Nutritionist and TV presenter Zoe Bingley-Pullin discusses all things hormones from what they do in the body, to regulation and the best foods to eat. She shares her journey of discovering she was in perimenopause before 40.
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Oh hello, welcome to Extra Healthy Ish. You have t into the big sister podcast Too Healthy Ish from Body and Soul. I am your host of Felicity Harley and joining me in the studio today is nutritionist, chef, presenter and author Zoe Bingley Paul and she has a new book out. It is called Eat Your Way to Healthy Hormones. So yes, we are talking all things hormone health today, from what they do in the body, to how to regulate them and the best foods to eat. She also shares her let's call it hormone journey of discovering she was in perimenopause well before she'd even hit forty.
Zoe, welcome back, Thank you very much. It's great to be here and with a new book. With a new book.
Indeed, Each Way to Healthy Hormones a labor of love. I mean, I think I've mentioned before I feel like I had imposter synjome. When I finally held it, I was like, oh my god, this is real. So look, I mean it was a it was a real kind of eye opener writing this book as well, because I think you've done a few before.
Yeah. So this is my third book and I might have another one coming out next to your sometimes today true people.
So look, I think what I found really interesting with my own journey is I kind of I found out when I was twenty nine I couldn't have children. And I think it was it was such a shock to me because I thought I was ticking all the boxes.
I was healthy, you know, I was you know, moderately stressed, not crazy stressed, you know. I I was in a loving environment, you know.
And I was really quite taken back when I started to dig a little deeper. And I was so grateful because I had an older friend of mine who was going through IVF at the time, and she said, look, don't don't bother with the guest work, go and get go and get the test done.
So I went and got my.
First test done, and I had a very low what's called an ant him a really or hormone. So what that is, that's an indication of how many eggs I had. Now it's greater between fifteen and thirty. My number was two. So it was also a bit of a line that would show me that I potentially would go into perimenopause earlier. As a result of that as well, I had to see, oh, I felt like I had failed. I felt like I was something there was something wrong with me. I wasn't getting any clear insight into what that actually meant either, because particularly if you go back I'm you know, forty six. Now, if you go back fifteen years ago, it was a very much I was seventeen years ago, I don't think.
Get my mass brain working.
You know, it was very much more geared to you know, fertility is this and this, Horman does this, and there wasn't that holistic approach to kind of look at it kind of what was really going on as well. So we sort of traveled down this path and you know, we started IVF.
I then sort of did more testing.
We found out my fallopian tubes had had scar tissue. There was a potential that I had I'd miscarried, and we think I was away and we think it may have been a little bit of an a topic pagnancy, But it wasn't anything that was sort of you know, it was too hard to kind of say because I was serious, so mysterious, so much unknowns as well. So kind of traveling down six cycles of IVF. Later, you know, had Emily best pregnancy ever. I was so effing cruisy.
It's okay to swear by fucking.
Cruisy because I you know, I'd sort of weathered the storm.
I kind of gone through so many I'd miscarried so many times for IVF. You were a lucky one. I was a lucky one, even though you went through six rounds. Yes, exactly like I think I had an incredible team.
My doctor, Joe Burstein was my is now in retirement, was my IVF doctor.
We shared different views.
He wasn't, you know, a pro complimentary functional nutrition person, but he also said just do it and don't tell me. So I behind the scene was always doing, you know, the herbs and this and then that, and you know, to come to.
Support this process.
But to give an example, when I miscarried one time, he offered to drive me to the you know, because my Michael was away at that time. So you need that love, you need that care. I think what was good. Now it's sort of deviating a little bit, but I think, you know, building in that kind of counseling component and that psychology apponment that should be coming, not when you have the miscarriage, that should be all the way through, because again rejection comes in different boxes.
It looks different for different people as.
Well, and to normalize the conversation is really really important. But it wasn't until I kind of started to want thinking of having another child again. At that stage, I was thirty nine, we had had we had two embryos saved. Now I was never able to produce many embryos. At one stage, we were looking at having to get egg donors, so it was kind of a little bit of, you know, a curious kind of positioning, but then we ended up kind of that all worked out. So when I went to see this new IVF doctorm, she sort of sat me down. We did all the tests with everything. She said, look, the reality is you got about a two percent chance because you're perimdal pausal. And I was like, so, what fucking language are you talking. I didn't really actually know what that was, even though I'm in this industry. It wasn't a term that I had been spoken about. And my perimenopausal was when I looked reflectively, I actually realized that those symptoms at low lying anxiety, that sleeplessness that have been happening, just that feeling of feeling out of control or out of kilter. I could actually relate it back to my hormones, which I wasn't actually looking at it because I thought I was too young to actually look at it that way.
With you before this, you know, as a nutritionist, were hormones on your radar very much so in more their metabolic hormones.
So when we look at sort of those appetite regulating hormones like lepon and gorilla, and you know, the absorption hormones like CCK insulin, they were the ones I focused on because I predominantly was am still a nutritionist that focuses on weight loss, you know, I'm about kind of trying to find that lovely homeostasis, that balance in our diet where and of course we were looking at the stress hormones as well, but less of the reproductive hormones. It wasn't necessarily the clients that I was seeing, so I was seeing you know, burnt out bankers and lawyers. So again, you know, hormones, there's they're very vast, and often what happens we kind of pigeonhole them into certain areas rather than looking at them holistically and seeing how.
They work together.
We'll go back to your story in a minute. But let's just focus on hormones. I mean, it's quite hard to get your head around hormones because, as you say, and we talked about this and healthish, but for so many years there was just to focus on the reproductive ones, not the rest.
Yes, so explain to us the gamut of hormones. Okay, well that might take a while, but we'll ball it down in a nutshell. In a nutshell, no pun intended. So, hormones are chemical messages. They are produced by something called the end endocrine system as well. So the endocrine system you have to kind of see as this kind of you know, big mothership. It basically helps to send those chemicals.
So it stimulates it.
All that message goes through the blood and basically tells your body to do something. So it might be to release when you're young, to release more growth hormone. It might be that when you're in a state of stress, to release adrenaline and cortisole. It might be that, you know, when you're going through a period, to do lootnoozing hormone or follicle stimulating hormone or whatever it might be as well.
But what's really interesting about.
That we have to kind of think about how a hormones mate, because a lot of the time we understand kind of what they are. But you've got these three set of categories of hormones. You've got lipid hormones, which is fat produced by cholesterol, and that's that's a lot of our reproductive hormones. We then have our amino acid hormones, so that's obviously protein. The example of that is melotonin. And then you have your peptide hormones as well, so that's like oxytocin.
And what's really important that hormone?
Oh who doesn't someone created for that in the gesture and I might just.
Babey, please rush it alone with me every just so much more niceer, isn't it to be nice? Anyway? Carry on?
Yes, So again, look, if I often sort of say to people, if you don't have that correct diet, that great foundation, it doesn't really matter what stays you're in, you might be in a position of not even being able to build those hormones correctly as well. So I do sort of say to clients or anyone who will listen, I mean, I try and sort of boil it.
Down to a sort of a ratio three two one.
So basically three parts carbohydrates on your plate, so ideally logolycemic whole food carbohydrates. Two parts protein, and again it can be animal protein or vegetarian protein. If you are vegetarian, we do need to make sure you're a lot more sort of creative, getting a lot of diversity, so you are getting those essential amino acids and then one part fat. Now if you can have that in breakfast, lunch, dinner, plus two snacks, it's pretty hard that you're not getting it over you're not getting that cross section of the correct foods to then build those hormones overall.
What are some disruptors to Yeah, mind, good one, isn't it?
I mean life in general notes, I just in my head is just maybe?
I mean yes, I mean definitely because of that feedback system, you know when we are overloaded with stress. Now I'll give you the example of sort of the steroid type hormones.
So this is DHA.
So DHA is produced by our adrenal glands and a little bit in our testes and our ovaries. Now that very much is sort of cortisol and adrenaline. But if you looked at sort of the start kind of what that cascade is. So when there's a little chart that you can look at, it's worthwhile googling, because the duchy is quite enjoyed, chat, gdping, whatever you want.
To do these days.
But again, what you'll see as adrenaline quarter gazole are the sort of the start of the cascade, and then that will influence other hormones as well.
So I often find.
That if I can address stress with my clients, that will help to address other hormones as well. We have to be prescribed DHA, but there's lots of amazing adaptogenetic herbs that we can take ashra, ganda, jin sing, oh my God, Tim read Kirkhaman, things like that because of the trending ones the reason why perhaps as well they work, you know, So if we can incorporate those often what happens is that will help us support our adrenal magnesium. You know, magnesium is over three hundred functions within the body as well, very much. He really correlated to our adrenal support as well, so that feedback system. But the other thing obviously is xeno estrogens. So we need to look at these hormone disruptors, plasticizers, the sprays that we use, the body creams that we use.
I mean I often my daughter, I mean.
Emily is ten and a half, and every child wants to go to fucking Mecca these days. And I've literally washed my daughter into Mecca. And I sat there with the lady, which I was quite surprised. I wasn't quite sure how this was going to turn out. And I said, could you please tell my daughter why there's very few products that are actually okay for her to be using this in this store?
How did that go down? No, the person was really good.
She said, the reality is is that you know, there's a couple of things that you should only be using that are very natural.
Your skin doesn't need it.
But we have to kind of often think of that cumulative approach, and that's not what we often look at. We look immediately, you know, I'll use this product for this amount of time.
But if you're putting you.
Know, poor quality food and poor quality products into your child from a very young age, they're hormone disruptors. I mean, it's often I think a theory as to why we're seeing children develop breasts develop, you know, their period much earlier than what they have way before them mature enough to actually really understand what's actually going and they're getting these surges of reproductive hormones when they're really only just working out life.
We'll be back after this shortbreak with more from Zoe. What are some hormones supporting foods? No matter what your age, I mean, in your book, you go into different you go from between all the way to post menopausal and blokes, Yes, I was impressed that little section about Yes, very necessary.
Pause that they get.
We don't want them to kind of you know, they go through their own stage of kind of menopause. Let's give what are some foods that we should include in our diet weekly?
Yes?
Okay, so again what we really you need to focus on is very much fats. I'm a big, big believer of fats as well, So making sure that you know you've got a beautiful cross section of monola saturated fats, essential fatty assas because they're very much the primary builder of hormones. So things like fish, avocado, extravergent, olive oil, nuts, and seeds, you know, hemp seeds, flax seeds, cheer seeds, popping them all in there and just you know, sort of seeding no pun intended. Seating them in every.
Sort of part of it easy.
I mean, look, ever since I started posting these podcast I now actually douse my warning fruit and granola with so many different seeds. I've got so many different little going on, and it's tasty.
I mean, I you know, even whenever, even once a vegel might sandwhich I sprinkle hemp seeds in there. That's a great way, chicken mummy, that's not all I do.
You know, I love throwing it in everywhere.
But the other obviously the food group, well you know, the new tune or macronutune that we talk a lot about is phytoestrogens, so fighter estrogens. Again, they've got a bit of a bad name because people associate them with estrogen. They're est modulators. They replicate the behavior, but they're not estrogen. So at any stage we need to be getting those estrogens in, like those fight or estrogens in our diet.
So it's about fifteen milligrams.
Of these that we require every day an adult does primarily anything over eight or sixteen onwards, and again that might be something like a two hundred gram piece of tofu. Please always make sure that it's organic and non genetically modified. It might be something like a tablespoon of sesame seeds in there as well, you know, putting some flax seeds in there as well. You can put them in your smoothies, you can put it into a stir fright, you can put it into a salad dress.
See, that's a good idea.
Yeah, And you can put all these types of foods into that. I mean sesame is also sesame seeds also have a huge amount of calcium as well, and as we know, you know, particularly when estrogen levels are dropping, that affects the way that we absorb calcium or vitamin D. We've also got circulating estrogen, which then can disrupt that absorption. So we need to make sure that we are getting a good class section of calcium into our diet. Overall, let's go back to your story. What when you realize that you're in perimenopause. Talk to us about how your perhaps your diet change to support your hormones with your changing hormones at this point in your life. Look, I think from a lifestyle point of view, I think all my friends and my husband were particularly happy. But I kind of made that change because I was very much a doer, and I was like.
Let's just get on and do whatever I come out of that. Come out of that, Let's go a you know, twenty four thousand things a day. But that's kind of was me.
I kind of liked to work that way, and I didn't know there was another option, to be really honest, because that works so well for me in the past.
But I could see how it wasn't.
Working, and I was getting to a point where it was harder for me to kind of do the things as easily with as much joy, and exercise was a.
Big part of it.
You know, I've struggled with mental health issues my entire life, whether it be anxiety, depression, So exercise has always been my beautiful cuddle that I do every morning. I don't do it for weight loss that's an added bonus, or strength that's an out of bonus. I do it for mental health because there's nothing that increases those neurochemicals, all those hormones faster.
Than exerciset exercise do you do?
So I change from doing sort of those high intensity cardiovascular too or you know, really heavy weight based environments to doing more yoga. So I do a lot of yoga so I'll probably do yoga three times a week. The other thing I do is I do a hit run, So I do small intensity cardiovascular that doesn't then put extra pressure on my adrenals as well. So I've got an eighteen minute run that I do.
I run.
I live in Bond, I run out my house, I run up Blair Streets, So wave at me next time you see me. Do it.
So I always I need a little encouragement every now and then.
So I run up Blair Street, I run down Military, I run along the beach, and I come back up.
Hilly for anyone, it's hills, Yeah, very hilly.
Yeah, thank you that that needed that explanation. It's a very hilly environment. But it's hills where I'm basically exerting my body. I'm intaking as much oxygen, so that oxygen kind of keeps within the system for longer as well. I'm then declining, so that drops it all down, drops the adrenals down, and then I go back up. And there's a lot of research now that looks at that that that what maintains over that time is that it increases that metabolo grade, it maintains that oxygen level, but doesn't overstimulate the adrenals as well Hills himself, as we know they've got it toning the ass. So again, you know, I'm using those big muscle groups as well.
What do you include in your diet? Like what are your go toes now too?
Yeah?
Are you in menopause or so?
It's really interesting because last year, I really even though no, I mean metopause is technically considered it a year after no medicine, so no period. Yeah, for one year you are considered metopausal. Just to kind of back check a little bit perimenopausal. I often always encourage I always encourage my clients to get as much pathology. Now, pathology is an interesting one. What often we're just trying to create is a baseline because perimenopause, if you're in it, and you know it, ladies, it's all over the place. So there is no clear time unless you are non perimenopausal. So that's why we be starting this testing even before that. You know, we're supposed to test that on the twenty first day of our circle because that way will give us an indicator of certain hormones being at the point that they're and then we can compare them as well. So starting earlier to create that baseline is fabulous when you're impairing metopause. Or what we need to look at is other markers.
Vitamin D.
You might notice that your vitamin D drops, you might notice that your cholesterol, your LDL goes up, because when you think about it, that's what produces.
These hormones like estrogen.
So when they're not being produced as much, the need for that cholesterol and the need for that vitamin D changes. So we can look at those kind of markers. But even looking at things like se reactive protein, let's look at inflammation.
That's inflammation. Let's see what's going on there and creating that baseline.
But again, metopausally, that's a year after I'm getting I've had my period once this year, so what are we in October? Once in a bish, so I'm definitely on the way to metopause. It probably was sped up a little bit because I had a sort of a cancer scare last year at the end.
Of last year's so one of my own was removed. It's fine.
The other one apparently looks was meant to look like a walnut and looks like a peanut.
So and let me just that was a guy who said that I might put that one.
So to you make sure he's in your diet, so a non negotiable for me. There's lots of fermented food. I make sure I take a probiotic every single day. What I want to make sure is that I've got the correct bacteria so I'm not getting what's called disbiosis or inflammation through the gut.
As well.
I also eat a lot of kimchi, sour cra bone broth, miso paste.
You know, apple side of vinegar is a big feature.
And making sure I've got all those beautiful digestive enzyme or stomach enzymes to help break down the food.
The second thing I do is a cold pressed juice. Every single day.
I do a beetroot, carrot ginger sometimes tournwork in there and grapefruit juice every single day. So I make that juice enough to last two or three days. Now, there is a degree of nutrients that will be a lot, but the way I look at it.
Better, they're not getting it in there at all. It's a cold pressed juicer.
I put it straight in the fridge and I do that every single morning.
But I'm very very much a stick.
Like every person's different, and I'm not a believer for for me personally of intermittent fasting, it doesn't work for me. So I make sure that every single meal has got a really good cross section of protein, complex carbohydrates, and fats. So, for example, my breakfast this morning was the leftover veedgies last night. I cracked two eggs in them, douted in olive oil, sprinkled it with hemp seeds.
Fucking delicious, delicious. I feel so good.
So I've had my juice, I've had the eggs. Coffee always features, It's always a coffee. I tended to go a little bit more to less.
I only have one a day. I don't think it's really necessary to have more than that. Two weeks. Is that okay to you?
The year?
That's good? Yeah.
And again I made sure that I've got a lot of liver supporting food in there. So a lot of foods that actually are going to increase the beautiful enzyme to break down, you know, the toxic forms of food that are kind of come that I might be getting, or just the excess you know, sometimes good foods it does, unless we get rhythm, they'll have the toxic impact on the body as well.
So peppering all of that, I find that often a lot.
Earlier as well, so you know, in some way I am always getting that twelve hours pewre because again, your body needs rest. But the other thing also, it's important that we have gaps in between our eating. We need a three hour gap in between each meal purely because what that does is that helps our body digestively to have time to metabolize our food. But with our insulin, those insulin hormones, we want that to come down because naturally when we eat, the body releases insulin to convert that food into carbon to a glucose to then burn it. So we need it to kind of all calm down.
And just make sure, yeah reminder because yeah, we don't I don't clock how often it was nice, no hungry or is it lunch?
Yeah, And you remember, like the hunger cues are quite hard, and I'll often ask people like, do you know the difference between low blood sugar levels and hunger? Yeah, because again, you know, hunger is very much more a stomach thing. You know, that's where you're you know, you're actually going to feel the emptiness within your stomach. You might hear some low plus sugar levels is very much.
A neural thing. Well yes, crazy, yes, yes, feel not fun yeah? Angry Yes I am I get hangry.
Zoe, thank you so much for coming on Extreme Pleasure.
Thank you so lice, and thank you everyone for listening.
If you're after a breakdown of exactly what you should be eating and how you should be moving, how you should be living, Zoe has it all in her books. She breaks down the different age brackets from tweens to menopause. I highly recommend having a look at the book. It is called Eat Your Way to Healthy Hormones and it is out now. And Zoe will be at Gwingana Lifestyle Retreat for four nights from December one to December five. I will leave a link to that in the show notes. If you feel like a get away, we all do right before Christmas. What a perfect time, so jump on the link. Check it out anyway, Thank you for listening to episode. If you do have any ideas for an upcoming et, DM me across social media at Felicity Harley, anything Else, head to Body and Soul dot com dot you follow us on socials. Grob Our Print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow.
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