metabolism as the ester bloom.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So while we're dealing with dyspiosis with constipation or poor elimination, I'm thinking about how effectively the body is processing and eliminating hormone metabolites too.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this doesn't mean that every heavy period or every perimenopause symptom?
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well,
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm at that Ludial phase in my cycle right now where things are not coming as clearly as I'd like.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am also 44 almost 45 and about like I am in it with you sister.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: no one is immune.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: No matter how hard we work on it.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that every heavy period in very menopause symptoms, estrogen dominance, right?
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It means that you're gut and your hormone environment are communicating.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If your period suddenly become heavier, if you're more bloated, if your breast or tender or your cycles are changing in your digestion
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are clues I want you to look at together rather than treating them as five unrelated problems and this matters whether or not you ever decide to use hormone replacement therapy.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: HRT doesn't replace the need for a functioning gut.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, a hill I will not die on is that we should always be looking at our estrogen metabolism or liver and gut before we go on hormone replacement therapy.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You still want the body to digest, to absorb, to metabolize and to eliminate, well, this is a key part of clear and out the junk of the body.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to give you three steps and a deliberately don't want step one to be go spend $500 on a test.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Testing is incredibly valuable.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I use GI map testing and stool and microbiome testing, all of the time in my practice with my clients, and they're very helpful and something I run on myself every single year.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I want you to start something you can do today for free.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So step one, I've got a few steps for you.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is the time if you're making notes, if you can pull over, if you're listening to your car, make a few quick notes so that you know you don't have to come back, although I love if you come back and listen to the episode for the next few days, I want you to become a detective in your own body, not obsessive, not tracking 47 things in an app, just want you to become curious when you wake up in the morning.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: How does your belly feel?
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: After breakfast, how does your belly feel?
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: After lunch, how do I feel?
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: At bedtime, how do you feel compared to how you felt this morning?
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course pay attention to your poop.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you going regularly?
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it comfortable?
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel completely evacuated?
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was it difficult to get it out?
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did it burn?
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did it fly out of you?
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we are friends and this is what we're talking about.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you relying on coffee to actually get it out of the body, right?
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you need to have that coffee in order to poop?
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happens when you eat a higher protein meal?
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do certain foods make you feel more bloated?
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you burping after your meals?
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like food sits in your stomach?
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you eat, and then maybe like bag out on the couch, all of a sudden you kind of feel that like yucky pressure burning up in your, like the back of your throat, that's reflux and heartburn.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you just aren't functioning that well in your gut, start listening, right?
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body is constantly telling you and giving you data through these messages, through the whispers, that is why we call this the period whispers.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We just tend to be too freaking busy to read it, to read the data, to hear the data, to listen to the data, and also we're like, I don't have time to do anything about the data.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: time to make time.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to happen because health debt is no different than credit card debt.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is compounding whether you are looking at it or not.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the sooner we deal with it, the sooner we like, I and the mirror together, the faster we're going to get fixing this issue and getting you back to building health wealth, which is what we want.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to build health wealth.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is where your muscle is.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is where your lean body lives.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is where your energy lives, your libido, your sleep.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is where your dreams live as in health.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we wanna make those dreams come true.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Step two, look at what you're asking your gut to handle.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where I want you to start looking at your lifestyle.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: How fast are you eating?
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you even chewing your food?
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many times are you chewing your food?
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We kind of want to chew it.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when my mom was saying, there's no teeth in your stomach.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to chew it down.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you're putting more work on your gut to do a job that your teeth should have done.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you eating while you're answering emails?
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am guilty of this sometimes.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you eating standing in the kitchen counter?
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you stressed out of your mind while you are eating?
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: How much alcohol are you drinking?
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: How quickly did you increase your protein?
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: How much raw food are you eating?
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: How much water are you drinking?
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: How much fiber are you getting?
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: How are you sleeping?
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: and locate your supplements.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please don't assume that because something says gut health on the bottle, you need it.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Probiotics are a great example of this.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Probiotics can be really useful, but more bacteria is not automatically better for every gut or every situation.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The right support really depends on what's actually happening in your individual gut.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one reason I'm not a fan of playing supplement roulette.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to understand what your body needs rather than just continually adding things to it.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you come back to that idea of the desert being a gut of the gut being a desert or a soil or a garden if you have a very abundant gut and now there's like weeds everywhere and you're just throwing more stuff in that got it's actually going to cause more problems.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas of course if we have a desert gut then digestion and probiotics can be really really helpful and of course if you have an overgrown gut.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We might not want to be adding more boats to the party, but we still may need support with digestion that might be the reason you are not able to wipe out too many of the bad guys so step three we're going to make digestion easier for you right before we get fancy let's reduce the workload so first I want you to do this you're not going to want to do it a lot of people want to throw tomatoes at me for this.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: slow down when you eat.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have to remind myself to do this.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not sexy.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know that, but digestion isn't just about what's on your plate.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is involved very much.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So before your meal, take a few slow breaths.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Give yourself 30 seconds.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: One minute.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't need a meditation cushion and to that in singing goals.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't need that.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just stop shoveling
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let your body know we're safe.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're eating.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's time to digest.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's shift into digestion.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, I want you to chew your food.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I was saying earlier, we don't have teeth in our stomach.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: As our grandmothers and mothers told us, help the guts out.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, chew more slowly.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Third, if you are struggling with bloating, experiment with more cooked foods, do you where then enormous raw food salads for a period of time?
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cooking starts some of that breakdown process for you, right?
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like hiring a cleaning person to come help and clean your house.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We still got a tidy up a little before they come, but we need to just
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fourth is to go for like a 10 minute walk after your meal.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you, I notice a huge difference.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I do not walk after dinner, then when I do.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sleep better.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel better.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: My day gestion is better.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Movement can support digestion and has the bonus of helping with post-neal blood sugar regulation.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and fifth, for some people digestive support such as bidders or digestive enzymes may be really useful here.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some people also experiment with a small amount of deluded apple cider vinegar in water before their meals, although that's not appropriate for everyone, particularly if it worsens reflux or irritates your stomach.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want you throwing high-duclark acid enzymes, probiotics, and seven other gut products into your body all at once, right?
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, pick up some digested enzymes or some digested bitters.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just try one thing, pay attention, see how your body responds and we're not offending machines, so give it a few days, sister.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's the theme here.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: See how your body responds, pay attention.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now,
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you do this.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You slow down, you're chewing, you're walking, you're sleeping, you've cleaned up the obvious lifestyle contributors and you're still bloated, you're still constipated, you're still uncomfortable, you're still struggling to tolerate foods or maybe you don't have huge GI symptoms, but you've got this collection of downstream symptoms and something just is an adding up.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I love about testing.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where something like a GI map can give us a much deeper look at what's happening inside that ecosystem and help us make targeted decisions instead of guessing.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I particularly love retesting because after we cleaned up lifestyle and done targeted support, I want to know, did we actually change the terrain?
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the difference between randomly doing healthy things and strategically getting out of health debt.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is where I want to leave you today because I was a big talk about debt and gut and all of these things.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: If your gut is struggling, we're not going to pretend the rest of your body is an involved.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system affects digestion, hormones affect the gut, gut interacts with the immune system.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I told you all of this and you know it.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of those things affect how well you're able to build muscle, to recover, to maintain metabolic health, and move through parry menopause.
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why this mini series matters.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to look at each of these systems individually so that you can recognize the signals.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I slate the signals of health debt, but we're always going to zoom back out because our body is one big connected financial statement.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And our goal isn't just to pay off one credit card.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: our goal is to move you from health dead into health well.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what we want.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the dreams live.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I want you to do this week, Sister.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: For the next three days, become curious about your digestion, morning belly, evening belly, how you feel in after meals, bowel movements, gas, bloating, reflux these things, your energy after you eat.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't judge it.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just collect the data.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you can't change something you're not
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I want you to take my health debt quiz.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to help you identify where your body may be carrying the greatest debt right now and where you might want to be starting to make deposits.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll find the link down below in the show notes.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I also created something new because I want this podcast to become even more of a conversation between you and me.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's now a speak pipe link in the show notes where you can actually leave me a voice message.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me what's happening.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me what's confusing you.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me what you're doing that should be working but isn't.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might say, Maria, I'm eating a 100 grams of protein and I'm bloated out of my mind.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is basically the message I already got or you might say I'm lifting waste three times a week and I'm getting weaker or I'm exhausted but can't sleep or I hormones are supposedly normal but I feel anything but normal.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those questions may become the jumping off point for upcoming episodes in this health debt series because sometimes your body isn't asking you to try harder.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's showing you where the debt is.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not your fault you don't know this because nobody taught us this, but remember, women's health is like Latin.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's talking about it.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's telling us it's a dead language.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's teaching it while I'm trying.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's the root of all health.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like Latin's the root of all language.
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Women's health is the root of all health.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: No women, no people.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all know this.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: your body is showing you where the health that is.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once we can see the debt, we can finally start making the right deposits.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can pay it off.
• 28:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, if today's episode helps you connect some dots, send it to one woman in your life who is doing everything right and still wondering why her body isn't responding.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you're subscribed because next we're going to keep moving through the different areas of health debt and show you how they're connected.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take the quiz, leave me a message, be more in your life and not just less on a scale, and I'll catch you next week on the period with spur podcast.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're 35 plus and ready to stop guessing, start understanding your hormones and feel your absolute best, hit subscribe.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what we do here.