October 8, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Soma Says, host Dr. Soma Mandal sits down with Claire Snowdon-Darling, founder of The College of Functional Wellness, to unpack the truth about women’s health and hormone balance.
Claire shares her personal journey from health struggles to becoming one of the UK’s leading voices in menopause care. Together, they explore the root causes of hormonal imbalance—the adrenals, blood sugar, and digestion—and how these key systems shape everything from mood to metabolism.
The conversation dives deep into the differences in menopause care between the UK and the US, the essential role of stress management and nutrition, and the often misunderstood condition of Premature Ovarian Insufficiency (POI). Claire also explains how kinesiology and functional wellness can help women—and healthcare practitioners—support the body as it moves through the profound transformation of menopause.
This episode is an empowering listen for anyone seeking clarity, confidence, and holistic insight on the midlife journey.
Timeline00:00 Introduction to Claire Snowdon-Darling 00:25 Comparing Menopause Care: UK vs US 01:50 Claire’s Personal Health Journey 04:54 Founding The College of Functional Wellness 09:10 Understanding Premature Ovarian Insufficiency 17:34 The Functional Wellness Approach 21:54 The Importance of Stress and Diet 40:05 Kinesiology and Hormone Health 45:20 Final Thoughts and Advice
Connect with Claire Snowdon-Darling🌐 Website: www.clairesnowdon-darling.com 📲 Instagram: @clairesnowdondarlingofficial 💼 LinkedIn: Claire Snowdon-Darling
Connect with Dr. Soma Mandal🌐 Website: www.somamandalmd.com 📚 Book: Midlife Masala — available on Amazon, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube at @SomaSays 📲 Instagram: @drsomamandalmd 💼 LinkedIn: Dr. Soma Mandal, MD
Support the PodcastIf today’s episode inspired you or taught you something new about women’s health, please subscribe, share, and leave a review for Soma Says on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps more women find the clarity, community, and confidence they deserve through every stage of life.
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(00:00):
.9996948242Today on Soma Says, we're joined by Claire Snowdon-Darling—founder of The College of Functional Wellness, and a leading voice in women’s health and hormone balance. 2 00:00:09,520.0004577637 --> 00:00:21,659.999847412 Claire is a functional kinesiologist and speaker who helps women navigate menopause with clarity, confidence, and compassion by addressing the root causes of imbalance—adrenals, blood sugar, and digestion. 3 00:00:22,170.000076294 --> 00:00:24,129.999160767 Claire, welcome to Soma Says.” 4 00:00:25,562.5 --> 00:00:35,332.5 Why is it that the UK seems to be much more progressive in terms of menopause care in comparison to the us? asked that before. 5 00:00:35,332.5 --> 00:00:36,982.5 It's a really good question. 6 00:00:36,982.5 --> 00:00:52,802.5 what is happening with women's health in general in the US is challenging, right? That being said, there are a lot more voices and a lot more advocates that are coming out and talking about women's health and advocating for us. 7 00:00:53,182.5 --> 00:01:04,37.5 But in the few years that I've, been involved in this type of care it just seems that there are more voices in the UK than there have been in the us. 8 00:01:04,37.5 --> 00:01:21,67.5 So I've always been curious as to why it's strange as well, because of course everyone holds up our health system as being, exemplary and actually it's letting down a lot of women in the uk and so I think those of us who speak from the outside of it as well can often. 9 00:01:21,567.5 --> 00:01:26,497.5 Putting our heads above the parapet can be quite dangerous, but actually you are right, there seems to be quite a big movement right now. 10 00:01:26,987.5 --> 00:01:42,862.5 I think what we have learned from the American system is there's a lot more, the adverts that I've seen when you are in the States, the drug companies advertising to you, so people's empowerment to go and request the care that they want, because ultimately they're paying for it. 11 00:01:43,112.5 --> 00:01:45,92.5 That's really drip feeding over here. 12 00:01:45,92.5 --> 00:01:46,557.5 People actually, it's learning. 13 00:01:46,707.5 --> 00:01:47,357.5 It's okay. 14 00:01:47,402.5 --> 00:01:49,982.5 What to ask for and pushing back. 15 00:01:50,52.5 --> 00:02:09,422.5 So You're known for transforming your own health struggles into a career, which I find fascinating because I feel a lot of us who go into healthcare it took me a while to understand this and appreciate it and accept it within myself that I was essentially trying to save myself by helping others. 16 00:02:09,762.5 --> 00:02:25,687.5 Can you share your personal experience that drew you towards this field and ultimately founding the College of Functional Wellness and all the great advocacy work that you do? Great question. 17 00:02:25,687.5 --> 00:02:40,532.5 So if I kind of start with the first part of your question, which is what drew me to this as a career? I think the truth is back as a teen, I was fascinated by the more complimentary aspects of health. 18 00:02:40,832.5 --> 00:02:50,397.5 But back then, in the nineties, I was born in the seventies, so back then in the nineties when I was a teen and deciding on career pathways, complimentary health, there wasn't really an option. 19 00:02:50,397.5 --> 00:02:57,87.5 You could be a physio, an osteopath, or you went into beauty and you did health and beauty, and that's where the reflexology and things were. 20 00:02:57,537.5 --> 00:03:01,642.5 And none of those things really gripped me, but I was fascinated by. 21 00:03:02,727.5 --> 00:03:10,772.5 Health in general, didn't have the education in the belief in my academic ability to go and pursue being a doctor. 22 00:03:11,132.5 --> 00:03:15,122.5 And so ended up going down another career pathway, which I also really loved. 23 00:03:15,122.5 --> 00:03:19,202.5 I actually worked in theater and specialized working with people with learning disabilities. 24 00:03:19,412.5 --> 00:03:23,792.5 So there was always this care aspect that kind of came through. 25 00:03:23,792.5 --> 00:03:29,997.5 And the advocacy piece, when I look back, there is a through line between self-expression and advocacy. 26 00:03:30,537.5 --> 00:03:43,217.5 But what happened was in 2004, I gave birth to my wonderful daughter who's now 21, and we both nearly died in the labor process and the experience. 27 00:03:44,207.5 --> 00:03:51,917.5 My first recollection is waking up in recovery with this overwhelming tiredness that never went away. 28 00:03:51,917.5 --> 00:03:54,347.5 And we are talking for 15 years. 29 00:03:54,347.5 --> 00:03:56,327.5 this horrific tiredness of 15 years. 30 00:03:56,867.5 --> 00:04:03,877.5 So what I came to realize was something like chronic fatigue syndrome also postnatal depression. 31 00:04:03,982.5 --> 00:04:09,662.5 I ended up postpartum psychosis being diagnosed with a form of PTSD. 32 00:04:09,992.5 --> 00:04:12,272.5 Just everything just cracked open. 33 00:04:12,272.5 --> 00:04:15,662.5 And, I just desperately wanted to feel better. 34 00:04:15,712.5 --> 00:04:25,492.5 As you said I started to develop an interest in nutrition and in alternative medicine in general. 35 00:04:25,492.5 --> 00:04:28,942.5 And I discovered at the time, kinesiology and nutrition. 36 00:04:29,212.5 --> 00:04:32,662.5 I trained, I went crazy trained in about 16 modalities. 37 00:04:32,852.5 --> 00:04:34,262.5 But the two that really gripped me. 38 00:04:35,432.5 --> 00:04:51,992.5 Kinesiology and nutrition and I was trying to get myself well, but had also discovered a way to help other people get well and ha I felt like this was, it just felt like this was what I was put on the earth to do. 39 00:04:51,992.5 --> 00:04:53,462.5 So I I set up my practice. 40 00:04:54,332.5 --> 00:05:11,472.5 But then moving into the second part of your question is what then led me into the more functional aspect of wellness and to founding the college? That kind of happened a bit by accident because I had a great career in clinical practice. 41 00:05:12,282.5 --> 00:05:18,377.5 I wasn't getting myself I was doing everything that I was told by the complimentary therapist I was seeing. 42 00:05:19,497.5 --> 00:05:25,847.5 I was doing all the things that were, at the times, this is the way to do things. 43 00:05:25,847.5 --> 00:05:27,827.5 I was, I tried everything. 44 00:05:27,827.5 --> 00:05:46,337.5 There was no stone unturned, and I was also working with a variety of medical practitioners because I was desperately trying to find some kind of diagnosis because this wasn't just chronic fatigue, there was preposterous weight gain there. 45 00:05:46,362.5 --> 00:05:49,407.5 It was just horrific problems with bleeds. 46 00:05:49,407.5 --> 00:05:57,27.5 And ultimately, I eventually got a diagnosis of premature ovarian insufficiency, which for anyone who doesn't know. 47 00:05:58,92.5 --> 00:06:02,952.5 It's passed off as being early menopause or a menopause like condition. 48 00:06:03,222.5 --> 00:06:07,512.5 My experience has been it's not been like a menopause experience. 49 00:06:07,517.5 --> 00:06:13,302.5 It's been a very fluctuating hormonal experience, and I'm still not through the menopause part. 50 00:06:13,302.5 --> 00:06:15,192.5 I'm still technically in perimenopause. 51 00:06:15,192.5 --> 00:06:19,582.5 So I will have spent, next year, 25 years in per mepa. 52 00:06:19,677.5 --> 00:06:19,817.5 Okay. 53 00:06:19,867.5 --> 00:06:37,417.5 so the great thing about that was I realized that something is missing here in terms of how people are looking at, how the medical model is looking at this condition that I'd finally got a diagnosis of and how we deal in general with hormone conditions. 54 00:06:38,287.5 --> 00:06:52,62.5 And basically through my own research and a stroke of insight, there was a lightning bolt moment where I basically came up with the clinic model that is now at the core of our work which we call the triangle of Hormonal Health. 55 00:06:52,562.5 --> 00:07:00,812.5 And it was just a way of explaining to women really how fundamentally important diet is. 56 00:07:00,812.5 --> 00:07:04,482.5 Because one of the issues that we have is compliance often with people. 57 00:07:04,822.5 --> 00:07:08,602.5 And it's, I remember being in the mentality of, but I can have this treat. 58 00:07:08,662.5 --> 00:07:10,942.5 I've been really good all week, I can have this treat. 59 00:07:11,362.5 --> 00:07:25,82.5 And when I fundamentally understood how blood sugars work and their correlation with stress hormones, with the reproductive sex hormones, everything went off, like light bulbs in my head. 60 00:07:25,907.5 --> 00:07:34,697.5 We realized my business partner Laura, and I started to put together some one day CPD training courses for practitioners. 61 00:07:34,697.5 --> 00:07:43,997.5 We'd already taught, we were teaching for other colleges, we taught some other bits and pieces ourselves, and we sent them off to our governing body to have them accredited as CPD. 62 00:07:43,997.5 --> 00:07:49,127.5 And they came back and said, no, you've actually invented a whole new branch of this modality. 63 00:07:49,787.5 --> 00:07:51,497.5 Go away and start a college. 64 00:07:51,887.5 --> 00:07:56,707.5 So we then jumped through the hoops to become an accredited accredited college. 65 00:07:57,487.5 --> 00:08:02,727.5 Our modality at that time was an in-person training included body work. 66 00:08:02,727.5 --> 00:08:05,547.5 Kinesiology is a combination, nutrition and some body work. 67 00:08:05,577.5 --> 00:08:10,737.5 And then of course the world was hit by the pandemic and all of our hard work felt like it was gonna go down the drain. 68 00:08:11,157.5 --> 00:08:22,857.5 But what we suddenly realized that became clear was our, the really phenomenal part of our work wasn't in the body work part of the modality. 69 00:08:23,127.5 --> 00:08:25,257.5 It was in the research that we'd done. 70 00:08:25,257.5 --> 00:08:30,992.5 And so we then were able to put the course an actual course in itself. 71 00:08:31,92.5 --> 00:08:34,442.5 A functional wellness diploma for coaches. 72 00:08:34,442.5 --> 00:08:36,632.5 And then that's now been accredited all over the world. 73 00:08:36,632.5 --> 00:08:37,682.5 So it was accidental. 74 00:08:38,102.5 --> 00:08:38,582.5 Okay. 75 00:08:39,462.5 --> 00:08:44,172.5 I do have a lot of doctors and other practitioners who listen to my podcast. 76 00:08:44,422.5 --> 00:08:49,12.5 So this, as you mentioned this can be taken by anyone across the world. 77 00:08:49,322.5 --> 00:08:52,772.5 And they can use that as credit to a certification. 78 00:08:53,372.5 --> 00:09:00,912.5 Yes, it is now a fully accredited, people with existing qualifications can do it as continuous professional development. 79 00:09:01,12.5 --> 00:09:09,702.5 also people who are in a full career change can start at the very beginning and then come out as qualified coaches with full certification. 80 00:09:10,77.5 --> 00:09:14,787.5 And going back to what you were saying before, you mentioned premature ovarian failure. 81 00:09:14,947.5 --> 00:09:28,947.5 for my audience who are not medical and trying to learn from this podcast, can you talk about what that is and how it differs from perimenopause and menopause? Yes. 82 00:09:29,7.5 --> 00:09:33,57.5 So it's a still considered a fairly rare condition. 83 00:09:33,137.5 --> 00:09:41,27.5 About 17% of women will experience it, and some people develop it randomly, idiopathic, really randomly. 84 00:09:41,87.5 --> 00:09:45,947.5 Others will develop it because of surgery or medication, things like that. 85 00:09:45,977.5 --> 00:09:56,722.5 Where basically the ovaries stop doing the job that they're supposed to do, which of course happens as a natural process in menopause and is supposed to happen. 86 00:09:57,202.5 --> 00:10:02,842.5 But I know that the youngest person to ever be diagnosed in the UK was 14 years old. 87 00:10:03,112.5 --> 00:10:06,582.5 And so it's not supposed to happen in these younger ages. 88 00:10:06,862.5 --> 00:10:08,992.5 And especially in this idiopathic way. 89 00:10:10,117.5 --> 00:10:15,817.5 And so no one has ever been able to medically tell me why it happens. 90 00:10:16,447.5 --> 00:10:30,222.5 I do see in my clients who have experienced it there that obviously the medication and the surgical route, but when it has been idiopathic, there can be a, a period of, a high stress, a lot of trauma, some kind of surgery. 91 00:10:30,222.5 --> 00:10:36,162.5 There's something that actually just tips the body over and it just goes, I can't, I, the ovaries go, I can't do this anymore. 92 00:10:36,502.5 --> 00:10:41,742.5 And so yes, it, it mimics menopause because the ovaries have stopped doing their job. 93 00:10:43,422.5 --> 00:10:45,672.5 The bit that people don't often understand. 94 00:10:45,672.5 --> 00:10:54,972.5 And I have met other women like me, I definitely had a history even before the birth trauma of. 95 00:10:55,722.5 --> 00:10:56,832.5 Quite a lot of trauma. 96 00:10:57,222.5 --> 00:11:05,652.5 And what women often don't know is that we don't just make all of our hormones in our ovaries, we also make them in our adrenal glands. 97 00:11:05,712.5 --> 00:11:13,962.5 And in response to trauma, the body will choose the stress hormone cortisol over the making the reproductive sex hormones. 98 00:11:14,532.5 --> 00:11:26,262.5 And so when we've got someone with premature ovarian insufficiency, they're often, if they've got this history of trauma, not able to make even that small amount of hormone. 99 00:11:26,502.5 --> 00:11:40,332.5 And so this is where this fluctuating situation comes in, because they can be put on HRT, but the HRT one month is too high, then it's too low, and it can just be quite a lot to navigate. 100 00:11:40,882.5 --> 00:11:43,912.5 But the struggle for me has actually been really beneficial for my clients. 101 00:11:43,912.5 --> 00:11:49,612.5 'cause I now know a lot about different HRDs and why they might not be working. 102 00:11:49,912.5 --> 00:12:10,762.5 Isn't that uncanny how that happens? I've had not premature ovarian insufficiency, but you, as you were mentioning perimenopause and it took me a long time even with me being a doctor, and I was even able to have a pregnancy through that. 103 00:12:11,192.5 --> 00:12:19,92.5 But there were issues related to the perimenopause that ultimately led to some issues and led to an emergency C-section. 104 00:12:19,92.5 --> 00:12:30,402.5 And I've had to really sit back and realize, okay, even though I wasn't menopausal, my hormones were just fluctuating rapidly. 105 00:12:30,912.5 --> 00:12:35,582.5 And what I should have been on is some progesterone during my pregnancy. 106 00:12:36,222.5 --> 00:12:39,332.5 And that's what led to a placental abruption. 107 00:12:39,332.5 --> 00:12:42,482.5 And thankfully everything worked out, but. 108 00:12:42,872.5 --> 00:12:49,682.5 But you just, you don't even realize these are the things and I didn't have that guidance either. 109 00:12:50,252.5 --> 00:12:57,992.5 So that, those are the reasons, my own experiences, plus what I've seen with my patients, plus my mom. 110 00:12:57,992.5 --> 00:13:10,232.5 And it's really led me to want to advocate for women as much as possible because here in the States, I can reflect back to my years of medical school and residency. 111 00:13:10,622.5 --> 00:13:15,752.5 There was just a very small amount of information that was given. 112 00:13:16,92.5 --> 00:13:19,962.5 I actually remember, oh, if you FSH is above 20, that means you're menopausal. 113 00:13:19,962.5 --> 00:13:20,862.5 No, not really. 114 00:13:21,552.5 --> 00:13:24,42.5 But that's literally what I remember being taught. 115 00:13:25,152.5 --> 00:13:29,292.5 So it, it was just very lack of information that was given. 116 00:13:29,292.5 --> 00:13:37,522.5 and then as the Women's Health Initiative came out and it added even more chaos and confusion to the whole picture. 117 00:13:38,332.5 --> 00:13:41,722.5 So we both established why we do what we do. 118 00:13:42,92.5 --> 00:13:58,192.5 So when you began speaking openly about menopause and perimenopause, what was the reaction that you received from the women that you were speaking with and from the broader medical community? It, you've actually summed it up beautifully. 119 00:13:58,292.5 --> 00:14:05,132.5 The thing that took me quite by surprise was. 120 00:14:05,687.5 --> 00:14:09,317.5 That no one knew about menopause. 121 00:14:09,317.5 --> 00:14:17,92.5 So I didn't know, I knew what it was, but I didn't really understand it, when I first got given that diagnosis, it was just like menopause. 122 00:14:17,192.5 --> 00:14:21,182.5 That's a terrible way to give a diagnosis anyway, but it, no, it's not. 123 00:14:21,272.5 --> 00:14:29,462.5 And also I don't really know what menopause is and what does that actually mean, and I just thought that maybe I'd just forgotten that bit of school. 124 00:14:29,462.5 --> 00:14:38,152.5 But then the overarching realization I had, the more that I went out and started doing, I did a lot of there's a lot of menopause cafes over in the uk. 125 00:14:38,152.5 --> 00:14:39,712.5 There's a lot of menopause groups. 126 00:14:40,92.5 --> 00:14:46,52.5 And I went and did a lot of talks at those groups and just this realization that women did not. 127 00:14:47,12.5 --> 00:14:48,512.5 They weren't given the information. 128 00:14:48,512.5 --> 00:14:53,882.5 I found out that we actually only started teaching about menopause in schools three years ago in the uk. 129 00:14:54,432.5 --> 00:15:01,312.5 'cause I, 'cause we all kept, all my peers kept saying, why don't we know this? And then this realization, we weren't all at school anything about menopause. 130 00:15:01,692.5 --> 00:15:08,32.5 But then the bit that really surprised me with the medical community was that they too don't know about menopause. 131 00:15:08,572.5 --> 00:15:19,677.5 Even the doctors who are specialists trained for their GP practitioner surgery don't know a lot of the stuff that we are talking about regularly in the functional community. 132 00:15:20,437.5 --> 00:15:24,317.5 I'm a speaker on a national website menopause.co 133 00:15:24,317.5 --> 00:15:28,457.5 uk, and it was launched because of this lack of information. 134 00:15:28,457.5 --> 00:15:36,507.5 And what's so wonderful is the person who launched it, fabulous health advocate he pulled to, he pulled all different groups of people and specialists. 135 00:15:36,507.5 --> 00:15:41,917.5 So there is the medical, there's the alternative view so that women can find the pathway that feels right for them. 136 00:15:41,917.5 --> 00:15:43,27.5 That was the motivation. 137 00:15:43,417.5 --> 00:15:59,167.5 But he launched it at a medical convention and I was in the room and he just, there was 400 medical practitioners and he said, how many of you went to medical school? And 400 hands went up and he said, how many of you have trained in menopause? And 10 stayed up? And he went, that's why we need this website. 138 00:15:59,272.5 --> 00:16:01,252.5 if the women don't know they can be taught. 139 00:16:01,687.5 --> 00:16:13,787.5 And if the doctors don't know, if the women know, then they can start self advocating and they can start actually requesting the care that they want, right? Absolutely. 140 00:16:13,787.5 --> 00:16:39,647.5 I have turned into an advocate for my patients and a lot of times I often help coach them on how to, let's say if they're seeing a specialist aside from me how to approach them, how to talk, with their breast specialist or their endocrinologist, or perhaps if they're getting surgery, what questions to ask and advocate for their own health. 141 00:16:39,927.5 --> 00:16:44,767.5 I often find that these days I think there's, more information. 142 00:16:45,337.5 --> 00:16:54,937.5 That women have that's coming out on social media and they're more people who are coming out and talking about it and advocating for women. 143 00:16:55,417.5 --> 00:17:05,647.5 But I often find here in the states that women patients still describe that they're not necessarily met halfway. 144 00:17:05,977.5 --> 00:17:08,357.5 That they're told that they're too young. 145 00:17:08,357.5 --> 00:17:19,612.5 Let's say they're 39, that they're too young for perimenopause and to wait until they're officially over and done with, which I don't know what that means, but I'm assuming done with menopause. 146 00:17:20,112.5 --> 00:17:34,692.5 So the approach that you take how do you approach women in terms of the advice that you give them? You've often described functional wellness as a root cause approach. 147 00:17:34,782.5 --> 00:17:41,97.5 What does that look like in practice? Can you describe that for my audience? Yeah. 148 00:17:41,97.5 --> 00:17:44,937.5 So when it comes to menopause specifically, I think there's the two ways to answer this. 149 00:17:44,937.5 --> 00:17:51,887.5 And the first way is for the woman who's having quite a textbook menopause and that's in no way dismissing it. 150 00:17:51,887.5 --> 00:18:06,587.5 What's happening there is the natural fallout of hormones and that can be navigated with the conventional HRT approaches and actually some women who don't want that get on really well with those herbal approaches as well. 151 00:18:06,887.5 --> 00:18:07,427.5 However. 152 00:18:08,657.5 --> 00:18:17,387.5 I think that the functional wellness approach really comes into its own with women who are having a challenging menopause. 153 00:18:17,387.5 --> 00:18:24,337.5 So what I mean by that is someone who has gone to the doctor and let's say for simplicity sake, she is over 40. 154 00:18:24,337.5 --> 00:18:34,687.5 She's obviously in perimenopausal, and they've put her on HRT and the HRT doesn't work and she feels worse, or her anxiety's gone through the roof. 155 00:18:34,687.5 --> 00:18:43,937.5 So now she's being, prescribed antidepressants and she's struggling and she's piling on weight and, the anxiety, the not sleeping, but nothing seems to be working. 156 00:18:44,777.5 --> 00:18:52,127.5 I think that's where the functional approach really works, because what it looks like in practice is. 157 00:18:52,937.5 --> 00:19:01,97.5 there are often what I call hormonal red flags that go all the way back, usually to puberty and even before. 158 00:19:01,467.5 --> 00:19:07,707.5 And so these are the things that we have normalized as part of the trajectory of a woman's life. 159 00:19:08,337.5 --> 00:19:12,677.5 Irritable bowel syndrome, headaches and migraines maybe some bad skin. 160 00:19:12,887.5 --> 00:19:21,887.5 Heavy bleeds, painful bleeds, just stuff that we've just pass off as this is all low level and fine. 161 00:19:22,787.5 --> 00:19:42,507.5 Actually, that's actually where we start to hone in because the causes of those symptoms are often these underlying hormone issues that very commonly link back to the gut and to diet and things like food intolerances that can be completely overlooked. 162 00:19:42,567.5 --> 00:20:02,217.5 And my experience is that when you start looking at the health history of a woman who's going through a challenging menopause, and it's just like they've had these, this, these sort of things babbling around that get bigger and bigger by the time that menopause comes and those hormones start dropping even further, everything is exposed and they can, it can just feel like a mess. 163 00:20:02,667.5 --> 00:20:10,947.5 And my experience is that often when we start talking about it just looks like this has gone, goes right back to when you were 15 and you experienced this, and this. 164 00:20:11,517.5 --> 00:20:18,447.5 They're often so relieved because they felt all the while that something wasn't right, but it was just ignored. 165 00:20:18,787.5 --> 00:20:36,607.5 So that's what it looks like in practice is really starting to hone in on not just the hormones, because obviously at menopause the menopause, the post menopause transition, they're fluctuating and changing anyway, but what was going on before those hormones started to be a problem. 166 00:20:36,622.5 --> 00:20:38,197.5 So that's where we start to look at the gut. 167 00:20:39,7.5 --> 00:20:53,647.5 So it's really sitting down with your client and getting a very in-depth history of what their symptoms, signs were like even when they were adolescents Yeah, absolutely. 168 00:20:54,117.5 --> 00:20:54,407.5 Yeah. 169 00:20:55,662.5 --> 00:21:09,572.5 That's interesting because I read something recently where it was basically talking, and maybe it's in, in the same school of thought where it, the article that I was reading was saying that the symptoms that. 170 00:21:09,932.5 --> 00:21:26,172.5 You often can have post pregnancy postpartum, for example, if there's like a strong history of postpartum depression or anxiety, then those things can also manifest af during perimenopause and menopause itself. 171 00:21:26,562.5 --> 00:21:31,392.5 So there, there's a similarity between what you are saying and what I read. 172 00:21:32,52.5 --> 00:21:45,682.5 But from what I understand reading about you and learning about you, you focus on the, like a three core pillar system, as you mentioned before, the adrenal glands, your blood sugar and digestion. 173 00:21:45,732.5 --> 00:22:06,672.5 Can you tell us about why these are so important and foundational to women's hormone health? So I'm gonna start with the adrenals and the stress piece, because I don't think that stress and women's hormones is talked about enough, and also what stress actually means. 174 00:22:07,62.5 --> 00:22:09,122.5 So I use the word stressor. 175 00:22:09,122.5 --> 00:22:10,352.5 I don't even like the word stress. 176 00:22:10,352.5 --> 00:22:15,302.5 'cause again, we've normalized it and I think there's such a glorification of I'm so stressed. 177 00:22:15,302.5 --> 00:22:21,687.5 I'm so busy, I had an auntie, auntie Valda, and she died gosh, must have about 15 years ago now. 178 00:22:21,687.5 --> 00:22:24,287.5 And she was in her late seventies then. 179 00:22:25,247.5 --> 00:22:27,827.5 She was a 1950s housewife. 180 00:22:28,217.5 --> 00:22:31,97.5 And the 1950s housewives had problems of their own. 181 00:22:31,97.5 --> 00:22:34,697.5 We know there was a lot of boredom, there was a lot of alcoholism and a lot of drug abuse. 182 00:22:35,27.5 --> 00:22:37,102.5 However, what they had. 183 00:22:38,27.5 --> 00:22:39,617.5 Was time. 184 00:22:39,857.5 --> 00:22:40,637.5 In general. 185 00:22:41,27.5 --> 00:22:51,287.5 So she would get up in the morning and she'd make the breakfast for my uncle and my cousins, and then they would go off to school and work and she would sit down with the radio on and have her breakfast. 186 00:22:52,502.5 --> 00:22:59,552.5 She would get up and she'd start doing some housework, and then at some point she'd sit down with a cup of tea and again, radio on or read a magazine. 187 00:23:00,122.5 --> 00:23:07,892.5 You find me a woman today who gets an opportunity to sit down with a cup of tea and listen to the radio flick through a magazine. 188 00:23:08,22.5 --> 00:23:14,832.5 Just make this costume for World Book Day for the kids, or put that thing on, or do the washing or do this thing over here. 189 00:23:14,832.5 --> 00:23:16,2.5 It just doesn't happen. 190 00:23:16,422.5 --> 00:23:25,422.5 And so what's happening is the stress of general day-to-day living is really affecting our hormone system. 191 00:23:25,422.5 --> 00:23:32,52.5 But that's just part of the picture, because then there's the other stressors that we can't control. 192 00:23:32,52.5 --> 00:23:37,292.5 There's pesticides, there's pollution, there's light toxicity, there's such a long list. 193 00:23:37,952.5 --> 00:23:52,612.5 So I truly believe that there's an opportunity for a whole new wave of feminism to be had where we're no longer habitually burning ourselves out because we actually understand that women's bodies aren't designed to withstand prolonged periods of stress. 194 00:23:52,612.5 --> 00:23:57,22.5 That's the difference between our hormone structure and the male hormone structure. 195 00:23:57,892.5 --> 00:24:05,452.5 So that's why we need to focus on supporting women to stop glorifying stress. 196 00:24:05,467.5 --> 00:24:13,267.5 Understanding how they can slowly start to chip away at reducing that stress and prioritizing their health. 197 00:24:14,167.5 --> 00:24:35,727.5 But the blood sugars are so important as a piece of that picture of course, because, with the stress profile, the easiest way to get our hormonal access to change is by, by changing what we eat and making sure that our blood sugars are balanced so that we don't end up with the insulin, cortisol rollercoaster. 198 00:24:35,827.5 --> 00:24:41,407.5 And also what people really overlook is food intolerances. 199 00:24:41,557.5 --> 00:24:56,692.5 So this is something I go on about a lot because people could be talking about I eat a keto diet, or I eat, I eat high protein, low carb, I'm really careful with diet, but they don't realize that eating foods there're intolerant to, and as soon as we eat foods, we're intolerant to, we do spike those stress hormones. 200 00:24:57,82.5 --> 00:25:00,892.5 So we focus as a foundational piece of work on diet. 201 00:25:01,522.5 --> 00:25:10,662.5 Also, because women in general for the last 50 years have fallen, under the spell of diet, culture, food, fear. 202 00:25:10,722.5 --> 00:25:12,72.5 We've got food addiction. 203 00:25:12,72.5 --> 00:25:22,727.5 We've got so many sort of confusing languages and teachings around food that actually bringing it back to some basics is really important. 204 00:25:23,237.5 --> 00:25:29,377.5 And then once we've got the food in place, that also is gonna change that stress profile almost straight away. 205 00:25:30,127.5 --> 00:25:38,467.5 But we can start to choose what we eat in a way that balances our blood sugars and we can start to change our stress. 206 00:25:39,687.5 --> 00:25:49,437.5 But if we have got an underlying unresolved gut dysbiosis or intestinal permeability, we aren't gonna win against systemic inflammation. 207 00:25:49,647.5 --> 00:25:52,437.5 So we have to look at those areas as well. 208 00:25:52,437.5 --> 00:26:04,647.5 So that's why I call it foundational health 'cause there's no point trying to layer on the HRT and hope that's gonna be the magic bullet that's gonna resolve all your issues if those things aren't in place. 209 00:26:04,862.5 --> 00:26:07,112.5 I'm not a functional medicine doctor. 210 00:26:07,362.5 --> 00:26:21,82.5 But even I know right? If you are drinking too much alcohol and you're on HRT, I'm just using one example, then you're actually backtracking and it's not necessarily going to help you at all. 211 00:26:21,82.5 --> 00:26:36,962.5 Can you give us an example of a client that you helped with your method, perhaps she was already on hormone replacement or not, so that we get to understand how your treatment helps patients. 212 00:26:38,522.5 --> 00:26:39,122.5 Yeah. 213 00:26:39,152.5 --> 00:26:39,722.5 Okay. 214 00:26:39,772.5 --> 00:26:43,12.5 I had a client actually who was. 215 00:26:44,112.5 --> 00:26:45,342.5 Early fifties. 216 00:26:45,942.5 --> 00:26:52,212.5 And was really struggling with horrific migraines and exhaustion. 217 00:26:52,212.5 --> 00:26:55,457.5 But it had really tipped into some kind of chronic fatigue. 218 00:26:55,467.5 --> 00:26:59,757.5 She was struggling with work and she had a very incredibly high profile job. 219 00:27:00,257.5 --> 00:27:01,97.5 Very high profile. 220 00:27:01,337.5 --> 00:27:04,377.5 And she had seen some of, the UK's finest. 221 00:27:04,377.5 --> 00:27:13,947.5 We have a street in London called Harley Street, and that's where a lot of the private medical practitioners, it's renowned for, this is where you go if you want the best medical practitioners. 222 00:27:14,217.5 --> 00:27:21,387.5 And she had gone through variety of people and they, so she was on HRT and they had kept increasing her estrogen. 223 00:27:21,437.5 --> 00:27:27,857.5 But what no one had looked at was that, so we did Dutch testing. 224 00:27:27,902.5 --> 00:27:34,572.5 And for those who don't know Dutch testing, it's the dried urine testing for comprehensive hormones. 225 00:27:34,872.5 --> 00:27:40,432.5 And it's different to serum blood testing, but it's looking at the metabolites of your hormones. 226 00:27:40,492.5 --> 00:27:52,842.5 So basically what is your body doing with your hormones? So is it working with them effectively? But the bit that I love the most about the Dutch testing is women can often feel that they're estrogen dominant. 227 00:27:52,842.5 --> 00:27:54,557.5 There's a lot of talking about estrogen dominance. 228 00:27:54,587.5 --> 00:27:57,212.5 But your blood tests can show that your estrogen's fine. 229 00:27:57,962.5 --> 00:28:04,622.5 What we can find out in a Dutch test is that there is, I always say there's two types of estrogen in menopause. 230 00:28:04,712.5 --> 00:28:06,392.5 'cause you're not making so much of it yourself. 231 00:28:06,602.5 --> 00:28:12,242.5 There's the one that we're slapping on our skin, and then there's the one that your body isn't able to clear out. 232 00:28:12,242.5 --> 00:28:14,372.5 It's the recirculating estrogen. 233 00:28:14,372.5 --> 00:28:16,622.5 So your body's not detoxing it effectively. 234 00:28:16,622.5 --> 00:28:19,532.5 And that can happen 'cause your liver becomes more sluggish. 235 00:28:19,652.5 --> 00:28:22,682.5 And also some lifestyle factors, but I'm just simplifying it a bit. 236 00:28:23,522.5 --> 00:28:30,362.5 What we were able to see in the Dutch test was that she was not processing her estrogen effectively at all. 237 00:28:30,782.5 --> 00:28:36,72.5 And so this had been overlooked because the medical model just you're not, you haven't got enough estrogen. 238 00:28:36,462.5 --> 00:28:37,932.5 We needed to keep giving you more. 239 00:28:37,932.5 --> 00:28:43,142.5 But as they kept giving her more and more is recirculating and contributing to this horrific exhaustion. 240 00:28:43,562.5 --> 00:28:45,382.5 This this what was looking like estrogen dominance. 241 00:28:46,222.5 --> 00:28:57,292.5 And so by knowing the right pathway to detox her to support her liver, we were able to fundamentally get her detoxing that estrogen more effectively. 242 00:28:57,802.5 --> 00:29:02,657.5 Actually, the recommendation, it was then to actually maybe speak to her doctor. 243 00:29:02,717.5 --> 00:29:07,932.5 We can't advise on HRT, but actually the dose of h of estrogen that she was on was very high. 244 00:29:08,232.5 --> 00:29:08,352.5 Okay. 245 00:29:08,352.5 --> 00:29:12,532.5 We have a, had a trend in the UK of very high estrogen dosing. 246 00:29:13,42.5 --> 00:29:20,722.5 And to actually maybe push back and ask for some more progesterone 'cause she was actually on a very low dose. 247 00:29:20,772.5 --> 00:29:24,12.5 And get the balance, the ratio of those hormones better. 248 00:29:24,322.5 --> 00:29:29,932.5 Whilst we were effectively working with the detoxing and we worked on diet and some food intolerances. 249 00:29:29,932.5 --> 00:29:31,792.5 And so that dramatically changed her life. 250 00:29:31,792.5 --> 00:29:34,372.5 The fatigue change the migraines changed. 251 00:29:34,372.5 --> 00:29:41,172.5 She was able to go back So the estrogen that she was not processing, it was leading to more fatigue. 252 00:29:41,222.5 --> 00:29:41,702.5 Horrific. 253 00:29:41,702.5 --> 00:29:42,602.5 Migraines. 254 00:29:42,602.5 --> 00:29:44,657.5 Anything else that weight gain. 255 00:29:45,212.5 --> 00:29:45,962.5 More weight gain. 256 00:29:45,962.5 --> 00:29:46,322.5 Yes. 257 00:29:46,322.5 --> 00:29:46,927.5 That can, yeah. 258 00:29:47,747.5 --> 00:29:49,127.5 That is definitely insomnia. 259 00:29:49,427.5 --> 00:29:49,637.5 Yeah. 260 00:29:49,642.5 --> 00:29:50,147.5 And insomnia. 261 00:29:50,357.5 --> 00:29:50,777.5 Yeah. 262 00:29:51,467.5 --> 00:29:51,827.5 Yep. 263 00:29:52,427.5 --> 00:30:04,257.5 So we've been talking a lot about hormones in general and your methods which obviously differs from the conventional approaches to menopause care. 264 00:30:04,587.5 --> 00:30:17,372.5 I often find when I talk about perimenopause and today I had a patient who was 39 and I told her, you're not, and she's been having symptoms, fatigue, hot flashes, mood issues. 265 00:30:17,712.5 --> 00:30:25,22.5 It was the first time I met her, but I informed her that you're not too young to not be perimenopausal. 266 00:30:25,412.5 --> 00:30:44,397.5 In your experience with your clients as well as your own experiences, what are the most under-discussed symptoms, early symptoms that you can think of that women should be aware of, that they, we should pay more attention to? I love that question. 267 00:30:44,907.5 --> 00:30:52,17.5 So from our perspective, we look at just coming back to that age piece, because I think that's really important. 268 00:30:52,657.5 --> 00:31:03,622.5 Statistically, when we look at a map of perimenopause we have, our hormones are doing what they're supposed to do, and then at 36 we've got estrogens tracking along. 269 00:31:03,892.5 --> 00:31:09,952.5 But at 36, that's when progesterone starts to literally looks like on a map, doesn't it? It looks like on a graph, it looks like it falls off a cliff. 270 00:31:10,192.5 --> 00:31:12,292.5 That statistically starts at 36. 271 00:31:12,772.5 --> 00:31:25,322.5 So yes, medically, we don't say that someone's menopausal until way further down the line or perimenopausal, but this very early place of perimenopause can get totally overlooked. 272 00:31:26,427.5 --> 00:31:37,412.5 So the type of things that we see commonly are things like, so when we think about what progesterone is for a second, progesterone is our calming hormone. 273 00:31:37,682.5 --> 00:31:41,402.5 So it's the hormone that calms us down, puts us into rest, digest. 274 00:31:41,832.5 --> 00:31:46,92.5 It's our anti-inflammatory hormone and it's also a mood stabilizer. 275 00:31:46,92.5 --> 00:31:50,802.5 So when that starts to drop off even a little bit, we can be more snappy. 276 00:31:50,802.5 --> 00:31:55,692.5 We can be more irritated, we can actually, to become quite mindless. 277 00:31:55,782.5 --> 00:32:03,362.5 So one of the things I heard quite a lot when I was in, in one-to-one clinical practice was I just keep finding, I keep putting my keys in the fridge. 278 00:32:03,362.5 --> 00:32:07,462.5 Why am I putting my keys in the fridge? Or I forgot to pick my child up from school. 279 00:32:07,462.5 --> 00:32:09,232.5 I never forget to do those things. 280 00:32:09,782.5 --> 00:32:12,452.5 It's very easy then to put that down to overwhelm. 281 00:32:12,752.5 --> 00:32:13,772.5 I'm overwhelmed. 282 00:32:13,772.5 --> 00:32:14,882.5 I'm just a bit tired. 283 00:32:14,932.5 --> 00:32:16,12.5 Less confidence. 284 00:32:16,12.5 --> 00:32:24,142.5 One of the things I heard regularly was I just, I struggle with driving all of a sudden out of the blue or flying, I'm just really suddenly scared of flying. 285 00:32:24,592.5 --> 00:32:36,432.5 A bit of an increase in anxiety, a bit of weight instability, maybe not the big weight gain, but just a bit like, oh, I'm just not fitting my jeans so easily or I'm just not sleeping as well. 286 00:32:36,432.5 --> 00:32:46,32.5 And these are the things that often don't lead someone to go to the doctor, but they stop feeling like themselves and it can really have this knock on effect with their confidence. 287 00:32:46,302.5 --> 00:32:54,672.5 And by the time they often do go to the doctor, that's when they're often being told, you're probably a bit overwhelmed, a bit depressed, have some antidepressants. 288 00:32:55,62.5 --> 00:32:55,452.5 Yeah. 289 00:32:55,512.5 --> 00:33:04,812.5 And so I know in the uk I dunno what it's like in the US but whilst perimenopause is definitely acknowledged, our practitioners. 290 00:33:04,872.5 --> 00:33:09,72.5 Are treating from the end of the menopause transition. 291 00:33:09,532.5 --> 00:33:18,652.5 So all of this early perimenopause stuff is very much overlooked I think they're often, women are often misprescribed medication when they're actually in early perimenopause. 292 00:33:18,692.5 --> 00:33:18,992.5 Yes. 293 00:33:18,992.5 --> 00:33:22,352.5 I feel like I've been guilty of that myself, honestly. 294 00:33:22,352.5 --> 00:33:38,782.5 until I came to realize what was going on within my own self and my patients, where I realized, you know what not everyone needs to be on an SSRI like, let's look at the bigger picture here as to why this is happening. 295 00:33:39,112.5 --> 00:33:47,362.5 At this stage of their life, and it's often very hard because a lot of my patients are working women who are mothers. 296 00:33:47,412.5 --> 00:33:49,182.5 they can be in the sandwich generation. 297 00:33:49,182.5 --> 00:33:51,462.5 So there, there's a lot on them. 298 00:33:51,942.5 --> 00:34:06,512.5 So it often takes many visits for us to really know each other before I can say, okay, I think there is an element of perimenopause, but I think we do need to also look at your personal and work stressors. 299 00:34:06,812.5 --> 00:34:14,592.5 So it becomes a whole picture that we need to really work on rather than just fixing the hormonal aspect. 300 00:34:14,592.5 --> 00:34:16,912.5 Would you agree? absolutely agree. 301 00:34:17,342.5 --> 00:34:23,972.5 And in those early stages, I think it can be very easy to just want to reach for the low dose. 302 00:34:24,17.5 --> 00:34:28,842.5 Bioidentical hormones, I'm so much more of a fan of let's tighten up the diet. 303 00:34:28,932.5 --> 00:34:30,282.5 I get that you are overwhelmed. 304 00:34:30,282.5 --> 00:34:37,992.5 How do we make this more simple? What can you let go of, if you've gotta care for, like you say, bed sandwich generation, really that kind of coaching. 305 00:34:37,992.5 --> 00:34:46,172.5 I'm such a fan of supporting the body to keep making the progesterone in the adrenals rather than taxing the body even further. 306 00:34:46,502.5 --> 00:34:46,922.5 Yeah. 307 00:34:47,382.5 --> 00:34:52,182.5 And in that light you've said that menopause isn't something to be fixed. 308 00:34:52,182.5 --> 00:35:00,202.5 And I agree with you, it's, it, this is, for most women, as we mentioned, there are states where it doesn't happen, quote unquote naturally. 309 00:35:00,662.5 --> 00:35:04,682.5 But it's not something to be fixed, but rather understood. 310 00:35:05,12.5 --> 00:35:17,52.5 how does reframing menopause this way change the journey for your your clients? How does that change for them? Yeah, menopause doesn't have to be grim for everyone. 311 00:35:17,52.5 --> 00:35:22,842.5 It is for some, but even if you are having, you're sailing through menopause and you are having a, it's okay. 312 00:35:23,412.5 --> 00:35:28,542.5 It's still a rite of passage and it's supposed to be transformative. 313 00:35:29,202.5 --> 00:35:37,707.5 And there is something very powerful for women in, but particular about losing their estrogen. 314 00:35:37,797.5 --> 00:35:42,192.5 Because estrogen is our mothering hormone. 315 00:35:42,192.5 --> 00:35:45,132.5 It's what gives us tolerance, it's our caretaking hormone. 316 00:35:45,342.5 --> 00:35:52,247.5 And so as that starts to drop my experience personally with my POI. 317 00:35:53,337.5 --> 00:36:07,977.5 Is that HRT taking estrogen can smooth over the experience of not having the hot flushes, not having the symptoms, but the underlying experience of no longer having my estrogen. 318 00:36:08,457.5 --> 00:36:09,987.5 I have lost my tolerance. 319 00:36:09,987.5 --> 00:36:13,857.5 I have lost my ability to caretake the way that I could. 320 00:36:14,517.5 --> 00:36:23,557.5 But there's so much power in that because underneath that, even if you're on HRT, that transformation is still happening. 321 00:36:23,917.5 --> 00:36:28,717.5 And how that changes us is if we lose tolerance. 322 00:36:28,807.5 --> 00:36:32,562.5 What we tend to lose tolerance for is things that don't serve us. 323 00:36:33,457.5 --> 00:36:44,507.5 There is some groundbreaking, it's tipping more into the emotional work around menopause, about how this transformation is carving us into the women that we wanna be in our third age. 324 00:36:44,507.5 --> 00:36:46,877.5 That's what we tend to call it this third age. 325 00:36:46,977.5 --> 00:36:56,247.5 And we can either be the little old women who sit there and go quietly, or we can carry on being these radical force majeure that so many of us are. 326 00:36:56,787.5 --> 00:37:02,757.5 And if we are able, if the menopause is offering us an opportunity to look at what doesn't serve us. 327 00:37:02,757.5 --> 00:37:12,252.5 So actually drinking that much alcohol, doesn't serve me, or this relationship doesn't serve me, or this job doesn't serve me like this isn't right. 328 00:37:12,752.5 --> 00:37:14,912.5 I remember being told that menopause. 329 00:37:15,572.5 --> 00:37:18,2.5 Shines a light on all the things. 330 00:37:18,57.5 --> 00:37:19,347.5 That it's time to question. 331 00:37:19,397.5 --> 00:37:26,627.5 And it's your job to take a blow torch to the things that you don't want anymore because it's our opportunity to carve out this whole new life. 332 00:37:27,377.5 --> 00:37:46,797.5 So maybe, it's this opportunity to listen, to the lessons that it's trying to teach us, but maybe we can't party till dawn anymore and be really drunk and come in at 5:00 AM Maybe we need to go to bed at 10 o'clock after a nice cup of herbal tea and some soothing music. 333 00:37:47,277.5 --> 00:37:56,307.5 But instead of coming home when the sun's coming up, now we have the opportunity to wake up and be in the choir and have this time for ourselves. 334 00:37:56,547.5 --> 00:37:59,817.5 And so maybe that doesn't sound so exciting, but it's just different. 335 00:38:00,187.5 --> 00:38:08,857.5 And there is a grief potentially with what we have to let go of, but there is also some really great gifts. 336 00:38:09,442.5 --> 00:38:17,602.5 I think that's where we can start to reframe and reclaim the opportunity that menopause gives us. 337 00:38:17,662.5 --> 00:38:21,862.5 And yes, it's really hard, the aging process, I still don't think we talk about it enough. 338 00:38:22,642.5 --> 00:38:30,472.5 The wrinkles, the losing pits in our body, hurting our hair, brain, all the stuff that these days we can do something about. 339 00:38:30,472.5 --> 00:38:32,692.5 But there is still a grief associated with it. 340 00:38:32,692.5 --> 00:38:37,432.5 And I think that is a really important part of menopause is grieving. 341 00:38:37,972.5 --> 00:38:39,322.5 Celebrating what we had. 342 00:38:39,322.5 --> 00:38:43,222.5 Grieving what we're losing, but then also this opportunity to claim the new. 343 00:38:44,722.5 --> 00:38:45,382.5 Absolutely. 344 00:38:45,382.5 --> 00:38:57,12.5 I think, what I tell myself at least is that you've earned the gray hairs and you've earned the wrinkles and maybe a few joints creaking and stiffness. 345 00:38:57,12.5 --> 00:38:58,752.5 But we've earned it. 346 00:38:58,782.5 --> 00:39:09,417.5 But I also think that maybe it correlates to the age and experience, but we also have a lot of experience and are wiser. 347 00:39:09,867.5 --> 00:39:46,647.5 And I think there's a lot of potential to really at least, and I imagine that you and I are in the same generation, for us to carve the way for women who are younger than us so that they don't have to feel so confused about what's happening to their bodies when it comes to go from going through puberty to pregnancy to perimenopause and menopause and beyond that we can talk about this so that they can obviously learn from us, but they can continue teaching their kids as well so that they don't feel confused as our generation has been before. 348 00:39:46,647.5 --> 00:39:54,647.5 And definitely our moms I look back and I don't think my mom necessarily knew what was going on with her body. 349 00:39:54,697.5 --> 00:39:59,107.5 And this is not a blame game, but I certainly did not receive much education. 350 00:39:59,607.5 --> 00:40:03,957.5 From her and even though I went to medical school, not enough there either. 351 00:40:03,957.5 --> 00:40:05,607.5 So it makes you wonder why. 352 00:40:05,907.5 --> 00:40:11,667.5 I wanted to go back and you were mentioning kinesiology as central to your practice. 353 00:40:11,667.5 --> 00:40:16,137.5 Can you talk about what that is? So my, my audience can learn about that. 354 00:40:16,137.5 --> 00:40:29,822.5 And how does this help the your clients, the imbalances that, that standard lab tests might miss? So kinesiology is a modality that originally came out of chiropractic. 355 00:40:30,162.5 --> 00:40:51,142.5 And so if you've been to a chiropractor or a physio and they're asking you to resist their pressure 'cause they're checking how your muscles are responding and those kind of things but the chiropractor who developed kinesiology discovered that there are 50 muscles that are actually connected via the nervous system to organs. 356 00:40:51,142.5 --> 00:40:57,262.5 So He theorized that when we're actually testing muscles, we're in a dialogue with organs. 357 00:40:57,322.5 --> 00:41:03,552.5 And for example, it can be really interesting when you start to understand a little bit about the muscles that are connected. 358 00:41:03,552.5 --> 00:41:14,572.5 'cause you can watch someone walking or I used to watch my clients walking in and you could see if someone's not got glutes that are working or a problem with their hips and their piriformis muscle. 359 00:41:15,412.5 --> 00:41:16,882.5 That's often hormone problems. 360 00:41:17,172.5 --> 00:41:22,887.5 if people have got knee problems, the first question I would ask them is how their digestion, because it can be linked in small intestine. 361 00:41:22,967.5 --> 00:41:25,877.5 You start to see these really interesting little correlations. 362 00:41:26,297.5 --> 00:41:30,977.5 But through the muscle testing you can also test for supplementation. 363 00:41:30,977.5 --> 00:41:35,957.5 So the supplementation that the body is gonna find beneficial when you find that there are these imbalances. 364 00:41:36,677.5 --> 00:41:48,177.5 So what the tool does for us is it's really great at showing root causes and it's really great at showing supplements particularly that are going to be really useful for that person. 365 00:41:48,327.5 --> 00:41:53,247.5 'cause the problem with supplements is it can just be guesswork, educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. 366 00:41:53,247.5 --> 00:41:56,847.5 And that is a minefield and it's expensive. 367 00:41:57,147.5 --> 00:42:03,357.5 And the problem with supplementation is if we're taking loads of it, we can also be putting the body under metabolic stress. 368 00:42:04,392.5 --> 00:42:06,222.5 So it's finding a more bespoke solution. 369 00:42:06,492.5 --> 00:42:15,317.5 But what we now do in our online clinic is with kinesiology food intolerance testing because. 370 00:42:16,337.5 --> 00:42:25,47.5 I personally find it the most useful for people as a snapshot of the foods that they are in, they are intolerant to. 371 00:42:25,47.5 --> 00:42:27,637.5 So we are looking at it from that perspective. 372 00:42:27,637.5 --> 00:42:35,77.5 So for more bespoke supplement testing and also for food intolerance testing because you can really hone in on what someone's intolerant to. 373 00:42:35,317.5 --> 00:42:44,407.5 And it's different to a food intolerance test that someone sends off their blood or an allergy test because that's looking for a big response from the immune system. 374 00:42:44,827.5 --> 00:42:50,257.5 And we're looking at things that are often much more low level as an intolerance. 375 00:42:50,257.5 --> 00:42:56,737.5 So something that's just tipping the body into a bit of stress, we just don't want any cortisol response, a huge immune response. 376 00:42:58,197.5 --> 00:43:10,327.5 One of the things I'm really passionate about advocating for women is if their HRT isn't working to keep pushing back and to educate themselves about the different types of HRT. 377 00:43:10,867.5 --> 00:43:19,237.5 one of the things I find, particularly in the UK, because the current guidelines stipulate that women should be put on synthetics first. 378 00:43:19,547.5 --> 00:43:25,277.5 Is that often, especially with the women who have challenging menopause, the synthetics aren't gonna cut it. 379 00:43:25,277.5 --> 00:43:27,732.5 They need the Body identical progesterones. 380 00:43:27,812.5 --> 00:43:32,462.5 And so pushing back to get onto the body identical progesterones, but. 381 00:43:33,152.5 --> 00:43:39,32.5 You'll know that can often lead to quite heavy bleeding, right? That often means it's not enough progesterone. 382 00:43:39,32.5 --> 00:43:45,902.5 So they need to really educate themselves to keep going back, to not be scared to just everything that happens in their body. 383 00:43:45,902.5 --> 00:43:46,832.5 It's data. 384 00:43:47,202.5 --> 00:43:50,132.5 But to work with a coach who understands it if needs be. 385 00:43:50,382.5 --> 00:43:52,392.5 If they're not feeling great, there's something not right. 386 00:43:53,412.5 --> 00:43:55,782.5 And Claire mentioned body identical. 387 00:43:55,782.5 --> 00:43:59,352.5 In the US we call it bioidentical, which okay. 388 00:43:59,352.5 --> 00:44:12,372.5 And I'm surprised to, to learn that because that's what the w if anything the good thing about the WHI is that it taught us some of the bad things about the synthetic hormones. 389 00:44:12,372.5 --> 00:44:21,52.5 So those of us who are more inclined to, to use HRT, we're more leaning towards the bioidentical hormones. 390 00:44:22,177.5 --> 00:44:43,297.5 The current regulations say that whilst the bioidentical, so in the UK we call them body identical because they've created the difference between compounded bioidenticals and the low dose bioidenticals being outside the framework of the regulations. 391 00:44:43,387.5 --> 00:44:43,537.5 Okay. 392 00:44:43,537.5 --> 00:44:44,797.5 So they've given them that name. 393 00:44:45,37.5 --> 00:44:49,707.5 They call what you would be calling the bioidenticals body? Identical. 394 00:44:49,712.5 --> 00:44:49,732.5 Okay. 395 00:44:49,732.5 --> 00:44:53,367.5 It's the, it's the same stuff, right? That's the difference. 396 00:44:53,727.5 --> 00:45:10,887.5 But whilst the regulations stick the NIC guidelines, the practitioners state that whilst the body identicals have lower risk associated with them, practitioners should offer the synthetics first. 397 00:45:11,157.5 --> 00:45:14,397.5 And my suspicion is always because that comes down to money. 398 00:45:14,687.5 --> 00:45:14,907.5 Yes. 399 00:45:15,52.5 --> 00:45:25,487.5 'cause the NHS are giving it away essentially for very little Claire, I've learned so much from you and I hope my audience is really listening carefully. 400 00:45:25,787.5 --> 00:45:40,377.5 If you were to talk to my audience right now and most of my audience I imagine are women, if they could just take one step towards balance, what would you advise them? More protein. 401 00:45:40,467.5 --> 00:45:47,997.5 Please eat more protein for hormone balance, for healing that gut, for balancing those blood sugars. 402 00:45:48,507.5 --> 00:45:53,427.5 So the metrics that we work off of are, there's two ways of doing the maths. 403 00:45:53,927.5 --> 00:46:01,597.5 There is if you choose one gram of protein value in your food per pound of body weight. 404 00:46:02,197.5 --> 00:46:05,137.5 Personally, I prefer a more visual approach. 405 00:46:05,317.5 --> 00:46:09,987.5 And so the second way of working it out is if you to put your weight into kilos. 406 00:46:09,987.5 --> 00:46:16,647.5 So let's say you were 60 kilos, you put a decimal point in front of the first number, so that would be 0.6, 407 00:46:16,767.5 --> 00:46:21,957.5 and that would translate to 600 grams in raw meat. 408 00:46:22,587.5 --> 00:46:23,457.5 Kind of terms. 409 00:46:24,27.5 --> 00:46:26,7.5 And so it's a very high amount. 410 00:46:26,7.5 --> 00:46:26,997.5 It's a high number. 411 00:46:26,997.5 --> 00:46:31,767.5 And people are often surprised when you start talking about some of the longevity medicine practitioners. 412 00:46:31,767.5 --> 00:46:33,327.5 They're talking about 1.6 413 00:46:33,327.5 --> 00:46:34,347.5 grams of protein. 414 00:46:34,347.5 --> 00:46:39,477.5 So we're actually a bit of a halfway house, but that is, it's quite an astonishing amount of food. 415 00:46:39,777.5 --> 00:46:40,377.5 It is, yeah. 416 00:46:40,377.5 --> 00:46:43,767.5 That's what I would absolutely be saying to women. 417 00:46:43,987.5 --> 00:46:59,47.5 Please increase, meat, fish, eggs can do tofu, but tofu can be tricky for hormone imbalances, right? So we've gotta be talking about pure protein sources and we look to you as the guru for menopause care. 418 00:46:59,47.5 --> 00:47:05,137.5 So tell us about one, one ritual that you never skip yourself. 419 00:47:06,157.5 --> 00:47:08,167.5 I move my body every single day. 420 00:47:08,227.5 --> 00:47:14,557.5 So I work out with weights and resistance for half an hour, only 'cause prolong stress, not good for hormones. 421 00:47:14,597.5 --> 00:47:15,947.5 But I do that five times a week. 422 00:47:16,287.5 --> 00:47:19,17.5 But I walk every single day for 45 minutes. 423 00:47:19,47.5 --> 00:47:19,317.5 Absolutely. 424 00:47:19,857.5 --> 00:47:21,92.5 Move your body, move your limp. 425 00:47:21,747.5 --> 00:47:22,707.5 Absolutely. 426 00:47:23,97.5 --> 00:47:27,147.5 Claire, it's been an honor and honestly, I'm so glad that you joined me today. 427 00:47:27,147.5 --> 00:47:39,547.5 If my audience wanted to find you, read your book, find your website, and find you on social media, where would they go? They can go to all the social media platforms. 428 00:47:39,657.5 --> 00:47:43,587.5 And you just look for my name, Claire Snowden darling, and I am there. 429 00:47:43,697.5 --> 00:47:50,327.5 It's Claire Snow Darling Official on Instagram and Facebook and Claire Snowden darling on TikTok or claire snowden darling.com. 430 00:47:50,327.5 --> 00:47:54,827.5 And then through any of those channels, you will find the college and you can find the clinic. 431 00:47:54,877.5 --> 00:47:55,837.5 Fantastic. 432 00:47:56,457.5 --> 00:47:57,17.5 Thank Thank you so much. 433 00:47:58,217.5 --> 00:47:59,207.5 Yes, it's been wonderful. 434 00:47:59,577.5 --> 00:48:01,707.5 Thank you so much, It's been a pleasure. 435 00:48:01,707.5 --> 00:48:07,557.5 this podcast is for informational purposes only and isn't intended as medical advice. 436 00:48:07,917.5 --> 00:48:13,737.5 Always consult with your doctor before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or health regimen.
.9996948242Today on Soma Says, we're joined by Claire Snowdon-Darling—founder of The College of Functional Wellness, and a leading voice in women’s health and hormone balance. 2 00:00:09,520.0004577637 --> 00:00:21,659.999847412 Claire is a functional kinesiologist and speaker who helps women navigate menopause with clarity, confidence, and compassion by addressing the root causes of imbalance—adrenals, blood sugar, and digestion. 3 00:00:22,170.000076294 --> 00:00:24,129.999160767 Claire, welcome to Soma Says.” 4 00:00:25,562.5 --> 00:00:35,332.5 Why is it that the UK seems to be much more progressive in terms of menopause care in comparison to the us? asked that before. 5 00:00:35,332.5 --> 00:00:36,982.5 It's a really good question. 6 00:00:36,982.5 --> 00:00:52,802.5 what is happening with women's health in general in the US is challenging, right? That being said, there are a lot more voices and a lot more advocates that are coming out and talking about women's health and advocating for us. 7 00:00:53,182.5 --> 00:01:04,37.5 But in the few years that I've, been involved in this type of care it just seems that there are more voices in the UK than there have been in the us. 8 00:01:04,37.5 --> 00:01:21,67.5 So I've always been curious as to why it's strange as well, because of course everyone holds up our health system as being, exemplary and actually it's letting down a lot of women in the uk and so I think those of us who speak from the outside of it as well can often. 9 00:01:21,567.5 --> 00:01:26,497.5 Putting our heads above the parapet can be quite dangerous, but actually you are right, there seems to be quite a big movement right now. 10 00:01:26,987.5 --> 00:01:42,862.5 I think what we have learned from the American system is there's a lot more, the adverts that I've seen when you are in the States, the drug companies advertising to you, so people's empowerment to go and request the care that they want, because ultimately they're paying for it. 11 00:01:43,112.5 --> 00:01:45,92.5 That's really drip feeding over here. 12 00:01:45,92.5 --> 00:01:46,557.5 People actually, it's learning. 13 00:01:46,707.5 --> 00:01:47,357.5 It's okay. 14 00:01:47,402.5 --> 00:01:49,982.5 What to ask for and pushing back. 15 00:01:50,52.5 --> 00:02:09,422.5 So You're known for transforming your own health struggles into a career, which I find fascinating because I feel a lot of us who go into healthcare it took me a while to understand this and appreciate it and accept it within myself that I was essentially trying to save myself by helping others. 16 00:02:09,762.5 --> 00:02:25,687.5 Can you share your personal experience that drew you towards this field and ultimately founding the College of Functional Wellness and all the great advocacy work that you do? Great question. 17 00:02:25,687.5 --> 00:02:40,532.5 So if I kind of start with the first part of your question, which is what drew me to this as a career? I think the truth is back as a teen, I was fascinated by the more complimentary aspects of health. 18 00:02:40,832.5 --> 00:02:50,397.5 But back then, in the nineties, I was born in the seventies, so back then in the nineties when I was a teen and deciding on career pathways, complimentary health, there wasn't really an option. 19 00:02:50,397.5 --> 00:02:57,87.5 You could be a physio, an osteopath, or you went into beauty and you did health and beauty, and that's where the reflexology and things were. 20 00:02:57,537.5 --> 00:03:01,642.5 And none of those things really gripped me, but I was fascinated by. 21 00:03:02,727.5 --> 00:03:10,772.5 Health in general, didn't have the education in the belief in my academic ability to go and pursue being a doctor. 22 00:03:11,132.5 --> 00:03:15,122.5 And so ended up going down another career pathway, which I also really loved. 23 00:03:15,122.5 --> 00:03:19,202.5 I actually worked in theater and specialized working with people with learning disabilities. 24 00:03:19,412.5 --> 00:03:23,792.5 So there was always this care aspect that kind of came through. 25 00:03:23,792.5 --> 00:03:29,997.5 And the advocacy piece, when I look back, there is a through line between self-expression and advocacy. 26 00:03:30,537.5 --> 00:03:43,217.5 But what happened was in 2004, I gave birth to my wonderful daughter who's now 21, and we both nearly died in the labor process and the experience. 27 00:03:44,207.5 --> 00:03:51,917.5 My first recollection is waking up in recovery with this overwhelming tiredness that never went away. 28 00:03:51,917.5 --> 00:03:54,347.5 And we are talking for 15 years. 29 00:03:54,347.5 --> 00:03:56,327.5 this horrific tiredness of 15 years. 30 00:03:56,867.5 --> 00:04:03,877.5 So what I came to realize was something like chronic fatigue syndrome also postnatal depression. 31 00:04:03,982.5 --> 00:04:09,662.5 I ended up postpartum psychosis being diagnosed with a form of PTSD. 32 00:04:09,992.5 --> 00:04:12,272.5 Just everything just cracked open. 33 00:04:12,272.5 --> 00:04:15,662.5 And, I just desperately wanted to feel better. 34 00:04:15,712.5 --> 00:04:25,492.5 As you said I started to develop an interest in nutrition and in alternative medicine in general. 35 00:04:25,492.5 --> 00:04:28,942.5 And I discovered at the time, kinesiology and nutrition. 36 00:04:29,212.5 --> 00:04:32,662.5 I trained, I went crazy trained in about 16 modalities. 37 00:04:32,852.5 --> 00:04:34,262.5 But the two that really gripped me. 38 00:04:35,432.5 --> 00:04:51,992.5 Kinesiology and nutrition and I was trying to get myself well, but had also discovered a way to help other people get well and ha I felt like this was, it just felt like this was what I was put on the earth to do. 39 00:04:51,992.5 --> 00:04:53,462.5 So I I set up my practice. 40 00:04:54,332.5 --> 00:05:11,472.5 But then moving into the second part of your question is what then led me into the more functional aspect of wellness and to founding the college? That kind of happened a bit by accident because I had a great career in clinical practice. 41 00:05:12,282.5 --> 00:05:18,377.5 I wasn't getting myself I was doing everything that I was told by the complimentary therapist I was seeing. 42 00:05:19,497.5 --> 00:05:25,847.5 I was doing all the things that were, at the times, this is the way to do things. 43 00:05:25,847.5 --> 00:05:27,827.5 I was, I tried everything. 44 00:05:27,827.5 --> 00:05:46,337.5 There was no stone unturned, and I was also working with a variety of medical practitioners because I was desperately trying to find some kind of diagnosis because this wasn't just chronic fatigue, there was preposterous weight gain there. 45 00:05:46,362.5 --> 00:05:49,407.5 It was just horrific problems with bleeds. 46 00:05:49,407.5 --> 00:05:57,27.5 And ultimately, I eventually got a diagnosis of premature ovarian insufficiency, which for anyone who doesn't know. 47 00:05:58,92.5 --> 00:06:02,952.5 It's passed off as being early menopause or a menopause like condition. 48 00:06:03,222.5 --> 00:06:07,512.5 My experience has been it's not been like a menopause experience. 49 00:06:07,517.5 --> 00:06:13,302.5 It's been a very fluctuating hormonal experience, and I'm still not through the menopause part. 50 00:06:13,302.5 --> 00:06:15,192.5 I'm still technically in perimenopause. 51 00:06:15,192.5 --> 00:06:19,582.5 So I will have spent, next year, 25 years in per mepa. 52 00:06:19,677.5 --> 00:06:19,817.5 Okay. 53 00:06:19,867.5 --> 00:06:37,417.5 so the great thing about that was I realized that something is missing here in terms of how people are looking at, how the medical model is looking at this condition that I'd finally got a diagnosis of and how we deal in general with hormone conditions. 54 00:06:38,287.5 --> 00:06:52,62.5 And basically through my own research and a stroke of insight, there was a lightning bolt moment where I basically came up with the clinic model that is now at the core of our work which we call the triangle of Hormonal Health. 55 00:06:52,562.5 --> 00:07:00,812.5 And it was just a way of explaining to women really how fundamentally important diet is. 56 00:07:00,812.5 --> 00:07:04,482.5 Because one of the issues that we have is compliance often with people. 57 00:07:04,822.5 --> 00:07:08,602.5 And it's, I remember being in the mentality of, but I can have this treat. 58 00:07:08,662.5 --> 00:07:10,942.5 I've been really good all week, I can have this treat. 59 00:07:11,362.5 --> 00:07:25,82.5 And when I fundamentally understood how blood sugars work and their correlation with stress hormones, with the reproductive sex hormones, everything went off, like light bulbs in my head. 60 00:07:25,907.5 --> 00:07:34,697.5 We realized my business partner Laura, and I started to put together some one day CPD training courses for practitioners. 61 00:07:34,697.5 --> 00:07:43,997.5 We'd already taught, we were teaching for other colleges, we taught some other bits and pieces ourselves, and we sent them off to our governing body to have them accredited as CPD. 62 00:07:43,997.5 --> 00:07:49,127.5 And they came back and said, no, you've actually invented a whole new branch of this modality. 63 00:07:49,787.5 --> 00:07:51,497.5 Go away and start a college. 64 00:07:51,887.5 --> 00:07:56,707.5 So we then jumped through the hoops to become an accredited accredited college. 65 00:07:57,487.5 --> 00:08:02,727.5 Our modality at that time was an in-person training included body work. 66 00:08:02,727.5 --> 00:08:05,547.5 Kinesiology is a combination, nutrition and some body work. 67 00:08:05,577.5 --> 00:08:10,737.5 And then of course the world was hit by the pandemic and all of our hard work felt like it was gonna go down the drain. 68 00:08:11,157.5 --> 00:08:22,857.5 But what we suddenly realized that became clear was our, the really phenomenal part of our work wasn't in the body work part of the modality. 69 00:08:23,127.5 --> 00:08:25,257.5 It was in the research that we'd done. 70 00:08:25,257.5 --> 00:08:30,992.5 And so we then were able to put the course an actual course in itself. 71 00:08:31,92.5 --> 00:08:34,442.5 A functional wellness diploma for coaches. 72 00:08:34,442.5 --> 00:08:36,632.5 And then that's now been accredited all over the world. 73 00:08:36,632.5 --> 00:08:37,682.5 So it was accidental. 74 00:08:38,102.5 --> 00:08:38,582.5 Okay. 75 00:08:39,462.5 --> 00:08:44,172.5 I do have a lot of doctors and other practitioners who listen to my podcast. 76 00:08:44,422.5 --> 00:08:49,12.5 So this, as you mentioned this can be taken by anyone across the world. 77 00:08:49,322.5 --> 00:08:52,772.5 And they can use that as credit to a certification. 78 00:08:53,372.5 --> 00:09:00,912.5 Yes, it is now a fully accredited, people with existing qualifications can do it as continuous professional development. 79 00:09:01,12.5 --> 00:09:09,702.5 also people who are in a full career change can start at the very beginning and then come out as qualified coaches with full certification. 80 00:09:10,77.5 --> 00:09:14,787.5 And going back to what you were saying before, you mentioned premature ovarian failure. 81 00:09:14,947.5 --> 00:09:28,947.5 for my audience who are not medical and trying to learn from this podcast, can you talk about what that is and how it differs from perimenopause and menopause? Yes. 82 00:09:29,7.5 --> 00:09:33,57.5 So it's a still considered a fairly rare condition. 83 00:09:33,137.5 --> 00:09:41,27.5 About 17% of women will experience it, and some people develop it randomly, idiopathic, really randomly. 84 00:09:41,87.5 --> 00:09:45,947.5 Others will develop it because of surgery or medication, things like that. 85 00:09:45,977.5 --> 00:09:56,722.5 Where basically the ovaries stop doing the job that they're supposed to do, which of course happens as a natural process in menopause and is supposed to happen. 86 00:09:57,202.5 --> 00:10:02,842.5 But I know that the youngest person to ever be diagnosed in the UK was 14 years old. 87 00:10:03,112.5 --> 00:10:06,582.5 And so it's not supposed to happen in these younger ages. 88 00:10:06,862.5 --> 00:10:08,992.5 And especially in this idiopathic way. 89 00:10:10,117.5 --> 00:10:15,817.5 And so no one has ever been able to medically tell me why it happens. 90 00:10:16,447.5 --> 00:10:30,222.5 I do see in my clients who have experienced it there that obviously the medication and the surgical route, but when it has been idiopathic, there can be a, a period of, a high stress, a lot of trauma, some kind of surgery. 91 00:10:30,222.5 --> 00:10:36,162.5 There's something that actually just tips the body over and it just goes, I can't, I, the ovaries go, I can't do this anymore. 92 00:10:36,502.5 --> 00:10:41,742.5 And so yes, it, it mimics menopause because the ovaries have stopped doing their job. 93 00:10:43,422.5 --> 00:10:45,672.5 The bit that people don't often understand. 94 00:10:45,672.5 --> 00:10:54,972.5 And I have met other women like me, I definitely had a history even before the birth trauma of. 95 00:10:55,722.5 --> 00:10:56,832.5 Quite a lot of trauma. 96 00:10:57,222.5 --> 00:11:05,652.5 And what women often don't know is that we don't just make all of our hormones in our ovaries, we also make them in our adrenal glands. 97 00:11:05,712.5 --> 00:11:13,962.5 And in response to trauma, the body will choose the stress hormone cortisol over the making the reproductive sex hormones. 98 00:11:14,532.5 --> 00:11:26,262.5 And so when we've got someone with premature ovarian insufficiency, they're often, if they've got this history of trauma, not able to make even that small amount of hormone. 99 00:11:26,502.5 --> 00:11:40,332.5 And so this is where this fluctuating situation comes in, because they can be put on HRT, but the HRT one month is too high, then it's too low, and it can just be quite a lot to navigate. 100 00:11:40,882.5 --> 00:11:43,912.5 But the struggle for me has actually been really beneficial for my clients. 101 00:11:43,912.5 --> 00:11:49,612.5 'cause I now know a lot about different HRDs and why they might not be working. 102 00:11:49,912.5 --> 00:12:10,762.5 Isn't that uncanny how that happens? I've had not premature ovarian insufficiency, but you, as you were mentioning perimenopause and it took me a long time even with me being a doctor, and I was even able to have a pregnancy through that. 103 00:12:11,192.5 --> 00:12:19,92.5 But there were issues related to the perimenopause that ultimately led to some issues and led to an emergency C-section. 104 00:12:19,92.5 --> 00:12:30,402.5 And I've had to really sit back and realize, okay, even though I wasn't menopausal, my hormones were just fluctuating rapidly. 105 00:12:30,912.5 --> 00:12:35,582.5 And what I should have been on is some progesterone during my pregnancy. 106 00:12:36,222.5 --> 00:12:39,332.5 And that's what led to a placental abruption. 107 00:12:39,332.5 --> 00:12:42,482.5 And thankfully everything worked out, but. 108 00:12:42,872.5 --> 00:12:49,682.5 But you just, you don't even realize these are the things and I didn't have that guidance either. 109 00:12:50,252.5 --> 00:12:57,992.5 So that, those are the reasons, my own experiences, plus what I've seen with my patients, plus my mom. 110 00:12:57,992.5 --> 00:13:10,232.5 And it's really led me to want to advocate for women as much as possible because here in the States, I can reflect back to my years of medical school and residency. 111 00:13:10,622.5 --> 00:13:15,752.5 There was just a very small amount of information that was given. 112 00:13:16,92.5 --> 00:13:19,962.5 I actually remember, oh, if you FSH is above 20, that means you're menopausal. 113 00:13:19,962.5 --> 00:13:20,862.5 No, not really. 114 00:13:21,552.5 --> 00:13:24,42.5 But that's literally what I remember being taught. 115 00:13:25,152.5 --> 00:13:29,292.5 So it, it was just very lack of information that was given. 116 00:13:29,292.5 --> 00:13:37,522.5 and then as the Women's Health Initiative came out and it added even more chaos and confusion to the whole picture. 117 00:13:38,332.5 --> 00:13:41,722.5 So we both established why we do what we do. 118 00:13:42,92.5 --> 00:13:58,192.5 So when you began speaking openly about menopause and perimenopause, what was the reaction that you received from the women that you were speaking with and from the broader medical community? It, you've actually summed it up beautifully. 119 00:13:58,292.5 --> 00:14:05,132.5 The thing that took me quite by surprise was. 120 00:14:05,687.5 --> 00:14:09,317.5 That no one knew about menopause. 121 00:14:09,317.5 --> 00:14:17,92.5 So I didn't know, I knew what it was, but I didn't really understand it, when I first got given that diagnosis, it was just like menopause. 122 00:14:17,192.5 --> 00:14:21,182.5 That's a terrible way to give a diagnosis anyway, but it, no, it's not. 123 00:14:21,272.5 --> 00:14:29,462.5 And also I don't really know what menopause is and what does that actually mean, and I just thought that maybe I'd just forgotten that bit of school. 124 00:14:29,462.5 --> 00:14:38,152.5 But then the overarching realization I had, the more that I went out and started doing, I did a lot of there's a lot of menopause cafes over in the uk. 125 00:14:38,152.5 --> 00:14:39,712.5 There's a lot of menopause groups. 126 00:14:40,92.5 --> 00:14:46,52.5 And I went and did a lot of talks at those groups and just this realization that women did not. 127 00:14:47,12.5 --> 00:14:48,512.5 They weren't given the information. 128 00:14:48,512.5 --> 00:14:53,882.5 I found out that we actually only started teaching about menopause in schools three years ago in the uk. 129 00:14:54,432.5 --> 00:15:01,312.5 'cause I, 'cause we all kept, all my peers kept saying, why don't we know this? And then this realization, we weren't all at school anything about menopause. 130 00:15:01,692.5 --> 00:15:08,32.5 But then the bit that really surprised me with the medical community was that they too don't know about menopause. 131 00:15:08,572.5 --> 00:15:19,677.5 Even the doctors who are specialists trained for their GP practitioner surgery don't know a lot of the stuff that we are talking about regularly in the functional community. 132 00:15:20,437.5 --> 00:15:24,317.5 I'm a speaker on a national website menopause.co 133 00:15:24,317.5 --> 00:15:28,457.5 uk, and it was launched because of this lack of information. 134 00:15:28,457.5 --> 00:15:36,507.5 And what's so wonderful is the person who launched it, fabulous health advocate he pulled to, he pulled all different groups of people and specialists. 135 00:15:36,507.5 --> 00:15:41,917.5 So there is the medical, there's the alternative view so that women can find the pathway that feels right for them. 136 00:15:41,917.5 --> 00:15:43,27.5 That was the motivation. 137 00:15:43,417.5 --> 00:15:59,167.5 But he launched it at a medical convention and I was in the room and he just, there was 400 medical practitioners and he said, how many of you went to medical school? And 400 hands went up and he said, how many of you have trained in menopause? And 10 stayed up? And he went, that's why we need this website. 138 00:15:59,272.5 --> 00:16:01,252.5 if the women don't know they can be taught. 139 00:16:01,687.5 --> 00:16:13,787.5 And if the doctors don't know, if the women know, then they can start self advocating and they can start actually requesting the care that they want, right? Absolutely. 140 00:16:13,787.5 --> 00:16:39,647.5 I have turned into an advocate for my patients and a lot of times I often help coach them on how to, let's say if they're seeing a specialist aside from me how to approach them, how to talk, with their breast specialist or their endocrinologist, or perhaps if they're getting surgery, what questions to ask and advocate for their own health. 141 00:16:39,927.5 --> 00:16:44,767.5 I often find that these days I think there's, more information. 142 00:16:45,337.5 --> 00:16:54,937.5 That women have that's coming out on social media and they're more people who are coming out and talking about it and advocating for women. 143 00:16:55,417.5 --> 00:17:05,647.5 But I often find here in the states that women patients still describe that they're not necessarily met halfway. 144 00:17:05,977.5 --> 00:17:08,357.5 That they're told that they're too young. 145 00:17:08,357.5 --> 00:17:19,612.5 Let's say they're 39, that they're too young for perimenopause and to wait until they're officially over and done with, which I don't know what that means, but I'm assuming done with menopause. 146 00:17:20,112.5 --> 00:17:34,692.5 So the approach that you take how do you approach women in terms of the advice that you give them? You've often described functional wellness as a root cause approach. 147 00:17:34,782.5 --> 00:17:41,97.5 What does that look like in practice? Can you describe that for my audience? Yeah. 148 00:17:41,97.5 --> 00:17:44,937.5 So when it comes to menopause specifically, I think there's the two ways to answer this. 149 00:17:44,937.5 --> 00:17:51,887.5 And the first way is for the woman who's having quite a textbook menopause and that's in no way dismissing it. 150 00:17:51,887.5 --> 00:18:06,587.5 What's happening there is the natural fallout of hormones and that can be navigated with the conventional HRT approaches and actually some women who don't want that get on really well with those herbal approaches as well. 151 00:18:06,887.5 --> 00:18:07,427.5 However. 152 00:18:08,657.5 --> 00:18:17,387.5 I think that the functional wellness approach really comes into its own with women who are having a challenging menopause. 153 00:18:17,387.5 --> 00:18:24,337.5 So what I mean by that is someone who has gone to the doctor and let's say for simplicity sake, she is over 40. 154 00:18:24,337.5 --> 00:18:34,687.5 She's obviously in perimenopausal, and they've put her on HRT and the HRT doesn't work and she feels worse, or her anxiety's gone through the roof. 155 00:18:34,687.5 --> 00:18:43,937.5 So now she's being, prescribed antidepressants and she's struggling and she's piling on weight and, the anxiety, the not sleeping, but nothing seems to be working. 156 00:18:44,777.5 --> 00:18:52,127.5 I think that's where the functional approach really works, because what it looks like in practice is. 157 00:18:52,937.5 --> 00:19:01,97.5 there are often what I call hormonal red flags that go all the way back, usually to puberty and even before. 158 00:19:01,467.5 --> 00:19:07,707.5 And so these are the things that we have normalized as part of the trajectory of a woman's life. 159 00:19:08,337.5 --> 00:19:12,677.5 Irritable bowel syndrome, headaches and migraines maybe some bad skin. 160 00:19:12,887.5 --> 00:19:21,887.5 Heavy bleeds, painful bleeds, just stuff that we've just pass off as this is all low level and fine. 161 00:19:22,787.5 --> 00:19:42,507.5 Actually, that's actually where we start to hone in because the causes of those symptoms are often these underlying hormone issues that very commonly link back to the gut and to diet and things like food intolerances that can be completely overlooked. 162 00:19:42,567.5 --> 00:20:02,217.5 And my experience is that when you start looking at the health history of a woman who's going through a challenging menopause, and it's just like they've had these, this, these sort of things babbling around that get bigger and bigger by the time that menopause comes and those hormones start dropping even further, everything is exposed and they can, it can just feel like a mess. 163 00:20:02,667.5 --> 00:20:10,947.5 And my experience is that often when we start talking about it just looks like this has gone, goes right back to when you were 15 and you experienced this, and this. 164 00:20:11,517.5 --> 00:20:18,447.5 They're often so relieved because they felt all the while that something wasn't right, but it was just ignored. 165 00:20:18,787.5 --> 00:20:36,607.5 So that's what it looks like in practice is really starting to hone in on not just the hormones, because obviously at menopause the menopause, the post menopause transition, they're fluctuating and changing anyway, but what was going on before those hormones started to be a problem. 166 00:20:36,622.5 --> 00:20:38,197.5 So that's where we start to look at the gut. 167 00:20:39,7.5 --> 00:20:53,647.5 So it's really sitting down with your client and getting a very in-depth history of what their symptoms, signs were like even when they were adolescents Yeah, absolutely. 168 00:20:54,117.5 --> 00:20:54,407.5 Yeah. 169 00:20:55,662.5 --> 00:21:09,572.5 That's interesting because I read something recently where it was basically talking, and maybe it's in, in the same school of thought where it, the article that I was reading was saying that the symptoms that. 170 00:21:09,932.5 --> 00:21:26,172.5 You often can have post pregnancy postpartum, for example, if there's like a strong history of postpartum depression or anxiety, then those things can also manifest af during perimenopause and menopause itself. 171 00:21:26,562.5 --> 00:21:31,392.5 So there, there's a similarity between what you are saying and what I read. 172 00:21:32,52.5 --> 00:21:45,682.5 But from what I understand reading about you and learning about you, you focus on the, like a three core pillar system, as you mentioned before, the adrenal glands, your blood sugar and digestion. 173 00:21:45,732.5 --> 00:22:06,672.5 Can you tell us about why these are so important and foundational to women's hormone health? So I'm gonna start with the adrenals and the stress piece, because I don't think that stress and women's hormones is talked about enough, and also what stress actually means. 174 00:22:07,62.5 --> 00:22:09,122.5 So I use the word stressor. 175 00:22:09,122.5 --> 00:22:10,352.5 I don't even like the word stress. 176 00:22:10,352.5 --> 00:22:15,302.5 'cause again, we've normalized it and I think there's such a glorification of I'm so stressed. 177 00:22:15,302.5 --> 00:22:21,687.5 I'm so busy, I had an auntie, auntie Valda, and she died gosh, must have about 15 years ago now. 178 00:22:21,687.5 --> 00:22:24,287.5 And she was in her late seventies then. 179 00:22:25,247.5 --> 00:22:27,827.5 She was a 1950s housewife. 180 00:22:28,217.5 --> 00:22:31,97.5 And the 1950s housewives had problems of their own. 181 00:22:31,97.5 --> 00:22:34,697.5 We know there was a lot of boredom, there was a lot of alcoholism and a lot of drug abuse. 182 00:22:35,27.5 --> 00:22:37,102.5 However, what they had. 183 00:22:38,27.5 --> 00:22:39,617.5 Was time. 184 00:22:39,857.5 --> 00:22:40,637.5 In general. 185 00:22:41,27.5 --> 00:22:51,287.5 So she would get up in the morning and she'd make the breakfast for my uncle and my cousins, and then they would go off to school and work and she would sit down with the radio on and have her breakfast. 186 00:22:52,502.5 --> 00:22:59,552.5 She would get up and she'd start doing some housework, and then at some point she'd sit down with a cup of tea and again, radio on or read a magazine. 187 00:23:00,122.5 --> 00:23:07,892.5 You find me a woman today who gets an opportunity to sit down with a cup of tea and listen to the radio flick through a magazine. 188 00:23:08,22.5 --> 00:23:14,832.5 Just make this costume for World Book Day for the kids, or put that thing on, or do the washing or do this thing over here. 189 00:23:14,832.5 --> 00:23:16,2.5 It just doesn't happen. 190 00:23:16,422.5 --> 00:23:25,422.5 And so what's happening is the stress of general day-to-day living is really affecting our hormone system. 191 00:23:25,422.5 --> 00:23:32,52.5 But that's just part of the picture, because then there's the other stressors that we can't control. 192 00:23:32,52.5 --> 00:23:37,292.5 There's pesticides, there's pollution, there's light toxicity, there's such a long list. 193 00:23:37,952.5 --> 00:23:52,612.5 So I truly believe that there's an opportunity for a whole new wave of feminism to be had where we're no longer habitually burning ourselves out because we actually understand that women's bodies aren't designed to withstand prolonged periods of stress. 194 00:23:52,612.5 --> 00:23:57,22.5 That's the difference between our hormone structure and the male hormone structure. 195 00:23:57,892.5 --> 00:24:05,452.5 So that's why we need to focus on supporting women to stop glorifying stress. 196 00:24:05,467.5 --> 00:24:13,267.5 Understanding how they can slowly start to chip away at reducing that stress and prioritizing their health. 197 00:24:14,167.5 --> 00:24:35,727.5 But the blood sugars are so important as a piece of that picture of course, because, with the stress profile, the easiest way to get our hormonal access to change is by, by changing what we eat and making sure that our blood sugars are balanced so that we don't end up with the insulin, cortisol rollercoaster. 198 00:24:35,827.5 --> 00:24:41,407.5 And also what people really overlook is food intolerances. 199 00:24:41,557.5 --> 00:24:56,692.5 So this is something I go on about a lot because people could be talking about I eat a keto diet, or I eat, I eat high protein, low carb, I'm really careful with diet, but they don't realize that eating foods there're intolerant to, and as soon as we eat foods, we're intolerant to, we do spike those stress hormones. 200 00:24:57,82.5 --> 00:25:00,892.5 So we focus as a foundational piece of work on diet. 201 00:25:01,522.5 --> 00:25:10,662.5 Also, because women in general for the last 50 years have fallen, under the spell of diet, culture, food, fear. 202 00:25:10,722.5 --> 00:25:12,72.5 We've got food addiction. 203 00:25:12,72.5 --> 00:25:22,727.5 We've got so many sort of confusing languages and teachings around food that actually bringing it back to some basics is really important. 204 00:25:23,237.5 --> 00:25:29,377.5 And then once we've got the food in place, that also is gonna change that stress profile almost straight away. 205 00:25:30,127.5 --> 00:25:38,467.5 But we can start to choose what we eat in a way that balances our blood sugars and we can start to change our stress. 206 00:25:39,687.5 --> 00:25:49,437.5 But if we have got an underlying unresolved gut dysbiosis or intestinal permeability, we aren't gonna win against systemic inflammation. 207 00:25:49,647.5 --> 00:25:52,437.5 So we have to look at those areas as well. 208 00:25:52,437.5 --> 00:26:04,647.5 So that's why I call it foundational health 'cause there's no point trying to layer on the HRT and hope that's gonna be the magic bullet that's gonna resolve all your issues if those things aren't in place. 209 00:26:04,862.5 --> 00:26:07,112.5 I'm not a functional medicine doctor. 210 00:26:07,362.5 --> 00:26:21,82.5 But even I know right? If you are drinking too much alcohol and you're on HRT, I'm just using one example, then you're actually backtracking and it's not necessarily going to help you at all. 211 00:26:21,82.5 --> 00:26:36,962.5 Can you give us an example of a client that you helped with your method, perhaps she was already on hormone replacement or not, so that we get to understand how your treatment helps patients. 212 00:26:38,522.5 --> 00:26:39,122.5 Yeah. 213 00:26:39,152.5 --> 00:26:39,722.5 Okay. 214 00:26:39,772.5 --> 00:26:43,12.5 I had a client actually who was. 215 00:26:44,112.5 --> 00:26:45,342.5 Early fifties. 216 00:26:45,942.5 --> 00:26:52,212.5 And was really struggling with horrific migraines and exhaustion. 217 00:26:52,212.5 --> 00:26:55,457.5 But it had really tipped into some kind of chronic fatigue. 218 00:26:55,467.5 --> 00:26:59,757.5 She was struggling with work and she had a very incredibly high profile job. 219 00:27:00,257.5 --> 00:27:01,97.5 Very high profile. 220 00:27:01,337.5 --> 00:27:04,377.5 And she had seen some of, the UK's finest. 221 00:27:04,377.5 --> 00:27:13,947.5 We have a street in London called Harley Street, and that's where a lot of the private medical practitioners, it's renowned for, this is where you go if you want the best medical practitioners. 222 00:27:14,217.5 --> 00:27:21,387.5 And she had gone through variety of people and they, so she was on HRT and they had kept increasing her estrogen. 223 00:27:21,437.5 --> 00:27:27,857.5 But what no one had looked at was that, so we did Dutch testing. 224 00:27:27,902.5 --> 00:27:34,572.5 And for those who don't know Dutch testing, it's the dried urine testing for comprehensive hormones. 225 00:27:34,872.5 --> 00:27:40,432.5 And it's different to serum blood testing, but it's looking at the metabolites of your hormones. 226 00:27:40,492.5 --> 00:27:52,842.5 So basically what is your body doing with your hormones? So is it working with them effectively? But the bit that I love the most about the Dutch testing is women can often feel that they're estrogen dominant. 227 00:27:52,842.5 --> 00:27:54,557.5 There's a lot of talking about estrogen dominance. 228 00:27:54,587.5 --> 00:27:57,212.5 But your blood tests can show that your estrogen's fine. 229 00:27:57,962.5 --> 00:28:04,622.5 What we can find out in a Dutch test is that there is, I always say there's two types of estrogen in menopause. 230 00:28:04,712.5 --> 00:28:06,392.5 'cause you're not making so much of it yourself. 231 00:28:06,602.5 --> 00:28:12,242.5 There's the one that we're slapping on our skin, and then there's the one that your body isn't able to clear out. 232 00:28:12,242.5 --> 00:28:14,372.5 It's the recirculating estrogen. 233 00:28:14,372.5 --> 00:28:16,622.5 So your body's not detoxing it effectively. 234 00:28:16,622.5 --> 00:28:19,532.5 And that can happen 'cause your liver becomes more sluggish. 235 00:28:19,652.5 --> 00:28:22,682.5 And also some lifestyle factors, but I'm just simplifying it a bit. 236 00:28:23,522.5 --> 00:28:30,362.5 What we were able to see in the Dutch test was that she was not processing her estrogen effectively at all. 237 00:28:30,782.5 --> 00:28:36,72.5 And so this had been overlooked because the medical model just you're not, you haven't got enough estrogen. 238 00:28:36,462.5 --> 00:28:37,932.5 We needed to keep giving you more. 239 00:28:37,932.5 --> 00:28:43,142.5 But as they kept giving her more and more is recirculating and contributing to this horrific exhaustion. 240 00:28:43,562.5 --> 00:28:45,382.5 This this what was looking like estrogen dominance. 241 00:28:46,222.5 --> 00:28:57,292.5 And so by knowing the right pathway to detox her to support her liver, we were able to fundamentally get her detoxing that estrogen more effectively. 242 00:28:57,802.5 --> 00:29:02,657.5 Actually, the recommendation, it was then to actually maybe speak to her doctor. 243 00:29:02,717.5 --> 00:29:07,932.5 We can't advise on HRT, but actually the dose of h of estrogen that she was on was very high. 244 00:29:08,232.5 --> 00:29:08,352.5 Okay. 245 00:29:08,352.5 --> 00:29:12,532.5 We have a, had a trend in the UK of very high estrogen dosing. 246 00:29:13,42.5 --> 00:29:20,722.5 And to actually maybe push back and ask for some more progesterone 'cause she was actually on a very low dose. 247 00:29:20,772.5 --> 00:29:24,12.5 And get the balance, the ratio of those hormones better. 248 00:29:24,322.5 --> 00:29:29,932.5 Whilst we were effectively working with the detoxing and we worked on diet and some food intolerances. 249 00:29:29,932.5 --> 00:29:31,792.5 And so that dramatically changed her life. 250 00:29:31,792.5 --> 00:29:34,372.5 The fatigue change the migraines changed. 251 00:29:34,372.5 --> 00:29:41,172.5 She was able to go back So the estrogen that she was not processing, it was leading to more fatigue. 252 00:29:41,222.5 --> 00:29:41,702.5 Horrific. 253 00:29:41,702.5 --> 00:29:42,602.5 Migraines. 254 00:29:42,602.5 --> 00:29:44,657.5 Anything else that weight gain. 255 00:29:45,212.5 --> 00:29:45,962.5 More weight gain. 256 00:29:45,962.5 --> 00:29:46,322.5 Yes. 257 00:29:46,322.5 --> 00:29:46,927.5 That can, yeah. 258 00:29:47,747.5 --> 00:29:49,127.5 That is definitely insomnia. 259 00:29:49,427.5 --> 00:29:49,637.5 Yeah. 260 00:29:49,642.5 --> 00:29:50,147.5 And insomnia. 261 00:29:50,357.5 --> 00:29:50,777.5 Yeah. 262 00:29:51,467.5 --> 00:29:51,827.5 Yep. 263 00:29:52,427.5 --> 00:30:04,257.5 So we've been talking a lot about hormones in general and your methods which obviously differs from the conventional approaches to menopause care. 264 00:30:04,587.5 --> 00:30:17,372.5 I often find when I talk about perimenopause and today I had a patient who was 39 and I told her, you're not, and she's been having symptoms, fatigue, hot flashes, mood issues. 265 00:30:17,712.5 --> 00:30:25,22.5 It was the first time I met her, but I informed her that you're not too young to not be perimenopausal. 266 00:30:25,412.5 --> 00:30:44,397.5 In your experience with your clients as well as your own experiences, what are the most under-discussed symptoms, early symptoms that you can think of that women should be aware of, that they, we should pay more attention to? I love that question. 267 00:30:44,907.5 --> 00:30:52,17.5 So from our perspective, we look at just coming back to that age piece, because I think that's really important. 268 00:30:52,657.5 --> 00:31:03,622.5 Statistically, when we look at a map of perimenopause we have, our hormones are doing what they're supposed to do, and then at 36 we've got estrogens tracking along. 269 00:31:03,892.5 --> 00:31:09,952.5 But at 36, that's when progesterone starts to literally looks like on a map, doesn't it? It looks like on a graph, it looks like it falls off a cliff. 270 00:31:10,192.5 --> 00:31:12,292.5 That statistically starts at 36. 271 00:31:12,772.5 --> 00:31:25,322.5 So yes, medically, we don't say that someone's menopausal until way further down the line or perimenopausal, but this very early place of perimenopause can get totally overlooked. 272 00:31:26,427.5 --> 00:31:37,412.5 So the type of things that we see commonly are things like, so when we think about what progesterone is for a second, progesterone is our calming hormone. 273 00:31:37,682.5 --> 00:31:41,402.5 So it's the hormone that calms us down, puts us into rest, digest. 274 00:31:41,832.5 --> 00:31:46,92.5 It's our anti-inflammatory hormone and it's also a mood stabilizer. 275 00:31:46,92.5 --> 00:31:50,802.5 So when that starts to drop off even a little bit, we can be more snappy. 276 00:31:50,802.5 --> 00:31:55,692.5 We can be more irritated, we can actually, to become quite mindless. 277 00:31:55,782.5 --> 00:32:03,362.5 So one of the things I heard quite a lot when I was in, in one-to-one clinical practice was I just keep finding, I keep putting my keys in the fridge. 278 00:32:03,362.5 --> 00:32:07,462.5 Why am I putting my keys in the fridge? Or I forgot to pick my child up from school. 279 00:32:07,462.5 --> 00:32:09,232.5 I never forget to do those things. 280 00:32:09,782.5 --> 00:32:12,452.5 It's very easy then to put that down to overwhelm. 281 00:32:12,752.5 --> 00:32:13,772.5 I'm overwhelmed. 282 00:32:13,772.5 --> 00:32:14,882.5 I'm just a bit tired. 283 00:32:14,932.5 --> 00:32:16,12.5 Less confidence. 284 00:32:16,12.5 --> 00:32:24,142.5 One of the things I heard regularly was I just, I struggle with driving all of a sudden out of the blue or flying, I'm just really suddenly scared of flying. 285 00:32:24,592.5 --> 00:32:36,432.5 A bit of an increase in anxiety, a bit of weight instability, maybe not the big weight gain, but just a bit like, oh, I'm just not fitting my jeans so easily or I'm just not sleeping as well. 286 00:32:36,432.5 --> 00:32:46,32.5 And these are the things that often don't lead someone to go to the doctor, but they stop feeling like themselves and it can really have this knock on effect with their confidence. 287 00:32:46,302.5 --> 00:32:54,672.5 And by the time they often do go to the doctor, that's when they're often being told, you're probably a bit overwhelmed, a bit depressed, have some antidepressants. 288 00:32:55,62.5 --> 00:32:55,452.5 Yeah. 289 00:32:55,512.5 --> 00:33:04,812.5 And so I know in the uk I dunno what it's like in the US but whilst perimenopause is definitely acknowledged, our practitioners. 290 00:33:04,872.5 --> 00:33:09,72.5 Are treating from the end of the menopause transition. 291 00:33:09,532.5 --> 00:33:18,652.5 So all of this early perimenopause stuff is very much overlooked I think they're often, women are often misprescribed medication when they're actually in early perimenopause. 292 00:33:18,692.5 --> 00:33:18,992.5 Yes. 293 00:33:18,992.5 --> 00:33:22,352.5 I feel like I've been guilty of that myself, honestly. 294 00:33:22,352.5 --> 00:33:38,782.5 until I came to realize what was going on within my own self and my patients, where I realized, you know what not everyone needs to be on an SSRI like, let's look at the bigger picture here as to why this is happening. 295 00:33:39,112.5 --> 00:33:47,362.5 At this stage of their life, and it's often very hard because a lot of my patients are working women who are mothers. 296 00:33:47,412.5 --> 00:33:49,182.5 they can be in the sandwich generation. 297 00:33:49,182.5 --> 00:33:51,462.5 So there, there's a lot on them. 298 00:33:51,942.5 --> 00:34:06,512.5 So it often takes many visits for us to really know each other before I can say, okay, I think there is an element of perimenopause, but I think we do need to also look at your personal and work stressors. 299 00:34:06,812.5 --> 00:34:14,592.5 So it becomes a whole picture that we need to really work on rather than just fixing the hormonal aspect. 300 00:34:14,592.5 --> 00:34:16,912.5 Would you agree? absolutely agree. 301 00:34:17,342.5 --> 00:34:23,972.5 And in those early stages, I think it can be very easy to just want to reach for the low dose. 302 00:34:24,17.5 --> 00:34:28,842.5 Bioidentical hormones, I'm so much more of a fan of let's tighten up the diet. 303 00:34:28,932.5 --> 00:34:30,282.5 I get that you are overwhelmed. 304 00:34:30,282.5 --> 00:34:37,992.5 How do we make this more simple? What can you let go of, if you've gotta care for, like you say, bed sandwich generation, really that kind of coaching. 305 00:34:37,992.5 --> 00:34:46,172.5 I'm such a fan of supporting the body to keep making the progesterone in the adrenals rather than taxing the body even further. 306 00:34:46,502.5 --> 00:34:46,922.5 Yeah. 307 00:34:47,382.5 --> 00:34:52,182.5 And in that light you've said that menopause isn't something to be fixed. 308 00:34:52,182.5 --> 00:35:00,202.5 And I agree with you, it's, it, this is, for most women, as we mentioned, there are states where it doesn't happen, quote unquote naturally. 309 00:35:00,662.5 --> 00:35:04,682.5 But it's not something to be fixed, but rather understood. 310 00:35:05,12.5 --> 00:35:17,52.5 how does reframing menopause this way change the journey for your your clients? How does that change for them? Yeah, menopause doesn't have to be grim for everyone. 311 00:35:17,52.5 --> 00:35:22,842.5 It is for some, but even if you are having, you're sailing through menopause and you are having a, it's okay. 312 00:35:23,412.5 --> 00:35:28,542.5 It's still a rite of passage and it's supposed to be transformative. 313 00:35:29,202.5 --> 00:35:37,707.5 And there is something very powerful for women in, but particular about losing their estrogen. 314 00:35:37,797.5 --> 00:35:42,192.5 Because estrogen is our mothering hormone. 315 00:35:42,192.5 --> 00:35:45,132.5 It's what gives us tolerance, it's our caretaking hormone. 316 00:35:45,342.5 --> 00:35:52,247.5 And so as that starts to drop my experience personally with my POI. 317 00:35:53,337.5 --> 00:36:07,977.5 Is that HRT taking estrogen can smooth over the experience of not having the hot flushes, not having the symptoms, but the underlying experience of no longer having my estrogen. 318 00:36:08,457.5 --> 00:36:09,987.5 I have lost my tolerance. 319 00:36:09,987.5 --> 00:36:13,857.5 I have lost my ability to caretake the way that I could. 320 00:36:14,517.5 --> 00:36:23,557.5 But there's so much power in that because underneath that, even if you're on HRT, that transformation is still happening. 321 00:36:23,917.5 --> 00:36:28,717.5 And how that changes us is if we lose tolerance. 322 00:36:28,807.5 --> 00:36:32,562.5 What we tend to lose tolerance for is things that don't serve us. 323 00:36:33,457.5 --> 00:36:44,507.5 There is some groundbreaking, it's tipping more into the emotional work around menopause, about how this transformation is carving us into the women that we wanna be in our third age. 324 00:36:44,507.5 --> 00:36:46,877.5 That's what we tend to call it this third age. 325 00:36:46,977.5 --> 00:36:56,247.5 And we can either be the little old women who sit there and go quietly, or we can carry on being these radical force majeure that so many of us are. 326 00:36:56,787.5 --> 00:37:02,757.5 And if we are able, if the menopause is offering us an opportunity to look at what doesn't serve us. 327 00:37:02,757.5 --> 00:37:12,252.5 So actually drinking that much alcohol, doesn't serve me, or this relationship doesn't serve me, or this job doesn't serve me like this isn't right. 328 00:37:12,752.5 --> 00:37:14,912.5 I remember being told that menopause. 329 00:37:15,572.5 --> 00:37:18,2.5 Shines a light on all the things. 330 00:37:18,57.5 --> 00:37:19,347.5 That it's time to question. 331 00:37:19,397.5 --> 00:37:26,627.5 And it's your job to take a blow torch to the things that you don't want anymore because it's our opportunity to carve out this whole new life. 332 00:37:27,377.5 --> 00:37:46,797.5 So maybe, it's this opportunity to listen, to the lessons that it's trying to teach us, but maybe we can't party till dawn anymore and be really drunk and come in at 5:00 AM Maybe we need to go to bed at 10 o'clock after a nice cup of herbal tea and some soothing music. 333 00:37:47,277.5 --> 00:37:56,307.5 But instead of coming home when the sun's coming up, now we have the opportunity to wake up and be in the choir and have this time for ourselves. 334 00:37:56,547.5 --> 00:37:59,817.5 And so maybe that doesn't sound so exciting, but it's just different. 335 00:38:00,187.5 --> 00:38:08,857.5 And there is a grief potentially with what we have to let go of, but there is also some really great gifts. 336 00:38:09,442.5 --> 00:38:17,602.5 I think that's where we can start to reframe and reclaim the opportunity that menopause gives us. 337 00:38:17,662.5 --> 00:38:21,862.5 And yes, it's really hard, the aging process, I still don't think we talk about it enough. 338 00:38:22,642.5 --> 00:38:30,472.5 The wrinkles, the losing pits in our body, hurting our hair, brain, all the stuff that these days we can do something about. 339 00:38:30,472.5 --> 00:38:32,692.5 But there is still a grief associated with it. 340 00:38:32,692.5 --> 00:38:37,432.5 And I think that is a really important part of menopause is grieving. 341 00:38:37,972.5 --> 00:38:39,322.5 Celebrating what we had. 342 00:38:39,322.5 --> 00:38:43,222.5 Grieving what we're losing, but then also this opportunity to claim the new. 343 00:38:44,722.5 --> 00:38:45,382.5 Absolutely. 344 00:38:45,382.5 --> 00:38:57,12.5 I think, what I tell myself at least is that you've earned the gray hairs and you've earned the wrinkles and maybe a few joints creaking and stiffness. 345 00:38:57,12.5 --> 00:38:58,752.5 But we've earned it. 346 00:38:58,782.5 --> 00:39:09,417.5 But I also think that maybe it correlates to the age and experience, but we also have a lot of experience and are wiser. 347 00:39:09,867.5 --> 00:39:46,647.5 And I think there's a lot of potential to really at least, and I imagine that you and I are in the same generation, for us to carve the way for women who are younger than us so that they don't have to feel so confused about what's happening to their bodies when it comes to go from going through puberty to pregnancy to perimenopause and menopause and beyond that we can talk about this so that they can obviously learn from us, but they can continue teaching their kids as well so that they don't feel confused as our generation has been before. 348 00:39:46,647.5 --> 00:39:54,647.5 And definitely our moms I look back and I don't think my mom necessarily knew what was going on with her body. 349 00:39:54,697.5 --> 00:39:59,107.5 And this is not a blame game, but I certainly did not receive much education. 350 00:39:59,607.5 --> 00:40:03,957.5 From her and even though I went to medical school, not enough there either. 351 00:40:03,957.5 --> 00:40:05,607.5 So it makes you wonder why. 352 00:40:05,907.5 --> 00:40:11,667.5 I wanted to go back and you were mentioning kinesiology as central to your practice. 353 00:40:11,667.5 --> 00:40:16,137.5 Can you talk about what that is? So my, my audience can learn about that. 354 00:40:16,137.5 --> 00:40:29,822.5 And how does this help the your clients, the imbalances that, that standard lab tests might miss? So kinesiology is a modality that originally came out of chiropractic. 355 00:40:30,162.5 --> 00:40:51,142.5 And so if you've been to a chiropractor or a physio and they're asking you to resist their pressure 'cause they're checking how your muscles are responding and those kind of things but the chiropractor who developed kinesiology discovered that there are 50 muscles that are actually connected via the nervous system to organs. 356 00:40:51,142.5 --> 00:40:57,262.5 So He theorized that when we're actually testing muscles, we're in a dialogue with organs. 357 00:40:57,322.5 --> 00:41:03,552.5 And for example, it can be really interesting when you start to understand a little bit about the muscles that are connected. 358 00:41:03,552.5 --> 00:41:14,572.5 'cause you can watch someone walking or I used to watch my clients walking in and you could see if someone's not got glutes that are working or a problem with their hips and their piriformis muscle. 359 00:41:15,412.5 --> 00:41:16,882.5 That's often hormone problems. 360 00:41:17,172.5 --> 00:41:22,887.5 if people have got knee problems, the first question I would ask them is how their digestion, because it can be linked in small intestine. 361 00:41:22,967.5 --> 00:41:25,877.5 You start to see these really interesting little correlations. 362 00:41:26,297.5 --> 00:41:30,977.5 But through the muscle testing you can also test for supplementation. 363 00:41:30,977.5 --> 00:41:35,957.5 So the supplementation that the body is gonna find beneficial when you find that there are these imbalances. 364 00:41:36,677.5 --> 00:41:48,177.5 So what the tool does for us is it's really great at showing root causes and it's really great at showing supplements particularly that are going to be really useful for that person. 365 00:41:48,327.5 --> 00:41:53,247.5 'cause the problem with supplements is it can just be guesswork, educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. 366 00:41:53,247.5 --> 00:41:56,847.5 And that is a minefield and it's expensive. 367 00:41:57,147.5 --> 00:42:03,357.5 And the problem with supplementation is if we're taking loads of it, we can also be putting the body under metabolic stress. 368 00:42:04,392.5 --> 00:42:06,222.5 So it's finding a more bespoke solution. 369 00:42:06,492.5 --> 00:42:15,317.5 But what we now do in our online clinic is with kinesiology food intolerance testing because. 370 00:42:16,337.5 --> 00:42:25,47.5 I personally find it the most useful for people as a snapshot of the foods that they are in, they are intolerant to. 371 00:42:25,47.5 --> 00:42:27,637.5 So we are looking at it from that perspective. 372 00:42:27,637.5 --> 00:42:35,77.5 So for more bespoke supplement testing and also for food intolerance testing because you can really hone in on what someone's intolerant to. 373 00:42:35,317.5 --> 00:42:44,407.5 And it's different to a food intolerance test that someone sends off their blood or an allergy test because that's looking for a big response from the immune system. 374 00:42:44,827.5 --> 00:42:50,257.5 And we're looking at things that are often much more low level as an intolerance. 375 00:42:50,257.5 --> 00:42:56,737.5 So something that's just tipping the body into a bit of stress, we just don't want any cortisol response, a huge immune response. 376 00:42:58,197.5 --> 00:43:10,327.5 One of the things I'm really passionate about advocating for women is if their HRT isn't working to keep pushing back and to educate themselves about the different types of HRT. 377 00:43:10,867.5 --> 00:43:19,237.5 one of the things I find, particularly in the UK, because the current guidelines stipulate that women should be put on synthetics first. 378 00:43:19,547.5 --> 00:43:25,277.5 Is that often, especially with the women who have challenging menopause, the synthetics aren't gonna cut it. 379 00:43:25,277.5 --> 00:43:27,732.5 They need the Body identical progesterones. 380 00:43:27,812.5 --> 00:43:32,462.5 And so pushing back to get onto the body identical progesterones, but. 381 00:43:33,152.5 --> 00:43:39,32.5 You'll know that can often lead to quite heavy bleeding, right? That often means it's not enough progesterone. 382 00:43:39,32.5 --> 00:43:45,902.5 So they need to really educate themselves to keep going back, to not be scared to just everything that happens in their body. 383 00:43:45,902.5 --> 00:43:46,832.5 It's data. 384 00:43:47,202.5 --> 00:43:50,132.5 But to work with a coach who understands it if needs be. 385 00:43:50,382.5 --> 00:43:52,392.5 If they're not feeling great, there's something not right. 386 00:43:53,412.5 --> 00:43:55,782.5 And Claire mentioned body identical. 387 00:43:55,782.5 --> 00:43:59,352.5 In the US we call it bioidentical, which okay. 388 00:43:59,352.5 --> 00:44:12,372.5 And I'm surprised to, to learn that because that's what the w if anything the good thing about the WHI is that it taught us some of the bad things about the synthetic hormones. 389 00:44:12,372.5 --> 00:44:21,52.5 So those of us who are more inclined to, to use HRT, we're more leaning towards the bioidentical hormones. 390 00:44:22,177.5 --> 00:44:43,297.5 The current regulations say that whilst the bioidentical, so in the UK we call them body identical because they've created the difference between compounded bioidenticals and the low dose bioidenticals being outside the framework of the regulations. 391 00:44:43,387.5 --> 00:44:43,537.5 Okay. 392 00:44:43,537.5 --> 00:44:44,797.5 So they've given them that name. 393 00:44:45,37.5 --> 00:44:49,707.5 They call what you would be calling the bioidenticals body? Identical. 394 00:44:49,712.5 --> 00:44:49,732.5 Okay. 395 00:44:49,732.5 --> 00:44:53,367.5 It's the, it's the same stuff, right? That's the difference. 396 00:44:53,727.5 --> 00:45:10,887.5 But whilst the regulations stick the NIC guidelines, the practitioners state that whilst the body identicals have lower risk associated with them, practitioners should offer the synthetics first. 397 00:45:11,157.5 --> 00:45:14,397.5 And my suspicion is always because that comes down to money. 398 00:45:14,687.5 --> 00:45:14,907.5 Yes. 399 00:45:15,52.5 --> 00:45:25,487.5 'cause the NHS are giving it away essentially for very little Claire, I've learned so much from you and I hope my audience is really listening carefully. 400 00:45:25,787.5 --> 00:45:40,377.5 If you were to talk to my audience right now and most of my audience I imagine are women, if they could just take one step towards balance, what would you advise them? More protein. 401 00:45:40,467.5 --> 00:45:47,997.5 Please eat more protein for hormone balance, for healing that gut, for balancing those blood sugars. 402 00:45:48,507.5 --> 00:45:53,427.5 So the metrics that we work off of are, there's two ways of doing the maths. 403 00:45:53,927.5 --> 00:46:01,597.5 There is if you choose one gram of protein value in your food per pound of body weight. 404 00:46:02,197.5 --> 00:46:05,137.5 Personally, I prefer a more visual approach. 405 00:46:05,317.5 --> 00:46:09,987.5 And so the second way of working it out is if you to put your weight into kilos. 406 00:46:09,987.5 --> 00:46:16,647.5 So let's say you were 60 kilos, you put a decimal point in front of the first number, so that would be 0.6, 407 00:46:16,767.5 --> 00:46:21,957.5 and that would translate to 600 grams in raw meat. 408 00:46:22,587.5 --> 00:46:23,457.5 Kind of terms. 409 00:46:24,27.5 --> 00:46:26,7.5 And so it's a very high amount. 410 00:46:26,7.5 --> 00:46:26,997.5 It's a high number. 411 00:46:26,997.5 --> 00:46:31,767.5 And people are often surprised when you start talking about some of the longevity medicine practitioners. 412 00:46:31,767.5 --> 00:46:33,327.5 They're talking about 1.6 413 00:46:33,327.5 --> 00:46:34,347.5 grams of protein. 414 00:46:34,347.5 --> 00:46:39,477.5 So we're actually a bit of a halfway house, but that is, it's quite an astonishing amount of food. 415 00:46:39,777.5 --> 00:46:40,377.5 It is, yeah. 416 00:46:40,377.5 --> 00:46:43,767.5 That's what I would absolutely be saying to women. 417 00:46:43,987.5 --> 00:46:59,47.5 Please increase, meat, fish, eggs can do tofu, but tofu can be tricky for hormone imbalances, right? So we've gotta be talking about pure protein sources and we look to you as the guru for menopause care. 418 00:46:59,47.5 --> 00:47:05,137.5 So tell us about one, one ritual that you never skip yourself. 419 00:47:06,157.5 --> 00:47:08,167.5 I move my body every single day. 420 00:47:08,227.5 --> 00:47:14,557.5 So I work out with weights and resistance for half an hour, only 'cause prolong stress, not good for hormones. 421 00:47:14,597.5 --> 00:47:15,947.5 But I do that five times a week. 422 00:47:16,287.5 --> 00:47:19,17.5 But I walk every single day for 45 minutes. 423 00:47:19,47.5 --> 00:47:19,317.5 Absolutely. 424 00:47:19,857.5 --> 00:47:21,92.5 Move your body, move your limp. 425 00:47:21,747.5 --> 00:47:22,707.5 Absolutely. 426 00:47:23,97.5 --> 00:47:27,147.5 Claire, it's been an honor and honestly, I'm so glad that you joined me today. 427 00:47:27,147.5 --> 00:47:39,547.5 If my audience wanted to find you, read your book, find your website, and find you on social media, where would they go? They can go to all the social media platforms. 428 00:47:39,657.5 --> 00:47:43,587.5 And you just look for my name, Claire Snowden darling, and I am there. 429 00:47:43,697.5 --> 00:47:50,327.5 It's Claire Snow Darling Official on Instagram and Facebook and Claire Snowden darling on TikTok or claire snowden darling.com. 430 00:47:50,327.5 --> 00:47:54,827.5 And then through any of those channels, you will find the college and you can find the clinic. 431 00:47:54,877.5 --> 00:47:55,837.5 Fantastic. 432 00:47:56,457.5 --> 00:47:57,17.5 Thank Thank you so much. 433 00:47:58,217.5 --> 00:47:59,207.5 Yes, it's been wonderful. 434 00:47:59,577.5 --> 00:48:01,707.5 Thank you so much, It's been a pleasure. 435 00:48:01,707.5 --> 00:48:07,557.5 this podcast is for informational purposes only and isn't intended as medical advice. 436 00:48:07,917.5 --> 00:48:13,737.5 Always consult with your doctor before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or health regimen.
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