Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

 

 

Show Notes

Alison Bladh BSc (hons), mBANT, mCNHC, mNMTF, CIDESCO
Nutritional Therapy

Website: https://www.alisonbladh.com/
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+46 70 664 5797

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Transcript

My guest today is Alison Bladh.

Alison is an award-winning registered nutritional therapist and beauty esthetician.

She's passionate about empowering women to reclaim their health during menopause.

She does this through helping them with nutrition, mindset, and lifestyle modifications.

She's amazed to see how simple changes improve not only a woman's health and well-being, but their happiness.

Her mother was a professional chef who allowed her from a young age to help in the kitchen.

That, Alison says, was the beginning of her love for food.

She's traveled and lived in different parts of the world, experiencing different cultures, cuisines, and lifestyles.

Her underlying passion has always been about helping women overcome health issues so they can look and feel amazing.

She believes that with nutritious food, a positive mind-sight, mindset, and health-promoting lifestyle choices, the body can heal itself and age healthy.

Like myself, she appears to focus on solutions, not problems.

She says her aim is to focus on positive nutrition, not restriction.

It's about what you can include in your diet, not what you should not eat.

She's British and currently lives in Sweden.

Welcome to my show, Alison.

Thank you so much.

It's lovely to be here.

Thank you for having me on your show.

So tell me about your backstory real quick, because you have the cooking.

I see you with apron on, and your recipes look delicious as well as healthy, and they're going to help women with menopause and aging and all kinds of health problems.

But you also do these lifestyle coaching consultations.

It's more than just food.

Tell me how you got into this, doing what you're doing.

Yeah, a very long story short, it started when I was a teenager.

I had very bad skin.

I had acne when I was growing up, which I mean, it's hard enough being a teenager, isn't it, without suddenly developing a face full of acne.

And that really led me down the hormone route, because I wanted to know what was going on in my skin.

So even as a teenager, I started looking into, you know, is it something I'm eating?

Is it something I'm doing?

And I really changed my diet and my lifestyle, and I saw how it improved my skin.

So that led me into my interest in love for hormones and the skin.

And so I trained to become an esthetician, a puty-herit.

Oh, right, yep, yep.

Initially.

And because of my interest in hormones, I attracted clients or worked with clients that had hormonal problems with their skin, which is or can happen during perimenopause, menopause.

So I particularly worked with that group of women, very soon came to realize that you need the inside piece as well.

You know, it's okay, it's great with esthetic treatments, but you need to think about what is going on in the inside.

As in what we eat.

Yeah, that plays a huge role in how we are, in every aspect of our well-being.

We are what we eat.

I was about to say that, as in what we eat.

Yeah, it's very true.

And I remember as I was growing up, my mother and all her family members, her friends that were going through menopause, were really suffering.

And it was kind of that, well, you don't talk about it.

You just kind of get on with it.

It's just the change, a phase of life.

And I mean, it still really isn't spoken about now.

It's getting better.

It's because women, they know they're going to get a backlash or just get over it, or the negative feedback, or why do you suppose that is?

Because it almost seems like they're shy to talk about it, except when they're in a bad mood and they blame it on that because they have to.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's many reasons for it, and we're all very individual, but menopause is shrouded with negativity, isn't it?

It's kind of this, oh, you're aging as a woman, you're no longer going to be fertile.

It is this phase in life that maybe is taking away a little bit of your feminism, which is nonsense, I think, but it's still shrouded by that.

It's not thought in a positive way, not in the Western world anyway.

So I think women don't want to talk about it because, one, they don't get the support that they need, and two, because of it's shrouded with this negativity.

Because we do live in a society, don't we, of ageism.

We all want to remain and look young.

I think that is changing.

But it's all about preserving, isn't it?

And trying to look as young as possible.

And I think menopause really is.

So you have a discovery call.

You noticed when your service is, you do just, you do em, you talk to women first.

And then what are the steps with the menopause that you do in terms of, do you want to start with the food, that we are what we eat, or do you start with the lifestyle, the mindset?

What's the process?

I work very individually.

I do also do group programs as well, which are very successful.

But when I work individually with clients, I work with a functional medicine model, which means is you're really looking at the whole person, you know, why are you feeling the way that you do?

So we do a full health questionnaire, where we look at everything, you know, in your, in your life, why are you feeling like this?

And then really get into the-

Oh, that's because you, for listeners who haven't gone to her website, see what she does, it's not just menopause that she helps women with.

You could be at any stage in your life, right?

And have kind of symptoms or just want to get healthier.

That's kind of why you take that approach.

Yeah.

I mean, I predominantly work with women over 40.

Okay.

That is my niche, because that's where I've always worked, and that's why I have many, many years' experience.

But of course, I work with other people as well.

But majority of my clients are women over 40 that are coming into that kind of hormonal stage in their life and starting to see changes.

But you need the nutrition piece, you need the lifestyle piece, the way that you're thinking, the mindset piece.

All of this really needs to be in place to reach wellness.

Because there's so many things that go on when we have a decline in our hormones as women, and there's science behind that.

There's a reason why we need our hormones.

And when we don't have them anymore, that's when we can start experiencing menopausal symptoms and feeling anxiety and the emotional side of it as well.

It's very real.

So as long as we're on hormones, one of my listeners asked me when I said you were going to be on my show, she's gone through menopause and she's either on hormone replacement or doesn't want to be or is, she's concerned.

What do you think about hormone replacement?

The medical versus trying to do it with just nutritional?

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm not a doctor.

That isn't my specialty, hormone replacement therapy.

I think when we're looking at women that are going into menopause or are past that, because there's different stages of menopause, that it's an individual choice.

And what I say to women is be informed, get all that information in front of you, what forms of hormone replacement therapy are available.

Is that something that I want to look at?

Is that something I want to take?

Or do I want to use nutrition and lifestyle?

But one thing that we have to remember is there isn't any form of nutrition or lifestyle that is going to replace your hormones.

That isn't possible.

If you want to replace your hormones, then it is hormone replacement therapy.

Sometimes you read things, don't you?

Or if you eat this.

But that isn't science-based.

That's pretty logical.

That's the way you said it's pretty straightforward.

I think what they're really asking is, can I, by eating different diet, like you help them with, can I avoid getting hormone replacement?

Can it balance itself out even though it won't be a perfect replacement?

Nothing is going to replace your hormones, no matter how much you eat of the healthy foods.

However, and I see this with many of my clients that don't take hormone replacement therapy, that if you do all the pieces right, you look after yourself, you exercise, you eat good nutrition, you can get through menopause very well by doing that.

What we have to think about with hormone replacement therapy is that, when we as women get into what we call post-menopause, so that's when you've gone through menopause, you're no longer fertile, you're no longer producing oestrogen and progesterone that we have a higher risk of chronic diseases, such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, our bone health.

Stay healthy because you don't have the hormones.

As a man, I'm just assuming the woman, when she says hormones, she's thinking about sex.

Yeah, I get that the hormones are just a chemical, yeah, they do serve other functions.

So without it, you're susceptible to these other diseases.

Absolutely.

I mean, oestrogen and progesterone, and now we're just talking about those two hormones, there's many other hormones, are crucial virtually for all bodily processes.

We, just as you said, we think more of oestrogen and progesterone for reproduction, but they're not.

We have oestrogen and progesterone receptors all over our body.

For example, the brain, when we go through menopause, all of a sudden, you can't focus or you have this brain fog, you can't remember things, you feel a bit anxious.

It's basically to do with oestrogen is the messenger, the receptors there in the brain waiting for this message to come up to it to tell it what to do, but the message never comes because you're no long producing oestrogen.

So that affects your cognitive health, but it's the same all over the body.

Oestrogen is a master hormone.

It's needed for metabolism.

It's needed for homeostasis in the whole body.

So what's something simple in terms of, what is the first thing a woman could do in terms of, say, they're listening right now and they're getting it, we need to eat better.

And your recipes on your website are awesome.

They look delicious.

I would never guess.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, they're not just for eating well.

If you don't need to go through menopause to cook like this, it's great.

It looks wonderful.

But they are.

What's like some simple takeaways in terms of what can I start eating to help with all these mood swings and the weight loss and the brain fog?

Yeah, I think one, I mean, there's many things you can do, but one key thing that will give you a big result is to remove processed, refined foods from your diet.

I mean, we're living in a world now, unfortunately, where it's quite toxic, the food environment.

When I say processed foods, I mean, everything that comes in a package, that when you look on the back of it, it's maybe got 10, 20, 30 different ingredients that you don't even understand what they are.

High in sugar, high in bad fats, terrible for you.

So you just need to get back to basics.

I like the way you're going through this, because when you hear processed food, the definition that I imagine is, I'm not eating at McDonald's, so I'm not eating packaged food, I'm not eating a hot dog.

But in fact, you're right, like you just want simple vegetables.

Like I can't get a can of peas at the store these days, a can of peas without sugar being added.

And that means other stuff's added.

Until I get home and go look at the calories, how can there be that many calories in a can of peas?

That's terrible.

I mean, we don't need sugar and peas, do we?

No.

But it's all about just, and it doesn't have to be complicated.

I mean, all my recipes are very easy to do.

I'm very much into making it realistic, so you can do it at home.

But thinking about buying whole food, so buying vegetables, a piece of broccoli, a cauliflower, nothing in packages, in boxes.

I would say if it has more than four to five ingredients, and you don't know what they are, you shouldn't be eating it because it's probably chemical-based.

And protein, if you eat meat, fish, meat, eggs, dairy products, and then fat.

I mean, fat is something we think.

I grew up in the era where if you eat, it was totally everything was fat-free.

But now we've realized that that actually was not very good for us, because if you look at the rates of obesity worldwide, they have increased considerably.

Then we realized that we need fat.

We don't just need to eat carbohydrates, we need healthy fats.

And it's all about the sort of fat you're eating.

And as women, not just in menopause, we really need fat for hormone production, for brain health, for, you know, fat is needed for every cell in the body.

Olive oil, avocados.

They get the fat.

I was about to ask, so where do you get the fat from besides?

Because if you're trying to eat lean fish like salmon, it doesn't have as much fat.

Where do you get your fat from?

It's the oils and stuff like avocados that have built-in fat.

I mean, salmon is a wonderful source of omega-3.

So like fatty fish is a great source of the omega-3 oils, which are very beneficial for the body.

But olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocado, good old-fashioned butter, full fat butter, coconut oil, whole proper healthy fats.

The fats that we find in processed foods have been heated up to considerable temperatures so they can change their chemical composition and can cause inflammation in the body, amongst other things.

So thinking about the fats that you use in your cooking and what you eat is really important.

So starts with going to the grocery store and actually putting the real vegetables and fruit and meat in the cart and not stay away from the frozen section where it's already like microwave dinners are easy to package, to package the definition.

Yeah, just go back to basics, eating real food and like I say, it doesn't have to be complicated.

We're very, we live in a society, don't we, where everything has to be very fast and quick.

So if you pick these packaged foods up and shove them in the microwave, but you're not doing your health, any benefits long-term eating that sort of food is terrible for you.

And then what do you suggest in terms of a lifestyle?

So that starts with the food, avoid the package.

What's the one or two simple things next with lifestyle?

One key thing that I always work on with clients first is stress management, because stress is so detrimental for our health.

And we can find as women, when we age as women and come into menopause, because of all the hormone fluctuations, we can become overwhelmed and stress things that maybe didn't stress us out so much before, we just find that we can't handle these smaller things.

So stress management for overall health is crucial.

And also the stress hormone cortisol, which is released when we're stressed, if you're constantly got that in your blood circulation, it has other detrimental effects, like one of them is fat storage.

So if you're trying to lose weight, it's very difficult to lose weight if you're constantly stressed.

So what can you do?

I mean, this is the big question, isn't it, with stress?

Because it feels like the world that we live in at the moment, everybody's suffering from chronic stress.

It just seems to be part of our society.

But one, you need to acknowledge that you are feeling stressed, because we kind of just steam on, don't we?

Oh, no, I'm busy.

I've got to do this.

I've got to do that.

But you just need to make time, and it doesn't have to be complicated.

Things like deep breathing, it's a brilliant thing for stress, because it resets your nervous system into the relaxation state, the parasympathetic nervous system.

Things like just sitting down, looking outside, having a cup of tea, and just relaxing for five minutes, really having no interruptions.

We've got so much stimulation, haven't we, with all devices and social media and everything like that.

We're constantly being bombarded with stimulants.

Speaking of which, I had a problem with my phone recently, where I wasn't getting text messages, and I was in a small town for a bit, so I couldn't go to the big city to get my phone fixed, and it didn't work.

It was like, my gosh, how relieved, how low stress it was just not to have to get text messages.

My phone would still work.

I just didn't have text messages.

So like you're saying, just didn't have a cup of tea.

But I think I would add to that, put your phone down or on silence.

Even turn it off.

I mean, I know that sounds scary for some people.

I always recommend with clients that turn your phone off before you go to bed.

I'd like for an hour, a couple of hours, when you need to unwind and relax so you'll sleep well, turn your phone off.

Or if you can't do that, put it in another room.

Don't have it in the bedroom.

Yeah, it's amazing how we take it for granted, and that's actually what's causing stress.

So that's lifestyle.

And then the third one is mindset.

And what do you do for mindset?

Yeah, again, everyone's individual, but as we get age as women and come into menopause, you can feel overwhelmed.

And it's very easy to kind of go down that rabbit hole of, oh, everything's terrible, and it's, oh, this is all doom and gloom, and it's the end, and I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

You really have to start thinking about the way you talk to yourself.

You want to talk to yourself in a more positive way, rather than saying everything's terrible all the time.

Because doing that has an effect on your overall health and also stress.

If you're constantly being negative and saying how terrible you feel and, oh, this is awful, it causes stress.

So what I do with clients is really ask them to look more on the positive.

I know it's not easy.

I'm not saying you can be super positive all the time, but really think about your self-talk and also appreciating what you have in your life, being grateful, writing gratitude journals or just every morning, just writing down a couple of things that you're grateful for every day.

Because if you think about a lot of us have a wonderful life, we've got food on the table, we've got somewhere to live, we're in relationships or whatever you're grateful for.

I think we tend to forget that, don't we?

We do take things for granted a lot.

We're built to only think the negative, what's wrong, what's the next problem I can solve instead of every, you know, what have I got that's okay.

So speaking of which, in terms of positivity, I remember reading someplace that there's actually a positive thing about a woman's body having this transition, say, compared to a man where we don't have it as much, and maybe we should because we're getting older.

And there's a reason to turn off the childbirth hormones or whatever, because you know, you don't want to have maybe a child when you're at that age.

And so let's shut it down.

Because is there is something positive about that, right?

Like the body is saying, okay, we'll save it.

We'll do something different intentionally.

Right?

Yeah.

And I mean, isn't nature is amazing, isn't it?

There's always a reason for everything.

You know, our bodies are this fantastic thing.

And just as you said, there is a reason for everything.

We don't, there's theories around why we think this happens.

But, you know, we don't fully understand.

But what one of the theories is, is that, exactly as you say, I mean, really, as we age, is it appropriate to have a child, you know, when you're older?

You know, have you got the energy and strength to look after a child?

It's really, you know, our childbearing years maybe should be when we're younger as women.

I'm sure that's probably quite a controversial topic as well.

But I think just if you're looking purely at nature and humans, that we weren't meant to have children when we were older as women.

And what the theory is is that, you know, the older women were the ones that would then, because they were no longer fertile, they were no longer having children, they were there in the communities to then look after, you know, their grandchildren or the children that were there.

So the people, the parents of these children could then go out and work and hunt for food and do all of those things.

So they became more like the leaders of the community and looked after the children so the other parents could go out and work.

Besides shedding it off, though, to following that logic, which seems almost, you know, common sense.

What I was speaking of is more over, okay, I'm done with that.

I have 10 kids.

What can I do?

Yeah, I don't need anymore.

My group has enough, my community has enough new children.

Now, what if I shut this feature off in my body because it's taking a lot of energy.

Like, you know, eat food, it takes energy to digest and, you know, any process.

Now, yeah, I'm going to get some, you know, maybe I didn't need to shut all this stuff down, the hormones.

Like you say, there's reasons for everything.

But what I was going after in terms of the positive thing is maybe nobody understands why he has a theory.

But I know there has to be one besides it's I'm too old to have kids.

It's more to me, there's got to be something positive, like going through this change because I'm done with that.

I'm in a new chapter of my life and I need a new body for that.

And car is not perfect yet.

I've got new tires on it, whatever, but I'm working through it.

But it's going to be good.

There has to be something positive about it.

Yeah, it's a new phase, isn't it?

It's like you say, you've kind of done that thing.

You transition into a new phase and you see that.

I think what I think is fabulous with women is that they all of a sudden think, right, this is my next phase of life and I'm going to do what I wanted to do.

I'm going to do something wild and crazy, go off and sell up and buy a camper van and drive across the outback of Australia.

You see that a lot of women set up their own companies when they're in the mid-60s.

There is that, yeah, that new phase of life.

So back to the food.

Are there any, this was one of my thoughts.

Are there any secret spices ingredients?

We talked about going to the food and you get a shopping cart and you get real food, no packages.

Is there any spices, ingredients, condiments, things you can add to help with the menopause symptoms or just the different phase of your life?

Yes.

Spices are wonderful.

There's so many, I think in general, we don't use enough fresh herbs and spices in our cooking.

But for example, turmeric is an amazing spice.

I mean, it's so anti-inflammatory.

That's one of its benefits.

And this turmeric, you can actually make turmeric into a drink.

You can use it like as a hot drink, a turmeric latte, if you want to call it that.

You can put it in stews, soups, very, very anti-inflammatory and very good for the body, very calming.

Things like ginger as well is wonderful for the digestive health.

Ginger tea.

Yeah, ginger tea and ginger.

You can use ginger actually in different cooking, but ginger tea is great.

I have that actually every morning, just grated ginger in hot water.

It's very, and it's good for nausea as well if you're feeling-

I guess you get a real piece of ginger, not a packaged because even a teabag is packaged.

Yeah.

Now, just a piece of like a ginger root, and I just grate it and put boiling water over it.

That's it.

Nothing else.

And then you've got lots of different spices that you can use.

Every single parsley, basil, all of those wonderful fresh herbs are so nutritious for us, but we tend to not use them as much as we should.

I mean, in the summer when you can grow herbs, have fresh herbs that you can just pick and put on the top of salads or whatever you're eating.

But they're very, very beneficial for health.

They're very good nutrient herbs.

So now we're on the food topic, you got me thinking, what if I want to cook a special dinner?

I was like, I just listened to Alison on Daniel's podcast and this is going to make for dinner.

That's going to surprise her and be good for her because she's just started to go through menopause.

What would I make her and the ingredients, like we've been speaking about the food and the spices and so forth?

Yeah.

What would you have for dinner?

Okay, from menopausal woman.

One thing we want to do is we want to have a nice piece of protein.

So if you eat meat or fish, I mean like white fish, a piece of cod maybe, but now we're talking fresh ingredients.

We're not talking something you buy in the freezer department.

I'm going to cook it.

Yeah, you're going to cook it.

Say a piece of cod or salmon, also with lovely oily fish.

You could bake that in the oven.

Very easy things to do is to bake the fish.

You can actually put it in a baking tray, put some tomatoes around it, put some olive oil on it, and then some fresh basil leaves on that, and then some black pepper.

And just put that in the oven basically and cook that.

And then when you take that out, the tomatoes and everything are done.

And then what I would have with that would be a nice like broccoli salad.

So what you can do with a broccoli salad is you like steam.

If you've got a steamer, you can steam the broccoli.

So it's still crunchy.

It's not that soggy vegetable feeling.

And then you can have with that some nice green like rockula leaves.

You could maybe put some cucumber in there, some peppers, red peppers, you know, for a bit of color.

And then what you can do on that, you could sprinkle some pine nuts or some sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds.

All of those contain like wonderful ingredients and nutrients and healthy fats.

And you would have that and you could serve it with, you know, some olive oil and some vinegar over the salad.

And maybe with a, for the fish, you could have a turmeric like cream dressing on the fish.

And what's in the turmeric dressing?

That would just be like creme fraiche and some, you would, you don't really want to grate turmeric in that, but you can buy turmeric powder.

So you would just put the turmeric powder in there.

You could have some lime juice and then just salt and pepper to taste.

And bread, is there rice to go with it?

No, no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's the concept when you're going in menopause, and you know, because you can actually gain weight.

That's one of the side effects of the loss of hormones.

So when I work with clients, we focus very much on protein and carbohydrates from vegetables.

But I mean, if you're not looking at weight management, you can have a small amount of carbohydrates from whole grains.

So with that dish that we were talking about, for example, you can maybe have some brown rice or a little bit of sweet potato.

Or we can just do without it.

Oh, sweet potatoes.

Yeah, you could have sweet, because that's a starchy carbohydrate.

And then what about to drink, besides water, or if it's water which you can add to it?

I was just going to say water.

Sparkling water, water, you really have to be careful with what you drink, because there can be a lot of calories and a lot of sugar unnecessarily in drinks.

I mean, water is my go-to thing.

But what you can do, if you don't want to drink water, which is delicious, you can, for example, have a jug of water, and in that you can use some fruit.

So you could squeeze some lemon juice in it, or lime juice.

If you buy frozen fruit, you can actually put them in the water.

So like strawberries or berries, cucumber is actually very nice in water.

So you can experiment with putting, you just basically chop the vegetables up and put them in the water and it gives it a little bit of taste.

That sounds kind of good, actually.

It's really refreshing, really, really, and very, very simple.

And if you do it with the sparkling water, it would be like one of those pre-packaged drinks you buy that.

Yeah, the saclet.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what could I make in the afternoon, say like a smoothie, although I know that sounds already like a lot of sugars and carbs.

Or where I'm going with this is I have a male friend whose partner is going through it, and he is really working hard and frustrated about lack of sex drive.

And I came up with this idea, like I would ask Alison, is it possible he could make like a smoothie or an afternoon, maybe it's like sparkling water, something with the red spices, to take the edge off for her, as it's challenging for him.

Do you have any ideas like that?

A smoothie.

Or it doesn't have to be a smoothie just besides the dinner.

So when the dinner is just a general health thing for menopause, this is more targeted specifically towards the sex drive.

Yeah, libido.

Yeah, I mean, that's a whole big subject, really, for where again, it goes back to hormones and also testosterone.

Testosterone for women, it's not necessarily related to men.

Well, it isn't related to menopause.

However, as we get age as women, our testosterone levels decline as they do with men.

So that can affect our sex drive, our libido, estrogen, progesterone, all of that can affect our libido.

Well, I just thought of a solution.

I don't know if it's the best one and the healthiest one.

But it seems to me that the other way to go is, as a man, it was kind of like a woman, and birth control is always on the woman, and it seems lopsided.

As a man, this would not be healthy, though.

Reduce my testosterone to match hers, basically reduce my libido, so my friend's not always...

There's a solution that popped into my head.

I mean, it's going back to this transition that we go through as women.

And in answer to your question about what you can eat, really, your question was really what you can eat for your libido, wasn't it, really?

I mean, there's so many factors that come into play when we talk about libido and menopause, because it can be the fact that you maybe are suffering from vaginal dryness, because the lack of estrogen affects that area, and it can be very, very discomfortable, you know, it causes a lot of discomfort for women.

It's so easy to fix.

You just basically go to your health care provider, and they give you a gel that is very safe.

It's not, obviously, hormone replacement therapy has, that's a big discussion.

So there's preparations that you can use that basically help.

So no woman should suffer from that.

But I also think that in the transition, you're changing.

You don't want to lose your libido.

Of course not, but it's just that imbalance of hormones that can make you feel less inclined, or your sexual desire isn't as much.

And don't forget, if you're having all these horrible symptoms, you've maybe put a little bit of weight on.

You're not feeling like yourself.

You're tired, you're exhausted, you're stressed.

It doesn't really fit in to having sex drive, does it?

There's many different things that come into play there, but I still haven't answered your question about-

Yeah, but you are, it's helping.

Yeah.

So I think food-wise, I mean, you hear, don't you, foods that are more like aphrodisiacs, but I mean, that isn't really what we're thinking about for menopause.

You want, if you're going to do, take a smoothie, for example, you need protein in there, but you want to be careful with smoothies that you're not consuming a lot of sugar.

Because if you put loads of fruit and things in there, you've all of a sudden got this really high calorie dense sugar drink.

So usually like vegetables, like more of a green smoothie, things like spinach, avocado.

I mean, you can have some berries in there, like blueberries, because they're lower in sugar.

And then to get more protein, you can put nuts and seeds in there.

But you can also, because sometimes it's difficult to get enough protein, you can use a protein powder, but just make sure you get a high quality one.

Really look at what is in the ingredients of that product that you're using.

But also, for libido, you don't want to eat too much either, do you?

If you're really like full.

And bloated and funky, yeah.

And then along the same lines, is there something just for a mood swing?

Like say, I'm a woman, I'm just having a mood swing.

This is not about libido, I'm just in that mood.

Is there anything specific for that?

Or is it a long-term kind of thing where just eating like we spoke of earlier, when you go shopping, no packaged foods, get some certain spices and so forth, just it's a long-term stable platform you're building, not an instant go-to for a mood change, you know, smoothie or something.

Exactly, it's learning to manage those moods.

And when you feel like you're going to get really irritated or have a mood swing, really just kind of backing off, doing some deep breathing is brilliant to just kind of calm yourself down.

But yeah, it's all about blood sugar balance that we were talking about, having control of your blood sugar, so you don't feel irritated.

High blood sugar can make you feel irritated and snappy and moody.

So really, if you just avoid ultra-processed foods, that will do a lot for your mood swings.

And acknowledging that you have mood swings due to menopause, I think, really helps.

And it also helps to talk to the people that are close to you.

That, you know, I'm going through this stage in my life.

I might be more irritated.

But this is why.

Because, you know, some men don't understand, do they?

They just know that their partner all of a sudden is changing.

And they're wondering, you know, it's upsetting what's going on.

Well, you know, the saying that anger is just a side of fear, which is just a side of, I don't know what, I don't know what's happening.

On the man's side, too, he just, I don't know what to do.

So yeah, coming back at you.

What's one of the common mistakes you see a woman make when they first try to manage their weight and mood during menopause, without having to having listened to this podcast, or knowing too much other about what we're speaking of?

What's a common mistake they make?

Yeah, I think the most common mistake women make is that they think, okay, I need to manage my weight.

I'm going to go on a really restrictive diet, cut back, be very, very restrictive.

So you're basically hungry all the time, and then go and spend like hours and hours at the gym every day doing high intensity workouts.

Because they think that will work, which maybe when you were younger, it would.

But as we age, that, and I see this a lot in my clients, that that doesn't work.

Restriction, it's about what you eat.

And training too much as we age, we have to change the way that we exercise.

If you go to the gym in the evenings after work, and you're doing these really high intensity workouts, this releases cortisol.

It creates stress on the body.

And then it goes back to the cortisol response, storing fat, all of that.

I had a client, actually, recently, that had been trying to lose weight for years, and she was doing exactly what I just said.

She was really, I mean, she was really, really trying and going to the gym.

And I just said to her, okay, we need to change this.

And I told her what she should be eating, delicious food, you shouldn't be feeling hungry.

And I said, just back off on the training a bit, start doing like yoga, go walking.

You can still do high intensity, but not nearly as much.

And she's basically lost weight, yeah.

Yeah, walking is great.

Even though I'm a man and I'm not going through menopause, I religiously go for a 15-minute walk first thing I wake up before coffee and right before I go to bed.

And I find that that's almost the same as working out is half as much as maybe your body's just movement or something.

I don't need to go out a mile, I just walk.

Yeah, walking is brilliant.

And it's easy, isn't it?

You can just go out more.

It's fun.

It's nice.

I get to go out, listen to the birds in the morning.

Well, depends on what time you get up.

It's nice to walk around the neighborhood.

Even if I'm in a big city, I like to do it, get out in the morning.

First thing, it's something like I have no non-negotiable with myself.

I will do this.

I don't care how I feel and to have it.

What about sleep?

I hear a lot of people have in trouble sleeping, either going to sleep or not getting enough sleep.

Is there anything, again, besides the long-term eat right, no processed foods, things worth speaking of, targeted towards sleep?

Yeah, sleep, that can be a big problem for women.

Again, it comes back to, oh, good old hormones again.

Yeah, I mean, there's the word which I'm saw people of her called sleep hygiene.

If you really want to work on your sleep and sleep better, you need to think about what you're doing before you go to bed.

And this really helps things like going back to our devices, not spending hours and hours on social media, really stimulating your brain, and then just going to bed and thinking that you're going to go to sleep.

What research is saying is that we really need to turn off our devices at least two hours before we go to bed.

You know, if you think, oh, that's way too much, you know, start small, start with half an hour, and then just work your way up, but reducing stimulation before we go to sleep.

You know, light...

Turn off your phone.

Turn off the phone, yeah.

Turn off your computer.

You know, if you're sat watching like a movie on television, that's really stimulating, like an action movie, that doesn't really help you sleep because you're going to be, you know, really anxious, and you've watched something that's very stimulating.

Also thinking about how much caffeine you consume in the day, you know, like coffee, for example.

I mean, caffeine is in other products.

It's in dark chocolate.

It's in tea.

You know, it's in energy drinks, which are terrible because they also contain so much sugar.

But caffeine interrupts with your sleep.

So if you are having problems sleeping, I would recommend that you either avoid it.

Just you can do a test.

You could say, OK, I'm going to avoid drinking coffee, if that's your thing, for a couple of weeks and see if it helps my sleep.

Or if you're not, if you don't want to do that, just don't drink any coffee after 12 o'clock, so after midday, because the effects of caffeine last for a long time in the body and they really kind of affect your sleep.

Making sure that you're not eating a big meal before you go to bed because that, you know, your digestion, your digestive tract will be, you know, digesting all that while you're going to sleep, and it can affect your sleep.

So I'm drinking tea.

Oh, good one, because I'm painting a picture now.

I've shut off my phone.

I'm not on the computer watching a movie.

I've watched my caffeine a couple hours before.

Maybe I went for my walk.

I'm trying to picture what I'm doing now because I'm not watching TV and my phone's off.

I'm reading a book or breathing.

This is what we're speaking of a half hour before I...

Reading a book is a brilliant thing.

You can sit on a nice, comfortable chair.

It's like you don't have to have a full-on light.

You can have just a reading light.

Just sat there comfortably reading a book or maybe having a chat with some family member, just kind of winding down.

But not doing anything that gets you excited or, you know...

Which come to think of it, if I'm the man or the partner, how you can help your partner out who is going through menopause is not to be watching the action movie and going, come on, don't you want to watch this with me?

This is the best sequel ever, like, you know, Matrix 3 or some.

No, didn't you listen?

I was supposed to shut that thing down.

And, you know, you want my libido to go up?

Shut that thing down so I can get some good sleep.

Yeah.

I'm just going to read a book.

Then of course, it's like, pardon me, what am I supposed to do?

I don't read, but that's part of the relationship, right?

Yeah.

And also if you think, if you're sat watching a movie, it can be quite likely that you may be having a few snacks there, aren't you?

Maybe not popcorn or whatever that aren't necessarily beneficial for sleep.

You might be drinking something.

I mean, alcohol has a huge effect on sleep as well.

So really thinking about the things you do in the few hours before you go to bed is crucial.

Is alcohol bad or I've heard some people drink it to go to sleep?

Now, alcohol affects your sleep.

What happens is, if you drink alcohol, you might fall asleep quicker, but you will wake up and it doesn't allow your body to go into the deep beneficial sleeps.

It wakes you up.

If you drink, especially women in menopause, I mean, I see this myself, even if I've just had one glass of wine, you go to sleep, but then 2 o'clock in the morning, it's like, ping, your eyes open and you just wide awake.

Yes, that's what happens to me.

And I'm not a big drinker.

I literally might have a few glasses of wine a week, on a big week.

But if I'm really trying to go to sleep, I'm like, you know what, last time that glass of wine worked.

And that's what happens.

I don't get the sleep.

I should have been reading a book and turn off my phone.

No, in fact, it can also affect our blood sugar, which can affect weight you up.

But it's a toxin, isn't it, alcohol?

It isn't good for anything.

It's not good for your liver or anything else.

So Alison has a ton of good stuff on her website, which will be in the show notes.

She's got stuff like the Menopause Five-Step Breakthrough Pathway Program.

She has cooking classes.

She does consultations.

And there's a lot of stuff on the web.

There's a lot of stuff we probably haven't spoken about.

Is there anything we haven't spoken about that's critical a listener should know about?

One thing that I run group programs that are really in demand and they're fantastic.

And I've got another one starting on the 4th of November.

It's called the 21 Day Reboot and Reset for Women Over 4.

So it's 21 days that can turn you around and make you feel fabulous.

It's fun.

It's realistic.

And I've had some amazing results from these programs.

So on my home page, on the website, that you can...

I've just opened it up actually to...

It's alisonbladh.com, her last...

Alison Bladh with the H.

The H is silent.

alisonbladh.com.

And you can also download her free ebooks for the recipes there.

Yeah.

Thanks for being on my show, Alison.

We have a few...

We still have a few more minutes.

I was just trying to squeeze all that in before we ran out of time.

Anything else you want to add?

Your programs, you also have programs that you don't have to sign up and take them at this certain time, right?

Are they self-paced?

Yeah.

I mean, when I work privately with clients, so one-on-one, it's either 12 weeks, eight weeks, or four weeks, and that is totally individually tailored to what you need.

I also do testing and supplementation and all of those things that are involved in nutritional therapy.

I mean, nutritional therapy is nutritional science really, how it affects.

When you mentioned functional medicine, I knew you knew somewhat what you're speaking of because that's a new term for me, functional medicine.

What does that mean?

Tell people what that does mean, the functional medicine part, which is part of what you do even if you're not a doctor.

Yeah, functional, the university that I went to, that was their model that it was nutritional science using the functional medicine model.

And it's basically, I mean, it's fantastic.

It's looking at the root causes of chronic diseases and illness and why we feel like what we do, rather than if you think it's not just putting a plaster on the symptom.

I've got a headache, okay, here, take this.

It'll make it feel better, but it won't actually get to the root cause of it.

Whereas functional medicine, it's like peeling back the layers of an onion till we actually find out why you're getting headaches.

You know, is it coming from the gut?

Is it past trauma?

Are you allergic to some sort of food?

Have you got sensitivities?

Is it stress?

So we really break down and really, really find what is going on in the body.

And that's what functional medicine does.

It looks at the root causes of disease and fix it.

You know, because all, I think with functional medicine, what we have to remember is all our systems of the body are connected.

You can't just isolate them.

You know, the gut, for example, has an effect on the whole body.

The gut and the brain have many, many things that the gut affects our mood and how we feel.

So functional medicine really gets to the root cause of the problem and fixes it.

Hopefully, it fixes it.

And you've tied that same model into what you do with your nutritional cooking and your lifestyle stuff.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, nutrition is called lifestyle medicine.

You know, there's so many things that you can do with nutrition and with lifestyle to improve your health and prevention is best, isn't it?

If you look after yourself, you know, what you eat, what you do, how you think, then hopefully it will prevent you from developing any chronic diseases in the future.

That's the saying, the apple a day keeps the doctor away, preventative medicine.

Yeah, exactly.

Thanks for being on my show, Alison.

It's been wonderful.

Details for everything you're speaking of your programs.

I'll put them in there in the show notes.

Brilliant.

Thank you so much.

It's been a real pleasure talking to you today.

Yeah.

From Sweden.

Sweden, yes.

Okay.

Well, which it's evening there.

It's six o'clock there and it's 10 a.m.

here.

Yeah.

What are you cooking real quick?

What do you make?

What are you making yourself for dinner?

Yeah, I actually know I'm having salmon and an avocado salad.

Sounds, sounds yummy.

Very easy.

Just bake salmon in the oven, chop up an avocado, some cucumber and some leaves, like salad leaves, salt and pepper.

You put it all on top in the oven at once?

No, because the salmon I just do, the actual avocado and the salad is just fresh.

That isn't cooked, that isn't put in the oven.

Anything else you want to add?

No, I think that's everything.

Thank you.

Thanks for my show.

Okay.

Have a good evening.

Yes, and you.

Thank you.

Bye.