Phytoestrogens: your secret weapon against perimenopause symptoms?

Could phytoestrogens be your secret weapon against perimenopause symptoms?

While quick fixes and magic bullets are myths when it comes to managing your health; phytoestrogens stand out as a powerful tool that might just make the difference in your battle against hormonal fluctuations during perimenopause.

In this episode of Chaos to Calm, we dive deep into the realm of functional foods:

1. Understand phytoestrogens: Discover how these natural compounds gently modulate your hormones, offering relief from perimenopause symptoms.
2. Dietary power: Learn how a varied diet rich in phytoestrogens can become a formidable ally against the challenges of perimenopause.
3. Cultural differences: Explore how women in cultures rich in phytoestrogens experience fewer menopausal symptoms, and how you can incorporate their dietary secrets into your lifestyle.
4. Optimise your gut: Understand the role of your microbiome and estrobolome in your health, and learn how phytoestrogens can enhance intestinal health to help reduce perimenopause symptoms.
5. Practical tips: Receive actionable advice on integrating these beneficial foods into your daily routine, enhancing your health and well-being during perimenopause and beyond.

This episode delivers practical, natural solutions that leverage the power of your diet to manage symptoms effectively, transforming your journey through perimenopause.

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• COMING SOON: Discover how to use food as your most powerful medicine, smoothing hormonal fluctuations and easing perimenopause symptoms naturally. (Yes, you have more options than hormone therapy!) Say goodbye to feeling out of control and hello to feeling more like your old self every day, with PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!)
• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• Been told your blood test results are "normal" or "fine" while you feel far from your best? Discover the power of optimal blood test analysis with The Blood Test Decoder: Optimal Ranges for Women Over 40.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

Transcript

Sarah McLachlan: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Chaos to Calm podcast, episode number 48. I'm Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath, your guide through this wonderful journey of perimenopause. So if you're over 40 and feeling like you're changing, hormones are hijacking your mood, your energy, your weight and you want to change that in a holistic and natural way, then this is the place for you, because each episode I'm going to share with you my views on what the heck is happening in your body, why you're feeling the way that you are and what you can do about it, with actionable advice to help you feel more calm, in control, less stressed and much more comfortable in your body. I'm so glad you've joined me today. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. Let's get on with the discussion of today's topic so we can start moving you from chaos to calm. I love using food as medicine. If you've hung out with me for a little while here, and even if it's not all 48 episodes, you will probably know that it was what I always wanted to do when I was studying to become a naturopath. It's the reason that I started studying to become a naturopath was to teach people how to eat, how to power up their food for their best or optimal health. I love talking about optimal things as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:15

What I've noticed is that these days there's a lot marketed at us, especially in perimenopause. It's like this new booming industry. It certainly wasn't like that when I started talking about perimenopause five years ago. People were only talking about menopause. Perimenopause wasn't even much of a talked about thing. But it didn't make sense to me that we just talked about menopause, because that's usually when things got better for people, because their hormones had declined and settled. And so that's why I started talking about perimenopause, because it's really that time where things fluctuate a lot and we have lots of symptoms and can be really uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:55

Companies these days really like to take extracts from food or herbs or plants and condense them. They're going with the more is more kind of theory. Actually, more is often less, because I think you lose a lot when you only extract one part of a plant or a herb, because there's a lot we do know about our bodies, how they work, and same for food and plants. But there's also a lot that we don't know, and I always think that a food, a plant, a herb as a whole has so much more therapeutic power than just the sum of its individual parts or constituents do so. I think that we lose that synergy or that synergistic effect when we're taking extracts out of a plant or a herb or a food and not using the whole thing. So why am I talking about this? Where am I going here?

Sarah McLachlan: 2:48

Last episode I was talking about quick fixes and magic bullets, like they're everywhere being marketed at us, like you can't turn your head, you can't open your social media without having something bombarded at you a pill, a potion, a powder, whatever that's going to fix everything for you, make it all go away. Now, I don't really believe in quick fixes or magic bullets. They just don't exist in my opinion. But one of the key types of functional foods or foods that I use as medicine myself and with my clients is phytoestrogens, and that's what we're going to talk about today, and I am saying this with my tongue firmly in my cheek. Maybe it is a magic bullet for women in perimenopause and menopause. I do, as I said, include them in my meals every day and I encourage my clients to as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 3:40

I asked my client Nikki she was in the Chaos to Calm method, so she had her personalized nutrition plan. She was using that with great success. She was losing weight, she was sleeping better, had better energy, more consistent energy across her day and week. She was feeling good all around, but still having the occasional flush and sweat at night. So I got her to add in phytoestrogens flax seeds or sometimes you might see them called linseeds, in this case at a therapeutic dose that research has confirmed for us and her flushes and sweats went away within the week. So do magic bullets exist? No, I'm still going to say no. Nikki was doing so many other things to cover off the basics and really helped to optimize her health with her personalized nutrition plan and the other actions and advice that I gave her in the Chaos to Calm method. So, yes, phytoestrogens definitely helped her as a functional food. It was one part of our approach and maybe it's something that you might like to add to your approach in managing your perimenopause symptoms, naturally and we're going to talk about it today, but please do just remember it's one part of your whole treatment plan or management plan there. All right.

Sarah McLachlan: 4:55

So what plant phytoestrogens? Why am I talking about them? Why should you care? Phytoestrogens are plant compounds. They have a really similar structure, but not exactly the same, to our body's own hormone of estrogen. It's enough of a similarity that it gives them the ability to interact with the estrogen receptors that our cells have, and almost all our cells have estrogen receptors. It's why so many things can happen to us or so many symptoms can come up in perimenopause as estrogen ping-pongs around between high and low before it hits its lows in menopause. So they can interact with our estrogen receptors, but they do act a little differently to estrogen hormones that our body produces.

Sarah McLachlan: 5:41

So a little analogy if we think of endogenous estrogen, that's the estrogen our body produces, and a little analogy if we think of endogenous estrogen, that's the estrogen our body produces and there's a number of types and metabolites of it as well. But let's just think about estrogen as a whole. That estrogen is a key and it can open lots of doors in the body. That goes into the lock which is the receptor on the cells and that can cause different reactions, different trigger, different activities or hormonal events in the body. So endogenous estrogen that our body produces unlocks these doors, opens them wide, like when you're saying to your kids were you born in a tent with the flap open that kind of wide, and so they have their complete and full effect there.

Sarah McLachlan: 6:26

Now phytoestrogens from plants act like as a key to the same lock, but how you see those doors and they might have like a half door or a little door within a door. So think of the phytoestrogens from plants as a key that unlocks a smaller part of the door. It doesn't open up the big door and it certainly doesn't open it up in full. So it allows some activity to occur. It stimulates the receptor a bit, but not as much as our own estrogen does. It's limited, it can be easily controlled as much as our own estrogen does. It's limited, it can be easily controlled. So opening that smaller phytoestrogen door creates a little bit of activity and some reactions, but not nearly as strong as our own endogenous hormone estrogen does when it opens up the whole door. So they do not act.

Sarah McLachlan: 7:20

Phytoestrogens don't act exactly like our own estrogen. They're much gentler, have a smaller effect and they can modulate the impact of estrogen in your body. They can either help boost it up when it's low or turn it down when there's too much, when it's unopposed, and so that makes it really helpful in perimenopause and menopause, because we have it often too high. We have that unopposed estrogen, or some people call it estrogen dominance in perimenopause, particularly early perimenopause, but then in menopause itself low estrogen is often the issue. So these lovely gentle phytoestrogens can be really helpful for us and the way that they work. When our if our own estrogen is quite high, they have an anti-estrogenic effect by competing with our own hormones for those receptor sites on the cells. So if you think of it like a roller derby where everyone's jostling trying to get through and the phytoestrogens might get to the receptor that lock on your cell before our own estrogens and they'll have a much gentler effect. So it just helps moderate estrogen levels in our body. So if we think about it in that door analogy again, if the smaller door has been opened and unlocked by the phytoestrogen, so the lock's being occupied by the key, then there's less entry points, there's less spots for our own estrogen to pop its key in the lock.

Sarah McLachlan: 8:50

This is important too because remember episode 38 I did on endocrine disruptors, and there are some chemicals that have a strong estrogenic activity. We call them xenoestrogens. When we use things like phytoestrogens they can block that strong action of things like xenoestrogens. So episode 38, if you do want to go back and listen to that again, phytoestrogens is not just one compound. There's a group of them and they all have a slightly different mechanism of action in our body and come from different foods as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 9:23

So the main phytoestrogens that we talk about, particularly with regard to perimenopause and menopause isoflavone they are very similar to estrogen. We have lignans. Lignans in themselves are not particularly phytoestrogenic. Your intestinal bacteria has to convert them into compounds that have estrogenic effect. Coumestans are less common than the isoflavones and the lignans. And we have still beans, found in very small amounts. You probably know resveratrol. It's the most studied because it's in grapes and red wine, and, of course, everyone always wants to have a reason to drink red wine. I'm going to tell you eat the grapes and leave the wine, because it causes more irritation and problems than it helps. So where else can you find the phytoestrogens?

Sarah McLachlan: 10:13

Soy products, so controversial often. But they are actually really helpful as long as we remember to choose them, not so much in the refined soy milk, but things like how they were traditionally eaten and in their fermented form or their whole form. So tofu, tempeh, miso, edamame those things have isoflavones. Nuts and seeds, particularly flax seeds. I love them so much I'm going to talk about them in much more depth shortly.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:42

Sesame, pumpkin seeds, almonds and walnuts all contain lignans in good quantities. Legumes, so your pulses, your lentils, your beans, chickpeas they all contain lignans as well. Whole grains like barley and oats contain lignans, and so do vegetables like garlic, alfalfa, broccoli, kale, cabbage. Is there anything that broccoli and kale can't do with a side of turmeric? That's my question to you today. Sweet potato and herbs like red clover tea contain both lignans, coumestans and isoflavones.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:18

And oh, I forgot apples. I love apple a day. It's what all my clients have to do an apple a day and I encourage you to do it too, because now it's a source of phytoestrogens, along with berries like strawberries, but apples tend to be so much better tolerated, available year-round and usually quite cost-effective there as well. So nice variety of flavors and health benefits from those different foods, and they all have different nutrient profiles as well. So they add value to your diet and provide other building blocks in vitamins and minerals and other compounds for your body there as well. So let's think you're thinking about what I've just talked about and how phytoestrogen foods work and where you find them.

Sarah McLachlan: 12:00

I hope that you can see how helpful they are for our hormonal regulation and symptom management, especially of things like hot flushes and sweats, heavy bleeding, pms, sore breasts, breast tenderness and lumpiness in perimenopause. And actually, if we look to other cultures, like if we look in Asia, in many Asian cultures well, they have a different philosophy around perimenopause and menopause, so that brings some differences in people's symptoms. But they have a diet that's naturally rich in phytoestrogens. They consume quite an amount of soy, but also other phytoestrogen-rich foods as well, and the research tells us that women in those cultures often experience fewer and less severe menopausal symptoms compared to people in Western cultures like us. So the prevalence of hot flashes is a lot lower for women in Japan and their diet typically has about 50 to 200 milligrams of isoflavones daily, whereas an average Western diet only has three to five milligrams per day. So if we were looking at, how would I get to that much isoflavone content, which I would also suggest that you don't necessarily want to stick with one type of phytoestrogen food. You want to diversify across all of those ranges of the different types there. But let's talk about the common soy products or those ones that I told you, that pretty good for women in perimenopause and menopause there as well and also generally accepted as well from my research I think as being okay for people to eat.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:40

So tofu you want a nice, organic one that doesn't and don't buy the flavors or the marinades because you're just going to add sugar and other stuff to it. You do that yourself. Tofu contains about 20 to 30 milligrams of isoflavones per 100 grams and so like a serving size for dinner for tofu, 100 grams would be good. That's about three ounces for our American friends, maybe three and a half. So if you want to get 50 milligrams of isoflavones, you'd need about 165 to 250 grams of tofu, or six to nine ounces. It's a lot. If you want to go for the full 200 milligrams, like I said, wouldn't recommend. I would say please diversify. Tempeh is really rich in isoflavones compared to tofu and that's got about 30 to 50 milligrams per 100 grams of tempeh. So a serving size of about 100 grams is going to give you that. There.

Sarah McLachlan: 14:37

Edamame are the young soybeans, so they're green rather than the hard white round ones that look like chickpeas. When you get the dried soybean, you can buy them quite easily in the freezer section at your supermarket and you don't really need to do anything to them. You can buy them shelled now, which I love as well. It makes it super easy to have them Just sprinkle them in a salad or add them if you're having a poke bowl or a sushi bowl or something like that. So they contain about 10 to 20 milligrams of isoflavones per 100 grams. So you're going to need to eat one to two kilos of those if you want to get your 200 milligrams of isoflavones. Of course, the content of the actual content of isoflavone content can vary depending on the specific variety of soy, how it's processed, how it's grown all of those things as well. But including a mix of those foods, the different types of phytoestrogen foods, can really help you get towards the beneficial levels of phytoestrogens that are found in Japanese diet and helping to reduce hot flushes, mood swings and all of those sorts of stuff.

Sarah McLachlan: 15:48

All right, now it's time to press pause on our discussion of phytoestrogens and move into the part of the podcast that's driven by you, dear listener, it's box time, so let's dive in. I've got a question from Suzanne this week and she is asking are there any tests that I should take to understand my hormone levels in perimenopause? Now, first of all, perimenopause although it isn't an illness or a disease but it is a phase of life. It's diagnosed via a symptom based assessment. In Australia that's the gold standard of diagnosis. The conventional Western medicine standard for diagnosing perimenopause is the basis of new onset vasomotor or other symptoms and a change in the pattern of your menstrual bleeding.

Sarah McLachlan: 16:35

So hormone testing some practitioners might tell you to get your blood test done to check your hormone levels. I generally don't suggest this. It's quite expensive and you've got to get it right. You've got to do it on a particular day of the month to get the best reading for your estrogen and a different one for progesterone. So there are some times it's useful and I'll talk about them in a minute but generally I don't suggest that you do it when you're in perimenopause.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:00

Your follicle stimulating hormone and estradiol can drop. Perimenopause your follicle-stimulating hormone and estradiol can drop. But these hormones, like all hormones in our body, fluctuate a lot from day to day and even from morning to night. They can change. Like I said for hormone testing, there's specific days of your cycle that you want to measure on to get a baseline, but then there's lots of factors that can confound that as well. So you've got your cycle variation. Your cycles are getting longer or shorter.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:26

It can be really difficult to work out a day 21 of your cycle, for example, to get progesterone levels. You don't even know that you're ovulating because you may not be ovulating every cycle, especially in perimenopause. You might not even have a cycle. You might not have it for months at a time. How can you work out what your day one or day three is for your estrogen if you're taking hormonal medications like the pill or using a marina or an implant? There's no point because you're just going to see the levels of the hormones that those things are contributing there. So it can be really difficult to gauge where your hormones are at, and that's why I think symptom and case taking are actually your most powerful tools for working out where you're at. So the exception is if early perimenopause is a suspect among other potential conditions, definitely do your hormones. Then maybe you're using HRT and your GP wants to test your levels. That makes sense, do that. But if you're in your, let's say, your late mid to late thirties or early thirties, your period's gone wonky and your symptom picture could fit other medical conditions like PCOS or endometriosis. Hormone testing is really helpful then. So thank you, Suzanne, for your question. Hopefully that's helpful for you. You can also, if you want to work out from your symptoms where you're at, if you're in perimenopause and what phase you're at, go to the show notes and download my freebie, the Perimenopause Decoder. That is exactly what it's designed for to help you understand where you're at and for how much longer. So if you liked this segment and you have your FAQ you you want me to answer, I'd love to hear from you. Please do check the show notes on how you can message me your questions.

Sarah McLachlan: 19:15

Let's return to phytoestrogens, though, and I just want to shine a little spotlight on my very most favorite little seeds, which is flax seeds. They are tiny little things and really cost effective and widely available most of the year round, and they pack a punch nutritionally, though. They're really rich in key components for maintaining our menopausal perimenopausal health. They are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, so your anti-inflammatory, your beneficial fatty acids that we can't actually make ourselves, they provide for us, so they're a really rich plant-based source of alpha-linolenic acid, a type of omega-3 fatty acid. It's really essential for your cardiovascular health, your heart health, reducing inflammation, and a lot of people will use fish oils for that, but I love using this plant-based source because it's a lot more environmentally friendly and sustainable for our environment than fishing is, and it comes often with a lot less chemicals or heavy metals that the fish can.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:17

So lignans, phytoestrogens flax seeds contain up to 800 times more lignans than other plant foods. It's amazing like 30 grams of flax seed can contain 85 milligrams of lignans, and everything else on my lignan list is like 0.2 of a milligram or 0.5. So lignans are phytoestrogens with antioxidant properties as well. So how cool are these little flax seeds? And they also are a great source of soluble and insoluble fibers. So soluble fiber can help manage your blood sugar level and lower cholesterol, and insoluble fiber helps with bowel motions and helps prevent constipation. And flax seeds also have some magnesium, potassium, manganese, phosphorus, iron and copper in them too. You see, they're quite wonderful, aren't they? And, as I mentioned, they're very beneficial for your cardiovascular health, blood sugar control and your digestive function and daily bowel motions, which is absolutely imperative for everyone's best health. And that's because of their high fiber content. And we know that hormonal changes in perimenopause can slow down your digestive system, so this makes them valuable in that way too, and they do help optimize your microbiome and estrobolo, and I'll just I'm just going to tell you about those things just briefly now because I am going to do another podcast episode on them in more depth.

Sarah McLachlan: 21:43

So what is microbiome? The microbiome is that big community of microorganisms you have living in your large intestines. It's got bacteria, fungi, viruses, all sorts of stuff. We're learning more and more about it each and every day and week and year. We have a skin microbiome, we have a vaginal microbiome, we have a microbiome in our large intestine. So they live on us, they live in us, they even form part of ourselves cells, bacteria, our energy factories, mitochondria. Actually we're bacteria that have been incorporated into ourselves. So we truly are more microbe than we are human cells. So we truly are more microbe than we are human cells.

Sarah McLachlan: 22:31

And the microbiome helps us digest food, produce nutrients, neurotransmitters, regulate our immune system and helps protect us against other invading pathogens there as well. Now in perimenopause it's just as important because it helps regulate our hormones, our mood, our stress, weight management, immune function all of that as well and we look after it. We support our microbiome with a healthy, balanced diet that's rich in fibers and probiotics. So fermented food and prebiotics, which is fibers and starches in our vegetables and grains and seeds and nuts, and they really help our microbiome to thrive, which then helps us to thrive there as well. So phytoestrogens really help benefit your gut health. By influencing the balance of bacteria in the microbiome. They support the growth of your beneficial bacteria and that, as I said, helps regulate your hormone levels, including estrogen, by what we call the estrobolome. The estrobolome consists of a particular range of bacteria there's about 60 of them that can produce and modify estrogenic compounds. Beta-glucuronidase is the main one there that helps influence estrogen in our gut and that also helps regulate the circulation in our bloodstream of estrogens, or the reabsorption of estrogen from the intestines into our bloodstream and also the excretion of estrogens in the body. So I will talk about that in more depth another time because it's certainly worthy of a whole podcast episode on its own.

Sarah McLachlan: 24:06

And my little tiny friends flaxseeds they have that rich source of dietary fiber and lignans and they are a prebiotic. So prebiotics nourish, provide food for your beneficial gut bacteria and help them to thrive and to grow strong and in their numbers. I always find it so amazing that, like food can do these wonderful things. I hope that you do too and see the wonder in it there and that these foods, including or especially my favorites flaxseeds are so widely and easily available and really, really cost effective. It's so cool. It doesn't have to cost a bomb. You don't have to keep buying fancy products, pills, powders, potion to look after your health. It's so good.

Sarah McLachlan: 24:49

So let's talk about how you can pop some of my favorite flax seeds into your diet. I would like you to use ground flax seeds rather than the whole one, so I want you to buy them whole and grind them yourself, if you can, if you have a moment to do that, or a blender or something that can do it Food processor, I mean Blender have a flaxseed smoothie. I do have my limits and that would be one Right. So ground is better, because it's really difficult for our teeth and our digestive system to actually crack the flaxseeds open to be able to get the goodness from inside them. So if we do that mechanically mortar and pestle works or your food processor, whatever you've got coffee grinder it allows you to absorb and get the omega-3s, the lignans, the fiber, the magnesium, potassium, all those things I said before. Otherwise, they're going to pass through and digest it, which is still valuable. They'll draw water into your bowel motion and into your bowels, into your large intestine, and help you have a nice, smooth, easy bowel motion.

Sarah McLachlan: 25:49

But you're not going to get all of the benefits from them as well. Now, research tells us in perimenopause, two tablespoons of ground flax seeds is fantastic for helping modulate estrogen and support that hormone balance. So you know, add them to your breakfast, smoothies, yogurt, sprinkle them over your lunch or even just mix them in some water and chug them down. You do need to make sure you drink plenty of water if you're having flax seeds, because otherwise you might get a tummy ache. Now, as I mentioned, please buy them whole, grind them and when you've ground them, you do need to keep them in an airtight container in the fridge or the freezer, because they can go rancid really quickly because of their high omega-3 fat content. They're very sensitive to light and air. So keep them cool, keep the air away from them, and that will preserve their freshness and nutrients as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 26:41

One thing that you can do as well I forgot to mention it, so I'll mention it now before we finish up is flaxseed oil is really lovely as well. I use that in when I'm making salad dressing. So just a basic vinaigrette or something delicious, like a honey mustard one. I use flaxseed oil in it so that everyone in the house benefits from the high omega-3 fat content. So the phytoestrogen content of flaxseed oil is less than the seeds, but you do get more of the omega-3 fat content there as well, so you do get a bit of phytoestrogen effect from that flaxseed oil. But your best bet if you want the phytoestrogens is using the ground seeds there as well. Now, now, as with anything that I suggest to you, please do check in with a qualified practitioner naturopath or general practitioner doctor before you start.

Sarah McLachlan: 27:35

If you're taking medications or hormone therapy, there are times that you need to think twice about what you're doing and because it may impact your hormone levels and start slowly because you don't want to blow your guts away and you want to be able to see how your body's going to react and build up to it. Like if we have an imbalance in our microbiome and then we chuck in a whole bunch of stuff that's going to alter our microbe balance, we can end up really gassy and bloated and uncomfortable. So you want to start small and work your way up. You might add in a serve of tofu or a small amount of flax seeds, like a half a teaspoon or a teaspoon, a few times a week and just one new thing per day and see how you go over the week. Yeah, so always reviewing and reflecting how you're feeling, how your hot flushes, how's your mood. What else is changing? Is your gut health, changing bowel motions, anything like that? Keeping notes in your diary or in your notes app on your phone is really helpful, I think, there as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 28:33

As I said before, please don't rely on a single source of phytoestrogens. Yes, I love flax seeds absolutely, but I also have a variety of other phytoestrogen rich foods in my day, and that will help prevent excessive intake. In Western society, we love to take something to the max. I said at the start of the episode more is more is what society seems to think. It actually isn't. Less is often more, so it just helps you benefit from the different nutrients that each food offers there as well and not rely heavily or have a great.

Sarah McLachlan: 29:07

That's exactly why soy can become negative in our diet is because we take it like, say, something like soy milk which is highly refined and not necessarily fermented from whole beans as it traditionally was made, and then we have a soy milk on breakfast and we're having a large or jumbo size soy milk, coffee a couple times a day and and maybe some tofu or tempeh other times as well, and we just have too much. And then you, if you're having a protein powder, it's probably got soy protein isolate in it, or maybe your bread does as well. It's hidden in lots of places and that's when it becomes a problem, because we're not eating it how it was traditionally eaten and prepared and also just doing too darn much of it. So please diversify and adjust as you need and reflect on how you're feeling and what's happening. As I mentioned, you might want to chat with a practitioner before you start. If you have a hormone sensitive condition, like breast cancer, ovarian cancer or uterine fibroids, those sorts of things, please work with someone who can really help you address all of those things and what's underlying their development. If you're on hormone replacement therapy, even the pill, you might want to check in as well before you start adding in phytoestrogens, because you don't want to have an accidental or bonus baby if that's not in your plan of things, if you're impacting the hormone levels there as well. Now, one final note that I wanted to say is that research can be really inconsistent about the impact of phytoestrogens and I think that this is because of the variation in things like microbiome health and function between people participating in the study. So we can eat the most marvelous diet, but there's lots of factors impacting how we break down, absorb and use those foods. I've talked in recent, like within the last 10 episodes, about digestive health and function and things like why you don't tolerate meat anymore. They all impact what we're doing and phytoestrogens are no different. They rely on us being able to break down and you and absorb and use those compounds as well. So that's why I keep saying diversify your sources and also they.

Sarah McLachlan: 31:17

This may form one part of your approach in perimenopause and menopause. It's not the be-all and end-all. There's no magic bullets. There's no quick fixes. We need to identify and address the underlying drivers of your symptoms, what's stopping you from feeling great, and that's when your symptoms will be resolved. Just using phytoestrogens to suppress your symptoms isn't necessarily going to work for you if you're not addressing the other driving factors. So that's a wrap on today's episode. We covered heaps of ground all about my phytoestrogens and my favorite little friends, flaxseed, and how they can support you in perimenopause Recap three points for you to take home today.

Sarah McLachlan: 32:01

Incorporating phytoestrogens in your diet can really help modulate your hormones naturally, lifting them when needed, reducing them when needed, and give you some relief from symptoms like hot flushes and mood swings, while working on those underlying drivers there as well. So soy products, nuts and seeds, let beans and lentils, whole grains, fruit, vegetables basically a balanced, a varied diet. Pretty basic, I guess, when we put it that way, isn't it? But we are what we eat, but we're also what we break down, absorb and use in our bodies as well. Putting the right things in and being able to use them with an optimized digestion and intestinal health is really important.

Sarah McLachlan: 32:46

As a bonus tip for you there Listen to your body, as I said, so pay close attention to how your body responds to anything that you're doing, and only introduce one thing at a time. Otherwise how the heck are you going to know what exactly has worked? And my last point for you to take home from this episode is make sure you have a balanced intake by including a variety not just of phytoestrogen sources but of all your foods. Please don't just eat the same thing day in and day out, like first of all boring, but also it doesn't give your body all the nutrients that it needs.

Sarah McLachlan: 33:20

Now, if you're looking for more resources or you have questions you'd like answered in an upcoming FAQ segment, please visit the show notes at www. chaostocalmpodcast. com and you'll see there a little link to be able to message me your questions. And don't forget to hit subscribe while you're there to make sure that you don't miss an episode of Chaos to Calm or share it with a friend who needs some of my tips and advice to help smooth out their journey to menopause. Once again, thank you so much for listening and sharing your time with me today. I'm looking forward to exploring more ways to support your health journey in our next episode, where we will be diving a bit deeper into maintaining a healthy gut, microbiome and estrobolome to help keep you shifting your perimenopause experience from Chaos to Calm. Until then, have a great week.