Erin O'Hara: naturopath and wellness expert with tips for optimising metabolic health

A healthy metabolism is important to maintaining overall well-being - but how can we keep it in shape? 

The metabolism helps with digestion, and keeping it in shape can reduce blood sugar spikes and bring down the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explains  the benefits of checking in on your metabolism.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talk SEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time to Talk Wellness Now with Aeron O'Hara. Good morning,
Good morning. Today, you're going to talk about optimizing our
metabolic health. What is metabolic health?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes, So, metabolic health is when your body can digest
and absorb nutrients from food that you can eat without
any unhealthy spikes in blood, sugar, blood, fat, inflammation, and insulin.
So basically how your body's digesting food and releasing it
into the bloodstream. And for some people it can be

(00:43):
a genetic problem where their bodies not metabolizing food very well.
So basically weight gains more common, also puts it increased
breasts for type two diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and
non alcoholic fatty liver disease is more common with metabolic
health problems. But the biggest trigger is can be ethnicity,

(01:04):
can be age, can be diet, can be, obesity, a
sedimentary lifestyle. So there's numerous factors that affect your metabolic health.
And it's not just calories in calories out that affects
your metabolism, So it's not just a matter of eat less,
doing more exercise that's affecting how much you're gaining weight

(01:24):
or how much you're holding on to weight in your body.
But actually there's more factors to whether you hold on
to more weight in your body, particularly around your abdominal area.
Is that putting you at a high risk of a
poor metabolic health. So there's some things that we need
to really watch out for. So if you are concerned
about your metabolic health, is maybe getting a check in

(01:46):
with your doctor, getting some blood tests, checking things like
high blood pressure, impaired fasting, glucose hydrict traglesride levels, low
HDL which is your good cholesterol, and a high alt
liver enzyme. Now, these are factors that are affecting your
metabolic health, so it's good to get those things checked

(02:06):
so you can check in whether the reason you can't
lose weight is not just because you're eating too much
and not doing enough exercise, but more to do with
how your metabolism is working and why you're not burning fat.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Basically, metabolism has always just been a bit of an excuse,
hasn't it. I've got a slow metabolism, Oh, I've got
a fast metabolism. I shouldn't eat that because I've got this,
or I can eat that because I've got that. But
actually we can adjust that metabolism. We can.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, there's some things we can't change, like age, sex,
and your genetics because women generally have poor, poorer metabolic
health than men. But we can modify things like oh,
so it's to do with more hormones and holding on
to fat stores and also more around that perimenopause. Menopause
age puts you out higher risk of insign resistance or

(02:57):
things like PCOS for women as well, So those are
factors that also affect your metabolic health. But things we
can modify, things like your diets, so trying to get
more vegetables and fruit, and we actually need more than
five plus a day. I know we say five plus
a day and people try and hit that five. But
actually as many as you can get in fruits and vegetables,

(03:17):
they're going to be great for your microbiome, which is
going to help your metabolism as well as giving you
all that fiber and roughage for the guts which is
going to be really good for digesting. Also cholesterol. Also
making sure you getting plenty of healthy fats. So things
like nuts, seeds, olive oil, olives, avocados, all those good fats.
Fats are actually good for our metabolism, especially the right

(03:39):
types of fats, and cutting back on our saturate of
fats are things like high fat dairy and all their
skin you know on chicken skin and the pork crackling.
Those are not so good for our metabolic health.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
So if someone's just sitting at home now going okay
metabolic health, well, how do I know if my metabolism
is working as well as it could or so? First,
because you might just you might just be thinking, well,
I think I'm fine you.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
And may I know you're holding on to weight as
you hold on to weight very easily. Then go get
some blood test to get those things check first, and
then you can see whether that is affecting the way
you're holding on to weight, and then you can do
things to make your metabolism improved by making sure you're
adding the right foods, getting more exercise, prioritizing sleeps, all

(04:29):
those basic things. Getting out for some exercise, especially after
a meal, because it helps you lower the spikes and
blood glucose levels after a meal. So you might get
out and walk around the block for ten minutes after
a meal, just to help you utilize the blood sugar
that's released from the carbohydrate. Also looking at your mental health.
So if you're emotional eater and you eat lots of

(04:50):
sugar in a big amount and then you're kind of
that'll fetch your metabolic health as well, if you're adding
big volumes of sugar or high saturated fat foods.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Fascinating is always Thank you so much. Erin o'harrell catch
up next.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Week or from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio