Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.115 Busting Menopause Myths: Laura Lamb on Weight Loss, Inflammation, and Nutrition

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 115

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Is your approach to midlife health and wellness stuck in the past? On this episode of Asking for a Friend, we unravel the complexities of midlife body changes with a focus on metabolism, diet, and exercise. Join me, Michele Folan, as we challenge the myths perpetuated by diet culture and reveal the benefits of balanced nutrition and weight lifting. I'm honored to have Laura Lamb, a menopause practitioner and founder of the Menopause Lab, as our guest. Laura talks about her own journey from a corporate career to becoming a menopause coach, sharing her battles with diet culture and her mission to empower women over 40 to take control of their health.

Discover how combating inflammation through menopause nutrition can significantly alleviate symptoms like hot flashes, joint pain, and visceral fat gain. Our dedicated nutritionist sheds light on the widespread misinformation about women's health, especially during menopause. We emphasize the crucial role of estrogen as an anti-inflammatory hormone and the importance of adopting an anti-inflammatory diet. 

We also explore the impact of menopause on gut health and the necessity of individualized wellness strategies. From protein and fiber intake to the early effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), we cover all bases. Laura and I discuss the vital role of exercise, including cardiovascular, resistance training, and pelvic floor exercises, in maintaining overall health during menopause. Laura passionately advocates for self-care, stressing its importance for women who often prioritize others over themselves. Tune in to gain invaluable insights and actionable advice on navigating midlife health and wellness challenges, making this episode a must-listen.

You can find Laura Lambe at:
For info on menopause services offered: https://menopausemastery.health/services/
Access to free Menopause course: https://www.skool.com/the-menopause-lab-2151/about
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laura_lambe/?hl=en
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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling rundown. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan

Have questions about Faster Way? Feel free to reach out.
mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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Michele Folan:

You've tried it all Keto, weight Watchers, Atkins. Maybe you've even tried one of the GLP-1 shots. Then there's Orange Theory and other high-intensity cardio. That's, I don't know, I think, kind of boring, and the results Meh. I, too, struggled to figure out what was going to work for my midlife body. We are not necessarily the blame, though. Diet culture threw us a curveball, and what may have worked in our younger years may not be the secret sauce for success now. What I have found is that many of my clients have been under eating, which blunts our metabolism. We're doing too much cardio when we need to be lifting weights. What if I told you that you could eat all the food groups, including carbs? Eat more than you're likely consuming now, and wrap a bow on it with 30-minute at-home workouts for any fitness level. Have I piqued your interest? It doesn't have to be complicated or expensive, but you do need to take the first step. Go to the show notes of this episode or send me an email at mfolan, that's F as in Frank O-L-A-N Faster Way at gmailcom. Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife.

Michele Folan:

I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. I hear it all the time. What is happening to my body? Where is this fat on my belly coming from? You clearly are not alone. We talk a lot about menopause on the podcast, and the one thing most women are concerned about is their changing body composition and some of the frankly annoying symptoms of menopause. So often we have something going on with our health and it ends up being related to this change in life. What if I told you you have more control over this than you think? Laura Lambe is a menopause practitioner and member of the British Menopause Society, teaching women how to thrive after 40. She is a menopause coach and the founder of the Menopause Lab, a hub dedicated to menopause education and a safe space to connect with other women on similar journeys and to learn from them too. Laura Lamb, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Laura Lambe:

Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Michele Folan:

Well, your accent is lovely, and I would first like for you to tell everyone where you're from.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, I need to be very careful in my accent because sometimes I talk very fast and then people are unsure what I'm saying. I'm originally from Ireland. I live in the UK, in London now, but, yes, I am Irish.

Michele Folan:

Yes, you are very.

Laura Lambe:

Irish and I love it.

Michele Folan:

I got quite a bit of Irish in me too, and uh, but you yeah, I love the accent, you have quite a background and you have an amazing following. How did you get to where you are today? What was the career path?

Laura Lambe:

Well, I actually have a very surprising career path and that most people probably won't really expect. So I used to work on a trading floor. So I come from a very corporate background. I was an investment risk analyst in my previous years. I worked directly with the CEO with a hedge fund and I managed P&L for the trading floor. So I did that. That's kind of my background and, like most people that come from the corporate world, it just wasn't my passion, it wasn't something that I wanted to do. It was a very male dominated sector. It just wasn't my passion, it wasn't something that I wanted to do. It was a very male dominated sector. It just didn't really fit who I am as an individual.

Laura Lambe:

I've always had a massive interest in health and fitness, always from a very young age. I've played sports from a young age and so on. I did, unfortunately, battle with poor relationships with food and with myself, mainly from, unfortunately, the diet culture. I got very wrapped up in diets in my kind of early 20s and, like most women, unfortunately kind of spiraled on that kind of disordered relationship with myself and disordered relationship with food. So my first venture into nutrition was really to see if myself was really to help me. I was so fed up with the diet world. I was so fed up with honestly just starving myself, because it's what every magazine told you to do and it's kind of what everything to do and I just didn't feel great in myself. So that's why I actually went and got educated and became a nutritionist was really to help myself, and when I did that I realized how women's health was in such a mess was in the amount of lies, the amount of misinformation, the amount of fads that don't actually help your health in any shape and form. They're kind of all set up to keep you stuck so that you're constantly paying more money to do this, trying to try to do this. You're just stuck in that kind of churn that people are making so much money out of women for making them feel stuck.

Laura Lambe:

And so that's when I really found my passion in life, really my path in life in terms of what I do now, in terms of helping women, and then, naturally, when that started really ball and the role and the ball rolling in that previously my company was just full nutrition, so we would have done all nutrition with women in all different forms, um, and then I really um became a huge fan of the whole menopausal sector.

Laura Lambe:

Whenever I got to learn a little bit more about menopausal women and working with menopausal women and so on, um, I just really learned how underserved they are and the amount of information. Even with becoming a nutritionist, even having registered dietitians on my team, we kind of all sat down together in like a group of women and thought we actually don't even know anything really about this, like we're meant to be trained and qualified to help women and we actually don't really know. We haven't actually been taught anything about menopause. Like I think it was like maybe a small footnote in a chapter whenever I was doing my nutrition degree, like it was like nothing, it was barely even mentioned. And then that's whenever that whole passion and fire about three or four years ago started with menopause.

Michele Folan:

Well, and so no wonder you don't know anything about menopause, because doctors don't know anything about menopause. I don't think the United States and the UK are all that different in terms of the lack of knowledge and the lack of advocacy, although I think it's really changing, and just doing this podcast, I would say over the last two years, I see a big shift in that there are women out there that are really banging the drum and trying to get this in the forefront of even medical research yeah for sure.

Laura Lambe:

It's a shame that we have to be advocates of our own health and that we can't just rely on the people that are meant to help us, ie doctors, gps and so on. That's not going to change in our generation and I don't even think it'll change in the generation come behind us. I think it'll be a couple of more generations before it dwindles down enough that when women go to GPs and GBYNs and so on, that they actually get factual information. But yes, for now we have to become advocates for our own health.

Michele Folan:

And I find it so incredibly sad that and I have friends that have gotten through menopause relatively unscathed right, we all know those people. But when you meet clients I'm sure that are wanting to quit their job or they're having to totally readjust their lives for these menopause symptoms that can be treated. That's just not acceptable any longer and so hopefully it's changing yeah, hopefully. You talk a lot about inflammation. I do follow you. Why are women in menopause more likely to have inflammation and what are the effects or syndromes of inflammation on the body?

Laura Lambe:

So estrogen is our main anti-inflammatory hormone. So when we lose its protection as we go through our perimenopausal years in particular, inflammation does start to naturally increase in a female body. Now it does increase in men as well. It obviously increases a lot quicker and at an earlier age in females. A lot of the menopausal symptoms are inflammatory linked. So things like our vasomotor symptoms so your hot flashes and night sweats are inflammatory linked. Things like joint pain inflammatory linked Vaginal atropathy symptoms inflammatory linked, and even things like visceral fat, so your visceral fat and which does naturally increase from about five percent to about 10 to 15 percent of your body fat in your late perimenopausal years are is driven mainly by inflammation and hormonal changes.

Laura Lambe:

So, yes, one of the very first things that we will teach about inside with our free community and if any of our clients come to us through your virtual clinic, one of the very first things that we will teach about inside with our free community and if any of our clients come to us through our virtual clinic, one of the very first things that we will input for all of our individuals is leaning them towards a more anti-inflammatory approach, just so that we can start to offset some of those more inflammatory now, like symptoms that they are having, the joint pains, the ache pains, the visceral fat increase and so on, because now that their estrogen, ie that main anti-inflammatory hormone, is on its decline, and I want to delineate between visceral fat and subcutaneous fat.

Michele Folan:

So visceral fat is that, it's that yellow fat that typically we have in our gut. It surrounds our organs.

Laura Lambe:

It's the very unhealthy fat. Yeah, it's the metabolically active fat, so it's not very unhealthy fat. Yeah, it's the metabolically active fat, so it's not really the fat. To an extent it's something it is still, but it's not a subcutaneous fat is mainly driven by how much you're eating and your lack of exercise and so on. Your visceral fat is driven more so by your insulin resistance, hormonal shifts and inflammation, and that's why it does increase quite rapidly in women's perimenopausal years. Compared to an increase that a man may experience, it's not on the same level.

Michele Folan:

Okay. Are there foods that we should be eating that will help us combat this inflammation?

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, and people really do overcomplicate nutrition in so many different ways. So the very first thing that we want to look at first is removing inflammatory foods. So we'll firstly remove those, because it doesn't matter how great of the anti-inflammatory foods that you're putting in if you're constantly pouring in foods that are going to be triggering and increasing your inflammation rate anyway. So these are things that we're all very aware of as it is. So things like very highly processed foods, a lot of alcohol, sugar, processed candy and so on. So situations and foods that we're already aware of that we should try and keep them at a minimum. We don't need to fully reduce them. We don't need to fully eliminate them.

Laura Lambe:

Life is all about a balance. That odd glass of wine isn't going to be a make or break. So we call these things our minority activities. So the majority of your habits, the majority of your food and the majority of things that you do around the time is what's going to drive your results and your health. Your minority, those little glasses of wine, that odd treat and so on. That's life. That's about balance. So we definitely want to make that very clear, that I'm not talking about completely eliminating those things, but definitely trying to keep those more inflammatory foods so those processed foods, sugar, alcohol and so on to the very minority of your daily intake and across the week Outside of that, then the biggest way that you can look at it is trying to consume real food, trying to consume real, raw, nutritious food.

Laura Lambe:

So we want to get away from eating less the fad diets low fat, low calorie. We're done with that. We're now looking at fueling our body and eating enough food. So we need to think of fuel your body, give your body nutritious elements, and these are things that we are already aware of, but they become more vitally important as we go through menopause. So things like consuming enough protein, consuming enough fiber, getting actually whole green carbohydrates and that so many women are freed off because of the diet world healthy fats, fruit and veg, nuts and seeds, so that really balanced diet that we're all very aware of, but we've actually got so far away from because of social media and supplements and taking all this magic stuff and doing these diets, that we kind of forget what basic nutrition is. And so when we are talking about anti-inflammatory foods and your menopause nutrition, it's honestly getting women back to basics and what we already know that we should be doing, but we're so caught up on the social media kind of BS with it all.

Michele Folan:

Well, okay, I got to back up. So you were talking about foods that can cause inflammation. One thing you didn't mention, and I'm curious what your thoughts are about seed oils like canola oil, things other than olive oil, coconut oil or avocado oil.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, so definitely yeah, we want to be in your minority. Now again, we don't want to have a blanket statement where women feel like it is completely unavoidable, because in some individuals' lives, it isn't easy for them to completely reduce them if they're on the go, if they're eating, if they travel a lot, and so on. You definitely want to try, though, and keep it at a minority, because it is an inflammatory-linked food.

Michele Folan:

I think keto has probably done more damage to our mindset about food than anything, because we need fiber, and raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, those all have a nice bit of fiber in them, and then there are some fiber rich vegetables that will also have some carbohydrate. Do you find that's one thing that you you find you have to overcome with with clients often?

Laura Lambe:

Anything that has rules with it is so damaging. So anything, whether it's keto, carnivore diet, fast, anything that A tries to label the way that we eat as full-grown adults and tries to place rules and restrictions and timelines everything it's just it's a diet. It's a restrictive, it's a diet. It's not a natural, healthy relationship with food in any shape or form. So, yes, unfortunately, because women that we work with have spent decades, the vast majority of their life, under this kind of thought process that they then really believe that there's good food and bad food and good way to eat and a bad way to eat, and they're so afraid of certain foods and so afraid of other things that they end up just actually doing nothing because they're trying to do everything that kind of all or nothing mindset or that kind of really afraid of doing things that, yeah, nutrition becomes this huge, scary topic when in reality, if we take it back to basics, it can be pretty straightforward.

Michele Folan:

What do you think about turmeric for inflammation? Is that something you recommend?

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, so any kind of spices are fantastic. So things like turmeric garlic is another one that's great. Even things like peppermint teas, so putting peppermint in and so on. So, yeah, turmeric is a fantastic. Any kind of spices that you can add to your food is a great way to get some more of those antioxidants into your diet.

Michele Folan:

So we talked a little bit about the foundational foods. We talked about having carbohydrate. In terms of fiber, how much fiber are you typically recommending for your clients per day?

Laura Lambe:

In and around 25 to 30 grams. If an individual tracks their food intake and, as a side note, if you do track your food intake, it should be a short-term thing, it's not a long-term method. Tracking your food intake is just to give you awareness of what's on your plate and what you're actually consuming. Once you get that awareness, put the tracker away. But in and around 25 to 30 grams a day is the daily recommendation amount for a menopausal woman on her fiber intake.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, and I agree with you about the tracking food. And something that I often recommend too is, before I start working with a client, I'll have them track their food, what they would have normally eaten on a regular day, so that we can kind of look at that and kind of digest it and say, okay, here's some areas where we can make some quick improvements, because I see it there in black and white so. But it can be daunting to have to track your food day in and day out. I hear you on that.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, and it can create very disordered. It's not healthy, it's not a long-term solution in any shape or form. It's just really to give you awareness and educate you on what's actually in food. It's the education we should have gotten when we were all children at school, but unfortunately we didn't, and so this is kind of our best method to do it now as adults.

Michele Folan:

Well, you know it's funny though. So I'm 60 and growing up in the United States. Back when I was a little kid, I mean, the junkiest food that we had was maybe Fritos or potato chips, something like that. You may call them crisps, I don't know what you call them, but and maybe, maybe Coke and maybe Coke Coca-Cola, but that had real sugar in it. At the time we didn't have all this stuff now, and now when you go to the grocery store it's disgusting. It's so much pre-prepared food. And I guess, just telling your clients, we call it the ring of perishables. I took retailing in college. The ring of perishables try to stay on the outside of the store. Are your stores set up the same way?

Laura Lambe:

They are. And even if you go down what is called the health aisle, it's always processed powders, processed high protein cookies, high protein processed bars. It's supplements. Even if you go to we have wellness events in London, all supplements. Even if you go to we have wellness events in london all the time and you go to the in in-person wellness event and they'll say, oh, we've provided healthy snacks and it's all this processed health label stuff and you're like how are we? How is this the situation that we're in? Like, how is this what is actually being called health?

Michele Folan:

yeah, and I remember the 90s it was all low fat and we had snack well, cookies. So I mean we've done so much to screw ourselves up, you know in terms of trying to figure out what the heck to eat. I want to talk about protein, because you did mention, you know, making sure that we are getting enough protein, and I absolutely agree with you. How much protein are you typically recommending? And then, what do you find are the best sources of protein?

Laura Lambe:

So we always start with the basics. So just get the key foundations in, which will be trying to aim for at least three meals a day and having in between 20 to 30 grams of protein on each meal and for the vast majority of women, if they're able to hit that so three meals a day at about vast majority of women if they're able to hit that so three meals a day at about 30 grams of protein they're doing very well and if you look at like a portion, it would be roughly the palm size of your hand. So if a woman is consuming that amount of protein on a daily basis, she's doing great. If, then, maybe, an individual exercises a lot, it may need to be slightly more for her. We want to add in maybe a protein snack and so on, but that's on a more individual basis. The core foundation is that sort of 30 grams give or take on across your three meals across the day.

Laura Lambe:

Again, we want to try and keep these as much to like just normal, real, unprocessed food as possible. It obviously depends on an individual's lifestyle and so on. So any kind of like lean meat sources are great. Any obviously I am that we can get plant-based protein, any kind of like nuts and seeds, even kind of Greek yogurt. So really just focusing on what is real protein rather than leaning towards nothing wrong with the protein powders and so on. They're, they're just. They're nothing magical, they're just a protein source, but they are slightly, a little bit more processed, and especially when women go through such a large shift in their microbiome, in their gut we typically find menopausal women find it quite hard to digest processed protein, and so with our clients we would try and keep that at a minority and just have them consuming real food and real protein.

Michele Folan:

I'm glad you brought that up. That is a real thing when we are trying to up our protein and you feel sometimes like it's just kind of sitting there, like it's harder to process. And I do agree with you, sometimes the protein powders can be a little harder to process. I wanted to go back to the topic of protein real quick. Sometimes the protein powders can be a little harder to process. I wanted to go back to the topic of protein real quick. If you have a client who is very active, physically active, lifts weights, all of that, what about the timing of protein for that person?

Laura Lambe:

It would be one of the last things that I would be getting stressed about or worried about, and so on. So does it make a difference? Yes, does it make as much of a difference as what people think? No, if I was working with an athlete, then, yeah, maybe a bigger difference for her, but for a working mom with kids who goes to the gym four or five times a week, it's nothing. It's just another to-do. It's another thing that's layered up on making nutrition feel more difficult. So, yeah, we would advise that.

Laura Lambe:

You know you, if you want to be eating your protein correctly, you want to have it across the day and even portions, and you want to spread out nice and evenly. And if you're going to work out, you want to try and get protein in after that, and so on. But in some people's lives that's just impossible, and so if we try and put all these rules to things, then that's where it becomes harder. Like, at the end of the day, what's going to make the difference is how much protein you're eating across the day. If you can get it in perfectly across the day, amazing. If you can't, don't sweat it. It's not going to be that big of a difference.

Michele Folan:

See, I love your practical approach. I really do. It's very refreshing. All right. Question Peanut butter and almond butter Are they a fat or a protein? A fat, okay.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, they have protein in them, but you would need a lot of them to be getting a proper protein portion.

Michele Folan:

All right. All right, I agree with you High fiber foods. We did talk a little bit about high fiber foods and getting 25 grams of fiber per day minimum. Can you talk a little bit about gut recalibration, because that's something you do discuss?

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, one of the biggest things that we work with, with all of the women that will come to us for lots of different reasons. So, firstly, when we go through menopause, it occurs around about the ages of 40, 45. Sometimes it varies, but all women will experience a quite large shift in the diversity of the bacteria or your microbiome in your gut. Now it's actually the same as in your skin. So we have bacteria or microbiome in our skin and we have bacteria or microbiome in our skin and we have bacteria and microbiome in our vagina. That's why we have symptoms of like dry skin, itchy skin, acne. We also vaginal dryness, vaginal irritation. It's all coming from a shift in bacteria, so we have bacteria in our gut as well. The shift in bacteria in your gut triggers some of the menopausal symptoms that we experience Now. So things like mood swings, feeling flat in mood and feeling flat motivation. One of the more natural treatments and protocols that we look at is gut health Brain fog, one of the first protocols. Gut health, things like fatigue, low energy and so on gut health. So we do look at gut health when we're treating menopausal symptoms and we also look at it for just overall well-being. Now our gut health will continue to decline in women until end of life. So it does continue to decline. You can slow up that decline with different ways, but one of the first things that we look at is just optimizing it straight out of the bat.

Laura Lambe:

Now, when women go through menopause they can develop a new onset of food sensitivities. So we kind of approach it as let's just get to relearn your gut. So what foods may work well for you before but maybe cause a little bit of sensitivity, cause a little bit of flare up of bloating, maybe a little bit of constipation or change in bowels, maybe disrupt your sleep a little bit. So we would get our clients to roughly. And you can do it with a pen and paper. We have an app but you can do it with a pen and paper where you would just track your gut. So just track your bloating, track your bowel movements, track your energy across the day and see if you can see any trends with what you're eating, if there's anything that could be triggering that and so on, because as you're going through menopause you will have that experience. So that's the most important thing to do and that'll always be the first protocol in looking after your gut. Because, kind of like with the inflammatory foods, there's no point pouring all this fancy fiber stuff in on top if you're currently eating stuff that your body's struggling to digest. So get that out of the way first. Then look at optimizing your nutrition. So making sure that you're getting enough fiber, making sure, again, that you're maybe utilizing more probiotic, prebiotic foods you don't need a reach for a supplement to do that. You can do that with foods for most people.

Laura Lambe:

And then, unfortunately, this is where then we start to have a conversation around cortisol. So when women go through menopause and their estrogen declines, their body kind of panics because estrogen is that anti-inflammatory hormone. So their body's like oh no, we're losing inflammatory protection. So let's make more of this other inflammatory hormone, which is cortisol. So, again, social media tries to jump all over cortisol and make it this really fear thing.

Laura Lambe:

It's a natural progression and that natural increase of cortisol in our body isn't causing a lot of concern, but it is making us more stressed. It's making us less stress resilient. So things that maybe wouldn't have bothered us in the past are maybe making us more stressed now and so on. Maybe your mood snaps a little bit quicker, and so on. And it's just because of that natural shift of cortisol in your body.

Laura Lambe:

But another thing that cortisol does in your body is inflame your intestines. So when we're looking at a woman's gut, there are the three things that we'll take her through. What foods now no longer serve her that good and we want to get rid of those? What foods is she missing in her diet to really help her gut health? And what is her overall stress like? And things that cause more cortisol in your body are things like skipping meals, overusing caffeine, really prolonged fasting, under eating, um overtraining. So we're not just looking at what is your stress like, because unless you quit your job and dump your kids and go to desert ireland, you're probably going to have stress in your life. But there's other things that can cause increased cortisol and so they're the three things that we would take somebody through for gut and for the vast majority of women in, and around 96% of our clients will have gut work with them.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, you know the gut-brain connection thing I find one of the most, isn't it? But it's so fascinating. And then back to cortisol, so I can blame my mood on cortisol. Tell my husband, it's just my cortisol talking, Don't worry about it, right? Yeah, and you brought this up too. Not eating enough, you know it is putting our bodies in undue stress. So is this why the 1,200 calorie diets or less really don't work for us any longer.

Laura Lambe:

Well, they don't work at any age. Again, it comes right back to what I was saying in the very beginning. We have been conditioned to think it's normal to starve our bodies and it's really not. 1200 calories or less is what a nutrition or a dietician would give to a young girl. None of us are young girls, so we shouldn't be eating like young girls. So this is like.

Laura Lambe:

Our hormones require food to function, our body requires food to function, but we as women this is not a thing that men get we as women have been conditioned to just not eat and conditioned to just think it's normal to eat 400, 500, 600 calories a day, to go days with fat. We just think this is normal because it's what we have been conditioned at. So, regardless if that quote unquote allows you to lose weight, to see a number on a scale, it should never be a topic of conversation that we would ever say to any woman that it's normal to so massively under eat or, as a full grown woman, to consume ideally intake of what a young girl should eat. That should never be a concept of ours and it just comes back to, like I was saying earlier, we are so conditioned to associate eating with a number on a scale.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I know, and it's busting the whole myth or busting the whole diet culture thing that is so incredibly difficult is because it's so ingrained in us, so ingrained, so ingrained, so it's. Yeah, let's talk about menopause symptoms real quick. So what are the five symptoms? Craziest symptoms of menopause that you see. Most often we'll throw libido in there, that's the one.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah well, libido isn't even a crazy one. Libido is so common, like one and two, so one and two will have libido issues, and it's so common. So, um, unfortunately, because it's not commonly spoken about, a lot of women think it's a normal part of aging, so easily treated. But a lot of women think libido is just a normal part of aging and so they don't even really bang it up like we'll do consultations and it's never brought up unless I ask so, unless I ask do you have any vaginal dryness? Do you have any vaginal irritation? Do you have any pain during penetration? Do you have any low libido?

Laura Lambe:

Then it becomes a topic and they're like I didn't even realize this was menopause related, like I didn't know I could do this. I thought this was just me getting older and I kind of thought it's like no, it's not that. So that's not even the craziest ones. Things like a burning tongue sensation is one that would catch a lot of people that don't think it's menopause related. Itchy ears, frozen shoulders, things like tingling or crawling sensation on your skin. Things like change of like focus in your eyes, so like dry eyes, would be a crazier one. Again, quite all quite common, but ones that people just don't typically, or you don't tip. We hear about the hot flashes, we hear about the brain fog, we hear about the weight gain, but a lot of these other symptoms we don't really hear as much about.

Michele Folan:

I do want to talk a little bit about HRT too, since we're kind of talking about menopause symptoms. Does being on estrogen help with weight loss? Or I mean, like, what are people's thoughts now about that?

Laura Lambe:

So yeah, so it's proven that it's not Okay. So HRT will not drive weight gain or weight loss. So there's no connection with weight gain or weight loss. Now, when you go on HRT in the very beginning and a lot of women panic and then they come off HRT too quickly because they're not told this you can have water retention when you go on HRT in the beginning. That's not weight gain. That will come back down.

Laura Lambe:

So unfortunately, what we'll see is that women will go on HRT. They'll have this water retention. Their doctor hasn't told them about this. They'll panic when they see the scale going up and they'll think I'm never going near that again because that's made me gain weight, when in reality, if we just had told that woman it's normal when you start to consume hormones that your body will hold water, it'll flush it back out again in a few weeks. Keep going. So that's the water retention. So it's very important for women to understand that. But no, it doesn't help with weight loss.

Laura Lambe:

Is there more water retention when you do progesterone in combination with estrogen? It's really individual based. So it's really individual and how you react. So some women will have no water retention, some women will have some, someone will have a lot. So it's really just an individual and that's why it's really important to track your symptoms when you're just starting any kind of HRT and you're meant to track your symptoms anyway and go back to your GP or your provider in three months, present your symptoms and then your dosage is based on that. So HRT and the combination of HRT is totally individualized for each person.

Michele Folan:

Okay, and I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about exercise. Do you also give client recommendations on fitness?

Laura Lambe:

yeah, yeah, super, super important. So obviously, when women go through menopause, you're we do become at a higher risk of cbd, so cardiovascular activity or cardiovascular disease, sorry. So it is very important for us to exercise. So again, it's just part the thought that all that we should do is focus on weight loss, like exercise is important for overall well-being. So when you're going through your perimenopausal years, a woman will lose bone density at the quickest rate that she ever will in her entire life.

Laura Lambe:

So we think things like brittle bones and so on are associated with old age and in your 80s and your 90s and coming towards the end of life, it's not. It's in yours. That's when you're losing actually the most bone density that you ever will in your entire life. So your bone health for the rest of your life is dictated on what you're doing. This brings me right back to what I was saying about don't be starving yourself anymore, because your body is relying on you to look after it so that your old age can actually have a good quality sense of life.

Laura Lambe:

So the way that we approach exercise with our clients is we want to make sure that they have three things. So we want to make sure there's some form of cardio, whether it's walking, jogging, whatever that individual likes to do, but some form of cardio, some form of resistance training. Now, there's lots of different ways that we can do resistance training. You don't need to go in and stand in a gym by yourself. Some women think that's the worst thing that they could ever possibly do, and so if you don't like to do that, don't do it. But some form of resistance training, whether it's performer Pilates, whether it's a class, whether it's weight training, something like that.

Laura Lambe:

And the third thing is pelvic floor exercises. I cannot stress the importance of pelvic floor exercises, even bringing back to our libido women, the importance of pelvic floor exercises, even bringing back to our libido women that come to us with low libido. The very first thing that we'll do is get them to do pelvic floor exercises because it stimulates the blood flow and it can help with vaginal dryness, it can help with vaginal irritation, it can help with your low libido and it's actually one of the best things to slow up even your gut health. So we think pelvic floor and the only reason you'd ever do that is if you're leaking urine. But it's so important and the recommendation from the menopause societies is that all women over the age of 38 should be doing consistent pelvic floor exercises. So they're the three things that, when we're building an exercise plan, we want to put them in, and how we put them in totally depends on the person's time, their current fitness levels, their overall goals, but all exercise plans should have a combination of those three things.

Michele Folan:

Oh my God, pelvic floor and I've had pelvic floor experts on the podcast before. It's not something that I think about every day, but, oh my God, it touches everything. I mean it really does.

Laura Lambe:

It's so important. It's one of the very first things when I get asked what would be one of the things that you would say all menopausal women Do your pelvic floor. It's one of the biggest things that you will see such an increase in, even when it comes to stress and so on. It's so, so important.

Michele Folan:

And it's more than just Kegels too. I think we need to talk about that too.

Laura Lambe:

There's lots of different ways that you can do it. Yeah, we actually do pelvic floor exercises on a weekly basis inside of my free menopause lab, because that's how important it is, and I try and show as many ways you can do it when you're sitting at your desk. There's so many different ways that you can do your pelvic floor.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, okay, I think you probably have at least one amazing client testimonial. Do you mind sharing one?

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, it's actually a client that we're still working with at the present. Now, I've worked with some amazing women and all the clients that we come through our door have fantastic stories, but this one really hit home. It was an individual. Her name is Holly. I won home and it was an individual. Her name is Holly I won't disclose her surname, but her name is Holly and she came to us three months ago, so she's in her fourth month with us now, but she actually she booked the consultation with ourselves and but it was actually her husband that turned up to the consultation and not her, which was obviously, firstly, a very unique situation that's never happened before where a husband will come and not the woman, and it was just so touching because he had all our medical notes, he had everything written down, he was so invested in making his wife be better and like, yeah, I was just like, is there more of you? Do you buy you on Amazon? Like where are you coming from?

Laura Lambe:

But she unfortunately had such severe menopausal symptoms that she was actually bed bound. So she had been bed bound for the guts of a year, so she was would be able to maybe come downstairs for at the odd time, barely interact with her kids or do anything like that because such severe fatigue, severe, severe brain fog, severe gut issues, quite low mood and so on. She had traveled the length of america and with her per husband trying to find menopausal support, and she had got fobbed off every time because she couldn't take hrt. So she wasn't in a medical position to take hrt and so, unfortunately, that's that's the end of the line for the a lot of women. If you can't take hrt, that's the end of the road.

Laura Lambe:

And so she was women. If you can't take HRT, that's the end of the road. And so she was never given any advice or help or anything. So she just went from one person to another person to another person and such bad insomnia she was sleeping about 30 minutes a night and so on, and in the last three months we have got her now to sleep in seven plus hours every single night. She is now outside exercising with her kids on a daily basis, she's now homeschooling her kids and she's spending very, very, very few days now actually bedbinding or doing anything else. So that for me was a real big one because, yeah, like her whole life is completely and utterly changed.

Michele Folan:

That is amazing and I'm so happy for her. I'm happy for her husband. What a great story and that's get you on the path to feeling better and it's it can be your, your food. It can just start with your food and and your pelvic floor exercises. Um, I think that's fantastic. How do you work with clients? I do want to make sure I cover that really quick.

Laura Lambe:

Yeah, so, um, we work with everybody privately, one-to-one, through my virtual clinic. So if any individuals want to work with us on an individual basis, they can just reach out and book a consultation. You can do that via any of my social media and we'll work with all our clients one-to-one, personally inside of that, but I am on a very big mission to make sure that nothing is protected behind paywalls. So I personally believe something that myself and my whole entire company are really pushing forward over the next coming years is that all women should have access to menopausal education. So, regardless, if you want to work with me on a one-to-one basis and pay for our services, we have now founded and built an entire free portal which does.

Laura Lambe:

It's called the Menopausal Lab. All the links are in my bio and so on. It's probably one of the best things that I've ever done in my career. It is all. We have a full, entire menopausal education and everything that you'll need to know in terms of diagnosis and treatment, all the treatment options not just hrt, but all the hrt and all the treatment options, sorry are listed. We do monthly master classes. We have experts around the world coming in there. We do do nutrition workshops everything, because I do feel that every single woman should have the basic right to know what's going on in her body.

Michele Folan:

I love your mission. I think that's very generous of you to offer that, and I will put all that in the show notes so people will have that. I have one last question for you what is one of your own pillars of self-care?

Laura Lambe:

Stress. Looking after myself, really looking after myself, obviously doing what I do and having a huge team behind me so I have 20 menopausal specialists on my team, between operational staff and so on my stress levels can get very high on a daily basis. So looking after and replenishing myself so you can't pour from an empty cup. So on a daily basis, I make sure that I have something, whether it's five minutes in the morning, an extra longer shower, whether it's reading a book in the evening, whether it's just taking a walk, something on a daily basis to look after me. Because, as women, we look after everybody else all day, every day and again. We're conditioned to think that's the way it should be. And, yes, we have responsibilities in life, but looking after me and doing something for myself every day is a non-negotiable in my life.

Michele Folan:

Well said. I think that's a great way to finish up this conversation. Laura Lamb, thank you so much for being a guest today.

Laura Lambe:

Thank you very much.

Michele Folan:

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