Speaker 1: Well, hello, they're healthy Ish listeners. I hope you are
Speaker 1: feeling well metabolically healthy, and if not, you have come
Speaker 1: to the right place. You of course have tuned into
Speaker 1: the daily podcast and brod in Soul. I am Felicity Harley,
Speaker 1: and my guest today is brilliant and she's going to
Speaker 1: help you determine whether you are metabolically healthy or not.
Speaker 1: She's a naturopathic doctor, women's health expert and author of
Speaker 1: new book, The Metabolism researt Her name is Lara Brydon,
Speaker 1: and she is going to help us make sense of
Speaker 1: metabolic health. If you like what you hear from Lara,
Speaker 1: and I know that you will make sure you're listening
Speaker 1: to extra Healthy Ish, where we take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into all things metabolism. You can search for that wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Lara, welcome to healthy Ish. Thanks
Speaker 1: for 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 for 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 mitochondria or
Speaker 2: the parts of yourself. I mean that would be you
Speaker 2: doing are getting enough energy today, but you can feel
Speaker 2: whether you're getting enough energy. So one of the first
Speaker 2: signs of something called metabolic inflexibility as opposed to metabolic flexibility,
Speaker 2: is being less able to access your own body fat
Speaker 2: stores for energy, and that can lead to finding it
Speaker 2: very difficult to go between meals without reaching for a snack.
Speaker 2: That's a common experience. That's not someone's fault. That's the
Speaker 2: fact that their bodies, all the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 2: metabolism are not able to tap into that energy source
Speaker 2: the way they should be. And of course that's reversible.
Speaker 2: So that's the point of the book, is to return
Speaker 2: to a place where you can access your body fat
Speaker 2: stores for energy. The other aspect, important aspect of metabolic
Speaker 2: dysfunction is having something called insulin resistance. I know from
Speaker 2: experience with my patients and my followers, and everyone half
Speaker 2: tunes out when they hear that term. It needs a rebranding.
Speaker 1: But it does, doesn't it because it sounds very sciencey
Speaker 1: and oh, I don't even want to think of I
Speaker 1: know that, how would you rebrand it?
Speaker 2: I think it's something in the word resistance that people
Speaker 2: feel immediately that sounds hard.
Speaker 1: Yes, So.
Speaker 2: Insulin resistance is the state of having chronically elevated levels
Speaker 2: of the hormone insulin. One of the most important downstream
Speaker 2: effects of that is insulin. Chronically elevated insulin impairs fat
Speaker 2: burning and makes it difficult for all the parts of
Speaker 2: your body that are trying to get access to your
Speaker 2: body fat stores to do that. So it is about
Speaker 2: trying to get insulin down. So maybe chronically elevated insulin
Speaker 2: 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: I think, oh, yes, high cortisol. That's a thing that
Speaker 2: sounds bad. It's actually high corsol 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 resistance syndrome. So it's
Speaker 2: that central and.
Speaker 1: I agree we should go back to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, metabolic syndrome is the cluster of high
Speaker 2: blood pressure, high tricolystrides or cholesterol, and potentially weight gain
Speaker 2: around the middle. People can have insulin resistance without having
Speaker 2: really noticeable weight gains. So there is this disconnect between
Speaker 2: just body size and what's going on metabolically, which I
Speaker 2: hope I've managed to communicate in the book. And the
Speaker 2: weight associated with insulin resistance is inside the abdomen. It's
Speaker 2: not the soft kind weight fat you can see on
Speaker 2: the outside your boy, It's deep inside and it sort
Speaker 2: of can feel like a like a hardness under the
Speaker 2: 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: Triglycerides 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 ever complicate things. High triglyss rides are a really
Speaker 2: good surrogate biomarker for insulin resistance. But I dedicated a
Speaker 2: whole chapter two testing, so I talk about some other
Speaker 2: common tests that people might already have on their reports
Speaker 2: from their GP. You can also measure the hormone insulin,
Speaker 2: and I talk about that in the book. But just
Speaker 2: an important takeaway is that having a normal blood glucose
Speaker 2: or a normal what's called HbA one C cannot rule
Speaker 2: out insulin resistance.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, Actually, I just wore a CGM for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, a continuous glucose poster because I was
Speaker 1: really I mean, I love trying everything, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to see whether it's you know, what my insulin
Speaker 1: was doing and how my blood sugar levels were when
Speaker 1: after I ate. Do you think that's a good.
Speaker 2: Thing or right? So that's measuring glucose. Yes, sorry, insulin. Yes,
Speaker 2: a lot of people do kind of conflict.
Speaker 1: Oh, there we go. Yes, but they just completely joined.
Speaker 2: The two 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, Well.
Speaker 2: It started through 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 you know, it's written in
Speaker 2: still and people can still do something about it and
Speaker 2: still reverse it. But of course the scientists are scrambling
Speaker 2: to figure out what went wrong with the food environment.
Speaker 2: I dedicate a chapter to that to try to survey
Speaker 2: 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: we live in this environment where signs are shouting at us,
Speaker 1: prices are low. You know, there's not enough fresh fruit
Speaker 1: and veggies around us.
Speaker 2: And another takeaway, one of the most important symptoms of
Speaker 2: metabolicists function 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, just as an example, I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this this morning. I often try to
Speaker 2: have leftover dinner for breakfast, like I have meat for breakfast,
Speaker 2: just because I find that really stabilizes my energy throughout
Speaker 2: the day, and I personally enjoy walking and yoga, but
Speaker 2: 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. Ah good,
Speaker 2: I know that's hard, but doable.
Speaker 1: Lara, thank you for coming on healthy Ish.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Do you feel you want to know more? After hearing
Speaker 1: from Lara, She's great, isn't she. I really enjoyed chatting
Speaker 1: to her. Well, there is more and it is in
Speaker 1: the book, her book, her new book. It is called
Speaker 1: The Metabolism Reset, and it is out now. If you
Speaker 1: did enjoy this chat, we encourage you to jump on
Speaker 1: rate and review it, or of course, you can subscribe
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Speaker 1: and until tomorrow, stay healthy Ish