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

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The male body has always been the default body in clinical medicine, making the assumption that women are just smaller versions of men. This could not be more wrong,’ Dr Wallace says. Jonathan Wolf: In until you get to the perimenopause. Is this menstrual cycle pretty constant for most women through their life after it starts or racially? Are there changes, you know, earlier in terms of what you experience? And the way these hormones are, are varying. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. Cycle syncing has become quite, big in the last couple of years. Essentially, it's just about syncing your lifestyle to the faces of your menstrual cycle because as we mentioned, those different hormonal phases cause our body to have different needs be that sleep needs, nutritional needs. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, hormones play a role, but they're not the only thing. Women tend to ruminate a bit more at night, so they'll stay awake thinking about things they have to do.

Categorizing reproductive health as an R-rated topic is an issue that extends far beyond Meta advertising policies, reflecting wider societal views, from politics to sex education curriculums. Hazel Wallace: there's actually very little to no research done around the changes to the microbiome during menstruation, there's some emerging and when it comes to advising women about gut symptoms around menstruation, for example. I often say, you know, you could try a probiotic, but there's absolutely no trials looking at how probiotics could improve gut related menstrual symptoms, which blows my mind. Jonathan Wolf: and then is it true that these cravings are towards particular sorts of food? I'm tending to think about things like fats and things like is that real? Thank you, Hazel, for joining me on ZOE Science & Nutrition today. We've heard a lot today about how each of us has this unique body, whether a man or a woman. If you want to understand how to support your body with the best foods for you, then you may want to try ZOE's personalized nutrition program. You can get 10% off by going to joinzoe.com/podcast.We also tend to suffer with conditions that will keep you awake, so, Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety and depression in their lifetime experience. Things like overactive bladder, so having to wake up in the night to go for a whee and heartburn or reflux is also more common as a general rule, although it varies from household to household. Jonathan Wolf: when you say sleep architecture. I love the idea that I have sleep architecture. Can you explain a little bit more what that means? Jonathan Wolf: Oh, it sounds fascinating to try and understand more. Now, before I let you disappear, I have to follow up on the intermittent fasting. What can it do?

As a kind of a general statistic as well, women typically sleep more than men, but have. Worst quality sleep, and that's for multiple reasons. Jonathan Wolf: and this being the ZOE podcast, I have to ask you about the microbiome, but I think I know what you're gonna say. Do we have any understanding about whether the microbiome is actually fluctuating during this cycle as a result of all of these massive changes?But as we've just said, and you know, in this entire podcast episode, we're very different from a kind of a hormone profile point of view, but this also changes our physiology, our metabolism. Even our anatomy. And so it's really important that we take that into consideration. And this is why we know so little about the menstrual cycle and even when we do research on it, just taking calendar methods.

This is a must read for all women with no-nonsense information about what is within your control and what is not. It’s received heaps of praise for a reason.

Need sometimes to think really carefully about how you can do these measurements. Because you know, often people are doing, you're doing an at-home test, you're doing that at a point of time. Or even if you're doing something measuring blood sugar over a week or two, that's not the whole cycle. Yeah. So it's clear a lot to do and I think we're, we are really interested so we should follow up after this and see whether we can do something that could shed I think some light, cuz I think we generally see these things are very interlinked. And whether that's something that we've all thought about from a societal point of view, you know, a lot of us will relate periods PMS to chocolate. There's also a kind of a breakdown in protein, a higher breakdown in protein during that phase, and also a higher breakdown of fat. So I'm a nutritionist and a lot of the work that I do will be how to optimize your nutrition in that phase. Hazel Wallace: Well, the research kind of points to all forms of moderate intensity exercise, and so that's really anything where you can kind of hold conversation, but maybe you can't sing. So brisk walking. It could be riding a bike, it could be going to an exercise class, it could be going for a run. I think it's very individual and you know, While I can sit here and say, you should be doing three times a week exercise and it should be of this intensity. Jonathan Wolf: And can you explain a bit more what that is? I think for a lot of listeners, they've never even heard of it. Yeah. What, what's going on? And for people who are worrying about this, maybe either they, they think they might be experiencing it, or maybe they've even had it diagnosed, you know, what can they do? Yeah.