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

Product Information

So really to be doing the best research, we should be taking urine tests, blood tests as well, to find out where women are at the cycle. And for researchers, that's a huge inconvenience, a huge expense, and it's just easier not to do the research. So there needs to be a bigger drive there and. Like you, you mentioned it may change how we, how women respond to treatments, how women present to hospital with different conditions. 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. And typically women will have some physical symptoms of PMS as well. So the things that we mentioned, like headache, mood disturbance, cramps, things like that. But they'll have significant mood disturbance and that will impact their day-to-day quality of life. So they'll find that, you know, a lot of women will even use their annual leave because they'd feel like they can't go into work, which is something that is not okay. Hazel Wallace: Sleep is really interesting and I would definitely love more research in this, especially when it comes to sleep architecture. So when we're talking about the different stages of sleep, but as a brief overview, we do see a lot of sleep disturbance just after ovulation and in that premenstrual period. So just before the next period.

Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I've discussed at length with Tim Spector about when it comes to fasting and women, and we've both agreed that we definitely need more research there to really understand how it affects the menstrual cycle and how we can optimize. Both that protocol to suit women who are menstruating because it might be, we have to tweak it at certain phases of the cycle. 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.A lot more complicated than I think many people Imagine as like you have your period, that's a few days of the cycle and everything else is like sort of stable actually. You're describing this very complex thing with not even just two hormones, but even more of these going up and down. There's quite a lot of individual variation, but if we take that sort of average is around 28 days then you've also got this big difference between the period sort of in the first week, which is associated with this period, and then what you're seeing in sort of the second half of this environment that a lot of people actually feel really quite good after their period has come. Jonathan Wolf: and then is it true that these cravings are towards particular sorts of food? I'm tending to think about things like fats and things like is that real? Jonathan Wolf: They're experiencing the same change in hormones that other women are having, which is a big change as what you're describing, but they're somehow the reaction of their body to this, which sounds pretty profound. Yeah. As somebody who's a man is having, I guess, much more stable hormones through, through my day and through my month, the impact is much higher.

We also tend to suffer with conditions that will keep you awake, so, Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety and depression in their lifetime experience. Things like overactive bladder, so having to wake up in the night to go for a whee and heartburn or reflux is also more common as a general rule, although it varies from household to household. The Food Medic Podcast. Available on Spotify, Apple, and Global, Dr. Hazel invites leading experts to share evidence-based advice on healthy living while clarifying conflicting well-being information you often find online. Dr Hazel Wallace is the founder of The Food Medic, a medical doctor, registered associate nutritionist and personal trainer. We'll say that an average menstrual cycle is about 28 days, but anything between really 23 to 35 days can be considered normal. They're extremes of normal, but anything in between there tends to be normal. And so this is basically fluctuation of hormones. There's four main hormones. We mostly talk about estrogen and progesterone.

In a bid to change the conversation, female reproductive health content creators are not letting Meta’s restrictions silence their voices. It also covers to how to eat to ease the menopausal transition and staying active during pregnancy as well as countless other female specific issues. Hazel Wallace: I think the power that our reproductive hormones have on other aspects outside of our cycle. So our mood, our sleep, our metabolism, our gut health. I don't think that's something that many people know.

Jonathan Wolf: Because the estrogen is helping your, basically, without it, these, it's worse. Is it? These arteries are no longer able to be as flexible, Jonathan Wolf: And then stop for 26 days. That's not a pattern. There's never any like good cheats. I have to say it's very disappointing things about this podcast, and no one comes to and says, oh, well you can just exercise once a month and you'll be fine. so you're saying here like, just make sure that like regular exercise has been shown to be helpful, but you are saying don't stop through this period.Through an anti-inflammatory diet, and what I mean by that is lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, high fiber, whole grains, legumes, omega-3 rich foods like oily fish, flax seeds, walnuts, lots of herbs and spices, and that can help dampen the immune response. Hazel Wallace: So, I am slightly skeptical in advising, intermittent fasting for women who have menstrual cycles because women are very sensitive to the amount of energy available. So if they go for long periods without food, we can see menstrual cycle abnormalities. So longer cycles, bigger gaps between cycles. Jonathan Wolf: Amazing. Now, you mentioned a number of other things I do, I don't wanna miss out on, about the way that the menstrual cycle is affecting your, your health, and I think you talked about sleep, you talked about stress. Could you just tell us what else is actually changing through this cycle? Tracey Lindeman, the author of “BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis,” says classifying all female reproductive health issues under the umbrella of sexual health “perpetuates the idea that our sexual organs are to be exploited and used for sexuality, even at a young age.”