There is very real and genuine stress and there is also a huge amount of stress we create for ourselves because of how we think. So much of our stress stems from our thoughts about things, and often unconsciously thoughts about ourselves, and these all drive a host of biochemical reactions.
We create stress for ourselves every day while we sit at our desks and react to our emails or race through our day feeling pressured to get as much done as possible. For the younger generation of women, it is social media that has become a huge source of stress.
In a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal, a courageous whistleblower has shared how even Facebook’s own internal research has highlighted how Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) is an engine of ‘social comparison’ for teenage girls and the devastating impact this has on their self-worth.
It doesn’t matter what it is that is driving our stress, it can all have a profound effect on our health when it is as constant and relentless as it is for too many people today.
Recently I was invited to speak at TEDx Currumbin. The event was held at Dust Temple (a space that is a masterpiece of creation) and it was a joy to speak in front of a live crowd.
I chose to bring my ideas about changing the way we think about stress, to life. After all, TEDx is about sharing ideas. These ideas have been formed from my research as well as working with patients for over 20 years. I’ve been interested in the stress response for a long time and the way we think can contribute significantly to the stress we experience.
Alongside supporting people to manage stress, I feel it is well overdue to also understand more about what leads us to produce stress hormones in the first place, and endeavour to address what we learn.
It was an honour to share my insights at this special event and I’m delighted to now be able to share the talk with you.
Just like the rest of your body, the brain requires nourishment to function at its best. Yet, many people aren’t eating in a way that supports this.
When it comes to brain health—which affects our mood, memory and cognition—our overall eating pattern matters more than consuming one specific food. However, there are some foods that are particularly rich in brain-boosting nutrients that many people aren’t eating regularly. Here are five foods that you might like to consider including, as part of a whole food way of eating:
Oily fish
Oily fish are a key source of two long-chain omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which are protective for the brain. These are the fatty acids found in high-quality fish oil supplements, however when we eat fish (rather than just consuming fish oil) we also obtain various other nutrients that are beneficial for the brain. Some examples of oily fish include salmon, sardines, mackerel, and trout.
Berries
The brightly coloured pigments in berries have potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. This means they help to prevent damage to cells, including brain cells. The purple/blue/black pigments, called anthocyanins, are especially protective for the brain. While blueberries are most well-known for this, aiming for a variety is always a good idea. Greater variety in the plant foods we consume helps to support the gut microbiome, which is constantly communicating with the brain. Both fresh and frozen berries are great options.
Walnuts
Walnuts provide a plant source of essential omega-3 fatty acids, along with other nourishing fats, fibre and beneficial phytonutrients. Regular consumption has been associated with better cognitive function so a handful makes a great snack, or they can be sprinkled into salads or used in other recipes—check out my Brain (Bliss) Balls recipe that features walnuts here.
Eggs
Eggs truly are nutritional powerhouses. Not only do they provide a source of protein and fat which can help with sustained energy, they are one of the richest dietary sources of choline. Choline is a nutrient that can be used to make chemical messengers in the brain, and it plays an important role in supporting cognition and memory. Eggs also contain a range of other nutrients, including iron, zinc and B vitamins.
Green tea
Green tea is packed full of antioxidants and can have some beneficial effects on cognition and brain function. While it does still contain some caffeine, it also contains a substance called L-theanine. This has a calming effect, helping to buffer the effects of the caffeine so you feel alert but not wired. If you’ve been trying to cut down on your caffeine consumption, switching your coffee to green tea can be a great start.
Do you find yourself regularly forgetting where you put the keys? Or do you often walk into a room only to forget what you were going in there for? When we’re experiencing stress, our memory can suffer and it might feel a bit like a cloud is hovering over your brain—you can’t quite think clearly or retrieve information from your memory as efficiently.
This is because when we’re experiencing stress, our body is geared towards survival. In response to worries or perceptions of pressure and urgency, stress hormones are released and these travel throughout the body, including to the brain, to communicate a ‘danger’ signal. To your body, all stress equals danger and so it directs more resources to the essential processes necessary for survival—and less towards the ‘nice to have, but not essential’ functions. Remember, your body always has your back and is doing its best to help you stay alive, based on the messages it is receiving.
So what can you do?
Breathe
We can’t always change our circumstances, but we can alter how our body is responding to them through the way that we breathe. Breathing diaphragmatically is a powerful way to activate the calm arm of your nervous system. Commit to 20 long, slow breaths at a certain time (or several times) each day. Linking it to another activity or task that you do every day can help to make it a habit so you might like to do it when you are boiling the kettle, for example. You might also like to practice diaphragmatic breathing any time you notice you are feeling stressed. Be kind and patient with yourself if this way of breathing doesn’t come naturally at first—you may not have breathed in this way for a long time and so it may take some practice, just like any skill.
Increase your nourishment
It is not only psychological stress that can impact our memory and brain function. The stress of poor nutrition can also play a role, and it’s often when people are under a lot of stress that their food choices tend to be less than ideal. This is problematic because the body requires even more nutrients when we’re churning out stress hormones. Focus on including more real, whole foods in your day but be mindful that you aren’t creating more overwhelm by trying to overhaul everything at once. It can be more sustainable to start with one or two small changes and building from there. A good aim can be to add an extra serve of green leafy vegetables each day. Or, perhaps you decide to swap biscuits at morning tea to some fruit, such as some berries.
Prioritise sleep
When we’re highly stressed, our sleep quality can often suffer—and along with it, our memory and mood. Adults require 7-9 hours of sleep each night and if we’re not well rested, we cannot expect to function at our best. Try to listen to your body—is it telling you that you need more rest than usual? While it can be tempting to stay up late to get more things done (particularly if you are stressed because you perceive there isn’t enough time), prioritising your sleep can help you to be more productive in the long run. If you’re having trouble sleeping restoratively, check out my tips here.
Focus on things that are in your control
Focusing on the things that you can control, rather than those that are outside of your control, can help you to better manage your stress. Bring awareness to how you are responding to stressful situations, and whether your actions are really supporting you or not. Are they helping to buffer the stress or are they adding to it? Routine can also be quite helpful, particularly if your stress is related to situations that involve some uncertainty or overwhelm. It doesn’t have to be big—some people even find that making their bed every day after they get up provides a sense of normality and a little bit of momentum for a productive day.
When I talk to people about stress, there are those who tell me outright they are stressed and those who tell me that they’re not.
For those who say they’re not, there will, of course, be some who genuinely do not feel stress. There are those who connect more with the experience of “worry” than “stress”. And there are also those who may think they’re not stressed and yet their bodies are showing numerous signs that they are.
How can this be?
While stress is often psychological, it can also be nutritional and biochemical. For example, you may have a great mental resilience to cope with anything life throws your way and be eating in a way that does not provide your body with the nourishment it needs to function optimally. Nutrients are what drives all of the vital biochemical processes that create health in your body. And without enough of nutrients, you’re going to be inadvertently adding to your body’s stress load.
It is possible too, to consciously think you’re not stressed and unconsciously be driving stress hormone production. This is because we have two thought systems—I like to call them Old Brain and New Brain. The problem is, they don’t talk to each other. Old brain is rapid, emotional and intuitive (with ‘intuitive’ in this instance meaning a reactive, instantaneous processing that occurs based on prior patterns, associations and experiences we’ve unconsciously concocted about what kept us safe), while New Brain is much slower, and able to calculate and rationalise. The New Brain doesn’t automatically examine the Old Brain and understand why it does what it does. New Brain doesn’t usually even know that Old Brain has made a decision and led you to feel a certain way!
Image Credit: The Invisible Load / Stephanie Antill
And this is where a significant amount of our stress comes from today. Even if your New Brain thinks you are managing just fine, your Old Brain may be busy creating meanings from the situations you are involved with in an attempt to keep you safe—and you may not even realise it.
This is why it’s always a wonderful idea to tune into your body’s messages and learn to decipher what it is trying to communicate to you.
How does stress show up in the body?
Well, this is where it gets tricky. It can be anything from digestive disruptions to poor sleep, hormonal challenges to blood pressure problems.
Regardless of whether you ‘feel stressed’ or not, your body may be reacting as if some things are stressful and trying to send you a signal if you are experiencing:
Low progesterone
Problems with your periods which might look like heavy, clotty periods, irregular periods, PMS, or debilitating menopausal symptoms
Conditions related to your menstrual cycle such as polycystic ovarian syndrome
Sugar cravings
Poor short-term memory
Thyroid challenges
Regularly disturbed sleep or waking up feeling tired
If any of these symptoms are familiar to you and, no matter what you have tried, you can’t seem to get to the bottom of them, it may be related to the constant, relentless production of stress hormones. Or an intake of nutrients that is not high enough to meet your body’s biochemical needs.
What can you do about it?
First of all, you’ll need to figure out whether there are factors such as biochemical or nutritional stress that your body is dealing with, and whether this is contributing to elevated stress levels, even if you feel ‘fine’. You may like to start by focussing on increasing your intake of whole, real foods, and minimising processed foods, as this will help you either way. If increasing your nutrient intake doesn’t alleviate the symptom/s, you may like to start exploring ways to reduce stress hormone production in your body. You can find a list of suggestions in this article here.
As you race around across the morning sipping coffee, you’re usually not thinking about how you’re going to sleep that night. You might be thanking coffee for taking the edge off your fatigue from the poor night’s sleep you just had! Yet coffee itself might be the culprit for all that tossing and turning.
Coffee—or more specifically caffeine—is directly absorbed into your body by travelling from your gastrointestinal tract across into your blood. It can also cross the blood-brain barrier where it binds to adenosine receptors, the downstream effects of which is to signal to the adrenal glands to release adrenaline. This stress hormone is designed to prepare your body to get out of danger and it does its job incredibly well.
Adrenaline drives a host of biochemical changes to allow you to escape from danger. It puts you on red alert on the inside, making your heart and thoughts race, and gives you a jittery feeling that can make it difficult to feel calm and centred, despite your best efforts. It elevates your blood pressure and diverts blood away from your digestive system to your to your arms and legs, compromising digestion—because if you’re in danger you need a powerful blood supply in your periphery to help you get away quickly. Since you’re not actually in danger, all of these biochemical changes may make you momentarily more productive and focused (or they may tip you into a very uncomfortable place emotionally, driving anxious thoughts and feelings, without you considering caffeine as a driver for this), which may be great to help you get through your full day, yet come night, the adrenaline that’s still running through your body can take a toll on your sleep.
For many people, caffeine isn’t the only trigger for adrenaline in their day—and this is usually at the heart of the problem. Any time you feel stressed, pressured or overwhelmed, you’re sending a message to your body to produce stress hormones. Most often this comes from how you think and your perception of pressure and urgency. Usually, it’s an accumulation of instances throughout your day signalling the production of stress hormones that becomes problematic for sleep, not just one cup of coffee in the morning. Although for some people one tiny cup is enough to set off a chain reaction that significantly impacts sleep. And if you’re having more than one cup and not sleeping well—or drinking coffee later in the day? It’s highly likely to be a key contributing factor.
So what is it about adrenaline and sleep? Well, if adrenaline is the hormone that’s produced when your body is in danger, you’ll start to get the idea. If you are truly at risk, your body doesn’t want you to fall into a deep, restful sleep because if you do, you may not be able to rouse yourself quickly enough to get yourself to safety.
And so you’ll toss and turn, drift off then wake up again and then drift off into a restless sleep that isn’t all that restorative. Or perhaps you’ll lie there for hours—either at the beginning of the night or somewhere in the middle—unable to sleep thanks to a mind that won’t stop racing. Frustratingly for you, your body doesn’t know the difference between the adrenaline produced as a result of actual danger and perceived danger. If you decide to take a swim in crocodile-infested waters and see two beady eyes coming your way, you’ll want adrenaline to give you the boost you need to swim as quickly as you can away from this very real danger. Yet if you read a text from your boss asking you to come into a meeting tomorrow and you instantly get worried about what it could entail (i.e. you perceive danger), adrenaline will be coursing through your blood with nothing to do but make you feel wired.
The bottom line is, if you’re having trouble sleeping, you want to avoid producing adrenaline as often as you can throughout your day. So you may like to reduce your intake of caffeine or take a break from it entirely. You will also benefit from exploring your perceptions of pressure and urgency. Are you unnecessarily adding urgency to things that aren’t urgent? Are you putting unrealistic amounts of pressure on yourself to get more done in a day than is actually possible? Reflect on how you are adding to your body’s perception of danger with your thoughts and beliefs.
A question I am asked regularly is whether or not oats are gluten-free.
So, let’s take a look.
Gluten is the name given to a protein in wheat, rye, barley and oats that affects people with coeliac disease.
Gluten is a composite name representing:
gliadin in wheat
secalin in rye
hordein in barley
avenin in oats.
People diagnosed with coeliac disease cannot eat gluten-containing foods. Yet there are others who, despite not testing positive to coeliac disease, have numerous symptoms that resolve through the same dietary changes. My take on this is that science isn’t finished yet. What if there are 50 more mechanisms through which the human body reacts to gluten and coeliac disease is only the main one we currently know about?
The current tests for gluten can measure gliadin, hordein and secalin, but not avenin, as it is a slightly different protein. Avenin is an essential part of oats, just as gliadin is with wheat. Oats will never be gluten free (i.e. avenin free) even if they are described as gluten free. Oats are (obviously) wheat free (i.e. gliadin free). Many labels are misleading or at minimum, confusing, in this regard. I’ve also seen cafes offering “gluten free ANZAC biscuits” made with oats, which is an inaccurate (and concerning) name to give them. Approximately one in five (20 per cent) people with coeliac disease react to pure uncontaminated oats. That is, they react to oat avenin.
While some people with coeliac disease and some who are gluten-intolerant can tolerate oats, others can’t. Since we cannot predict who is the one in five (20 per cent), and we know that damage can occur in the absence of symptoms, I believe the best advice is that oats are not to be consumed by someone with coeliac disease without a biopsy prior to and during consumption. The practicalities of doing so may prove either challenging or worthwhile.
For someone who is gluten intolerant, if they know how their food reactions typically present, they will likely be able to tell if they digest oats well or not. Soaking them overnight helps their digestibility for some people who are gluten intolerant, but not all.
So when a label says that oats are gluten-free, a more accurate statement would be is that they are free from wheat gliadin, rye secalin and barley hordein. In other words, that there is no measurable contamination. But they still contain avenin.
A common reason people often give for not eating whole real foods is because they perceive they’re a lot more expensive than packaged or processed food, or that eating this way is not sustainable for most families. However, a whole food way of eating doesn’t need to be complicated and you don’t have to buy fancy or expensive ingredients to eat well. Here are some of my top tips to make eating whole foods easier on the pocket.
Plan
Planning your weekly meals helps to reduce wasted food and can save you money because you are only buying what you need. If you shop to your plan then everything in the fridge has a purpose, meaning heads of broccoli and bunches of spinach won’t be forgotten and left to rot in the back of the fridge. By planning your meals you will reduce some of the perceived stress that can be involved in deciding what to have for dinner. You will also be less likely to reach for expensive take-aways when you have a plan in place. Dedicating some time to plan for the week ahead will save you time and money in the long run.
Consider your meal proportions
Most people are aware of the concept of portion sizes, but have you considered the proportions of foods that make up your meals? Many people often eat meals that include too large a portion of meat and not enough vegetables. Adding extra vegetables, legumes or pulses can help to bulk out meals so that they go further—you might even have some leftovers to save you buying lunch the next day—or so you can use a smaller quantity of more expensive ingredients (such as good quality animal protein). Try adding in some lentils and grated vegetables to bolognaise, or adding some extra vegetables, chickpeas, lentils or beans into curries, soups and stews.
Buy local
Buy local produce where possible. Not only does it support local farmers in your community, it can also guide you to buy produce that is in season, which is good for your health and for your wallet. Fruit and vegetables grown in season are more likely to have been grown outside in natural conditions where the plants are able to soak up and transform more nutrients. Also seasonal food doesn’t need to be shipped from other countries, ensuring fresher food (more nutrients) and cutting out the cost of travel. When buying from local farmers’ markets it is often possible to find spray-free or organic food for a similar price as conventional produce.
Buy in bulk
Buying in bulk and sharing with a friend or storing for later use can be a great way to save money. Often when buying in bulk it is possible to get cheaper prices. For example, buying nuts and seeds in bulk can save you money long term. Most nuts and seeds can be frozen to keep them fresh and stop them from going rancid. In season produce can be frozen, bottled, or fermented for later use.
Use your freezer
Freeze foods before they go to waste. Freezing brown bananas (peel them first) and saving them to be used in muffins or in a smoothie is a great way to reduce waste. The same can be done with other produce. Fruits can be stewed then frozen and added to smoothies or warmed and added to muesli. Vegetable scraps can be saved and used to make stock or broth. Be sure to label food with what it is and the date you froze it so you don’t end up with miscellaneous items in the freezer that never get used.
Buying frozen vegetables can also be a great, cost-effective option. Snap-frozen vegetables can be just as nutritious as fresh and it’s a convenient way to make sure you always have some vegetables on hand to add to a meal.
Grow your own
There are plenty of veggies and herbs that are easy to grow all year round. Kale, spinach and silverbeet will grow almost all year round, and can be used to make smoothies, juices, or to bulk out stews, curries, soups or salads. Herbs can be expensive to buy in small amounts but they are very easy to grow. Parsley, thyme and rosemary are hardy herb plants and so versatile, lending themselves to many dishes.
Explore your priorities
When it comes to what you spend your money on, consider your priorities. Do you draw the line at broccoli when it goes over a specific price yet you buy yourself a coffee or two each day? Sometimes finances for food are genuinely limited while for others, bringing awareness to priorities and values can lead to finances being reallocated.
Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world, with roasted coffee beans and tea leaves being the primary source of dietary caffeine. It is also found in cocoa, chocolate, soft drinks, energy drinks, some medications and dietary supplements.
Some people notice they are caffeine sensitive while others will claim they can drink a strong black coffee after dinner and still sleep solidly for eight hours. This can, in part, be due to the way caffeine is metabolised and cleared from the body, which involves a number of variables such as gender, hormones, liver function, genetics, smoking, dietary intake and other lifestyle factors.
Let’s explore why some people tolerate caffeine better than others, and why others don’t tolerate it at all.
Liver overload
Caffeine is metabolised via the liver. Don’t be put off by this big, long name – an enzyme called Cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2) is the main enzyme responsible for this process. Fancy names aside, the point is, caffeine is a drug which requires detoxification via the liver so it can be safely eliminated from the body. Detoxification is a change process where the liver takes something, that if it accumulated inside you, would be harmful to you, and transforms it into a less harmful version, in preparation for elimination. There are two phases of detoxification in the liver and one in the gut.
A good way to imagine what happens with caffeine is that like other substances that the liver needs to deal with (alcohol, trans fats, refined sugars, synthetic substances, as well as substances made inside you like sex hormones, cholesterol, and metabolites from microbes), caffeine arrives at the front door of the liver needing to be changed (detoxified). Imagine the liver has roads through it: there are roads substances like caffeine can travel along into the liver that make up phase 1 detoxification and there are roads out of the liver, which are the pathways for phase 2 detoxification. Caffeine increases the speed of phase 1 liver detoxification. Great, you might think, sounds like just what I need—faster liver detoxification processes. But here’s the thing: for too many people today, their phase 2 is inefficient, congested or simply overwhelmed with its task list, so the substances travelling along a phase 2 pathway can be moving slowly, like traffic crawling along a motorway. And now you have sped up phase 1 with the caffeine.
So with fast phase 1 generating what are known as ‘intermediate metabolites’ that need to immediately be taken in by the phase 2 pathways to continue on their detoxification journey, if the phase 2 roads are congested with traffic, the products of the end of phase 1 have nowhere to go. This can have major consequences for your health and your body’s ability to prevent diseases as these intermediate metabolites that are only partially detoxified, are highly reactive and can damage your tissues.
To learn more about the phases on liver detoxification, please click here.
Genetics
Genetics also plays a role in the way our body functions, with caffeine metabolism being no exception. Research suggests genetic variations altering the activity of CYP1A2 determines how efficiently your body produces this enzyme, resulting in the metabolism of caffeine being either sped up or slowed down. This genetic variability suggests the amount of caffeine consumed can affect two individuals differently, depending on their genetic make-up.
This is a great example of why tuning into YOUR body and having a true understanding of how foods and beverages affect YOUR health as an individual is so very important.
Your adrenals need a holiday
Too many people in the Western world today regularly over-consume caffeine, they feel pressured about their work, money, relationships or their body, feel like all of their tasks are urgent, like there aren’t enough hours in the day, feeling as though whatever they do, it is never enough.
Many people have become so accustomed to living this way that they don’t even notice how stressed they are anymore. Anxiety is rife, yet most people who experience it are not aware that caffeine intake leads them to make the very hormone that drives anxious feelings. If you experience such feelings, caffeine needs to be the first thing that goes.
Bowel health
Are you relying on your morning cup of coffee to “keep your bowels regular”? Caffeine increases gut motility, the contraction of muscles that allow faeces to move through the digestive system. For some people, this simply results in consistent bowel motions while for others it promotes bowel emptying urgency and/or generally loose stools. Relying on caffeine to stimulate bowel movements however, can lead to a host of digestive system challenges as well as nutritional deficiencies. Caffeine blocks the absorption of numerous minerals including calcium, magnesium and zinc. Coffee and tea also contain tannins which inhibit iron absorption.
For tips on supporting your bowel health, click here.
Some signs and symptoms caffeine may not be benefiting your health:
Your heart rate increases after consuming it
You suffer from anxiety or have anxious feelings regularly
Jittery hands
Brain fog
Muscle tension
Magnesium deficiency
Zinc deficiency
Digestive upsets or loose stools
Headaches
Some people’s health, energy, sleep, nutritional status, hormone balance and gut function are significantly better without caffeine. Yes, none. For others, their health parameters would improve if they consumed less caffeine. This might look like a single shot of coffee three days a week and away from food, instead of a double shot two to three times a day. Other people are fine with a coffee each day. Or perhaps tea doesn’t bring on any challenging symptoms, whereas coffee does. Start to notice how caffeine from any source leads you to feel and make choices that serve YOUR individual health needs.
Is it time you reassessed your caffeine intake?
Thanks for reading!
References
Nehling, Astrid; Alexander, Stephen P.H. (2018). Interindividual Differences in Caffeine Metabolsim and Factors Driving Caffeine Consumption. Pharmacological Reviews, 70(2), 384-411. doi: 10.1124/pr.117.014407
Denden, S.; Bouden, B.; Haj Khelil, A.; Ben Chibani, J.; Hamdaoui, M.H. (2016). Gender and ethnicity modify the association between the CYP1A2 rs762551 polymorphism and habitual coffee intake: evidence from a meta-analysis. Genetics and Molecular Research, 15(2), –. doi:10.4238/gmr.15027487
A girl might be 10 years old, and life is good. Her energy is fine. She might have some challenges with friends at school from time to time, but otherwise, everything is okay. As she gets a bit older, her breasts start to bud and her hips start to broaden and to do this the body usually has to store some more body fat. This is the result of an increase in estrogen production. Some girls feel a bit “puffy” or swollen as this occurs, and this can be distressing for some of them as they feel or are told that they look “fat”. After a few months of her family noticing that she has become somewhat moody—not every day, but a few times a week she might be snappy, for example—everyone writes it off as “stress” at school or jokes that the “hormones must be starting”.
Then menstruation begins, and for so many girls today the loss of menstrual blood is heavy, painful, and clotty, right from the beginning. Days at school are missed each month. Sport is interrupted too. Sometimes menstruation is regular; other times, months are missed. But when it comes, it is so very painful.
Let’s take a deeper look at this scenario and what all of this really means.
Pituitary gland
When a girl first starts to menstruate, it is the first time that her pituitary gland, at the base of her brain, has ever attempted to cyclically communicate with her ovaries. Each month, her pituitary gland sends messages via hormones to her ovaries that stimulate an egg to ripen and enable ovulation. However, initially, this pathway of communication between the pituitary and the ovaries is somewhat like a goat track—it’s not well established or clear. Sometimes the messages get through; sometimes they miss. It takes about five years for these pathways of communication to become like a five-lane highway.
Estrogen
As you read in the scenario above, estrogen is the first female sex hormone to be made in any great quantity in a girl’s body. As beautiful as estrogen can be as a hormone, it can also wreak havoc when it is present in excessive amounts and/or without the buffering effects of another hormone – progesterone. An excess of estrogen is often what makes periods heavy, clotty and painful in the first place. When a girl first starts to menstruate, she can easily be in a state of estrogen excess (or ‘estrogen dominant’ in the later part of her cycle), until regular, cyclical ovulation is established.
Supporting both estrogen metabolism and progesterone production can assist in helping a newly menstruating female to innately balance her hormones and ease the symptoms of estrogen excess.
Supporting estrogen metabolism
Once a unit of estrogen has been made and done its job, it cannot be immediately eliminated. Its structure first has to be changed (detoxified) by the liver and the gut also plays a role. To put it simply, the liver is responsible for an endless list of tasks, so it prioritises what it needs to detoxify. Because the body makes estrogen itself, the liver doesn’t see it as a high priority item. Instead, it will prioritise dealing with potentially problematic substances we’re exposed to in our environment via what we eat, drink, absorb through our skin, and inhale. Remember too, that some environmental pollutants, such as pesticides, herbicides, and substances in plastics (please never heat plastic of any kind; this means don’t put it in the dishwasher), can mimic estrogen, adding to your load. Reducing your exposure to what I refer to as ‘liver loaders’, helps the liver to do its job more efficiently.
To prepare estrogen for elimination, it must undergo two phases of detoxification in the liver and one in the gut. Imagine that the pathways along which estrogen needs to travel to be detoxified are like lanes on a motorway. As the estrogen tries to merge into the traffic, if there’s congestion already there (from the rubbish in ultra-processed food, drinks, skincare etc.), the estrogen has to slow down rather than effortlessly merge into the traffic. That’s phase 1 – you don’t want estrogen to have to slow down or be unable to merge. Once estrogen is successfully through phase 1, its structure has been slightly changed and now it is ready to travel along the phase 2 pathways. The challenge is, these roads might be even more congested (due to lousy lifestyle choices, nutrient deficiencies and/or genetics), making it difficult or slow for estrogen to complete its liver detoxification. All of these factors contribute further to a state of estrogen excess. Once a unit of estrogen gets through these two phases in the liver, imagine it is delivered to the gut inside an envelope. Ideally, the envelope stays sealed and you eliminate this estrogen in your faeces. However, if you have too many lousy types of gut bacteria (rather than plenty of good ones), they can produce an enzyme (beta-glucuronidase) that can open the envelope. This ‘reactivates’ the estrogen and you recycle it, adding even further to the excess estrogen.
Ways to support estrogen detoxification
Eat a wide variety of whole, real foods, including plenty of plants
Incorporate Brassica vegetables into your diet daily; these include broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. Broccoli and broccoli sprouts contain some of the highest levels of the substances you need for efficient estrogen detoxification
Minimise ‘liver loaders’ such as synthetic, ‘fake’ ingredients found in many ultra-processed foods, caffeine, and household cleaning and beauty products made from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as parabens
A dairy free way of eating for two months or two menstrual cycles (as a trial initially); it must be done super strictly for the trial period to see if this will make a difference; read all food labels
Ensure adequate hydration: – for a teenage girl this is about 2L per day
Significantly minimise/remove refined sugars (minimising processed foods and drinks can be a simpler focus)
Ensure bowel movements are occurring daily (helpful tips here)
Incorporate an organic green drink: powdered/ground green vegetables and grasses that you add to water. Good quality, organic green powders can offer concentrated sources of some key active ingredients that help support efficient liver detoxification, particularly estrogen metabolism.
Progesterone
Progesterone can be thought of as the cool, calm and collected hormone and its production is something we really want to help foster in our teens. Progesterone plays a role in maintaining the lining of the endometrium in the second stage of the menstrual cycle – estrogen lays it down and progesterone holds it in place. Yet it also acts as a natural anti-depressant, an anti-anxiety agent, and it is a diuretic, meaning that it allows a female to get rid of any excess fluid (recall the ‘puffiness’ mentioned in the scenario above). Once a female has started to menstruate, the main place from which she makes progesterone is her ovaries, but this only happens after she has ovulated – progesterone is made from the crater that remains on the surface of the ovary (the corpus luteum) after the egg has been released. And if she’s not ovulating because the pituitary-ovarian communication axis is still being established, or due to relentless stress hormone production, nutrient deficiencies, or she takes the Pill (to name just a few reasons), then her body is not able to make this monthly supply of progesterone and she misses out on all of its biological benefits.
Adrenal progesterone
The other place her body will make progesterone from is the adrenal glands; however, a good way to imagine this, is that it will do so only if the body believes she is “safe”. So, if she is churning out adrenaline and cortisol because she is worrying about her grades, what her friends are saying, boys, girls, fitting in, that her clothes don’t fit the way they used to, or there’s discord at home, for example, then her body can easily get the message that her life is in danger and that there is no food left in the world (because historically that’s what these two stress hormones have communicated to the body). Moreover, the female body links progesterone to fertility (because most of it is made after ovulation), so the last thing it wants is to bring a baby into a world where it perceives she is not safe and where there is no food. So, her body will likely shut down the adrenal production of progesterone, thinking it is doing her a great, big favour. Park the fertility aspect of what I have just said and consider the other biological consequences of low or no progesterone production: low mood, anxieties, fluid retention.
Ways to support progesterone production
Implement stress management techniques such as spending time in nature, embracing activities that bring joy to your daughter, encourage conversations, run a nice warm bath with Epsom salts and lavender oil to enhance relaxation and magnesium for muscle relaxation, a daily breath-focused practice such as Stillness Through Movement, yin yoga, tai chi, meditation, journaling
Create a new habit of not using backlit devices such as TVs, computers, smartphones, and tablets for 90 minutes prior to sleep as these emit a sleep-disturbing light.
Assess nutrient deficiencies such as zinc, selenium, magnesium, vitamin B6, vitamin D
Increase food sources of zinc (oysters, red meat, eggs, seeds), selenium (Brazil nuts), magnesium (green leafy vegies, nuts, seeds), and vitamin B6 (beef liver, fish, poultry, chickpeas, green leafy vegies, bananas) and support safe sun exposure for vitamin D
Herbal medicine may be appropriate (if guided by a medical herbalist): Paeonia and licorice is a synergistic combination of herbs that can help to support pituitary-ovarian communication and hence regular, cyclical ovulation.
Please remember, it’s important to give the teenage body time during this phase to establish clear communication between the pituitary and the ovaries that fosters regular ovulation. This transition doesn’t need to be uncomfortable or life-limiting.
For further support, you can learn more via my online webinar ‘Period Problems’ here.
Could a solution to slowing the degenerative processes in our body be right beneath our feet? Studies explore Earthing (also known as grounding)—a practice which typically involves direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, such as walking barefoot—and its potential anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body.
Inflammation is one of the ways our immune system responds to a substance it deems problematic. These substances can enter the body via the food and drinks we consume, the air we breathe, and even what we absorb through our skin. When your immune system perceives that a foreign substance has entered, it mounts a powerful attack on the unwelcome visitor. Part of that response is to create inflammation (the heat, swelling and redness), which occurs wherever the immune system is engaged in a battle—in the tissues of your face, in your blood vessels, and/or in your vital organs, for example. In other words, it isn’t always visible. Inflammation is essential for keeping us alive, but when prolonged, damage can occur.
The Earth’s surface holds a vibrational energy, caused, in part, by particles called free electrons. Studies have hypothesised that connecting the body to the Earth’s surface can enable these free electrons to spread into the body, having an antioxidant effect to slow down or even prevent inflammation and free radical damage.
A review of earthing research done by the Developmental and Cell Biology Department of the University of California at Irvine found that that reconnecting the body to the Earth’s surface, resulted in significant improvements in sleep disturbances and chronic pain. One of the studies reviewed involved randomly assigning subjects with sleep or pain disorders to sleep on conductive carbon fibre mattress pads, half of which were connected to the Earth’s surface, and half of which were not. The subjects who were connected to the Earth reported a significant improvement in quality of sleep, feeling rested upon waking, muscle stiffness and pain, and general well-being when compared to the control subjects. The review concluded that more research does need to be conducted, but that Earthing very well may be an essential element in the quest to increase human longevity.
We don’t always need to know how and why things work—perhaps the way we feel when we consistently do something (as long as it’s not harming us) is enough.
When we look at children and the way they move and interact with nature, whether it’s jumping in dirty puddles, crunching on the autumn leaves, or rolling around on the freshly cut grass—is this their innate wiring, or perhaps a knowing of the powerful relationship we hold with Mother Earth?
When was the last time you felt the sand between your toes or the lush grass beneath your feet? How can you prioritise spending some more time in nature today?
I hope this brings further curiosity about, and an even deeper appreciation for the land we are part of every single day.
