Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mama Mia podcast. Mamma mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Eat more protein. How about some salmon
Speaker 1: with that egg? How about some cottage cheese with that steak?
Speaker 1: How about you sprinkle some creatine all over that thing?
Speaker 1: What about protein powder and your protein powder for a
Speaker 1: morning smoothie full of fiber? And while we're at it,
Speaker 1: how many supplements? There's too many supplements? Should I, in
Speaker 1: fact rattle when I walk? Speaking of walking? Is walking enough?
Speaker 1: Counting my steps? Is that just propaganda? Now? And if
Speaker 1: I manage to get to the gym, what should I
Speaker 1: do there? For decades it's been burned, baby burn, and
Speaker 1: now it's lift, baby lift. Does it feel suddenly like
Speaker 1: there's a set of new rules that no one sent
Speaker 1: you that you just get glimpses of them yelled at
Speaker 1: you through your phone? One hundred grams of protein, bitch
Speaker 1: as you scroll past a twenty eight year old with
Speaker 1: fluoro athlesia and a neutrib bullet. Well, you'd be right.
Speaker 1: The rules are new because the old rules they were
Speaker 1: written for men, sweat, sprint, starve, And they were also
Speaker 1: written by the toxic body culture we were so surrounded
Speaker 1: by as we came of age. It was invisible to
Speaker 1: the naked eye, size zero, low rise genes, thigh gaps,
Speaker 1: crash diets, and the endless comparison game. Now we've woken
Speaker 1: up in what feels like a second puberty, and we've
Speaker 1: only just barely started to understand our bodies. They can
Speaker 1: feel like angry strangers. Hormones are fluctuating, sleep is elusive.
Speaker 1: Joints ache for no reason, and we're told it's just
Speaker 1: the beginning. What wants work doesn't work anymore. What once
Speaker 1: felt intuitive now feels like guesswork. The new rules are
Speaker 1: kinder but also confusing. Move your body more, but don't
Speaker 1: overdo it. Eat red meat, but not too much, because
Speaker 1: your heart gets some sun for vitamin D, but also
Speaker 1: that face from those raisor rays. Sleep more, meditate, fix
Speaker 1: your nervous system, add magnesium, track your cycle. Cut out
Speaker 1: sugar but not fruit or is it fruit too? If
Speaker 1: we decode it. If we find the new rules and
Speaker 1: write them down, learn to live by them, can we
Speaker 1: change what's coming? Protect our minds and our bodies from age,
Speaker 1: from wrinkles and falls, forgetfulness, aches and pains and the
Speaker 1: soft stand up grunt? Can eggs really do all that? Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, Midlife, Midfamily, mid
Speaker 1: lifting my tiny pink weights. Does it feel like you
Speaker 1: hit a certain birthday with a zero and everyone starts
Speaker 1: yelling at you about protein and dumbbells. Well, if it
Speaker 1: feels like that, you're right, because that's what happens. And
Speaker 1: for this last episode of Mid for season five, we
Speaker 1: wanted to ask someone smart to tell us exactly why
Speaker 1: that is, And so we found called Louisa Nicola and
Speaker 1: asked her what she thought of all the things midwomen
Speaker 1: are told to do. Why Louisa, Well, because she is
Speaker 1: an Australian neurophysiologist and human performance coach who's living in
Speaker 1: the US and working there at the moment, right at
Speaker 1: the forefront of all the science about longevity and health
Speaker 1: and performance and exercise and food. She used to be
Speaker 1: a world championship triathlete, representing Australia at all kinds of
Speaker 1: major international events before a serious injury stopped her athletic
Speaker 1: career in its tracks. But that also set her on
Speaker 1: the path to understand what she calls brain training and
Speaker 1: become an expert in basically telling us normies what athletes
Speaker 1: and high performance people know to be true. One of
Speaker 1: the things we're going to talk to Louisa about today
Speaker 1: is how to care for our brains as we age.
Speaker 1: But we are going to talk to her two about
Speaker 1: our bodies because that is one of the things that
Speaker 1: everybody's always talking to us about. What are the things
Speaker 1: to prioritize to live better longer? To be honest, the
Speaker 1: priorities she told me were a serious surprise. So here
Speaker 1: we go. This is your Nobs guide to the new
Speaker 1: rules of a better life. But before we get started,
Speaker 1: I need to make this clear. The information discussed in
Speaker 1: this episode is not intended to replace professional medical advice.
Speaker 1: Supplement availability, safety, and regulation vary between countries, including Australia.
Speaker 1: You always need to seek guidance from your GP or
Speaker 1: a pharmacist and ensure that any therapeutic goods are listed
Speaker 1: on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before you go
Speaker 1: near them. And if you listen to this conversation and
Speaker 1: you wonder, oh, I thought you might mention this supplement
Speaker 1: or this supplement, because I see them everywhere, there is
Speaker 1: a good reason why not, and that is because here
Speaker 1: in Australia we're actually pretty lucky that our regulations are
Speaker 1: really tight about what you can and can't talk about
Speaker 1: and promote. So if there are a few gaps here,
Speaker 1: that's why. But I still think you are going to
Speaker 1: find this conversation with Louisa Nicola really really interesting. Protein, sleep, exercise.
Speaker 1: Oh my, Louisa, I'm just so happy to be talking
Speaker 1: to you today because as a woman of my age,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of completely overwhelmed by all the stuff I'm
Speaker 1: being told to do and knowing what's real, what's helpful,
Speaker 1: what's not. And then if i am, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of other women are right, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: start with a big gun. So if there's one thing
Speaker 1: we can advise a woman who's in her kind of
Speaker 1: let's say she's in her forties, that her relationship with
Speaker 1: fitness is pretty typical, which is that maybe she goes
Speaker 1: and fits and starts. She might stick to a gym
Speaker 1: regime for a while and then drop out of it.
Speaker 1: She's had times in her life when she's been fitter
Speaker 1: and times in a life where she's been less. So
Speaker 1: what is the one thing we can advise this woman
Speaker 1: to do to change the quality of the next twenty
Speaker 1: years or so, what would it be.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, Holly, thank you for how you're
Speaker 2: definitely tapping on something that is becoming quite an epidemic.
Speaker 2: We all are inevitably going to face the decline of
Speaker 2: estrogen and progesterone somewhere throughout our life. I think what's
Speaker 2: happening now is menopause is really at the spotlight. It
Speaker 2: is gaining a lot of traction. And this is really
Speaker 2: due to the fact that we had a lot of
Speaker 2: misinformation around menopause and estrogen, etc. And this is now
Speaker 2: causing a lot of women in midlife and even at
Speaker 2: the age of forty to start rethinking their decisions. So
Speaker 2: to cut a long story shot, because I know we're
Speaker 2: going to evolve throughout this conversation, and to answer your question,
Speaker 2: what can a woman do right now to improve the
Speaker 2: next twenty years of her life? Well, look, she can
Speaker 2: do many things, Okay, but let's talk about what actually
Speaker 2: happens at this stage of life in the fourth decade. Well,
Speaker 2: the transition into many menopause comes at around a decade
Speaker 2: prior to the menopause onset. So if we're thinking it
Speaker 2: around the average age, maybe forty two forty three is
Speaker 2: the onset of perimenopause. When we start to see the
Speaker 2: decline of estrogen and progesterome, we need to start thinking
Speaker 2: about what is actually happening, because in my opinion, menopause
Speaker 2: doesn't just happen to your ovaries. It's a neuroendocrine malfunction. Really,
Speaker 2: we have a lot of things that happen to our
Speaker 2: brain and as a result of that, we then go
Speaker 2: through a cascade of issues ranging from bone mineral density.
Speaker 2: We see a decline in that, we see a decline
Speaker 2: in bone mass, in strength, in muscle mass, in cognitive functions,
Speaker 2: and these are the things we need throughout our lifespan,
Speaker 2: throughout my work and through what I do for a
Speaker 2: living and what I research, which is Alzheimer's disease. What
Speaker 2: I can safely say is the one thing you should
Speaker 2: do right now in your forties is practice good exercise.
Speaker 2: You mentioned people. You know some women go through stages
Speaker 2: of they're really motivated, they go to the gym for
Speaker 2: a week, and maybe they go off the gym. And
Speaker 2: what we know is that consistency is key, right because
Speaker 2: if we're going to build a good foundation for our
Speaker 2: body when we're eighty and when we're ninety, even in
Speaker 2: in your sixties and seventies. Really it's got to be
Speaker 2: consistent effort, consistently going to the gym, consistently putting in work,
Speaker 2: and if you have to follow a structured program from
Speaker 2: a personal trainer, I think that's actually becoming more of
Speaker 2: a need these days just to really get the foundation set.
Speaker 1: So what we keep being told right now is to
Speaker 1: forget the hardcore cardio that we might have been doing
Speaker 1: to chase a dress size in our twenties and focus
Speaker 1: on weights. Is it that simple and is that the
Speaker 1: shift we should definitely make.
Speaker 2: It's not that simple, But let me tell you there
Speaker 2: is a need for everything, every part of exercise. When
Speaker 2: we are looking into the scientific literature, we're usually separating
Speaker 2: exercises into three buckets. Right, We've got strength training, We've
Speaker 2: got cardiovascular training, which is your zone too easy, long
Speaker 2: long runs, long swim sessions, et cetera, cardio if you will,
Speaker 2: and then we've got this high intensity training. Right, So
Speaker 2: if we look at across the board, what is going
Speaker 2: to give you the biggest bang for your buck it
Speaker 2: would be strength and that's because we lose strength and
Speaker 2: muscle mass at a very rapid rate. It comes on
Speaker 2: in the fourth decade, right, and we females need more
Speaker 2: strength if we had to, we still need to work
Speaker 2: on our cardiovascular fitness. Right. When we're looking at cardiovascular fitness,
Speaker 2: we're also taking into account that we're training the powerhouses
Speaker 2: of ourselves, which is called the mitochondria. We've got more
Speaker 2: mitochondria than men. So a lot of this marketing what
Speaker 2: you're seeing when you're talking about zone two training, which
Speaker 2: is dubbed out you should be doing cardio at least
Speaker 2: three hours a week. That's really looking at males. Women
Speaker 2: should actually be prioritizing strength. And when I say strength,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about weights, so resistance training and then high
Speaker 2: intensity training. That's like when you're going hard out, not
Speaker 2: hit training, but high intensity, hard out efforts, and then cardio.
Speaker 1: I've heard you rail against the little pink weights we all.
Speaker 2: Have, Yes, it's you want I try and say women
Speaker 2: should move away from the pink weights because listen, it's
Speaker 2: not doing you anything. You're actually wasting your time if
Speaker 2: you're at the gym lifting small lightweights. If we want
Speaker 2: to prevent sycopenia, which is age related muscle loss. If
Speaker 2: we want to enhance our metabolic rate and glucose metabolism,
Speaker 2: we need to without being too scientific, but we need
Speaker 2: to trigger mechano receptors in muscle fibers, right, and that
Speaker 2: is triggered when we lift heavy. To improve our muscle
Speaker 2: mouse increase our muscle musk, we have to lift heavy.
Speaker 2: You're not going to get anything from lifting these two
Speaker 2: kilo dumbbells, which are often painted pink.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get a bit more serious. I think we'll
Speaker 1: come back to exercise in a while. So women in
Speaker 1: my age, apparently we cannot eat enough protein. It's just protein,
Speaker 1: protein protein. You can't buy cottage cheese anywhere in the
Speaker 1: shops at the moment because the older women have eaten
Speaker 1: it all. Eat eggs, fish, meat, eggs and fish more
Speaker 1: and more. I wonder if what we're being told is right.
Speaker 2: Look, I actually thought it was and I still do.
Speaker 2: I think that bare minimum, every single individual, but mainly women,
Speaker 2: should be having at minimum one hundred grams of protein
Speaker 2: a day. In it it varies right, because we should
Speaker 2: be eating around one point six to one point eight
Speaker 2: grams perk of body weight. So you know, if you're
Speaker 2: seventy kilos, then literally just seventy kilos, you literally multiply
Speaker 2: seventy by one point six and that's how much protein
Speaker 2: you should be having a day, and that varies.
Speaker 1: What does that much protein actually look like?
Speaker 2: To be honest, it's quite difficult for a lot of women.
Speaker 2: It's quite difficult for me to hit my protein goals
Speaker 2: every day. But it looks like having one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty grams of chicken breast for lunch, another one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty grams of chicken breast or similar for dinner,
Speaker 2: having two to three eggs in the morning.
Speaker 1: So the protein is key.
Speaker 2: Protein is key. However, I just interviewed one of the
Speaker 2: biggest scientists in protein, so he was actually responsible for
Speaker 2: the twin study that was actually documented on Netflix, and
Speaker 2: he said something really interesting to me. He noted that
Speaker 2: muscle mass is actually muscle mass, and strength is actually
Speaker 2: ninety percent resistance training and ten percent protein. So I
Speaker 2: was even fed this lie. I was even fed this
Speaker 2: lie that we needed we needed so much protein to
Speaker 2: gain muscle mass. But it turns out that if you're
Speaker 2: not actually stimulating the mechana receptors. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: if you're not even lifting heavy, but you're meeting your
Speaker 2: protein requirement needs, it doesn't even matter. But I just
Speaker 2: want to add on top of that as well. Protein
Speaker 2: also has other wonders where you can increase your metabolic
Speaker 2: rate by eating it. So it takes a lot to
Speaker 2: digest protein. So once you eat protein, you're also burning
Speaker 2: calories and it keeps you full of for longer if
Speaker 2: you can try and prioritize at least one hundred grams
Speaker 2: a day.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good, sensible advice, good for me to know.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about something else, vitamin D sunshine.
Speaker 1: I'm also being told lots of vitamin D.
Speaker 2: Vitamin D is really interesting, right we call it vitamin D,
Speaker 2: but it's a hormone synthesized by the sun. Right now,
Speaker 2: I live in the US, I live in New York,
Speaker 2: so a lot of people in the US are actually
Speaker 2: vitamin D deficient. So we measure it over here with
Speaker 2: nanograms per deesoleader. And what we are trying to and
Speaker 2: you can do the conversions in Australian metrics, and so
Speaker 2: what we're trying to get everyone too is around sixty
Speaker 2: nanograms per deesoleader, but the average is around twenty nanograms
Speaker 2: per desoleader. This doesn't mean that you are sun deficient, right,
Speaker 2: I mean it can, but it could mean that you
Speaker 2: are magnesium deficient. So I've had private clients and patients
Speaker 2: who we've worked on their vitamin D levels and we've
Speaker 2: brought their vitamin D levels up just by supplementing them
Speaker 2: with magnesium alone, because we need magnesium to make vitamin D.
Speaker 2: So vitamin D is extremely, extremely important. It's involved in
Speaker 2: many and zomatic processes in the body. So if you
Speaker 2: want vitamin D deficient, and it's so easy to get tested,
Speaker 2: just go to the GP, get a blood test and
Speaker 2: you will see if you're vitamin D deficient or not.
Speaker 1: How would you feel if you were vitamin D deficient? Like,
Speaker 1: how would you know if you were?
Speaker 2: That's a thing you wouldn't know. It could present as
Speaker 2: dry skin, it could present as fatigue. It could present
Speaker 2: as going to the gym and not getting that not
Speaker 2: being able to lift heavy fast enough. But it's not
Speaker 2: like a you can't get a headache and think, oh
Speaker 2: I'm vitamin D deficient.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, okay, And a few of those things you
Speaker 1: just said are often symptoms that menopausal or perimenopause or
Speaker 1: women living with anyway.
Speaker 2: I know right.
Speaker 1: After this break, Louise and Nicola and I discussed what
Speaker 1: might feel like the most elusive part of this whole thing.
Speaker 2: Sleep.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to ask you about sleep, because
Speaker 1: that's another thing we're being told is so important. And
Speaker 1: we all know that that's true, of course, but sleep
Speaker 1: hygiene is such a buzz term right now. Lots of
Speaker 1: products we can buy to optimize our sleep and measure
Speaker 1: our sleep and see how it's going. Sleep often becomes
Speaker 1: a really big problem for women around this phase of life. Anyway,
Speaker 1: We've got the anxious two am wake up that would
Speaker 1: be very familiar to lots of our listeners. How important
Speaker 1: is sleep?
Speaker 2: So sleep is incredibly important. We go through many things
Speaker 2: during sleep. Sleep is not just this thing that happens
Speaker 2: right during sleep. We go through two different phases. We
Speaker 2: go through non REM sleep, and then we go through
Speaker 2: REM sleep. During the non rapid eye movement sleep, we
Speaker 2: go through a period which is stage three deep sleep.
Speaker 2: And I can't tell you how important this stage is
Speaker 2: to get into and to stay into.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We don't want to just get into deep sleep for
Speaker 2: ten minutes out of the night. We really want to
Speaker 2: be spending maybe at least three hours of deep sleep
Speaker 2: at night. I track my sleep, you know, rigorously, using
Speaker 2: three different types of monitors, and I can tell you
Speaker 2: even sometimes I am experiencing fluctuations in my sleep. So
Speaker 2: during deep sleep, what happens is we activate this system,
Speaker 2: which is called the glymphatic system, and this is like
Speaker 2: a washing machine in your brain. What happens is all
Speaker 2: of the cerebral spinal fluid goes through your brain and
Speaker 2: cleans out all of the debris throughout the day. I'm
Speaker 2: talking amyloid beta that builds up during the day. We've
Speaker 2: got toxins, we've got oh the burdens. Apparently now we've
Speaker 2: got microplastics in our brain, which was actually stated first
Speaker 2: in an Australian study. So sleep is so important and
Speaker 2: there's so many things that we can do to improve
Speaker 2: both the quality of our sleep and the quantity of
Speaker 2: our sleep. However, we now know that consistency and regularity
Speaker 2: of sleep is more important than quantity and quality. So
Speaker 2: going to sleep at the same time every day and
Speaker 2: waking up at the same time every day, which is
Speaker 2: so hard, right, I travel like every three weeks for work,
Speaker 2: so that's incredibly hard for me. But maintaining a regular
Speaker 2: sleep and wake up time and actually doesn't matter whether
Speaker 2: you're sleeping twelve pm till eight am, all right or
Speaker 2: ten pm till six am is based on your chronotype.
Speaker 2: And you can take a chronotype quiz online. Just type
Speaker 2: it in. Take a quiz figure out whether you're an
Speaker 2: early bird or a night owl, and you can go
Speaker 2: to sleep at whatever time that you like.
Speaker 1: There used to be saying that, like the hours before
Speaker 1: midnight are worth more than the sleep you get after.
Speaker 1: Is that true? No?
Speaker 2: I thought that was true as well. But I sit
Speaker 2: on the board with one of the most well known
Speaker 2: sleep doctors and we had dinner probably i would say,
Speaker 2: two months ago, and I brought this up with here
Speaker 2: and he slammed the table. He's like, stop saying this,
Speaker 2: And he explained it to me that it's built on chronotypes.
Speaker 1: Tell me what your sleep hygen looks like to get
Speaker 1: the kind of sleep that you do, Oh, tell me.
Speaker 2: So it's really important for me to be able to
Speaker 2: bring my nervous system down prior to sleep. So a
Speaker 2: lot of people, if you work in a sleep lab right,
Speaker 2: for example, and you get a patient, you're often asked
Speaker 2: two things. Do you have problem falling asleep or trouble
Speaker 2: staying asleep? And it varies across the board. So for me,
Speaker 2: I sleep first of all, i sleep in a pitch
Speaker 2: black room, so I've got blackout curtains. I wear religiously
Speaker 2: an eyemask every night. Even though I've got blackout curtains,
Speaker 2: i still wear an eye mask. I sleep on a
Speaker 2: temperature controlled mattress, and i know not everyone can do that,
Speaker 2: but it's a bit fancy, but it basically I have
Speaker 2: an app on my phone and I can control the
Speaker 2: temperature of the bed, so it goes cold and then
Speaker 2: hot and all throughout the night. I have said it
Speaker 2: at around fifty nine degrees fahrenheit, but it's actually separated
Speaker 2: into cycles, so it matches. It knows Louisa's in deep sleep,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to bring the temperature of the bed down.
Speaker 2: Louisa is in light sleep, so I'm going to bring
Speaker 2: it down. I'm going to bring it up a bit more,
Speaker 2: and I've got an alarm on it. I'm like, well, bed,
Speaker 2: wake me up at seven am, so it starts to
Speaker 2: heat up at six point thirty in the morning because
Speaker 2: heat is actually what wakes us up. Well, heat and light.
Speaker 2: But it's like when the sun comes up, it warms
Speaker 2: your body, which then releases quartersole, and quartersole is what
Speaker 2: wakes you up. Right, So I've got the bed to
Speaker 2: heat up half an hour prior to waking.
Speaker 1: Look that sounds awesome. Do you use mouth tape? I
Speaker 1: see mouth tape everywhere.
Speaker 2: I sometimes do. I don't think it plays as big
Speaker 2: of a role as what we think. I think that's
Speaker 2: more in line with the beauty hacks. If you will, so,
Speaker 2: I don't mouth theare but I also don't mouthbreak.
Speaker 1: So if I don't have a temperature controlled mattress and
Speaker 1: perfect blackout, the best thing I can do to get
Speaker 1: myself in a good place for sleep is to wind down. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've all heard no phones, no blue light, how long
Speaker 1: before bed? And also I hear the longevity guys saying
Speaker 1: you should stop eating a long time before you go
Speaker 1: to sleep. Does that make a big difference?
Speaker 2: So when we eat, it raises our core body temperature. Now,
Speaker 2: in order to fall asleep and stay asleep, our core
Speaker 2: body temperature needs to drop at least two degrees. This
Speaker 2: is why I sleep on a temperature controlled mattress. You
Speaker 2: don't want to be eating too close to bedtime. I
Speaker 2: usually say, make sure you've had your last meal an
Speaker 2: hour and a half to two hours prior to going
Speaker 2: to bed, and that's to allow for digestion, right, anything
Speaker 2: above that, right, I mean, Brian Johnson is having his
Speaker 2: last meal at eleven am, and I think that's just
Speaker 2: really really poor education and marketing for the world. That is,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, stupid. So I think that's in line
Speaker 2: with females.
Speaker 1: So it's also that realistic to most people's lives.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, and I really want the women listening
Speaker 2: to understand that we are not men, all right, So
Speaker 2: if you hear a male say something, it might be
Speaker 2: great for us, right, but we have to do we
Speaker 2: have to dig a little bit deeper, and women just
Speaker 2: need more fuel in different ranges of you know, different
Speaker 2: stages of our lives. So I don't think that's correct.
Speaker 2: But I also don't think eating at ten pm and
Speaker 2: then going to bed at ten thirty is correct.
Speaker 1: So, just while we're on what you were just saying
Speaker 1: about the men, do you think that one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: It can feel that the health advice coming at women,
Speaker 1: particularly women going through hormonal changes, feels like a lot
Speaker 1: is because we're sort of waking up to the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of the medical conventions we've been sold
Speaker 1: about what's good for us, we're all about men. And
Speaker 1: now as we're learning more about women, there's all this
Speaker 1: new information to share.
Speaker 2: Yes, so first of all, women very hard to study
Speaker 2: in the lab, So a lot of the studies that
Speaker 2: have been done have been done on men because they're easier.
Speaker 2: Why are they easier because you have to conduct the
Speaker 2: gold standard in academic medicine, which is called a randomized
Speaker 2: control trial. You need women over a long period of time.
Speaker 2: Now what happens with women, Well, we go through menopause,
Speaker 2: so hormones change. That's going to skew the data. Some
Speaker 2: women want to have a child with enter tain year framework,
Speaker 2: so that skews the data. So women just became somewhat
Speaker 2: difficult to work with, right, So therefore not a lot
Speaker 2: of funding was placed upon them. So a lot of
Speaker 2: the funding was placed on men because they were just
Speaker 2: easier subjects. And then we put out all of this information.
Speaker 2: Scientists were like, well, this fasting does this, or zone
Speaker 2: to training does this, and it improves this, but we've
Speaker 2: forgot to include women in that, and we just thought, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this study says this, but we don't really understand sex differences.
Speaker 2: We're now becoming more attuned with sex differences between men
Speaker 2: and women. We know that women have more estrogen receptors
Speaker 2: in their brain than men. We know that men go
Speaker 2: through their own type of metopause, but the average age
Speaker 2: of metopause for a woman is fifty two. Men it's
Speaker 2: in their seventies, so that's called andropause. So that was
Speaker 2: why all of the marketing was really geared at men. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, and now we're understanding that better. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to learn all this.
Speaker 2: So look, I'm I'm in neurosurgery three days a week.
Speaker 2: I study the brain rigorously. It's all I do. It's
Speaker 2: all I've done for the past fifteen years. And every
Speaker 2: day I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: Much before we get to dementia and Alzheimer's. You mentioned
Speaker 1: fasting just now, and I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: eating in general. A lot of women around my age
Speaker 1: have lived in diet culture forever, right, we've sort of
Speaker 1: withheld food food from ourselves. We've tried a million different diets.
Speaker 1: We've tried Atkins and keto, We've gone donat before two pm,
Speaker 1: only at this time, not at that time. Do you
Speaker 1: think that women, maybe a lot of women are actually
Speaker 1: restricting themselves too much with food at this time in
Speaker 1: their life rather than not enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think women just don't understand food, right. We
Speaker 2: just you know, there's so much to learn. Fasting is
Speaker 2: both beneficial and can be detrimental. It depends and even
Speaker 2: with women just because we're all it depends on stages
Speaker 2: of menstrual cycle. What if you are planning for a pregnancy,
Speaker 2: you're starving yourself and then you claim that you're infertile,
Speaker 2: but maybe you're just not eating enough to produce the
Speaker 2: necessary amount of estrogen to go into ovulation, etc. So
Speaker 2: fasting is great. It can turn on autophagy, which is
Speaker 2: whatever they can actually stimulate stem cells. But I think
Speaker 2: that women should maybe move away from that and maybe
Speaker 2: move towards understanding macro nutrients like how much protein do
Speaker 2: I need in a day, and how can I maybe
Speaker 2: get off sugar and saturated fats and ultra processed foods
Speaker 2: and eat a really good lean diet and exercise. It's
Speaker 2: not rocket science, right, It's like, you know, then we
Speaker 2: can look at calories in, calories out, but it's not
Speaker 2: rocket science. If you are lifting and you are working
Speaker 2: out every day and moving your body, getting your ten
Speaker 2: thousand steps and eating a whole food diet without going overboard,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the secret, sauce.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to shift to that. Nourish yourself rather
Speaker 1: than punish yourself. You know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: women have lived a lot of years of life. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat that. I can't have that. I'm bad if
Speaker 1: my lunch is too big. It's like we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of emotion attached to it and we need to shift.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, to a nourish active right yeah.
Speaker 2: Nourishing your body and eating well to lift heavy is
Speaker 2: I think the new sexy. That's what we have to
Speaker 2: start to think. You know, skinny frail is just not
Speaker 2: going to cut it anymore. If you want to lift heavy,
Speaker 2: if you want to have the energy, and if you
Speaker 2: don't want to fall and break your hip, well, you
Speaker 2: have to get used to eating. You have to get
Speaker 2: used to eating. The rainbow I just did a podcast
Speaker 2: with doctor Tim Spector, who's a professor and he is
Speaker 2: an epidemiologist who looks into the gut microbiome, and he
Speaker 2: was telling me how eating the rainbow is really important
Speaker 2: and that our gut microbiome is very much correlated to
Speaker 2: diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease. So feeding
Speaker 2: your microbiome, getting the necessary amount of nutrients is going
Speaker 2: to help you throughout midlife.
Speaker 1: Also, the rainbow is a nice pet. Did to remember,
Speaker 1: eat the rain in bone. Make it as simple as
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, okay, you talked before about if you
Speaker 1: want to not fall and break a hip. This is
Speaker 1: a large part of why we're telling women to eat
Speaker 1: so well and lift heavy. Right, it's trying to avoid osteoporosis.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Is that what we're all trying to avoid?
Speaker 2: Yep. Yep Osteoporosis is something that occurs during the late stages,
Speaker 2: like postmenopausal women, just because of the depletion of estrogen.
Speaker 2: We have estrogen receptors on our bones, so if they
Speaker 2: are not stimulated through estrogen, and this is even if
Speaker 2: you're you're taking hit for example, if you're you're getting
Speaker 2: on hormones even if it's not. We need to stimulate
Speaker 2: our bone mass because bone mass obviously reduces the risk
Speaker 2: of osteoporosis and fractures. But what happens is we need
Speaker 2: to stimulate something called osteoblasts. Okay, and that's the creation
Speaker 2: of these new bone cells. But what happens is we
Speaker 2: get during menopause a huge turnover of osteoclass, so the
Speaker 2: breaking down of the bones at a much faster rate
Speaker 2: than the osteoblasts. So we're not regenerating our bone cells
Speaker 2: as much. Now, how do we overcome that? Well, Vitamin
Speaker 2: D actually is incredibly important for that because our bones
Speaker 2: are made of many things, so vitamin D can help
Speaker 2: you offset that. But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares
Speaker 2: to working out at the gym and lifting heavy like
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, weight training, mechanical loading.
Speaker 1: After this break, I asked Louisa about what most of
Speaker 1: us fear the most when we think about getting older, dementia,
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease, and cognitive decline. I've heard you say that
Speaker 1: your mission to eradicate Alzheimer's disease? Now, am I incorrect?
Speaker 1: When I'm sometimes saying dementia and sometimes saying Alzheimer's Are
Speaker 1: they different things? Just so I've got my language right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So dementia is the umbrella term that is used
Speaker 2: just to speak about a deficit in our cognitive abilities.
Speaker 2: Now underneath dementia sits Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewis body
Speaker 2: Parkinson's dementia front to temporal dementia. The reason why we
Speaker 2: know Alzheimer's disease is because it is the most prevalent
Speaker 2: out of all of the dementia's Alzheimer's dementia fifty five
Speaker 2: million people that I actually around sixty million people worldwide
Speaker 2: have this disease. That number is going to triple by
Speaker 2: the year twenty fifty. So Alzheimer's disease is different. They've
Speaker 2: all got different pathologies.
Speaker 1: Why is it going to triple?
Speaker 2: We have substantial evidence to show that lifestyle and environment
Speaker 2: affects the rates of our Ceimer's disease. So I mentioned
Speaker 2: around sixty million people worldwide. If you have a look
Speaker 2: across the board, around ninety five percent of these people
Speaker 2: got Alzheimer's disease through lifestyle, not because of a genetic makeup.
Speaker 1: So that's why when you say your mission is to
Speaker 1: eradicate it, you believe this is preventable with lifestyle changes.
Speaker 2: I believe it is a one hundred percent preventable disease.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the people listening to this will
Speaker 1: have loved ones who've been through this, and again maybe
Speaker 1: the umbrella term dementia, maybe not specifically Alzheimer's, and a
Speaker 1: lot of midlife women are terrified that's what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to them, because sometimes they've seen really distressing things
Speaker 1: happen to their loved ones in this space. So, of
Speaker 1: all the things we've been talking about today, is that
Speaker 1: part of what will help this prevention or is this
Speaker 1: the whole separate thing.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, it's interesting to note that, yeah,
Speaker 2: one in three people, you'll you know, you look around you.
Speaker 2: If you're in a room with two other people, one
Speaker 2: of you is going to get the disease. Two out
Speaker 2: of three cases of Alzheimer's disease is female, which is
Speaker 2: even more scarier for females. Good and bad news. Right,
Speaker 2: when we talk about genetics, there is a difference between
Speaker 2: genetic risk factors and genetic mutations. Genetic mutations are mistakes
Speaker 2: in the genetic code. For example, if you've got a
Speaker 2: genetic mutation on chromosome four, you will get Huntington's disease. Okay,
Speaker 2: we have When it comes to Alzheimer's disease, there's only
Speaker 2: three genetic mutations involved in the disease. That's Presnell and one,
Speaker 2: Presnell and two, and the APP gene. That only accounts
Speaker 2: for about I would say point five percent of the
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's disease cases. The other part of it is genetic
Speaker 2: risk factors. You've probably heard of the APE four gene.
Speaker 2: This is a risk factor gene. Now we've all got
Speaker 2: the apoe gene, the APO lipoprotein epsilon gene, and we
Speaker 2: get two allyls. We get one from mum, one from Dad,
Speaker 2: and where it consists of a po E two, three
Speaker 2: and four. If we get two copies of the Apo
Speaker 2: E two gene, for example, which is extremely rare, but
Speaker 2: Apo E two is a protective, protective gene. So if
Speaker 2: you've got at least one ALLYL, then you're in a
Speaker 2: really good place. Then you can be an E three
Speaker 2: E three which doesn't raise your risk at all of
Speaker 2: getting the disease, and it doesn't lower your risk. It's
Speaker 2: the average. I'm an E three E three carrier. I've
Speaker 2: had a patient who was E three E two, which
Speaker 2: was phenomenal. That's what I wish I had. But you
Speaker 2: don't determine that your parents do. Then we've got the
Speaker 2: APO e four gene. Now, the APO e four you
Speaker 2: can either have one copy or you can have two copies.
Speaker 2: Now Chris Hamsworth has two copies of the gene, which
Speaker 2: means that he raises his risk over ten times of
Speaker 2: getting the disease. And this gene is involved in what
Speaker 2: we call lipid metabolism. So basically in our brain, we
Speaker 2: have different transporters that help transport fats, and so we
Speaker 2: can utilize fat in our brain, different types of fats. Right,
Speaker 2: and if we have the APO e four gene as
Speaker 2: opposed to the APOE two, the APO e four basically
Speaker 2: becomes a dumb transport. It doesn't help us. It doesn't
Speaker 2: allow us to transport fat as well as we do.
Speaker 2: So what ends up happening, Well, our brain is the
Speaker 2: most vascular rich organ in the entire body, so then
Speaker 2: we end up getting the accumulation of fat in the
Speaker 2: vessels of our brain. So just like we do with
Speaker 2: cardiovascular disease, which is an occlusion in a blood vessel
Speaker 2: because of the build up of PLAK can happen in
Speaker 2: our brain. Now, this could lead to a stroke, or
Speaker 2: it could lead to an occlusion in one of the
Speaker 2: vessels in the brain, which stops our brain from functioning correctly.
Speaker 2: So the APO E four gene raises your risk of
Speaker 2: getting the disease, but it's not a foe gun conclusion
Speaker 2: if you are an E four E four carrier. By
Speaker 2: the way, I think everybody should get tested. Everyone can
Speaker 2: get tested, and if you're scared, it's just like figuring
Speaker 2: out whether the bus is coming if you're on the road.
Speaker 2: You want to know what you're up against. You don't
Speaker 2: have to do it, but it's.
Speaker 1: Nice to know.
Speaker 2: So let's just say you do have either one copy
Speaker 2: or two copies. It just means you have to be
Speaker 2: a bit more vigilant with your lifestyle interventions. It may
Speaker 2: mean really honing down with your cholesterol panel right, looking
Speaker 2: at your LDL cholesterol, looking at your APO B cholesterol.
Speaker 2: We know that especially in women, and this was a
Speaker 2: really well known study that was released, especially in women
Speaker 2: who are E four carriers. You want to maintain a
Speaker 2: LDL cholesterol level below seven that's American units. So we
Speaker 2: know that we need to really really consider cardiovascular disease
Speaker 2: risk as well.
Speaker 1: So assuming that testing is available, but even if not,
Speaker 1: we should be considering all these lifestyle choices we're talking
Speaker 1: about today to be helpful in safeguarding against Alzheimer's as
Speaker 1: well as cardio issues and all the other things we
Speaker 1: might worry about in terms of our aging bodies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a real nice saying, which is what's good
Speaker 2: for the heart is good for the brain. So just
Speaker 2: remember that even if you don't have an E four copy,
Speaker 2: you are still at risk of getting Alzheimer's disease if
Speaker 2: you do not sleep well, if you do not exercise
Speaker 2: every day, if you do not lower your stress, if
Speaker 2: you do not look at your micro nutrient profiles.
Speaker 1: So to recap, if you are going to tell midlife
Speaker 1: women who are totally lost when it comes to how
Speaker 1: to care for themselves, what should they start doing today?
Speaker 2: I have this pyramid and the pyramid at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the pyramid for you to age well sits exercise.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate, in my opinion, the ultimate elixa
Speaker 2: for longevity and brain health. So we really want to
Speaker 2: hone in the exercise. On top of that is sleep,
Speaker 2: and then it's nutrition. I would definitely recommend everybody getting
Speaker 2: a blood test, figure out what you might be deficient in,
Speaker 2: figure out are you perimenopausal? Is do you need to
Speaker 2: discuss hormone replacement therapy with your obgyn. These are the
Speaker 2: things that we need to be doing. But the biggest
Speaker 2: bang for your buck. Oh and also lower the bad
Speaker 2: stress that comes into your life and manage anxiety. If
Speaker 2: you can.
Speaker 1: There, you are friends. If there's one takeaway from that
Speaker 1: that I've internalized, it's exercise that the pyramid for well
Speaker 1: being goes. Exercise, then sleep, then nutrition of course protein, creatine, magnesium, sleep.
Speaker 1: If you like me, you probably need to listen to
Speaker 1: this again and write some things down. And the other
Speaker 1: most important thing that Luisa said to us is to
Speaker 1: remember that we are not men as we start to
Speaker 1: understand our bodies again and learn to care for them now,
Speaker 1: respecting the complexities of the female body and specifically your
Speaker 1: female body is key. Okay, friends, go and eat an
Speaker 1: egg and lift something heavy and enjoy feeling kick ass.
Speaker 1: I will see you back here for mid season six
Speaker 1: in a few short weeks until then. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being with us through this season of mid
Speaker 1: The executive producer of this episode is name A. Brown,
Speaker 1: The producer is Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio production
Speaker 1: by Jacob Brown. I'll see you next time. The information
Speaker 1: discussed in this episode is not intended to replace professional
Speaker 1: medical advice. Please remember that supplement availability, safety, and regulation
Speaker 1: vary between countries, including Australia. Always seek guidance from your
Speaker 1: GP or pharmacist and ensure any therapeutic goods are listed
Speaker 1: on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods the AARTG