Understanding Pain & Inflammation in the Peri-menopause & Beyond (Ep 21)

Join our in house nutritionist Hannah to explore pain and what you can do about it naturally in the Peri-menopause & beyond.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to this solo episode with me, Hannah Carr, and today I'm speaking to you about understanding pain and inflammation, particularly in women above the age of 35. So if you're in your perimenopausal years or beyond that, why is it that we get pain and inflammation, and really what I'm looking to do is to provide some education, but also to empower you to understand like the underlying cause and what you can do about it. So what are some of the natural solutions? So I was answering some questions inside our membership this morning. Actually related to ulcers in the stomach, and a member was saying that she wants to come off medication So that's the reason that we love natural solutions to things is the only side effects. Tend to be the positive ones, the benefits that we actually want, and there isn't this huge downside, this huge payoff that in 10 or 20 years we're gonna find out this other negative impact on our health. So it is really common to experience pain. Probably everyone in their lifetime has experienced pain. What we're really talking about here is the ongoing pain, the kind of chronic pain, meaning anything that's lasting longer than three months and one that might be impacting your life and you're looking for a solution and maybe you're looking to understand what's going on as well. So a very basic level, what I'd say is it's the body. Trying to feed back something to you that something may be out of balance. It's in a communication with you. Obviously we have these short term pains, which may be more of like a twisted ankle, where that pain is protective, and it's only gonna be there for. Probably a number of days or weeks. We're talking about the things that go on for longer, and there's lots and lots of reasons for it, but some of the reasons we may experience it more in perimenopause and beyond is our changing hormones. So when estrogen is, declining, then we are losing some of the anti-inflammatory effects of estrogen. Progesterone also affects your, pain threshold and when we're feeling really stressed and cortisol is increased, this may mean that we're gonna feel more inflamed, and that's also more likely during this. Stage of life. So there's so many ways that pain can show up. Some of our members were saying things like lower back pain, migraines, obviously joint pain. We got quite a lot come up in the feet actually for women inside our membership. But there's definitely a lot with, stomach IBS like I mentioned, someone was asking about ulcers this morning, but also pain throughout the body, like fibromyalgia, migraines, and headaches. There's so many, ways that we can experience it and. I've just run a session on this inside a membership doing a deep dive actually, and what I shared, and I may have shared it in one previous podcast, is I've had quite a big recent experience with pay myself, and I know Sarah's been here and done this work too, which is the opportunity. To not try and fix pain, not even naturally, to not need to medicate it, but to actually be with it and just to sit with it and to really honor and witness that pain. Often when discomfort is coming up in the body, things just want to be witnessed. They want to be seen and not pushed away or ignored. So just doing that in itself can actually allow the pain to disappear. So that is one option. Obviously we lead busy lives. You may be juggling the kids work, elderly parents, and it just may be that you need some relief and you are looking to help yourself in a natural way. And what I've really found with paper I've suffered in my life is there was a real massive link between. What I'm consuming. So mainly diet wise and how I'm feeling. So I'll give you a little example. When I used to drink alcohol regularly, when I would brush my teeth, I'd have bleeding gums. Now that is a sign of inflammation in the body. I know my inflammation's reduced a lot because when I go for my checkups at the dentist and they check my gums, there is no inflammation anymore in my gums. And the main thing that I've changed, well, I've changed a lot of things. I've changed my thoughts, I've changed the way I be, but I've changed my diet a lot from having an unknowingly inflammatory diet. So that would've included things like at the time, lots of white bread and sugary snacks and alcohol. And you know what? I was younger so I probably could get away with it. Apart from these bleeding gums, I wasn't really feeling it too much in the body. Now. I couldn't really eat those foods probably for two reasons. One, I'm not used to it. So then I would feel the effects of having it. And two, because when you're a little bit older, you can't quite get away with what you did when you were younger, often in your body. So there's so much that you can change in your diet, but some of the key foods to avoid are the ones we know that are no good for us, right? The processed sugars, the processed foods, the refined carbs, the alcohol, the seed oils. But what I like to focus on as a nutritionist is not what you have to remove, because that can feel very hard in our daily life. But what is it that you can bring in? So for example, what's really, really good for inflammation and pain in the body is omega threes. And there's a few different ways to get omega threes. You probably know through oily fish like salmon, macro, sardines. But you can also get that through things like chia seeds, flax seeds, walnuts, as well. How much of those are we really eating in our diet? So if you was to lay out all your food for a week, do you remember Jillian McKee who used to do that on the tv? Lay all the food out you've eaten for a week. How much is that actually going to make up of your diet? So often, because we want Omega-3 to be higher than omega six in the body, to reduce inflammation, we do need to supplement. And there's different ways to do that for vegans and different ways to do that for omnivores as well. So I think a very simple way to reduce inflammation in the body is to pay attention to what's already happening. So if you have that curry on the weekend, and it might have those seed oils in it, or a takeaway pizza, like how is your body feeling the next day? Are you notice that you're more inflamed? And what are the signs of inflammation for you? Is it stiffness? Is it pain? Is it, like I mentioned, the bleeding gums, Is it, perhaps for you, you notice that your face gets puffy? What's going on for you? So first of all, I think it's to be the observer of what is already happening in your body. So there's a lot more to say about food. And I've recorded the whole higher awareness session in our women's health membership, the Holistic Health Circle. It's an amazing place for women. Where you can access it online, all the support that you need in the perimenopause and in the session this month, I've shared, two different menu plans. One for omnivore. So omnivore means people who eat everything including meat. And then one plant-based, menu plan as well. And then we've got a four week challenge running. So every week we're just focusing on a different, it could be supplement or simple habit. To help you reduce pain and inflammation in your body in a structured way. Because sometimes even when we listen to a session with all the information, we can kind of walk away just knowing it, but not actually changing our habits or embodying it. And that is the most important thing. Now, there are lots and lots of different herbs that can help pain and inflammation in the body. So they could be herbs that you buy as a tincture, perhaps even as a capsule. Or simply as a tea. I do love to use teas. Actually. I find'em a really easy way to not need to have other drinks like tea and coffee with caffeine in it, but to drink herbal teas to hydrate the body, that's a break just from water that has a nice flavor, but actually has benefits to the body as well. So you could use herbs for different reasons. You may use herbs to sleep, for example, but in this case, you could use herbs for pain. One of those is called Kaile, which you probably will know that one. Well, you use it. It's great for kind of gut health, for calming in inflammation, for helping your sleep. And that one's actually in our self-love blend. So on our website, holistic health collective.co.uk, we've made up a women's. Self-love blend of herbs, and that is one of the herbs in there. The other ones are calender, which is amazing for the skin and the gut as well. You've got red clover in there, which is really good for, these perimenopausal years supporting our menstrual cycle. And the last herb in that blend is rose. And Rose is very soft, very feminine, very calming for the body. It's got a delicious taste, so check that out. there are other herbs as well, such as white willow and Valium that you could try. There's of course, essential oils that you can bring into place that can really help the body. I mean, what's your favorite essential oil? Why don't you drop us a message over. Perhaps on Instagram at at Holistic Health Collective uk. We'd love to hear what kind of oils are working for you, but a little bit more with the diet., Things like digestive enzymes can be really, really helpful electrolytes that are gonna be helping your hydration. And we are looking at some less well-known supplements such as MSM, which can really reduce inflammation in the body. And spirulina, you know, people aren't really talking about spirulina for reducing inflammation, but because it was antioxidant properties actually helps to reduce inflammation as well. There's other things that we can do, so. To reduce pain and inflammation in the body, we actually need to keep the body moving. This is really important and we feel that we. Are in pain. We often want to stop and be still, but the body always needs movement. So we need to find daily ways to move the body. you can do your non-weight bearing exercises such as, for example, your swimming, particularly if you're in pain, that might be really soothing for you. especially if you could get outdoors in nature and may mean imagine doing some wild swimming. I went wild swimming, the reeds were around me and the ducks and sunshine and the breeze. It was absolutely beautiful and then also for paint and information, it's really, I. Like I said at the beginning, observing when it's worse, but noticing other than food, what else is going on? So are you more stressed at that moment or are you more irritated about something or someone. Or what are your thoughts? Your thoughts about yourself, your thoughts toward yourself? This is all more the inner exploration, but equally and sometimes more important so we can create our own dis-ease in our body. Simply through our faults. If we are always berating ourselves, if we're always judging ourselves, if we're always feeling not enough, this creates a lot of limitations in our body, and limitations could show up as pain and inflammation. So perhaps the biggest takeaway from this short podcast this week is to really know your body and to know when you're feeling inflamed or in pain and when you're not and what's different. And then starting to make some changes through the diet, perhaps adding some herbs that we spoke about. But if you would really like to dive into this in a deeper way, this is our whole month's focus inside a women's health membership. I mentioned earlier The holistic health circle. It's our favorite place to be online, and I've gone much more deeply into the supplements, the dosages, the different herbs, the oils that you can use, some more movements. And we have our four weeks of challenge, either that you can do in real time with us or that you could do in your own time. So go and check it out. I'll drop the link in the show notes here. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you've got any feedback, any comments, any suggestions, you wanna share, anything that works for you with your body, then drop us an email at hello@holistichealthcollective.co.uk. We would love to connect. Bye for now.