SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hi, uh quick one before we get into it this week, then. I want you to picture something. It's about four o'clock in the afternoon. You've slept alright, well, alright enough. You've definitely eaten at some point, and yet here you are, feeling foggy, a bit flat, maybe a little bloated, standing in the kitchen or by the snack drawer at work, staring into it like it's personally let you down. If that feels a bit familiar, stick with us because today might explain a lot. We're talking about something that's quietly behind more of any of that than you could ever guess, and that is your gut. And perhaps not in the way you think.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

So, yeah, before before anybody switches off and thinks, oh, here we go, another episode about bloating. Honestly, this is about so much more than just digestion. Because gut health gets talked about a lot, but it's almost always focused on that sensation of bloating or digestion more generally, which is real, it's all real stuff, but that's only the headline. Now, your gut is doing so much more than just processing the food that you eat. It has a hand in your energy, your mood, focus, skin, immune system, even your hormones. And after 40, when so many women are already feeling a little bit off and can't quite put their finger on why, the gut really is one of the first places worth looking at.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, and I suppose before we go any further, let's just introduce ourselves. I'm Coach James.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

I'm Coach Julie.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And today we're walking through five signs that your gut might be affecting more than your digestion. So, this is the sneaky stuff that people don't tend to connect back to the gut at all. So, hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll understand as a woman over 40, one, why your gut is involved in so much more than just your digestion. Five signs that your gut might be behind a lot of how you've been feeling, why it tends to get more noticeable after 40, and some simple first steps you can go away with and you can implement that will help you with that. So, you know, let's give you an idea to try and bring this all together in a way that might think. Now, in our experience, many people think of the gut as just sort of like the digestion department. Yes, a long tube where food goes in at one end through your mouth and comes out at the other end through your backside, gets processed along the way, job done. But the truth is your gut and that digestive track is a little bit more like the head office of your whole body operation, it's what's making everything run, right? There are phone lines running from your gut to your brain, to your immune system, to your skin, to your hormones, um, and that gut and brain has a direct hotline to each other in constant two-way conversation. So when we think about the gut as more of the head office, then it might be easier to understand why when the head office is stressed, understaffed, not working properly, the culture's all wrong, every other department, even the ones that feel as though they've got nothing to do with it, actually end up being out of whack. So when your gut's unhappy, it doesn't always send the memo to your to your stomach. Sometimes it tells your brain, your skin, or your mood instead. So, Julie, let's talk about the signs then. We talked about the five signs, why your gut might be playing up and what might be going on. So let's you take the first one of those, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Sure. And yeah, that first one is a biggie that we hear from a lot of women. It's that whole brain fog that you feel it's a common um effect of menopause and that whole, you know, where did I put my keys, or walking around finding looking for my reading glasses when they're on top of my head. Um, you know, brain fog feels like that sort of fuzzy thinking. Maybe you walk into a room and you can't remember why you're there. Words feel like they're right at the tip of your tongue and they won't, but they won't come out. You just can't quite get there. Or you have that sort of mid-afternoon slump and you have to force yourself just to push through everything you do, even the simple tasks, feel like hard work. The reason these are connected to the gut, because as James said, your gut and your brain are are wired together, and that constant two-way conversation is happening all the time. And a big chunk of all of those chemicals behind focus and clear thinking are actually made or controlled down in the gut, not just the brain. So things like dopamine, right? That's let things, let's get things done, let's jump out of bed and take care of the day. I mean, that's a that's a huge one. It's also that hit we get, you know, when we we grab our phones because we want just something a little more stimulating. A large share of it is actually produced in the gut. And it's the same with serotonin, which is another neurotransmitter that contributes to mood and sleep and appetite and digestion. So it's kind of important. The gut doesn't just pipe these things straight up to your brain, but it is holding a lot of the controls when it comes to comes to how they work. So if your gut's irritated or out of balance, and let's face it, with the kind of diets that we have and the stress levels and everything else these days, that's pretty common. All of that low-grade background noise can show up upstairs in the brain as fog. So it's kind of like trying to look through a steamed-up window, right? You can't just can't quite see it very clearly. And by the way, the answer isn't more caffeine. Uh, we can say that from personal experience. I can at least. Um, but the the answer could be just learning how to calm your gut. And I mean, who hasn't had that moment of, well, like I said, I literally just this weekend was walking around really stressed because I couldn't find my glasses, and they were honestly on top of my head. So we all have those days, right? So things that help, which we'll we'll look at a little more in detail later, are th are things that are gonna help you steady those uh blood sugar levels and balance that out, having a better variety of things like fiber-containing foods and less ultra-processed food in the system. So, James, you want to take the next one?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah, so number two is sort of like energy levels uh dropped, or they feel as though they're never quite there, or you know, that mid-afternoon crashy stat type feeling. Now, I was doing a gut health workshop, one of our gut health workshops with a local MP and four of her staff on Friday, and every single one of those women, five of them, all aged sort of like mid-30s to mid-40s. I'm I'm guessing just about, they all said the same thing. Tiredness, energy levels, particularly in the middle of the afternoon, were a real real challenge. And these were ladies who work hard at their health, they try hard, they're eating their 30 um fruit and veg a day, they're trying to get their fibre levels up, they're trying to do protein in the right way. Um, obviously, they work in a stressful industry, and we all don't work in industries that it's as stressful as being an MP and looking after running the country and stuff, but it's a real, real challenge, and one that we hear a lot. You know, that feeling of being tired no matter how much you sleep, running on fumes by the mid-afternoon, and that's making you you know enhancing your cravings, and you're grabbing something from the snap draw again, you know, or relying on coffee or sugar just to get through until dinner time when you can eat something again. So, what has that got to do with your gut then? Well, you know, your gut is where you absorb everything that you want to keep from food, so all the nutrients, all the energy, all the uh micronutrients, all the for want of a better word, the goodness if you if you like, but it's also where you dispel all the bad stuff, yeah? It filters it out and helps you get rid of it. So if it's not working well, almost how much you eat doesn't really matter. And to sort of like draw into like a car analogy, I suppose. You know, you can have the best car in the world and you can put really premium fuel into it, but if the engine's all clogged up with crap and rubbish and not working properly or it's not being oiled, then it's a real real challenge for that car to run properly, and your body's a little bit in the same way, you know. You won't get the same energy and the power and the impact from that car as you would if the fuel was being flung through through an engine that worked really, really well. Um so an irritated gut can also create kind of like low-level inflammation, and that we see this more than anything else, and people often talk about the gut and they talk about the microbiome and stuff like that. You see this a lot with people who aren't paying attention to their gut. Lining with inflammation gets really, really challenging, and that inflammation is quietly exhausting. So, to go back to that car analogy, this is like leaving your engine running on low-level revs in the background all day long. So, eating all the right things is not just key here, it's absorbing those things properly. Um sometimes then I feel so tired, isn't it? Or a willpower problem, but it can also be a problem with absorption. Now, we talked a little bit about brain fog, but there is of course a flip to that or a or an adjunct, which is your mood being on a bit of a roller coaster. So, Julie, why don't you pick this one apart?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Sure. And you know, at a time we already know when we're dealing with things like PMS or PMDD, and then we go into perimenopause and we've got these ups and downs of our hormones already, where we've got the moods being affected. A lot of times, if our gut's out of out of balance, um, we can it can affect our mood as well. We maybe are we're running on a shorter fuse, we might be a little bit snappier, or we might feel a bit more emotional. Um, there are there's a lot of good research now that's connecting things like depression to gut health. Um, and you know, it's it's if you're feeling like that kind of just always sort of low or flat that you can't really connect with a reason, it could be tying back to your gut. Um the gut is often called the second brain, and it that's not a gimmick. That is, you know, it really does have a big influence on how we feel. And as I was saying before, so much of our neurochemicals and our feel-good chemistry um is is made or controlled in the gut. So, you know, serotonin I've already mentioned, which is kind of a steady mood one, about 90% of it is produced in the gut. Dopamine, that drive and focus, as I said, and GABA, which is another important one for feeling calm and sort of anti-anxiety brake pedal that put that your body puts on for you, is made by specific gut bacteria. So, you know, these gut-made versions don't travel straight to the brain, right? There's a barrier in the way, the blood brain barrier, but the gut does the gut does uh influence your mood in a few different ways instead. So through that direct connection and communication through the vagus nerve, through inflammation, as James was talking about, and then by controlling the raw materials that your brain needs to make its own mood chemicals. So these things have to interact really well together, or they don't uh function effectively. And that all doesn't actually stop at your mood. Things like melatonin, which is your sleep hormone, um, can also be affected by your gut health. So this is neurology, these are the neurochemicals that your body needs, and uh your gut holds a lot of those controls. So when your gut's struggling, you may feel it first in your mood or your ability to focus. Um, and you know, I mean, who feels cheery when your gut's grumbling and feeling uncomfortable? So these are a lot more connected than we often give them credit for. So, you know, it is stress is a huge factor, obviously, but stress also affects the gut. Stress and your gut affect your hormones. So gut can be a big part of this picture too, which is actually good news because it's something that you can support and it's something that you can have a direct impact on if you you know, if if you know what to do. So um let's look at the next sign because again, as we said, gut's connected to so many different things, and especially when we start aging, we're always thinking about looking for beautiful, glowing, healthy skin. James, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Well, I always find this as an interesting one because I'm sure most women think you know, you get to 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, that those breakouts that you used to get when it comes to your skin, you feel as though you've kind of left them behind, right? And then all of a sudden you hit your late 30s and early 40s, and it starts coming back, yes? A bit of redness here and there, some dullness, some dryness, itchy patches, skin that just looks tired, the products that used to work don't cut it anymore, and this tends to get worse, all the women get, or at least that's what we're told anyway, from from our clients and the people that we speak to. And you know, it's quite unbelievable. There's a really massive link between your gut and your skin at all times, and your skin is one of your body's sort of like advertising boards, you know. It it sort of like gives a great insight into what's going on on the inside of your body. So when your gut's inflamed or it's out of balance, your the skin is somewhere where it really shows up really, really quickly. So you need to think about this a lot. It's as I said, it's not always breakout's not usually a skincare problem, it can be a bit of an update of what's going on in your gut and you've got on your face or all over your body. And one of the things that I see quite a lot is that you know in my wife's peer group, people spend a lot of money on cosmetics and posh creams and serums that have got this ingredient and they've got that ingredient. And often before you revert to that, it's often just asking about what's what's actually happening on the on the inside. Yeah. Is is there something else going on when it comes to your to your gut? So sign five then. Um we've touched on this a little bit, but cravings, energy crashes, that good old phrase when it comes to sort of like weight gain, why won't they shift? I'm gonna hand this one back to Julie because it's a bit of a time bomb, so I'm gonna let her handle this one. Julie.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, and it's it's one that I think, well, I've certainly dealt with it, and and most of the women we work with and and talk to are dealing with these things too. And it and and they feel interconnected, right? Because when our energy crashes, we start craving things. Um, and those cravings feel like I must have this thing before somebody gets hurt, right? We get that I I and I can't remember ever talking to someone who craved broccoli or apples, right? Most of the time we're craving sugar or processed carbs, and that's usually again in that late afternoon slump. So those kinds of things are our brains are telling us just look for the easiest, quickest energy. So we're being driven toward those things because our gut says, feed me the right things, and our brain says, just feed me anything to give me some energy. So that sends you hunting for that, for that quick fix, for the snack drawer, for the candy jar, for you know, whatever, whatever might be uh most easily accessed, the vending machine. And sometimes it feels like your weight, your appetite rather just has a mind of its own. And those are the kinds of things that can make your weight feel very stubborn, like it just won't budge the way it used to. And you force yourself and restrict yourself, and that doesn't help either, because then it seems like those um cravings just get stronger. So when you have, you know, in in your gut, you've got this community, if you will, your microbiome, all of these little bugs that are in there working together to digest your food, absorb nutrients, and protect your body, build your immune system, um, all of those things are going to influence your cravings and how steady your energy is, um, depending on how you feed them. So when you feed the less helpful ones or the unhelpful ones, a lot of sugar and ultra-processed foods, they're going to get louder and demand more, right? You know, the all of those analogies about what you feed is what grows. So we want to feed the happier, better gut bacteria so that they can help us with steadier energy and fewer of those I must have chocolate right now kinds of moments. And I'm not against chocolate, by the way, neither of us is. We both love a good chocolate. But um, you know, we don't want to be paying rent to the part of our microbiome that we don't really want the loud signals from, right? We we want steadier uh energy, better moods, fewer cravings. So we want to feed the right ones and get them happy and thriving because that's going to really help with all of these things. So, and you know, this is where it overlaps with something that we talk about a lot, right? We've been, we've done some podcasts, we did a workshop all about protein. And and we've said before that that gut lining is one cell thick, and we need protein to build that a good strong gut lining. So when you build your meals around protein and fiber and real food, that keeps your blood sugar steady, is going to feed your gut well, and it's gonna take care of multiple jobs at at one time. So, you know, people are really surprised to hear that their gut lining is one cell thick. It's very delicate, and it is the entire border between what's in your gut and the rest of your body. So leaky gut isn't necessarily someone that has um you know loose stools in the bathroom. Leaky gut is when those uh tight bindings between the villi and your gut um separate and allow things that should never be going into your body into your body. And that triggers inflammation. So when the good news is it rebuilds astonishingly fast, right? It's the whole gut lining can be replaced about every three to five days. It's one of the fastest renewing tissues in your body, so it's always under construction, and that's fantastic news because it means we can feed it properly, we can build it better and have it come back stronger. We just want to renovate it with the right materials, right? And so when we're feeding it, we don't just want to get um any old materials in there. We want good quality, we want to get to where our body can actually absorb it. And since after 40, our body gets a little bit less efficient at using nutrients, especially protein, we have to make sure we get good bioavailable stuff. Um, and so we talk about getting enough protein at each meal because not only will that help with your gut lining, but it also helps with steadier energy, it helps with blood sugar balance, it helps with a lot of different things, not to mention maintaining your muscle mass and keeping your metabolism humming, humming. So um, James, I've been talking for too long now.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, well, just before we go, we said we had five. I'm gonna throw in a couple of other ones as well, just for people to think about. A little bit of a bonus when it comes to this. Here. Your gut health's also responsible for your immune function. So if you're one of those people who catches every single bug going around and you're really slow to recover from stuff, that could also be. Linked back to your gut health because an unhappy gut means that there's more inflammation in there, it means your immune system's affected, it means you can pick up every single cold that's going away. So that's one thing to think about. And then, of course, you know, perhaps the one that most people think we should start at because we talk to women 40 and above, but when your hormones feel all over the place, yeah, there is a physiological reason for that. Yes, that is part of the menopause transition of them going up and down, and that affects various different things. But you know, your gut plays a really, really important part in your hormone control, and people talk about wanting to control their hormones and want to balance them and all this kind of fancy talk. But really, you know, when your gut works properly, it should mediate many of these problems because your gut and your hormones are in constant conversation, you know, particularly when it comes to things like estrogen. There's an entire portion of the gut that is dedicated just to helping you process estrogen. So, you know, any troubles that you have with your gut that can make perimenopause and menopause symptoms feel much much louder, and vice versa, of course, you know, those perimenopause and menopause symptoms can make gut challenges uh more challenging as well. So it's all one connected system, and you like your gut, your hormones, all the other things we've talked about, they're basically talking to each other all day, every day, and usually when something's having a bad week, everybody else in the body tends to hear about it in some way, shape, or form. So there's lots and lots of stuff going on. So Julie, just to start rounding things off, then to bring this to a close, because we're coming up to sort of the half-hour half-hour mark where we'd normally like to sort of draw a close. Why does this all actually ramp up over 40? What's what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, it's it's interesting because so many of the symptoms we've talked about, a lot of people are uh you know, we're saying, oh, it's just part of getting old, but that isn't that isn't necessarily true. Now, having said that, after 40, our body does have a slightly smaller margin of error than it used to. So your gut, like you like everything else we've talked about in the past, um, it gets a little bit less forgiving. And the variety of good bugs in our gut can naturally thin out a little bit as we as we age. So when you add to that the shifts in estrogen during midlife, decades of dieting and over-restriction, you think about the stressful lifestyles that we have, we end up carrying a lot of that, um, a lot of that stress and and um dis-ease, I would, I would go so far as to say, because stress actually does hit the gut as well. I mean, have you ever had your stomach feel like it drops before a big meeting, right? Or you get butterflies in your in your stomach. I mean, these are this is that gut-brain communication in in action. So, really, when you're starting to struggle with some of these things, it could be that you've just got a system that's been quietly asking you for some support. And as we said already, the gut is so responsive, it can change and pretty quickly too. So it's a wonderful thing that you can actually have control of. And rather than just be all doom and gloom about here are all the terrible things, let's talk about what actually helps. And back to you, Jane.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah, there's loads stuff that can help, and without necessarily overhauling your life. Any of you who's listened to us before, to our podcasts, to our workshops that we do or whatever, we always say start with something small and do one thing at a time so you can master it. So, challenges tend to happen when it comes to inverted commas, fixing something when we try and fix everything in one go. So, you need to start fixing some foundations, really. So, just pick maybe one of these that you could think about doing. So, feeding the good bugs. So, more plants, more colour, more variety. You don't need to count anything, just aim for more different veg, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, all those things are gonna help feed the good bugs and help your gut be calmer and more balanced. That is one thing you can do. You could add some fermented foods, you know, live yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, you know, all really, really important for helping um more good bacteria get into the gut to do their thing. Little and often you don't want to go too quick with these kind of things because if you've already got a challenged gut, they can actually exacerbate the problem until you get get used to them and vary them. You know, don't just pick up sauerkraut and go for sauerkraut every single day. Maybe have a mouth spoonful of sauerkraut one day and a couple of spoonsful of live yogurt the next. So that can really, really help. We can't say this enough that almost exclusively, one of the number one things that we say to almost all our clients is get more and better quality protein, you know, particularly given that as Julie mentioned before, your gut lining is just one tiny tiny microscopic cell thing, but it does keep rebuilding itself, and to keep rebuilding itself, you need the materials to do it. And one of those key materials is protein. Aside from that, it helps keep your blood sugars um steady. And you know, we talk about this a lot. Aim for a portion at every single meal. We're gonna talk about our protein playbook in a moment and we'll show you how that can help as well. And then also something else you might want to think about is giving your gut a bit of a rest between meals. We were taught 15-20 years ago grazing was the answer to everything, right? You know, but what happens when you graze constantly throughout the day, you don't give your gut a break. You don't give the hormones that are involved in processing things like sugars, especially, you don't give them a break to do their job properly if you're eating constantly. They have to constantly work, particularly insulin, and we don't want insulin to be working all the time. Yeah, so that's really really important as well. Proper meals, well balanced, fewer random nibbles between them. And of course, you know, our old friends, stress, sleep, I feel almost like a broken record when we talk about how important they are, and particularly when it comes to your gut, your gut feels both directly, really, really quickly. And then finally, the unglammer swan is ask yourself, am I drinking enough water? And if the answer is no, then maybe that is a good place to start, right? So we need to think of the gut as kind of like a garden, you don't bully it into thriving, you feed the flowers, and in this case, you feed them with fibre, variety of plants, fermented foods, stop pouring you know, weed food on the weeds. And by weed food, in this case, in this analogy, I'm talking about adding extra sugar, and then give it a bit of a time, a bit of time. Once you give it a bit of time, if you're doing the right things, your gut does start to get better. So, you know, let's not think of this as a discipline problem. It's more something that needs nurturing, tending, looking after, and of course, that old adage, perfection is where your good habits are gonna go to die. So it's much, much better to make a small, consistent change week on week, that it's gonna be that will always beat a perfect plant that you can't actually stick to. So pick one of those things, not all six, just one. Maybe it's adding a fermented food, maybe it's adding more protein, maybe it's drinking more. Start there and then add the others. So, bringing the episode to a close then, if today's episode struck a bit of a chord and you're thinking, right, my gut probably needs some attention, the simplest, most powerful place to start is with what's on your plate: protein, fibre, and real food. That's exactly what our new high protein playbook gives you. It's 52 recipes with two weeks done for you meal plan shopping lists, but it also comes with something that we're super, super excited about. It's our digital protein gap coach. So, what we've done is we've added all the recipes and all our knowledge into an AI coach that you can go in, you can ask it anything, you can ask it for recipe suggestions, you can ask it to build shopping lists, you can tell it what's in the fridge, and it will come up with gut-friendly and high-protein meals for you. Yeah, so it's gonna help you steady your blood sugar, it's gonna feed your gut well. Give that gut liner the materials to rebuild and quieten some of those afternoon cravings. It's probably the easiest first step there is, and luckily, it's an easy first step that doesn't break the bank. It's currently £11.99, that's the launch price only until Sunday, June the 21st. If you're listening to this, some point in the future, we're talking 2026 here, and then after that, it's going to go to £19.99. So if it's been on your list, this is probably the time for you to grab it. Julie.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah, and if you want to go deeper and you're um motivated to start looking a little bit more intensely at your gut, um, you listen to those five signs, maybe you found yourself nodding along. Um, that's exactly what our gut health reset is built for. This is a structured four-week four-week reset that's going to walk you through step by step. So you're not trying to figure it out on your own. And we absolutely believe in this course. We actually had a client who came to us feeling absolutely awful, no energy, brain fog, just absolutely not herself. And she did this four-week reset. And at the end, she told us that she felt like she had a whole new lease on life. And that's just in four weeks' time. So that's the kind of shift that's possible when you stop guessing and actually support your gut and give it what it's been asking for. Now, the gut health reset is 49 pounds, and for how different you can feel in four weeks' time, it's probably one of the best investments you can make to feel like yourself again. So we're happy to put those things into the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Yeah. I think then it's two steps then. Yeah, maybe start with a playbook. Well, it's at $11.99. Really simple way to support your gut and energy this week. And if those five signs really hit home and you're ready to properly turn things around, the gut health reset is what you're looking for. So, as Julie said, we'll put the links into the show notes. But just to recap, then your gut's not just about digestion, it's tangled up in how you think, how you feel, your energy, your skin, basically everything about what's going on with your body. And here's the part that I find exciting about because people talk to us about feeling that feeling of wanting to be in control. This is an area where you can be quite a bit, yeah, looking after your gut, putting the right food in, getting the right bacteria in, getting enough good protein, and all those things happen, and then a surprising amount of other stuff starts to settle as well. Less bloating, but also clearer thinking, steadier moods, better energy, potentially fresher looking skin. Yeah, so remember you're not at the mercy of your body, you've got more say in how it runs than anyone ever tells you, and potentially more say than you actually think. And the best part is it's never too late to start. Your body's more responsive than you think it is. You can achieve great things however old you are. So that's what we've got for you this week. We've been coaches James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40, reminding you to stay strong, stay fabulous, and we will see you next time out. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Bye everybody.