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

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Jonathan Wolf: It's really interesting. I was just thinking about the phases of the moon as you talk about this. Cause I know there's always been this like sort of ancient link somehow to the moon cycle and presumably our ancestors couldn't have had any. Idea about what was going on with our hormones. But it's interesting you're describing something which is really not like just switching on and off, but something which is really phasing in and out in quite a complex like interplay here. It's not a great place to be. And actually eating this sort of really gut healthy diet that, you talked about, can potentially really reduce that level of inflammation and therefore reduce your symptoms, make you feel better, presumably be good for your long-term health. And this is all the classic sort of high fiber plant led diet. Hazel Wallace: Yeah, it can manifest in various ways, which is why there's certain criteria that doctors will use to diagnose it compared to other kind of symptoms like or other conditions like depression or anxiety. But typically it will be kind of low mood, tearfulness, irritability. Some women experience anger, so it can be a variation in different emotions and different moods, but it's very much tied to that, and there isn't enough research around why this happens. That would be my biggest piece of advice. Again, most of the research on fasting is on mice and men, so more research on women, please, and then we can better advise moving forward. So assuming that every woman is 28 day cycle with ovulation in between, most researchers will just assume that and we'll just use calendar methods, but that's not accurate because. Even if someone menstruates, we can't assume that they will ovulate in that month. Some women will have a month where they don't ovulate.

Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, these hormones also have far-reaching effects with other hormones, so there's a lot going on and there's a lot of influences within our body, but like you said, it is, it's a lot more complex than just a five day bleed. And so, for the past three years (in between COVID shifts at the hospital), I’ve dedicated most of my time to researching how to help women live healthier, happier lives. And The Female Factor was born. 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? Jonathan Wolf: We're now running the world's largest nutrition science study, and this is an area that Sarah and others are really interested in because actually the scale of the data that we're now starting to to get allows us to start to piece together some of these changes. Although you obviously. Jonathan Wolf: We've actually just done a massive study with participates on the ZOE Health study around intermittent fasting. As far as I know, we haven't looked at the data specifically for, women who are still going through their menstrual cycles. I think that's something really interesting, that we will definitely follow up on in general.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. The quality of our sleep. It's also quite interesting in that some studies have even looked at how our sleep architecture changes in that second phase. Hazel Wallace: So, I am slightly skeptical in advising, intermittent fasting for women who have menstrual cycles because women are very sensitive to the amount of energy available. So if they go for long periods without food, we can see menstrual cycle abnormalities. So longer cycles, bigger gaps between cycles. Jonathan Wolf: we actually had a lot of questions around that, from our members in advance. I definitely want to dig into this during this episode. 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.

There are lots of options here in the uk. We will start with things like lifestyle advice and then we'll move towards therapy and there are medication options. In very extreme cases, some women go for surgery and have hysterectomies and their ovaries removed, but that is very rare.

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Jonathan Wolf: And so can you see that difference if you were a, I'm guessing probably not for the average person in the street, maybe, but if you are a, you know, sort of top end athlete, can you see differences in performance, different points in the cycle? Jonathan Wolf: How much do you know about menstrual cycles? Half of you will be a lot more informed than the other half, but whether you've had a menstrual cycle or not, I promise you'll learn a lot during this episode. Even if you aren't having periods, I'd say it's important you listen to better understand and support the people in your life who are today. Hazel Wallace: It tends to be for more, high energy food, so high fat and high carbohydrate, and. That is likely because you have that increase in metabolic rate. Your body's just searching for the most energy dense type of food, and the most kind of reported craving will be chocolate.

And I think it was Matthew Walker who said that this is like emotional first aid. So it's really important for how we feel in our emotional wellbeing. And if we get less of it, So if we've had a bad night's sleep, we tend to feel a bit more groggy, a bit more irritable, maybe a bit more emotional the next day, and we see that drop in that REM sleep in that lal phase.

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Hazel Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. So again, like you said, this will vary from person to person, and there will be some people who almost float through their menstrual cycle and don't get much in the way of symptoms, or they're not really aware of what's happening. And then some people will be really tuned into their body and some people experience really debilitating symptoms. Hazel Wallace: Absolutely. It's interesting because yoga seems to be the one practice that has been really well researched when it comes to p m s and menstrual symptoms. These female sex hormones, and while they are high in women, they're also in men, and so they have really important effects in other aspects of health. Their primary role will be in reproduction and across the menstrual cycle. The main goal is to release an egg during ovulation and also to prepare the wombs lining to support a pregnancy and. Hazel Wallace: Yes. Yeah. There's not really much information or support out there for women. I think it's considered part and parcel of being a woman, and as someone who's gone through medical training and written a book on female health. I absolutely do not think, while it's common, I don't think we should normalize it. And I think there are lots of things we can do to support women there.