About Me

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Birmingham, United Kingdom
Welcome to my blog, and thank you for stopping by. I hope you find it informative, and if there is anything I have missed or you would like me to talk about please drop me a line of suggestion. After seeing a nutritional therapist I decided from the improvement of my own health that I would like to be there in the same way for others, therefore, I studied two degrees; one in Nutritional Therapy and another in Bioscience Nutrition so that i could be equipped to support a number of health conditions. I now work for a supplement company on a clinical team supporting practitioners and keeping upto date with all new scientific information and provide private consultations too aswel as keeping my blog going :)

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Tuesday 7 April 2015

Is Stress a Modern Disease

Woman HeadacheStress is not something you can see like a cut or a bruise and therefore is not always easily recognised. However our modern lifestyles make it an increasing problem, both personally and economically.
Government figures for the UK in 2013-2014 show stress, and its related conditions anxiety, depression and musculoskeletal problems, accounted for the majority of days lost due to work-related ill health: 11.3 and 8.3 million days respectively. On average this was 23 days off work per case of stress, depression or anxiety.

Are you affected by stress?

Some ways you can identify if you could be under stress are if you experience any of the following:
  • A vicious cycle of insomnia and fatigue
  • Achy joints and other signs of inflammation in the body
  • Cardiovascular problems such as palpitations
  • Poor immune system that is supressed under stress and when the body relaxes,
  • illnesses often show
  • Possible supressed appetite followed by sugar and salt cravings
  • Caffeine dependence
  • Poor liver function
  • Light headed when standing up
  • Pupils have a delayed or no dilation reaction to light

Physiological effect of stress

Woman Head in HandsStress makes your body want to run away from the situation to keep you safe. It does this by releasing cortisol to stimulate the liver and tissue stores to produce glucose for energy. To meet the demands you may crave carbohydrates and caffeine. However, you don’t really need the marathon amount of energy produced and the high circulating sugar causes glycation (aging, inflammation and damage to cells).

What to do: the first few steps

  • Follow a high protein, low GL diet to balance blood sugar and reduce the aging effect
  • Include foods or supplements containing vitamin B12 and folic acid and vitamin B3 which contribute to a reduction of fatigue
  • Avoid grains as these contain gluten and lectins. Sensitivity to these is common and may cause inflammation that activates the stress pathway to intensify anxiety
  • Consider supplementing chromium which forms part of the GTF (gluten tolerance factor) that contributes to the maintenance of a healthy blood sugar level
  • Read The Stress Cure by Patrick Holford, who outlines HeartMath® and a quick coherence technique exercise for you to learn how to transform negative stressful experiences into something calming

Women's Health - Hormonal Changes & Imbalance


Woman Holding StomachWomen may naturally have some hormonal ups and downs as they go through life that start from the first menstrual cycle, pregnancy and then during and possibly after menopause. For some these hormonal symptoms can be quite debilitating, and affect fertility and mood. The good news is many symptoms can be improved through lifestyle and dietary changes.
Symptoms and conditions that indicate/suggest hormonal imbalance include:
  • PMS (moodiness, sore breasts, irritable, depressed, sugar cravings)
  • Menstrual problems (heavy, painful, irregular)
  • Fertility issues
  • Acne
  • PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome)
  • Ovarian cysts
  • Endometriosis
  • Menopausal symptoms (hot flushes, vaginal dryness, insomnia, weight gain around the midriff)
  • Fibrocystic breasts
  • Excess hair growth on face, chest, stomach
  • Thinning hair (male- pattern baldness)

Suspected hormonal imbalance – what to do

Visit your doctor

If some symptoms sound familiar have a chat with your doctor as they can run scans and blood tests to look for imbalances and possible cysts on the ovaries. Once you have a diagnosis, it makes life easier, as you know what you are treating.

Visit a nutritional therapist

They will look at blood sugar, hormonal levels, health history, lifestyle and diet. They may do blood and saliva testing to check when your hormonal levels are high and low. The results can help a nutritional therapist develop a targeted programme to manage or improve your symptoms. If there are fertility issues, you may want to use a combination of natural treatment with medical management.

Self Help

Read Patrick Holford’s Balance Your Hormones book. It provides dietary and lifestyle support and a basic hormonal health questionnaire to use as a guideline to help you make changes.
Try the 100% Health questionnaire - a detailed questionnaire that gives you advice tailored to your individual health goals.
Consider nutritional support - Female Balance is a daily supplement for women that contains Vitamin B6 to support hormonal activity, along with vitamins B12, folic acid, niacin, vitamin C and magnesium to support mind health and reduce fatigue.

Basic 5 top dietary and lifestyle tips

  1. Limit alcohol and quit smoking - the two can upset your blood sugar levels and stress response, resulting in menstrual irregularity, depression and early menopause
  2. Dietary fibre is crucial to maintaining hormonal balance by binding to and removing unwanted oestrogen from the body. Get your intake from vegetables and oats to benefit from a range of nutrients.
  3. Use BPA free plastic or glass. You may have noticed that storage containers labelled ‘free of BPAs’ are becoming more popular. This is because BPAs can mimic oestrogens, causing havoc with your hormones.
  4. Weight bearing exercise to improve muscle tone. Muscles act as a glucose sink, which means less is circulating the system to disrupt hormones. Often a small amount of weight loss when overweight can make a huge difference to the regularity of menstruation and mood.
  5. Consider if you need to use contraceptives and HRT - ask your doctor about natural ways to prevent conception and manage menopausal symptoms. Hormonal medications can cause havoc and confusion to the body, especially when taken for long periods of tim