Traumatized by diet culture. It doesn't have to be that way!

In this chat that I originally posted on Insta, I am all fired up about the ways we can tackle and improve the symptoms of perimenopause.

or example: I have been traumatised by diet culture.
It doesn't have to be this way.

Enjoy!
Much Love
 Dr Kirstey Holland

The information shared in this podcast does not substitute working with your primary health care provider; it is general in nature and not considered personalised advice.

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thehollandclinic.com

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Transcript

Dr Kirstey Holland: 0:01

Hello. It's been a big week in clinic. And I am working from headquarters today in Williamstown And I just wanted to jump on to give you some of the answers that I've been getting so many questions for. We have our premium program rescue you from the rollercoaster of perimenopause all things keto cups, all things food for thought, all things smart, fast science backed prescriptions and health chronicles. So people often ask me, so what are your solutions? How do I rescue myself from the rollercoaster of perimenopause and all of these crazy unwanted symptoms that I absolutely wanna get rid of? I have the solutions for you and they're backed in hardcore science. So please reach out, ask me for the research articles. I would absolutely love to bamboozle you with the research. I sit here studying and researching almost every single day. And I have done for the last 23. I'm a bit of a tech nerd and I absolutely love female physiology. I will never be bored. There'll never be a day in my clinic where I am bored by female hormones. They do all sorts of crazy things, and of course, as Dr. Sarah Gottfried talks about, nothing in isolation with the perimenopausal hormonal system. Nothing in isolation with health in general anyway, but it's really important during this time of transition to be as healthy as you possibly can be in order to transition gracefully because your brain is going through so much right now. So let me talk about the solutions to rescue you from the rollercoaster of perimenopause. We start with the smart fast. If you like me originally, when somebody said, oh, I really want you to try fasting, I was just like, oh no, I was so traumatized and have been so traumatized in my life by diet culture and as a recovering food addict, I never ever wanna go on a diet again. I never wanna deprive myself again. In the Holland Clinic, it is a diet free zone. We talk about food protocols and and I'll get to those in a moment. But in terms of fasting, yes. When I did try fasting to begin with, I did white knuckle it. Lots of the research and the information out there is certainly based on trials with regards to men and fasting. Women don't do as well long term on fasting, and we certainly don't want to tax our adrenals anymore than we need to. During this time of perimenopause because it's actually a hypothalamus, pituitary ovarian and adrenal access that needs to be supported most. So the last thing we wanna do is tax our adrenals even further. So the message that we wanna send our bodies in general is, I am safe. All is good. You have a nutrient dense, rich blood supply. You are not skipping meals, you are keeping glucose stable. And in our program too, we talk about all of the disease states that suddenly tend to show up in perimenopause, right? So suddenly you've got an autoimmune condition that you never had before, suddenly you've got really itchy skin, or you've got crazy eczema or psoriasis and you scratching. Women suddenly feel like something's gone on with their metabolisms or their thyroids, they're cold all the time, or they're hot all the time and they're having those flushes. So high blood pressure is something that comes up very often in peri. And insulin resistance. But people don't necessarily know what insulin resistance is or metabolic syndrome. But often women fall into this category of type two diabetes or pre type two diabetes which is easy to test. In a blood test, you basically test hba one c glucose levels and fasting insulin. That's what I recommend in my clinic anyway. It gives us a nice comprehensive picture, but quite often women will have a normal blood glucose, but they'll have an insulin out of range. So in Australia, I like my women in my clinic to have insulin below 10, a fasting insulin of below 10 showing that you are metabolically flexible and metabolically healthy. It's so important for us during this transitional time too, not to pre predispose ourselves to things like heart disease and and eat and live and sleep and think and supplement in a way that combats that for good, you know? So the smart, fast smart fasting smart is not about white knuckling it. I'm currently fasting, but I have a beautiful keto cuppa. So I teach inside of my program how to fast in a fasting mimicking way. So basically you take in supplements and nutrients that send beautiful nutrient dense, rich messaging to your body. The message to the body is, I'm not skipping breakfast in any way, shape, or form.. My adrenals are beautifully balanced and my brain is on fire because it has an incredible fuel source. And at the same time, we are feeding our microbiota, so we're feeding our microbiome beneficial insoluble and soluble starches so that our gut is healthy and happy. And we're taking in quite often protein first thing in the morning too, to try to reduce that insulin resistance piece and insulin resistance if you're not sure whether you have it or not. Just ask yourself the questions like, do I have skin? Do I have thick yellow skin underneath my feet? Am I exhausted after eating? Do I feel like I'm able to actually access the food from my diet? And another one that's super common in perimenopause is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Women will come into my clinic and go, where the hell did this come from? Out of nowhere, my doctor has now diagnosed me with non-alcoholic fatty liver. I'm here to tell you that you've got to decrease the fructose, and I am, no, I, don't want you to restrict any food groups or foods at all. I just talk about"sometimes foods" and"everyday foods". Like I said, there's no diet here, but fructose can be particularly bad for insulin resistance. So what tends to happen, if there's too much sugar in the bloodstream, we will get ourselves into this fat store state as opposed to a fat burn. And we really wanna be in a fat burn state in perimenopause. Not only because we don't want to get that extra little bit of fat around the middle, generally just where we pull up our jeans, right? But we wanna be able to fire on all cylinders. And because of the fact that progesterone is decreasing, or we have estrogen flailing, but when estrogen is at its lowest, your brain is not able to access glucose in the way that it once did.. Anybody over the age of 35 experiencing, shortened periods or longer periods or, really tender breasts or new or different headaches or migraines mood disorders. You're feeling a bit agro. You're feeling a bit quick to fuse. You're not sleeping as well as you once did. You're not sleeping through the night the list goes on and. Spatial awareness issues, itchy skin yeah. And the rise of autoimmune conditions is very common. Hashimoto's thyroiditis, graves disease any autoimmune skin conditions. Lupus is a big one. Lots of women get diagnosed with MS at this time. That's a bit of a sad one and it's one really close to my heart. I have some incredible loved ones and very close friends with MS that do really, really, um, on our Holland Clinic peri protocol. So yeah, I think accessing a beautiful fasted state, but in a fasting mimicking way. So we fast smart in the Holland Clinic with perimenopausal women. We don't white knuckle it. There's absolutely no white knuckle fast going on here. And we do use keto cuppas. So I've got loads of beautiful recipes with all of those gorgeous ingredients in them so that we can have. Um, This fasted mimicking state and we can experience amazing energy levels, first thing in the morning and sustained right throughout the day so that our blood glucose is kept stable and we can access this fat burn as opposed to fat store state. So that we do keep our weight stable and and we are not increasing the weight year in, and year out. I have so many women that come into my clinic going, oh my God, I don't know what is going on. I haven't changed the way I move and I haven't changed the way I. But I've put on five kilos in the last two years. And I I know there was covid, right? But this is beyond that. And then food for thought. Our food protocols, again, not a diet, a food protocol is steeped in the most incredible scientific research based on research by Volta Longo Alessio, Dr. Lisa Mosconi. My food protocols are a hybrid between the the Mediterranean diet and the longevity diet. These diets ensure that we have good heart health, we have good gut health, we have good brain health. We are preventing chronic disease now and in the future. And I have a nourish and flourish meal plan, which shows you how you can potentially eat Monday through Friday. Just gives you some guidelines. I do have some beautiful recipes, but ideally I really want women to, eat what they love. and we do have a wellness food protocol, which is our most basic. Then of course we have a treatment food protocol that talks about all of the potential trigger foods that can be triggering women at this time, creating a an insufficiency in the gastrointestinal tract. So basically what we want during perimenopause is we want really tight gap junctions in our gastrointestinal tracts when we're taking in trigger foods or, things that don't agree with us like for example, gluten doesn't do me any good. So I know that when I eat gluten, I punch holes in my gastrointestinal tract, which creates an insufficiency and an integrity issue in my mucosal membrane in the gastrointestinal tract. And then what happens is inflammatory cytokines or proteins from the food are able to actually come into the bloodstream and then start causing havoc and attacking joints and our. So when we have this inflammation in the gut, we often have an inflammation in our moods and our minds. And quite often this can be the thing that creates joint pain in perimenopausal woman. And yeah, science back prescriptions. I cannot tell you how incredible supplementation can be at this time in your life. I am absolutely crazy about women. I'm crazy about women's health. I want us to all grow wings. I want us to all be the best we can be. I really do have a belief system. My why is basically that I know how tricky life can be and I just want women to be as vital as they possibly can be so that they can handle the things that life throws at. This hasn't been an easy path for me. I have had a long issue with my own health, a long health history. I'm a recovering food addict. I know what it's like to use food as medicine both positively and negatively. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, told that I was gonna be in fertile. I have a beautiful 16 year old boy fell pregnant naturally and had a gorgeous pregnancy and a wonderful. And I have toned down the volume on my own Hashimotos thyroiditis and my my thyroid condition. And I'm here to tell you that we can live an incredible life despite our ACE score. I had loads of adverse childhood events. I grew up in a very tumultuous household. Unfortunately my father had PTSD and was a high functioning alcoholic that beat us and. It does feel like a rollercoaster. I teach the woman in my clinic how to survive this progesterone crash because that is what's happening. And progesterone keeps you cool, calm and collected. She allows you to sleep. She allows you to think straight. She allows you to have that beautiful distance between yourself and your. so that you're not reactive or so that you're not, just reacting to everything. And that's what actually that progesterone crash is the thing that can bring on that mum rage or that relationship rage, where you just feel like you're so short to fuse. But don't forget, an estrogen excess can develop because of a progesterone deficiency, and she can really exacerbate that middle banding and those tuck shop arms. So it's really important for us to decrease that estrogen appropriate. And the most beneficial way to decrease estrogen appropriately without supplementation is to ensure that your gut health is brilliant. So I always start with repair your gut, your immunity, and your metabolism. Oops, I just spilled my coffee That is one of the perimenopausal symptoms, spatial awareness issues. Let me know if you have an issue with spatial awareness. I remember my father saying, oh, your mother is so beautiful the walls jump out at her. And I now realize that I bump into tables and it gets particularly bad about my period. Your body knows how to heal. It is this incredible self-healing mechanism. There are some incredible things you can do for your gut insoluble and soluble starches and accessing that fasting window so that your body can do the repair that it needs to do. You're basically you're sleeping for eight hours a night, hopefully and you're in a fasted state, so you're able to access those ketones so that your brain can be on and sharp in the morning. And then with the Holland Clinic keto cuppas you can stay in that fasting mimicking state and you can access that beautiful energy store and source. And then you can really heal that gut with things like collagen and MCT oil which is antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antiparasitic and you can actually use MCT powder, really gorgeous, high quality MCT powder. I do have some favorite brands. My favorite MCT oil powder Brain Brawn. It's a vegan keto MCT oil powder with prebiotic fiber. There's some really gentle antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti parasitic probiotics that you can use to just go into the gastrointestinal tract, pick off unbeneficial bacteria, adhere and compete for space and then it's so important that we increase that secretory IGA in our gastrointestinal tracts because it's within secretory IGA where the majority of our immune system is. So 80 to 90% of your immune system is in your gastrointestinal tract. So I'm here to tell you that if your gut is shot, your immune system tends to be shot too. So we tend to find that we're just, catching all the bugs that are going around. We just can't get over the flues the way we once did. And then your immune system does feel like it starts to attack itself. And this is where autoimmune conditions can actually become prevalent and start to exacerbate too. Inflammation is huge. And when there's an inflammation in the gut there's an inflammation in the mood in the mind. I've got three different food protocols in my clinic. I've got the wellness food protocol, which is of the easiest to follow and it doesn't really require too much from you. And then I have the treatment food protocol, which talks about all the foods. With, you know, there could potentially be triggers for you, like things with lectins or phytates or, and we go into, huge detail there. And I've dug really deep into the research to see what it is and which food triggers are affecting perimenopausal women. And then I have a heal seal repair program, which is a full elimination and reintroduction diet, which gives women this incredible clarity about what it is that causes havoc for them from a food perspective. So I'm here to tell you that I can't eat green apples. I can't eat bananas, I can't eat hummus and dairy is no, gluten is no good for me. I can handle a little bit of dairy, but those are my main triggers and it's so illuminating to figure out what your triggers are. Once you've done that and your overall health is incredible, I think it's really important to test. I don't see women doing very well on testosterone, and I know that this is a little controversial. I know that lots of my colleagues in the states are going nuts about testosterone at the moment. But I can tell you that I see more yeah, I see more issues with testosterone than I see good things. I have women coming into my clinic that have been prescribed testosterone that are losing. And yeah, so testosterone, if it's right for you, potentially estrogen and progesterone's body identical. Only if, again, they're right for you. But do not take hormone replacement therapy or body identical hormones without testing. I think you have absolutely got to test first. I would do both Dutch test and I would do the Dutch Plus. So you can also see how cortisol responds because cortisol is a huge player here. If you're making too much stress hormone, if you're making too much cortisol, you're not gonna be making enough progesterone. So if you could just decrease that stress lever, you may in actual fact be able to make enough. Progesterone. Blood testing, full blood testing. Do lh, do fsh, do all the female hormones in your bloods. Make sure you're doing them on the right days. Certain practitioners don't know when to test and they basically will tell perimenopausal women that their hormones are all over the place, so there's no point in testing. That's not actually the case. Day two and day 21 are a bit of a sweet spot for hormonal testing and of course between day 19 and 22 for the Dutch test. So ideally, five to seven days after ovulation, so we can see where that pre that progesterone is at. And then of course, please don't forget that botanical medication is incredibly successful at supporting hormonal production. So I think food first always food first and overall health needs to be addressed. You need to be as vital as you possibly can be with your gut working beautifully and all of your hormones working beautiful. In their natural state and the way that they can first. Repair your gut, your immune system, and your metabolism. Make sure that you're eating according to your own personal biochemistry. Make sure you have a nutrient dense rich blood supply. Make sure you don't have any iron deficiency, any D three deficiency, any B12 deficiency, any hydrochloric acid deficiency you wanna be digesting beautifully. You wanna have a great digestive capacity, you wanna be eliminating beautifully. You want your detoxification pathways to be ready to go. And then you can use so like I said, food, then botanical medication. And then you may want to look at body identical. I do use body identical progesterone. I don't see any need for me using estrogen at this point in time. And I'm having an absolutely wonderful time of it. I have been very unwell in my life. I did, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. And polycystic ovarian syndrome as a young woman. And was told that I was gonna be in fertile. I had metabolic syndrome, I was obese, I was a, food addict. I'm a recovering food addict. I'm no longer obese. I'm 47 and I'm somewhere between a size 10 and a 12. I hate the numbers because I'm traumatized from past, diet and restriction lifestyles that were so advocated for in the. It just doesn't work for us. We need to look at sometimes foods and our everyday foods, and we need to be as vital as we possibly can during this transition, and I'm here for it. I hope that makes it a bit clearer for some of the questions that have been coming through. If anybody is ready to take control of their lives in a completely holistic way we do have our rescue you from the rollercoaster of perimenopause program starting this month. Have a look at our program. Please be aware of the fact that you can start with part one only. So repair your gut, your immunity, and your metabolism. And I do have a special running at the moment. If you do join us for our part one, you are going to get a initial consultation with me valued at$495. So the premium program paid up front is just under 10 grand. And then the the separate sections part one, part two and part three are separately about$4,000 each, but pop onto the website and you'll be able to see all the information there. At the moment, I do have that bonus special. If you're signing up to the premium program, of course you get everything. You get the doctor in your pocket, you get me walking alongside you for six months, and you have access to me via our app Monday to Friday, 11 until four, you have unlimited prescription renewals with regards to your individualized precision prescription with evidence-based supplementation that are only therapeutic goods associated supplements. So you do need a prescription for those. I've been doing this for 23 years in my clinic in Melbourne, and I am so grateful to all of the three-dimensional women that have taught me. Jump onto our website and have a look at our wall of love and read the real life stories from real life women who have transformed their lives and are having a successful transition from this perimenopausal state of chaos. And let's get it calm and let's get you vital for good by focusing on every single aspect of your health. Please book your free clarity call with me. We have free clarity calls at the moment. I'm also running community webinar. On Monday nights every now and then, it's every couple of weeks where we talk everything peri,"Let's talk Peri", join my newsletter and you will get love notes and tips and tricks and recipes and all sorts of Straight from my inbox to yours. And yeah, like I said, if you have any questions, please reach out. I absolutely love talking all things, peri. I could talk this stuff underwater all night long, every day, all day. I'll chat to you soon. Bye. Beautiful people.