RISE RENEWED | Top Rated Holistic Health & Fitness Podcasts for Women Christian Moms, Morning Routine, Emotional Brain Training, Selfcare, Wellness, Productivity, Family, Adoption

Feeling Off? Discover NATURAL TREATMENT for Female HORMONE IMBALANCE That Actually Works with Louise Digby

• Ahna Fulmer | Holistic Health & Fitness Coach, Emotionally Intelligent Selfcare Specialist, Keynote Speaker

Share episode

Ever felt like your body is betraying you despite your best efforts with diet and exercise? You're not alone. As we uncover in this fascinating conversation with Louise Digby, registered nutritional therapist and creator of the Nourish Method, those unexpected changes might have more to do with your hormones than your habits.

Louise Digby specializes in helping women balance hormones naturally through personalized nutrition and lifestyle strategies, including:

Advanced blood work to identify root issues
Customized nutrition and lifestyle plans
Stress and sleep management techniques

👉 Explore The Nourish Method → https://www.louisedigbynutrition.com/

✨ Want a quick reset? Try Louise’s 5-Day Metabolism Reset to repair your metabolism and balance hormones naturally!

👉 Join the Reset → https://www.louisedigbynutrition.com/challenge

Revitalize your faith and fitness with a morning routine that does not sacrifice your sleep and does start each day with God's Word and a workout. Join the community today at www.earlymorninghabit.com 

☀️ Grab my FREE TRAINING on 3 Powerful Secrets to Rise Renewed Every Morning.
☀️ Join the Early Morning Habit course and community today.

➡️ Find Our Favorite Resources at the Early Morning Habit Amazon Shop

=============================
SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW
=============================
➡️ YouTube
➡️ Instagram

We value your feedback! Please share your thoughts on this show here.

This episode is NOT sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links; we will receive a small commission if you buy something.

Speaker 1:

the actual causes of hormone imbalance tend to be more linked to gut health and liver function and deficiencies, and stress and toxic load. These are all things that can disrupt the balance of your hormones.

Speaker 2:

Hi Rising Stars, Welcome to today's live training and member-only Q&A. If you are joining us later via the Rise Renew podcast, welcome. We are so glad that you're here. Ladies, as we get older, we often start to feel more sluggish and sometimes we feel off. However, unlike what most traditional doctors will tell you, the fact is your hormones could be the missing link. If that's you, you're feeling sluggish, foggy, frustrated with the changes in your body.

Speaker 2:

Hormones, not just lifestyle, could be the issue, and perimenopause which, by the way, for many women starts in mid thirties bring shifts in cortisol, insulin and thyroid function that can leave you feeling stuck and out of balance, no matter how well you eat or how hard you exercise. Today we have Louise Digby. She is a registered nutritional therapist and creator of the nourish method, and she helps women uncover these hidden hormonal imbalances, uses advanced blood work that helps to uncover some of these underlying root causes that most healthcare approaches tend to overlook. So we are going to dive in today on how hormones drive energy, mood, metabolism. Luis is going to share how she helps you learn how to work with your body, not against it, and ultimately, how some of this advanced testing, how to understand it, what you're looking for and then, ultimately, what we do in response to those results to help you thrive and rise with more energy. So, louise, welcome, it's such an honor to have you here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for having me and thank you for that lovely introduction as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit about how you got started. I am guessing you're based in the UK, based on your lovely accent. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Speaker 1:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

So I graduated in nutrition back in 2012.

Speaker 1:

And when I first started practicing, I was working with everyone and anyone, whatever their health goals, whatever, you know, whoever they were and what I noticed was that pretty much everyone whether they came to me for depression or IBS or skin problems or anything they all also wanted to lose weight as well, and so I had kind of that group of people that would come to me, but then I'd also have a group of people who would just come for weight loss, and I think what was interesting to me was that it was the people who focused more on the health side of things that got the best results, as opposed to the people who focused on the weight side of things, the people that were focusing on restricting calories and portion control and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

They didn't really get very far. And so I also noticed that there was a group of women women who were in their late 30s, 40s and 50s who had the most challenging time when it came to optimizing their health and losing weight. So I really wanted to bring all of that together and understand why the people that wanted to lose weight struggled and the you know, particularly the women who seem to be trying the hardest and the most disciplined got the worst results. So that's kind of how I got into that area really.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so I think what I'm hearing you say is really what you ended up focusing on are women who were in perimenopause and menopause. Would that be accurate?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think, a question that a lot of us end up having. So I'm 38 and it's right at that age where, historically, when I used to think menopause, 38 was not crossing my mind, because no one talks about perimenopause. It's like you've heard about menopause but most of us are only just within the last couple of years really hearing more about this idea of perimenopause and how much of the struggle in this decade really like 35 to 45, it ranges but how a lot of that struggle might actually be related more to hormones. So I guess question number one would be what would be some symptoms or indications that there could be hormone imbalances, that there could be hormone imbalances? Because I asked that? Because not every woman in perimenopause struggles like the other woman in perimenopause. So there's really there's a lot of diversity in what women are even experiencing. So talk to me about symptoms of a woman who should be, for example, getting the blood work done, doing a deeper dive to look at her hormones. What might she be experiencing?

Speaker 1:

There can be a huge range of symptoms, but I think some of the early signs can be a change in your menstrual cycle. For some women, that can be that they bleed for longer, or it might be that their cycle becomes shorter, or maybe it becomes more irregular, and it's, you know, normal to have the odd blip, particularly if you're going through some stress or something like that. But if your cycle is consistently different to how it used to be, then that's a really good sign that you know there could be some changes happening in how your hormones are balanced and how they're being produced. Um, and along with that, I find that a really common kind of set of symptoms are digestive issues.

Speaker 1:

Um, estrogen has, you know, quite a an intricate relationship with lots of things in the body, including our gut health, and I find a lot of women start noticing more bloating, maybe being more prone to constipation or maybe developing some food sensitivities.

Speaker 1:

That could, of course, be caused by other things, but if you're noticing that, at the same time as, perhaps, your menstrual cycle changing, maybe it's becoming more difficult to lose weight, or maybe you start gaining weight despite not changing anything, those can be some real key signs and also, I think more PMS, like symptoms, can be a strong sign as well.

Speaker 1:

You know, being more susceptible to mood changes or finding perhaps that more of your cycle is dominated by fluctuating moods or difficulty controlling cravings or energy fluctuations the type of thing that we might consider it to be somewhat normal to have a day or so of that typically. But if that starts becoming more than a week, two weeks, then that could be a sign that there's more going on there. Of course, no one should really be experiencing those symptoms if everything is well and everything is all in balance. But many women probably find that for most of their menstruating life they might have a few days of PMS at least. If that starts getting worse, then that's a sign that maybe things are kind of heading more towards that perimenopause transition.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I also you know it's interesting because I think for a lot of us it becomes hard to isolate these symptoms, like you mentioned, because so many other factors affect. You know, stress can affect your digestive system. I mean, stress alone can affect so many of the things that you just mentioned which you highlighted. Right, it might not specifically be perimenopause, and so I guess that kind of leads to the next question is if there is a concern, especially if you're entering, you know, statistically speaking, the age where those hormone imbalances could be a player in your symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Talk to us about the testing that is done, because I think I speak for a lot of women when this is a very ambiguous concept. When you hear get your hormones tested, most women really have no idea what that actually means. Like what is being tested, what are we actually looking for, why do we care, what are we going to do about it? So I think it'd be really helpful to just hear an understanding of what are we actually testing, what is normal and what isn't, and what might that indicate for?

Speaker 1:

us. There's kind of a couple of levels of testing. Really, you've got the testing that you might have done if you were to go to your doctors and I think it's probably similar where you are as it is here in the UK. They're really, when they're testing your hormones, when it comes to sex hormones, they're really just looking at are you ovulating, which is what they use as a measure of copulating, which is what they use as a measure of, you know, are you perimenopausal? Are you menopausal? And that's estrogen, progesterone.

Speaker 1:

Often here they won't even test the estrogen and the progesterone. They'll just look at um, fsh and lh, um, just to see if you are ovulating or not, um, if they might look at those things more, if you're on hrt or if they're trying to assess whether you have a need for hrt but it's not often done as just a standard or maybe your menopausal, perimenopausal. Let's test the hormones. You seem to have to push for it more here, but I don't know if that's the same where you are, but those are the hormones that may get checked.

Speaker 1:

But then there's also the thyroid hormones as well, and again, often it's it's quite a basic level of testing. They tend to just look at your tsh and maybe your t4 if you're lucky which are again just a very basic measure of how your thyroid is functioning and there's a lot of issues with thyroid testing as a whole. Um, but though that can be helpful information, for sure it can tell you if your thyroid's functioning at a basic level, and that's important to know because that's, you know, something that really controls your metabolism and also interacts with your sex hormones as well. Um, when it comes to how useful those tests are for the sex hormones, they have limited value.

Speaker 2:

If things are really out of whack, then, yes, you'll have to see that and just let ladies know what sex hormones are, just in case anyone's like. What are sex hormones?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so when I'm talking about sex hormones, really I'm mainly talking about estrogen, progesterone, the FSH and LH, and testosterone as well, although doctors are always really reluctant to go as far as to test testosterone here. So, yeah, those are the sex hormones that we're thinking about, but blood tests have limited value when it comes to the sex hormones. They tell you how much of those hormones are in your blood, but it doesn't really show you those more subtle fluctuations or how they might fluctuate over the course of the month. So that's when doing more advanced testing can be more helpful, because there's much kind of more in-depth ways that we can look at both the thyroid and sex hormones and how your body metabolizes those hormones. You know how your body breaks them down and processes them, which is a really key part of hormone balance.

Speaker 2:

That can often be where imbalances arise that can often be where imbalances arise, and so give us a sense of when. One, what the more advanced testing looks like. But then, two, what are we looking for right For the woman that might be concerned? This is what I'm feeling. Maybe I have this imbalance in hormone levels. What are you looking for Meaning? What kind of imbalances might we see, and what might that be translating to physically?

Speaker 1:

So common imbalances around the time of perimenopause can be initially women can become estrogen dominant, which is that can be that you have too much estrogen, but more often it's that your progesterone is dropping quicker than your estrogen is, so both are declining but the progesterone is dropping off more quickly.

Speaker 1:

So they become out of balance with each other and it's really important that they're in balance because estrogen is a very strong hormone. We kind of call it the diva hormone. When we have too much in relation to progesterone, we're more likely to experience PMS and mood swings and heavy bleeding and difficulty managing our weight and more inflammatory symptoms, and the progesterone is a more kind of calming hormone that balances it out. So that's quite a common issue that women see towards the early stages of perimenopause and then, as time goes on, you're more likely to experience the symptoms of low oestrogen, which can be more like drying skin, aging skin or dryness in various areas, hair loss and hair thinning. It can be muscle loss and bone loss and it's kind of more difficult to maintain muscle mass and that goes hand in hand with it being more difficult to manage your fat percentage as well.

Speaker 2:

And I think you said something that's really helpful to understand, because this is not my area of expertise at all. So this is wonderful and you can correct me if I'm totally off here. But the normal cycle of these sex hormones for women, meaning the natural course of things, is that initially estrogen will go up a little bit and progesterone will go down, and then initially estrogen drops. But the challenge becomes, if I'm hearing correctly, when estrogen is rising, like we would expect it to, but progesterone is dropping too quickly, then we sort of have this gap between them where we would want progesterone to slowly drop as the estrogen slowly rises. Is that correct? Am I hearing?

Speaker 1:

that? Yeah, absolutely, and that's a big part of why we talk about balance, because it's not so much about the actual levels of hormones, and that can be why it can be misleading testing hormones in isolation. So it's really helpful to get the full picture and also, you know, just testing hormones randomly at a point in time it isn't very meaningful. We need to understand where you are in your cycle, when you last ovulated and what all the other hormones are doing around that.

Speaker 2:

So is advanced, is more advanced testing. And, ladies, the reason that I brought that up and pointed that out is and Louise just touched on it beautifully is that these processes are normal, like this is normal, you're not abnormal because these things are happening. It's more so like you're not necessarily trying to fix a higher estrogen and then a lower estrogen. It's, like Louise just said, it's balancing it, cause I think we have this wrong idea sometimes, like I'm diseased. Right, it's like there's this disease or something. Like this is very normal. It's just healthcare needs to shift to help women transition through these normal processes with more comfort. I mean that's the goal here, like we shouldn't be miserable in these transitions. If we can help, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah the numbers more like, because what you just said that I heard is that it's like the isolated numbers which we I see a lot here in the United States with gynecological testing. It is more isolated, there's less like cracking, meaning you're actually looking at the trend like what does more advanced testing look like? What are you doing?

Speaker 1:

you, you can track over multiple days. You know, in an ideal world that's great, although it can be quite a costly option. Um, but what's more helpful is looking at, kind of the the journey that your hormones go through. So from how they're produced to the types. You know there's multiple types of oestrogens. There's three different types of oestrogens that we have. So looking at all those free oestrogens and then their metabolites, which is what they get broken down into, and looking at a whole journey through to how they're eliminated.

Speaker 1:

And sometimes that can mean doing a Dutch test, which is a test that looks all of those things and doing something like that alongside nutrient testing and gut health testing, maybe even looking at the liver as well, because all of those are areas that really come into play with balancing hormones.

Speaker 1:

And you know we talk about hormones a lot as if they are the problem, but really they're still a symptom. The actual causes of hormone imbalance tend to be more linked to gut health and liver function and deficiencies, and stress and toxic load. These are all things that can disrupt the balance of your hormones Because, like you were saying before, it's perfectly normal to go through this transition where your hormones start to decline when they become out of balance with each other. That's something that tends to be more driven by might be poor estrogen detoxification. You know, when we have that initial spike in estrogen at the beginning of perimenopause, that could well be linked with poor estrogen detoxification. Or maybe you're not having regular enough bowel movements and you're reabsorbing some of the hormones from your guts and the change in these hormones can kind of trigger off some of these issues as well and make them more prominent. So when I talk about advanced testing, often what I'm really referring to is going that level deeper and not just looking at the hormones but looking at how the whole body is functioning.

Speaker 2:

So you get these results back and give us a case study of maybe the most common woman and that sounds demeaning. I'm not meaning that to sound demeaning, but like the most common patient that you see, the woman that maybe most typically goes through your office. What do those imbalances look like? And then what are you doing so like? Just give us a case example, what that looks like, how you even approach that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'd say the typical woman who comes to me.

Speaker 1:

They tend to be someone who's already eaten pretty well, they're already pretty active and they've found that the weight is starting to go on despite them not changing anything or despite their best efforts.

Speaker 1:

And when we run the tests, first of all, they've often already been to their doctors to have hormone testing and, um, you know, look for deficiencies and the standard kind of basic testing that doctors do, and they've usually been told that everything's absolutely normal and they just need to try harder to to lose the weight, or to often that they'll be told lose weight and then all your symptoms will improve.

Speaker 1:

Um, but when we run the more advanced tests, what we often find is so often there are gut issues, when that might be an issue with absorbing nutrients properly or imbalances in the gut, bacteria and yeast. Typically it can be an overgrowth of those things which can cause inflammation and cravings and disruption to absorption. We very often find quite sluggish liver pathways, so people aren't detoxing efficiently, and so often we find that the thyroid isn't functioning optimally as well and there might be various other things going on. But those are some really common things that we see and functioning optimally as well, and you know, there might be various other things going on but those are some really common things that we see.

Speaker 1:

Is that blood work, by the way? Primarily that you're taking blood work.

Speaker 1:

It's a combination of blood and urine so that we can assess things in the ideal way. So some of these things aren't best assessed through blood, and I like doing organic acid testing, which is where we're really looking at the waste products that are produced as a result of all the metabolic processes that are happening in your body. That gives us a good insight into things like how your mitochondria are working and how that fat burning and energy production process are happening, and your individual need for various nutrients. So, yeah, when we try to address these issues, first of all, we always do it in a step-by-step way rather than like overhauling everything at once. We just work on one thing at a time, because any changes that you make, you want to make sure they're going to be sustainable. You know something that you can stick with in the long term, because otherwise there's no point. The issues will come back.

Speaker 2:

And you know which one works. Ladies, if I could say this a million times don't do everything at one time, because then you don't know what's working.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, that's so true um and so where we start will depend on the individual, but if there are gut issues, we so often start there and normally before we've got the test results back.

Speaker 1:

We've been working on blood sugar balance and and getting enough protein and that sort of thing, um, but once the results come back, we very often start with working on gut health, because that has such a knock-on effect on everything else in the body, um, so we'll kind of go through it step by step, strategically, like that, and, and that will involve dietary changes, but not necessarily going on a diet in fact, never going on a diet more making sure that the person is eating enough of what they need and that will look different for each person, but basically making sure that we're getting plenty of nutrients, plenty of macronutrients, micronutrients into the diet.

Speaker 1:

Focusing on exercise, again, not being prescriptive, but more thinking about what does this person need to thrive? And very often I have lots of women that come to me that are overdoing it a bit when it comes to the cardio and the intensity, and very often we're thinking about actually scaling it back in terms of let's do more walking, let's do more strength training, yoga, pilates, swimming, those sorts of things, as opposed to running marathons or, you know, spending hours on the cross trainer or whatever. Um, so tweaking their activity, also going beyond food and exercise and thinking about things like stress and sleep and toxic load, exposure to environmental toxins and, of course, mindset as well, because, again, there's no point making these changes if you know there's going to be self-sabotage coming in, emotional eating coming in, because they're going to just make you feel like you're failing, basically. So working on mindset is really key to bring all of this together.

Speaker 2:

I'm just curious if you could say, in your years of experience, if you could give one nutritional recommendation, one thing that you have seen more often than not be the key to improvement, what would it be?

Speaker 1:

that's a really big question, and I would probably be inclined to say protein because, despite all of the noise around protein it would have been my answer about it despite it being on.

Speaker 1:

You know what everyone's talking about. Still, I look at so many food diaries and I very rarely see someone who is eating enough protein consistently. And you know it doesn't have to be. You know that you're only eating protein. We obviously don't want that at all, but we just need to be getting it in consistently and in good quality forms as well, because, unfortunately, when a lot of the food diaries that I look at are achieving enough protein, often it's in very processed forms, which has its own issues. So, yeah, that's probably the best place to start for most people.

Speaker 2:

Ladies, did you notice I did not give any hints. They all know here how much I talk about protein. It's the key to unlocking so many quality things about our health. So love that. Tell us more about what you offer, because I think where a lot of us struggle and Alison touched on it is that we don't know where to go to get this testing. Half of it is just the reality that you know. We know we need more advanced testing, but who do you go to to see? Because when you Google it it's you'll get everything under the sun and then you have no idea if you can even trust the person that you're going to to see. So one, do you do this type of testing? You're in the UK. Is it something you can do virtually, if you will? And then just tell us a little bit about what you offer and where people can follow you, join you learn from you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, yes, I do do this testing with my clients and, yes, it's something that we can do virtually, because we have labs in the US as well that we can access. So we yeah, I mean there are there'll be other places that you can get testing from. You know, maybe for a functional medicine doctor, the experience that many of my clients who have been to a functional medicine doctor have had some of them have had a great experience some of them have just had tests done, been prescribed supplements and then that's it, and it hasn't been the full lifestyle intervention which is so critical, because I really feel that supplements are like the cherry on top. They really help everything to kind of come together. Alone, they can be pretty useless, to be honest. So that's just some experience that some of my clients have had with functional medicine doctors, but I'm sure many of them are fabulous as well, so you could go to a functional medicine doctor.

Speaker 1:

But, as I say, we do do the testing as part of our program, the Nourish Method, and this is, as I say, where we bring it all together and take you through a step-by-step approach with one-to-one consultancy and kind of making sure that we address all of the things that come up in a really holistic, strategic way where you're going to be able to maintain it long term, um, so, to find out more about that, you could visit my website, which is louisedigbynutritioncom, and I also have a five-day challenge, which is quite a good way of dipping your toe or kind of like a stepping stone, and that's all about getting the foundations in place. Uh, you know, we talk a lot about what we've spoken about today in more detail the hormones, repairing your metabolism, getting into toxic load and how stress impacts your body. Um, so we get those foundations in place in my metabolism reset challenge and then, you know, if you want to continue your journey, then the nourish method is a good next step after that.

Speaker 2:

Love that. What is the URL for the metabolism reset? Where do people go?

Speaker 1:

If you go to louisedigbynutritioncom forward, slash challenge that should, that should take you to it awesome.

Speaker 2:

We'll make sure that that is all in the show notes and also in the app. Ladies for the early morning habit community. I love what you do. It's such an honor to have you and it's so fun when we get to meet people from literally across the ocean or across the pond, as we might say and thank you for the amazing work that you're doing. Let me pray for us before we go and also thank God for you.

Speaker 2:

Luis. Lord, thank you so much for just the blessing that you give us through education and life experience and the way that we can learn from each other. Thank you for the service that Louise is offering women and empowering other women to thrive and there's just always so much to uncover and to learn and I'm so grateful for the expertise that you have given other people to share. And I pray your blessing over Louise. I pray your hand over her work, over her heart, over her home, and that the fruit of her labor would just be sweet. And thank you for the work that she's doing. I pray for the rest of us as we go forward in our week. Give us strength, give us courage, and thank you so much for the many blessings that you have given us and pray that we would go forward well inside and outside Jesus' name amen.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Ahna Fulmer

Host