The Female Factor: Making women’s health count – and what it means for you (The Food Medic)

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The more I shared female-focused research (albeit limited) and content online, the more women responded asking to be listened to. It made me want to learn more, to share more, to empower more. I knew there was an unmet need here and wanted to find some answers. So people might have heard about, you know, REM sleep and non REM sleep, and we'll go through cycles of this threat. The night and old stages of sleep are important, whether it's light sleep or deep sleep or REM sleep, but they all offer different. Benefits to us and when we go into that luteal phase, there's some evidence to say there's less REM sleep, which is that dream sleep.

We found that it increased engagement because it doesn’t flag your content as being inappropriate to certain audiences,” Wallace outlined. Hazel Wallace: Yes. And whenever I talk about this, you know, as we mentioned, women experience this. Menstruation on a very huge spectrum, so some people find it very hard to even get outta bed, and the thoughts of exercising is the last thing they wanna do. First of all, if you are bedbound, that is not a normal symptom and you should be speaking to your GP or your doctor about that. Hazel Wallace: Absolutely. It's interesting because yoga seems to be the one practice that has been really well researched when it comes to p m s and menstrual symptoms. Jonathan Wolf: I was gonna say, nevermind, they're the only ones who get pregnant, which having been through this period, time definitely messes with your sleep. So, Hazel Wallace: Yeah, it can manifest in various ways, which is why there's certain criteria that doctors will use to diagnose it compared to other kind of symptoms like or other conditions like depression or anxiety. But typically it will be kind of low mood, tearfulness, irritability. Some women experience anger, so it can be a variation in different emotions and different moods, but it's very much tied to that, and there isn't enough research around why this happens.Jonathan Wolf: And can you explain a bit more what that is? I think for a lot of listeners, they've never even heard of it. Yeah. What, what's going on? And for people who are worrying about this, maybe either they, they think they might be experiencing it, or maybe they've even had it diagnosed, you know, what can they do? Yeah. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, so they're more they, they feel it more, and it's the hormone sensitivity hypothesis. I think there's also some genetic variation there as well where we see it run in families. So if your sister, your mother had it, then you're more likely to experience it as well. And also there's lifestyle components. Interesting you said exercise actually is not only good full stop, so exercising regularly three times a week and it's not crazy exercise. It's like enough that you can't sing, but actually you could still talk, can really reduce your symptoms throughout the cycle and that you don't need to stop during your period. And whether that's something that we've all thought about from a societal point of view, you know, a lot of us will relate periods PMS to chocolate. There's also a kind of a breakdown in protein, a higher breakdown in protein during that phase, and also a higher breakdown of fat. So I'm a nutritionist and a lot of the work that I do will be how to optimize your nutrition in that phase. They can be very positive tha. during the time when you're having your period, the enormous number of women are having symptoms and I think a rather extraordinary sort, I think you said 20 to 40% are people are having really severe symptoms such that it's really impacting their quality of life. That all of this is incredibly understudied.

Are certain vitamin and mineral requirements particularly important at certain points of women's lives? And the reason I think that it's so poorly diagnosed is there's not a huge amount of information out there available. I don't think medical professionals are fully aware of the symptom spectrum and what it might look like. And like I said, I think we normalize a lot of these symptoms as a society that is just part and parcel of being a woman. Imagine a world where we are teaching young girls and women from puberty - this is what to expect, this is normal, this is not normal, this is when to ask for help. We would feel a lot more empowered,” Wallace stated.And I think it was Matthew Walker who said that this is like emotional first aid. So it's really important for how we feel in our emotional wellbeing. And if we get less of it, So if we've had a bad night's sleep, we tend to feel a bit more groggy, a bit more irritable, maybe a bit more emotional the next day, and we see that drop in that REM sleep in that lal phase. It's how we can essentially cycle sync. But, Keeping the individual and personalized to us, and I'm a huge fan of that instead of, we can use the research as a guide, but not the rule. The most important research that you can get is from yourself. Health issues and also bone health issues. And this is because estrogen affects how our arteries dilate and expand. And so we get a sharp increase in blood pressure, which increases the risk of things like heart disease Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we know, obviously how powerful the link is between our gut and our brain and our gut and our immune system and all these other systems. So it makes sense that there's a link between our menstrual health and our gut. And you know, even when it comes to estrogen, we know that there's an. It's generally a good time, and some people refer to it as the spring of the menstrual cycle. Then after ovulation, we come into the luteal phase and progesterone, which was low, starts to come up now. And I think there's a misconception about progesterone being a bad hormone. There's nothing wrong with it, but it seems to offset some of the good things of estrogen.

So if there are any researchers listening to this podcast, please do a trial on that because I think it would be absolutely fantastic to help support women during that phase and, and kind of find out how we can offset some of those gut symptoms. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, hormones play a role, but they're not the only thing. Women tend to ruminate a bit more at night, so they'll stay awake thinking about things they have to do. You’re born with a reproductive system. Whether or not you’re having sex, you still have that system in your body, and it’s still affecting your body in different ways,” Lindeman reasoned. The male body has always been the default body in clinical medicine, making the assumption that women are just smaller versions of men. This could not be more wrong,’ Dr Wallace says. Gut issues are quite common, so thinking about potentially how you might need to adjust what you eat. And then I think at the end, we talked about intermittent fasting where you're quite cautious and it sounds like you're mainly cautious about people eating enough calories, enough food, so it can potentially work, but don't just assume that this is this wonder solution actually, it sounds like you, you're concerned there might even be some issues here.

So, There is a suggestion that you might be more susceptible to getting colds and flus during that time as well, which is even more reason to get in more leafy greens and healthy fruits and veggie