Speaker 1: Oh hello and welcome to Healthy Ish and at Big
Speaker 1: Happy New Year. You have tuned into the podcast from
Speaker 1: Body and Soul. I am your host of Felicity Harley
Speaker 1: to inspire your twenty twenty five. We're actually dropping the
Speaker 1: top Healthyish episodes from last year and this one is
Speaker 1: the perfect one to kick start your best new year.
Speaker 1: Naturopathic doctor, women's health expert and author of book The
Speaker 1: Metabolism Reset, Lara Brydon joined us in the studio to
Speaker 1: help us make sense of metabolic health, including signs of
Speaker 1: metabolic inflexibility and what to do about it, what to
Speaker 1: eat and daly habits to improve it. Now, if you
Speaker 1: want some more inspo for the new year, listening to
Speaker 1: extra healthy Ish, where she discusses signs you might be
Speaker 1: insulin resistant, you can search for that podcast. Well rerever
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Laura, Welcome to Healthy Ish, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me, and well done on your new book.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's how do I describe this? It's just packed with
Speaker 1: so much good info and I feel like it's that
Speaker 1: put down, pick up kind of book. And so I
Speaker 1: guess that it took a long time to write.
Speaker 2: It did about about a year and a half with
Speaker 2: some input from various other experts from which I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there is one question that jumped down that
Speaker 1: I want you to answer for me, and that was
Speaker 1: from your husband, yerhaps expert, perhaps not, and he asked,
Speaker 1: in what way is metabolic health different from just health?
Speaker 2: I know, think of it this way. Metabolic health is
Speaker 2: about yourselves having all the energy they need to do
Speaker 2: whatever it is they need to do. So good underlying
Speaker 2: metabolic health can support healthy immune system, healthy digestion, healthy
Speaker 2: mental health. There's actually a big metabolic mental health movement
Speaker 2: going on at the moment, and healthy female hormone health.
Speaker 2: And so that's the bridge from my previous work because
Speaker 2: my real passion is menstruation, perimenopause, female hormones. And from
Speaker 2: twenty five years of working with patients, plus writing my
Speaker 2: other two books, I was able to see quite clearly
Speaker 2: that metabolic health can be a major factor in women's health.
Speaker 1: How can you tell, I mean, in a nutshell, I
Speaker 1: suppose if you're metabolically healthy or unhealthy? Because we can't
Speaker 1: look at ourselves, so what are some size exactly?
Speaker 2: You can't actually zoom in and ask your metochondria or
Speaker 2: the parts of your cells. I mean that would be
Speaker 2: notice you do it and getting enough energy today, but
Speaker 2: you can feel whether you're getting enough energy. So one
Speaker 2: of the first signs of something called metabolic inflexibility as
Speaker 2: opposed to metabolic flexibility is being less able to access
Speaker 2: your own body fat stores for energy, and that can
Speaker 2: lead to finding it very difficult to go between meals
Speaker 2: without reaching for a snack. That's a common experience. That's
Speaker 2: not someone's fault. That's the fact that their bodies, all
Speaker 2: the nuts and bolts of metabolism, are not able to
Speaker 2: tap into that energy source the way they should be.
Speaker 2: And of course that's reversible. So that's the point of
Speaker 2: the book, is to return to a place where you
Speaker 2: can access your body fat stores for energy. The other aspect,
Speaker 2: important aspect of metabolic dysfunction is having something called insulin resistance.
Speaker 2: I know from experience with my patients and my followers,
Speaker 2: and everyone half tunes out when they hear that term.
Speaker 2: It needs a rebranding, but it.
Speaker 1: Does doesn't because it sounds very sciencey and oh, I
Speaker 1: don't even want to think of I know that, how
Speaker 1: would you rebrand it?
Speaker 2: I think it's something in the word resistance that people
Speaker 2: feel immediately that sounds hard. Yes, So insulin resistance is
Speaker 2: the state of having chronically elevated levels of the hormone insulin.
Speaker 2: One of the most important downstream effects of that is insulin.
Speaker 2: Chronically elevated insulin impairs fat burning and makes it difficult
Speaker 2: for all the parts of your body that are trying
Speaker 2: to get access to your body fat stores to do that.
Speaker 2: So it is about trying to get insulin down. So
Speaker 2: maybeally elevated insulin might be another term for it.
Speaker 1: That sounds a bit more serious.
Speaker 2: I guess it does.
Speaker 1: Does That could be a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But people are familiar with having high cortisol, for example,
Speaker 2: they think, oh, yes, high cordisol. That's a thing that
Speaker 2: sounds bad. It's actually high cordisol is related to high insulin.
Speaker 2: High insulin helps communicate a bit more what's going on,
Speaker 2: and of course, untreated, it can progress to pre diabetes
Speaker 2: and eventually type two diabetes. It's also called metabolic syndrome
Speaker 2: in the science. When I was looking at all the
Speaker 2: old papers around this. When metabolic syndrome was first described,
Speaker 2: the original experts called it insulin resistant syndrome. So it's
Speaker 2: that central and I agree we should go back to that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, metabolic syndrome is the cluster of high blood pressure,
Speaker 2: high tricoly strides or cholesterol, and potentially weight gain around
Speaker 2: the middle. People can have insulin resistance without having really
Speaker 2: noticeable weight gains. So there is this disconnect between just
Speaker 2: body size and what's going on metabolically, which I hope
Speaker 2: I've managed to communicate in the book. And the weight
Speaker 2: associated with insulin resistance is inside the abdomen. It's like,
Speaker 2: it's not the soft kind weight fat you can see
Speaker 2: on the outside of your body. It's deep inside and
Speaker 2: it sort of can feel like a like a hardness
Speaker 2: under the ribcage or sort of a thickening through the waist.
Speaker 1: So what's your I mean, is what's your advice around
Speaker 1: determining whether you're insulin resistance as a matter of just
Speaker 1: going getting you know, triglycerides tested, cholesterol, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: Is that the first stop.
Speaker 2: Triglysrides are an excellent starting place. I was just I
Speaker 2: just read a Twitter thread this morning just saying, you know,
Speaker 2: don't hor complicate things. High triglysrides are a really good
Speaker 2: surrogate biomarker. For insulin resistance, but I dedicated a whole
Speaker 2: chapter two testing, so I talk about some other common
Speaker 2: tests that people might already have on their reports from
Speaker 2: their GP. You can also measure the hormone insulin, and
Speaker 2: I talk about that in the book. But just an
Speaker 2: important takeaway is that having a normal blood glucose or
Speaker 2: a normal what's called HbA one C cannot rule out
Speaker 2: insulin resistance.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, Actually I just wore a CGM for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, a continuous glucose master, because I was
Speaker 1: really I mean, I love trying everything, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to see whether you know what my insulin was
Speaker 1: doing and how my blood sugar levels were when I
Speaker 1: after I ate. Do you think that's a good thing
Speaker 1: or right?
Speaker 2: So that's measuring glucose yep, sorry, insulin. Yes, a lot
Speaker 2: of people do kind of conflict.
Speaker 1: Oh there we go. Yes, I just completely joined.
Speaker 2: Thereat too importantly with insulin resistance. With chronically elevated insulin,
Speaker 2: people can and do have episodes of low blood sugar.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So it's not synonymous with high blood sugar.
Speaker 2: I talk a little bit about the cgms or the
Speaker 2: continuous glucose monitors in the book. I think if people
Speaker 2: are interested and can afford it and want to put
Speaker 2: it in the right context, it can be a tool.
Speaker 2: But there's lots of ways to assess metabolic health and
Speaker 2: get healthier without having to go that route.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to mention something else in your
Speaker 1: book that I actually really enjoyed and think is really valuable.
Speaker 1: And you talk a lot about taking the shame out
Speaker 1: of well metabolic dysfunction and that it's not our fault.
Speaker 1: Can you expand on this.
Speaker 2: Well, it started three generations ago because of something called epigenetics,
Speaker 2: which is we've only discovered we only known about epigenetics
Speaker 2: for twenty five or thirty years. It's the fact that
Speaker 2: what we're exposed to in terms of food and stress
Speaker 2: levels and toxins, we can pass on to our offspring.
Speaker 2: So something changed with the food supply about anywhere between
Speaker 2: fifty to seventy years ago, and we're now seeing an
Speaker 2: amplifying of that. Every generation is born with a greater
Speaker 2: risk of insulin resistance compared to the generation before. And
Speaker 2: of course that doesn't mean it's written in still and
Speaker 2: people can still do something about it and still reverse it.
Speaker 2: But of course the scientists are scrambling to figure out
Speaker 2: what went wrong with the food environment. I dedicate a
Speaker 2: chapter to that to try to survey all the different possibilities.
Speaker 1: And I think you take the just takes a bit
Speaker 1: of the guilt, the self guilt out of But I
Speaker 1: can't make healthy decisions all the time. Well no, because
Speaker 1: in this environment where signs are shouting at us, prices
Speaker 1: are low. You know, there's not enough fresh fruit and
Speaker 1: veggies around us.
Speaker 2: And another takeaway, one of the most important symptoms of
Speaker 2: metabolic dysfunction or insulin resistance is feeling abnormally hungry, like
Speaker 2: abnormally high hunger. So given that's a common almost everyone
Speaker 2: who has insulin resistance is probably going to have that symptom.
Speaker 2: Given that fact, how cool is it that we just
Speaker 2: tell people to try to eat less?
Speaker 1: Yeah, cruel? Now, just quickly before we go, what's one
Speaker 1: key thing we should all be doing today to improve
Speaker 1: our metabolic health?
Speaker 2: What I do isn't necessarily what's going to work for
Speaker 2: every single person. I mean I just as an example,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this this morning. I often try
Speaker 2: to have leftover dinner for breakfast, like I have meat
Speaker 2: for breakfast, just because I find that really stabilizes my
Speaker 2: energy throughout the day, and I personally enjoy walking and yoga,
Speaker 2: but that's not the right fit for everybody, so I guess,
Speaker 2: as you know, the book is a troubleshooting manual to
Speaker 2: try to find what are the next best steps for
Speaker 2: each individual person. But a really simple one that probably
Speaker 2: everyone needs to do if they're not doing it already,
Speaker 2: is to cook at home most of the time.
Speaker 1: And I know that's hard but doable. Alara, thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on healthy Ish. Thank you, Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to this interview. As part of our twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four summer series. There are plenty more awesome epps for
Speaker 1: your ears, both from healthy Ish and our big sister podcast,
Speaker 1: Extra healthy Ish. If you did like this interview, please
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Speaker 1: feedback please dm me at Felicity Harley and until tomorrow,
Speaker 1: enjoy the sun and stay healthy is