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February 15, 2024 • 17 mins

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Discover the transformative power of a holistic approach to beauty as we welcome Alison, a nutrition expert with a passion for enhancing women's health, especially as they navigate the challenges of life after 40.

Her enlightening tales, from personal battles with teenage acne to professional insights on hormones' impact on skin health, promise to guide you through the nutritional and lifestyle shifts essential for glowing skin and vitality. You'll learn how true radiance emanates from within and how the right mindset, coupled with nutritional wisdom, can unlock the secrets to a life of both health and beauty.

Our heartfelt exchange extends beyond skin-deep as we underscore the impact of nutrition on overall well-being, reinforcing the importance of sharing knowledge in this journey.

To express my gratitude for your support, I'm sharing 12 Mediterranean diet recipes, handpicked to delight your palate and nourish your body. These dishes are more than just meals; they're culinary beacons leading the way to reduced inflammation and a balanced diet.



Learn more about Alison here:
My gift to you!




Thank you for your time and interest in this podcast! I invite you to leave a heartfelt review on whichever podcast platform you listen to. It does so much to bring exposure to the podcast and helps lift others up!

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bettina M Brown (00:04):
Hello and welcome to In the Rising a
health and wellness podcast forthose going through and those
supporting those going throughcancer.
My name is Bettina Brown andI'm board certified in physical
therapy, wound care andlymphedema, and you know, for me
, cancer is very personal.
It's affected my friends, myimmediate and my not so

(00:24):
immediate family, and thereforeI created this podcast and fit
after breastcancercom to addressthe multiple dimensions of our
lives during and after recovery.
Hello and welcome to thisepisode of In the Rising podcast
, year four, still talking abouthealth and nutrition and how it

(00:49):
relates to our everyday life.

(01:12):
I I had a unique opportunity tospeak with someone who is
currently living in Stockholm,Sweden; my first Swedish
podcast, Swedish podcast butshe also is from England, so she
has that wonderful accenttalking about nutrition and her
experience of Well, thank you,Alison, for being part of the In
the Rising podcast, and Iunderstand that you are also
really focused on helping othersrise in their own nutrition.
working with clients all aroundthe world.
Listen to the end of thispodcast because I have a gift
for you as well, from me to youAll.
Right.
Before we get into all of that, there's usually a spark that

(01:37):
started somewhere in your lifethat led you in the direction
that you're in.
Can you share about that?

Alison Bladh (01:47):
My journey was quite long, but a short version
of it was when I was a teenagerI suffered from very bad acne.
That's a hard time, isn't it, asa teenager, on its own, without
suddenly having problems withyour skin, and that, even at
that young age, led me down thatroad of looking into more

(02:07):
holistic ways that I couldimprove my skin through
nutrition, through lifestyle.
And what I did really, reallyhelped.
And that's when I started mycareer, initially as an
esthetician, so as a beautytherapist, specifically working
with women's hormonal skinproblems, and that very soon led

(02:28):
me into perimenopause menopause, because a lot of women in this
area or this time of life dosuffer from skin problems.
I very soon came to realisethat you can work on the outside
with aesthetic treatments, butyou need the inside piece as
well.
You need the nutrition.
So that's when I went back andstudied nutritional science and

(02:52):
have been working in women'shealth, specifically in women 40
plus, because there's a lotthat happens in our bodies and
with hormones and everythingJust in the power of nutrition,
mindset and lifestyle, so we canthrive through this next phase
of our lives.

Bettina M Brown (03:12):
Well, thank you for sharing that, and it goes
back to that saying so within.
So, without you know that youcan see when someone's really
happy they glow, and it is notjust the skin.
When you touched on somethingwhere you said the hormonal
aspects, do you feel that,whether it's education, whether

(03:35):
it's commercials or what havenot, on both sides of the pond
right, I'm sure you have clientseverywhere by pond I mean the
Atlantic Do you feel that womentend to focus on is it dirt, is
it extra oil?
Or do you feel that hormones,even, are top in the top five

(03:56):
conditions that they think aboutare causing skin changes?

Alison Bladh (04:01):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think women are becoming moreeducated in skin Now we're
obviously talking about skinhealth, but they understand a
lot about skin health due to theamount of information that is
out there in magazines, ontelevision, social media and I

(04:22):
think that they understand nowthat there's something you know
isn't just about what'shappening to your skin from a
environmental aspect.
There is something going on youknow inside with hormones and
what you're eating and whatyou're doing and how you just,
exactly, as you said, how youfeel, if you're happy, you can

(04:42):
really see that in someone'sskin.
So in answer to your question,I would say that a lot of women
do think about hormones.
Now I've managed a fair bit.
I've been working in thisindustry for over 30 years and
I've seen how people understandyou know things a lot more.
They don't just put it down tooh, am I using too many oily

(05:06):
products on my skin or is itsomething to do with when I'm
out in the garden?
I don't think people think thatway anymore as much as they
used to.

Bettina M Brown (05:18):
So that's good news to hear that you know
hormones and the inside of us isalso being recognized, not just
all the endless products weneed to put on top.
You have done.
I mean, you've gone intochemistry, you've gone into
biology so you have reallypulled and been drawn into the

(05:39):
desire to learn more of what'sgoing on inside.
You also grew up with a motherwho was a professional chef.
One thing that I hear commonand I will say this for myself
is I know I'm supposed to eatwell and it will make a
difference, but the energy right.
I work with a lot of people whoare low on energy for various

(06:02):
reasons, one of them goingthrough cancer treatment.
But are some hacks that youfeel would be helpful to make
nutrition more accessible on anenergetic level?

Alison Bladh (06:16):
I'm a huge believer in everything should be
easy and realistic and, likeyou say, I was very lucky to
have my mother who taught me tocook.
You know, as soon as I couldwalk, I was in the kitchen with
her.
What I say to people is what Isay to my clients that the
majority of people that I workwith are overwhelmed, they're
stressed, they're exhausted,they're lacking in energy.

(06:38):
You have to make the effort togo shopping, get away from that.
Well, we can now, can't?
We can order online and have itdelivered, but you've got to do
that kind of.
You've got to go in and orderwhat you want In your fridge.
Just have things, healthythings that you can take out of
your fridge, put together, youknow, within five minutes, 10

(07:01):
minutes and an eight.
And to give you an example ofthat, now, I appreciate everyone
has different eating styles,whether you're vegetarian or you
eat more plant based or meat.
For example, if you have, ifyou roast a chicken and you have
that in the fridge, and then onMonday evening, when you're
exhausted and you haven't, youdon't think, oh, I just can't be

(07:23):
bothered cooking.
You take the chicken out, youcut a piece of the chicken off,
you have some salad in yourfridge.
You take the salad out handfulof seeds, pumpkin seeds,
sunflower seeds, maybe.
Chop up a tomato celerywhatever you've got in the
fridge, put some olive oil,maybe some vinegar over it and

(07:43):
there you are.
You've got your chicken breast.
You've got a nice healthy saladwith that.
It doesn't take any time.
It's having the raw ingredients.
You don't have to cook a bigfancy dinner every night.
It's the same like with fish.
It's so much easier to eat ifyou have raw ingredients that
you can just and with that Ihave adopted, you know, the

(08:06):
cooking on the weekends.

Bettina M Brown (08:07):
I literally have a crock pot for breakfast,
lunch and dinner and I eat forall of the week and if I have
some extra and it frees up somuch time that the time it takes
on Sunday to make breakfast,lunch and dinner is nothing
because I'm already chopping anddoing all of that.
It frees up so much time andenergy and I don't feel the rush

(08:30):
in the morning and I don't feelthe rush in the evening when I
get home and that's absolutelytime to spend with family or
doing what you really like.
You also talk a lot aboutself-compassion and mindset.
Would you share a little bitmore about that and how it
relates to what you're noticingin clients, with how they feel

(08:51):
on the inside and how it affectstheir skin?

Alison Bladh (08:54):
How we are like, how our emotional state is.
It affects our skin.
I mean, it affects everything.
And there's actually newresearch coming out now I have
to get this word right.
It's called psychodermatologyand they're finding you know,
psychotherapists and they'rereally looking into this the

(09:15):
connection between our mentalstate and our skin.
And there is, of course, a bigconnection.
You know, if you're not well oryou're feeling down or you're
depressed or just not feelinghappy in general, that in turn
has an effect on our skin.
You know that is the.

(09:36):
It's quite new research comingout now, but it's very
interesting and exactly as yousaid earlier, somebody that's
happy and you know that the bodyis in balance and you feel
great and you've got energy,your skin looks fantastic.
So when I work with clients notjust for skin health but for

(09:57):
many, you know, hormonalmenopause, perimenopause we
really look at that mindsetpiece because you have to get
that in place as well.
It's kind of a bit like ajigsaw puzzle the nutrition
there.
You know you need to look atlifestyle.
How do I feel about myself, howdo I feel about you know my

(10:17):
life and am I actually happy?
So what I tend to do withclients is really just sit down
and have an honest conversationwith them how are you feeling?
And it's amazing how I think wedon't really always talk about

(10:44):
how we feel.
Do we Really like, truthfully,how we feel when someone asks
you oh, how are you doing, howare you today?
We always say, oh, I'm fine,I'm great.
But that isn't always the case,is it?
Probably a lot of the time itisn't the case.
And then you know, one of themost healing things for people
when they may be feeling, youknow, emotionally down, is to be

(11:07):
able to talk to someone aboutit, that is so someone that
listens to them and understands.
It's so healing, it's sobeneficial.
And then really, you know,talking to them and giving them
actionable things that they cando to make themselves feel
better.
Because during as we age aswomen and during menopause, we

(11:31):
can really lose our confidence.
We can suddenly become anxious.
This is for women that werevery confident and had no
problems before.
There's many factors that comeinto play, but one of them is
the decline in hormones.
So, really, just looking atsmall things that you can do to
make yourself feel better, likeallowing yourself time, you know

(11:55):
, but having self-care every day, even if it's just for five, 10
minutes.
You know, doing something thatyou enjoy for yourself is very,
very important on a daily basis.

Bettina M Brown (12:10):
Absolutely, absolutely.
We need to do that and we tendto not do that very often, but
you're right, and you mentionedthat your group is your focus.
That you have been drawn toserve are women, usually 40 plus
.
A lot has usually happened bythat time, and you also talk

(12:32):
about the importance of having apositive attitude with
nutrition and positive attitudewith your food.
Do you feel that we arestarting to swing in the
direction to have more of apositive relationship?
All right, you're back.
I'll see you, isabelle, withfood.

Alison Bladh (12:50):
Okay, I think that it's happening slowly.
I'm thinking, okay, I'm lookingat your.
I mean, I work worldwide, soyou know, I see it from many
different countries.
It's happening.
It's when we look at the stateof our health in general,
worldwide.
We're very sick.
There's a huge amount ofchronic illness.

(13:12):
It's very difficult becausewe're living in quite a toxic
food environment.
There's food everywhere.
Isn't there.
Everywhere you go there's foodand it isn't necessarily, you
know, whole food, it's ultraprocessed foods and we're eating
too much because there is foodeverywhere.

(13:32):
It's heading that way, butthere's a lot of work to be done
, to play.
But there's definitely amomentum there of people
understanding we really need tochange the way that we eat.
But it's not there yet.
It's quite a small percentage,I would say, of the world's
population that really arebehind this.

Bettina M Brown (13:57):
Yes, I think that's.
It's also big to acknowledgewhere people are financially,
where they are physically.
We have food deserts where wehave a lot of food, but it is
someone's call that fake food.
It's not real.
So I really appreciate yousharing the importance of that.
What would be one thing or oneidea that you would like to

(14:20):
convey to women, Like when youlook back on all of your work
that you've done and what you'rehoping to do, what do you feel
like you'd like to convey?

Alison Bladh (14:30):
One thing, okay nourish your body.
You know, choose to nourishyour body with whole foods.
You know, don't go down thatroute of eating foods that
aren't full of nutrition.
Make that little bit of extraeffort to really feed and

(14:53):
nurture your body, Because whenyou come into midlife and you're
coming into the menopause, youneed to just take more care of
yourself.
And it's doing that.
It's your daily habits thatmount up, that really add up to
your overall health.

Bettina M Brown (15:11):
I think that's it.
Nourish your body.
Feeding and nourishing are notnecessarily the same.
So to nourish your whole bodyyour mind, body and soul,
acknowledge those hormoneschanges and have a positive
attitude that your body is hereto support you as you can learn
to support it.
So what are things that you gotout of this podcast?

(15:32):
I would love to hear from youat Batina at intherisingcom.
You can also just message me onmy website in the
risingpodcastcom.
I look forward to hearing fromyou and thank you so much for
your time.
If you did enjoy this podcast, Iencourage you to share it.
Give the gift of giving theblessing of caring about someone

(15:54):
else's health and caring aboutthem in general.
If you would leave a review, apositive review, it would do so
much for this podcast to raiseit up and put it in front of the
people who would need it themost.
Since this podcast was aboutnutrition, as promised, I have a
gift for you, which are 12Mediterranean diet recipes

(16:18):
Actually good ones, because I'vehad all 12.
It's a gift for you, just sothat you have some idea of what
is helpful, what isevidence-based, science-based,
to help provide you some betternutrition to fuel you and reduce
inflammation and all the otherthings we can go off on a couple
episodes about.
So thank you, and until nexttime let's keep building one

(16:42):
another up.
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