Why You Need To Know About The Menopause in Your 30s (and 20s) - Insights with Marie Frost | Ep 104

Being in your thirties, you might not think the menopause is on your radar just yet... But imagine approaching your forties, noticing changes in your body, and having no clue what's happening. That's what happened to Marie Frost, our special guest from Nutricore Health, who started experiencing perimenopausal symptoms after having a baby. Join us as Marie bravely shares her deeply personal journey through perimenopause, shattering misconceptions about menopause, and emphasising the importance of recognising and understanding the often overlooked symptoms of this critical phase in a woman's life, and sharing how we, as women in our 20s and 30s, can start to understand and prepare for the inevitable transition through the perimenopause.

The ever-fluctuating hormones during this phase often lead to misdiagnosis, making it crucial for women in their twenties and thirties to be aware and proactive about their health.

This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom, offering insights into navigating this mid-life stage before you actually get there, learning to taking better care of yourself *now* to ensure longevity and quality of life. Tune in for a conversation that empowers every woman to take proactive steps towards their health as perimenopause gets closer every year.

Links

Follow Marie on Instagram: Marie Frost - Nutricore Health Instagram
Join Marie's "Women's Health Hub" FB Group

References:
Maisie Hill: Period Power
Mariella Frostrape: Cracking the Menopause
Laura Briden: Hormon Re

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Chapters

• 0:05 Menopause Awareness and Symptoms
• 10:32 Understanding Perimenopause Symptoms and Lifestyle Factors
• 16:48 Manage Stress and Sleep for Hormones
• 28:36 Community Support for Managing Health

Transcript

Chantelle: 0:05

Episode of the Single Girls Guide to Life, your ultimate guide to living on your own in your 20s, 30s and 40s, looking at all of the things from solo trips, single life and just managing being on your own when everybody else expects you to be getting into a relationship. And this week we're going to be talking about something a little bit different, something that I didn't necessarily have on my radar and I don't think a lot of us have on our radar. It comes as I saw. The lovely guest that we have and I'll introduce you to her in a moment was doing a lot of work and talks around Menopause Awareness Month, which happened in October.

Chantelle: 0:41

I missed the boat on that because it wasn't a topic that I was aware of, but it clearly worked because it got my attention and I thought what a fantastic thing to think about, because I've heard my mum, my aunt at the time, my mother-in-law talking about these things and then talking about all these different bracelet things. They're trying on some sort of thing she wore around here I don't know if it was and was trying all these things to manage some of the symptoms and I'm thinking, god, that's the last thing I want to be dealing with and, quite frankly, didn't realize how mad it could be. You get to talk about menopause at all and the basics of it, and so we have Marie Frost-In from Nutrachore Health. She is a women's health coach and nutritional therapist and she supports women's health through diet and lifestyle and I know she's been talking a lot to women in Essex in particular about menopause awareness. So I would like to introduce Marie to the show and say hello, marie, how are you doing? Tell us a little bit about it.

Marie: 1:37

Hi, lancel, and I think it's great that you've put me on this podcast, because I think we under assumption or presumption that menopause just happens to us when we're like 50s, 60s and the age old images that we see on social media this old, ageing women with gray hair fanning themselves from a hot flush that's just not realistic to the type of person who is experiencing these symptoms anymore and it's actually a false representation anyway, because that's kind of like what you would expect a woman to look like coming out the other side. I personally, I'm 45 years old. I started experiencing symptoms of perimenopause when I was 37, when I was trying to get pregnant, and at no point did anyone even talk about perimenopause, let alone. Well, I think maybe they were just starting to, you know, talking more about menopause. But perimenopause wasn't a topic of discussion and I think for me it was just like oh, you've got to diminish the verumersive, you're going to struggle having children, you have to have IVF. No one actually even said oh, maybe your reproductive system is retiring early and you're starting your transition to menopause, and I think that that would have helped me understand what I was experiencing and it may have helped me address how I felt. So anyway, that was kind of how I started my journey and made me think about more diet, lifestyle, like holistic health, and that's when I started studying. And then I did have a child and then I had a massive drop post birth.

Marie: 3:15

So when I had my child, this first two years I completely my hormones were flawed because I was in perimenopause, but no one explained that I'm going to be like it'll be like dropping off a cliff for my hormones, and so I had a really, really hard time and even though I was already studying nutritional therapy I think I was already a health coach by that point I hadn't at the time, I guess, specialized in that area, and it was a real struggle for me. I just actually put it down to being motherhood. You know, is this what motherhood really like? And I was a bit like oh my God, this is horrendous. And it was during COVID as well. So it, you know, there was lots of contributing factors that made it a lot worse than it had to be.

Marie: 3:58

But you know, just not not understanding what was even going on, feeling alone, thinking it's you, you're a bad mom, blah, blah, blah, because there was no one to initially say oh, this could be perimenopause, and if you're perimenopausal, you can feel like this and no sleep can really exacerbate those symptoms and you can feel horrendous and you might just want to cry, you might feel really low, you might not get any sleep, you might be irritable and all these kinds of things.

Marie: 4:23

So that's why I ended up doing what I was doing, because I wanted to make sure that women understood what perimenopause was really, understood that the lead up to menopause was really symptomatic, had the knowledge, knew they weren't alone and knew there was things they could do about it. So that's kind of why I set up my business and geared it towards women's health and more recently, I didn't want to specialize in perimenopause, because that's what everyone seemed to be doing. However, every single client who came to me there was an element of that because of my age and the women I was attracting. So I've decided that it's there's no running away from it. People do need this information and there's a need there, and so now I'm either running workshops, working with women one to one or doing talks and to make sure that they've got the support they need to get through this transition.

Chantelle: 5:14

And my story with us so we can get an idea of where that all comes from. And congratulations on having me in the middle of all of that and surviving that through a lockdown as well. And it's interesting that you say all these things in the way that they sort of overlapped and it was being put down to having a baby, that it sort of blurred it In terms of the symptoms that you were having, what were they and also what symptoms, even if you didn't have them, do we need to look out for for this perimenopausal bit, which is the bit before menopause actually takes its full onset there?

Marie: 5:46

So I think first I just want to just clarify the terminology, because another thing is people often say menopause and they switch in between perimenopause, menopause and it's a bit confusing. So people often talk about menopause as like the collective, like all three stages that you go through. So you've got perimenopause, menopause, then postmenopause. They're the three stages and menopause is actually just one moment in time. So it's just, it marks the 12 months without no period, so it's a cessation of your menstrual cycle and literally the next day you will be in the postmenopausal stage. So it's literally one moment in time, actual menopause. And I think that's often a revelation sometimes for people just to hear that because everything's just menopause. Menopause and perimenopause is the most symptomatic stage that leads up to that point. And late stage of perimenopause is when it's really symptomatic and you could get more hot flushes and a hot night switch. Well, you potentially could get those symptoms and they're the symptoms we the most common ones we associate menopause when we talk about is hot flushes and sweats. So perimenopause, which, like I said, is the most symptomatic part of it, because it's where all your symptoms start and they lead up to the cessation of your menstrual cycle that can start as early as your mid-30s and I think it's really important to know this because one I'm seeing and people experience in symptoms earlier than they ever have done, but also because a lot of people are assuming that this can't apply to them because they're too young. I think it's also important to point out why we're seeing it earlier, and that's because of our modern lifestyles, like if you think back to when maybe our grandparents, for example, were going through the menopause because I will keep calling it as the collective they may have just had some symptoms in the late stage of hot flushes and because, typically, if you think about your grandparents well, mine in particular they wouldn't have had a child at this age. They would have already moved out. So they wouldn't have had children because you were thinking the later stage. So towards late 40s to 50s, they would have had their child, have moved out. They wouldn't maybe have not been working by default, they wouldn't have had loads of pesticides, they wouldn't have had technology, they wouldn't have had been available 24 hours. The food will most likely be local, seasonal, organic by default. They probably were more active. They knew what it was like to be bored and switched off, so they didn't have the modern lifestyle exacerbating their symptoms and depleting them of nutrients and things like that impacting their health. So our Western modern lifestyle really has a massive impact on our hormones and during this stage, it's the diet and lifestyle factors and the environment we live in which is actually exacerbating symptoms more than they probably used to be. So that's why I think we're seeing more and that's why we're seeing so many people impacted now.

Marie: 9:10

But I think one of the other things is really important and this was something I was trying to highlight recently, because everyone has jumped on the whole menopause bandwagon, which is now called menowashing. So just chuck the word menow in front of anything can hike the numbers up right. So there's a market that everyone wants to coin in on, but I do think now because of celebrities and people like that talking about it, which is amazing because it raises the profile it also means that some people just assume that they're in perimenopause and they have certain symptoms and they just assume they're in perimenopause and they might go on HIT. They might not, but, however, what they're doing is masking or ignoring the underlying health issues, because there's overlapping symptoms which could be labelled as perimenopause, but they could also be labelled from nutritional deficiencies or lifestyle factors or other underlying health conditions.

Marie: 10:13

And I think, because of the big, I don't know, like some massive surge in discussion and topic, I mean it's everywhere now, isn't it? Well, it feels like well. To me it feels like it's everywhere because I'm in the business, right, but however it's in the industry, it's everywhere. But also I'm seeing supplements and programmes on TV and everything. Like I said, it's great to raise awareness, but then some people just make assumptions that they're labelling themselves and not addressing diet and lifestyle. So I think it's understanding what is actually a direct impact of perimenopause and what could actually be down to diet and lifestyle.

Chantelle: 10:52

So they're assuming some of the symptoms that they're experiencing are perimenopause, but in actual fact it might be. But it also could be a number of other things, which could be lifestyle, could be diet.

Marie: 11:05

Yes, yeah, or could be another health condition, so even like underactive thyroid. So hyperthyroidism has similar symptoms which overlap with perimenopause and in most cases when you go to your GP they'll likely run a blood test and include tests to test your thyroid to rule that out. So rule of elimination and again, what they test and don't test depends on your age of it. But it's just Because everyone's talking about it, so much people self-diagnose. But by doing that, or some people just maybe put it down to that and just say, oh, it's just that, I'll get on with my life and ignore it.

Marie: 11:43

They might, rather than looking at digging into why they're feeling something, they might just say I must be perimenopause rather than oh, actually, why am I feeling like that? Is it because I've got no downtime? Is it because I'm constantly stressed and spinning too many plates and things like that? It's almost like our hormones, because in perimenopause our progesterone drops and our estrogen fluctuates and it goes higher than it ever has done and lower than it has done. So it's a bit of a roller coaster and it can vary month to month, year to year. It's really unpredictable and that's the problem it's so unpredictable and I think I've just forgotten what I was going to say, what was I going to say my progesterone unpredictable?

Chantelle: 12:29

What did I say before that it was we were talking about. I was clarifying lifestyle choices, hormones, and then you were defining that it was what was actually happening. Did something different happen to what most people think? Or do people think it's something else? It's okay. If not, we can pick something up elsewhere. I'll just cut it and make it. Oh my God, I'm sure I had a really good point there, though this is the problem, right, I mean that does happen to me too, and I don't think I'm in perimenopause, I'm only 30. I've got to keep this bit in now. I have a really good point in podcasting, and then I've got like, where did it go? Where did it happen? But yeah, I mean we're seeing potentially some live symptoms of that.

Marie: 13:16

We are seeing that because I will let. So this is one of the. It's a very good point, actually. So there's a lot that you can do through diet and lifestyle, but there's some things that are out of your control. So I actually did a live on my Instagram this week of me having a very overwhelming moment after school drop off and explaining how you can try and make change through diet and lifestyle and think that you're ticking all the boxes and you are ticking the little boxes. But then if you've got events that are out of your control like a small child who could be unpredictable, and you've just come out of half term so you're a bit tired then sometime events like that or stress like that who was then sick the next day as well, so lack of sleep that's when you haven't got the resilience that you used to have, and I now remember what I was going to say on.

Marie: 14:10

The last point was these hormones the progesterone and the estrogen. They have many protective factors and benefits and they are like having big, fluffy protective coat around us and as we go through menopause, perimenopause, that coat is disappearing and it's kind of revealing what's bare underneath. And someone on a I was on a course the other day and someone described it as the tide going out. And then the estrogen disappearing is like the tide going out, and then you're just left bare with what's left on the shore. And that could be underlying health issues and they might have always been there, but potentially your hormones were protecting you and you were only having mild symptoms or you've not even noticed anything. So it's like the protective layer has been pulled back and this is really what's going on.

Marie: 15:04

And then these symptoms are you getting a tap on the shoulder to say hold on, listen. This is where you need to pay attention. This is where you need to provide some extra nourishment, some love and support to your body, because these are areas that are a bit weakened and that your symptoms, your body messaging you to say because it's the only way it can communicate to you is by symptoms saying look, this is stuff that you need to look out for now. So, really, this midlife age, so 40s onwards it's like a pivotal moment. It's like a window of opportunity to address any underlying health concerns, like you've winged it in your 20s and your 30s. Now you need to get your shit together and reevaluate your health and your lifestyle for longevity and quality of life, and this is the moment where you need to take that action. And well, actually, if you could do it in your 30s, even better. Right, because you're preventing it.

Chantelle: 16:02

Well, yeah, what can we be doing now? So, whilst this might not be on everyone's mind, I now, just having turned 30, like the concept of aging is becoming like a lot clearer to me, not just menopause or perimenopause or anything like that. Just oh, like I'm not as youthful as I used to be. I wrinkled and stuff. I've always had gray hair, so that's not an issue, but it does come down to well, if I've got some awareness of what you're describing now and the challenges that perimenopause brings on with its symptoms and potentially lifestyle and diet feeds into that, what can 20, 30-year-olds ones that are conscious of that, what can we be doing now to get into good habits ahead of hitting that potential time from, say, 40 onwards?

Marie: 16:48

Yeah, the biggest driver of anything is stress, right. So poor sleep and stress are the biggest drivers of disease. They're also the biggest impact to your hormone health and quite often, even if you was in your 30s and you wasn't perimenopause, or if you were highly stressed, that could impact your hormone production To the point you could see similar symptoms to that of perimenopause, because it can suppress progesterone. You might not ovulate and therefore you would have low hormones that month and you would have the same kind of symptoms of mood, irritability and things like that. So you can actually have a hormone imbalance at any point in your life that you have a menstrual cycle. So the lead up to menopause is just a longer period of that where it's more noticeable and you actually will definitely have an imbalance. But you can have an imbalance from stress, lifestyle and diet at any point. So it's always important.

Marie: 17:43

But we acknowledge the fact that we do wing it and enjoy our lives in our 20s and 30s and then suddenly, mid-30s onwards, we're just like hmm, you know, can't lose weight how I used to, can't start up all night like I used to hangovers, and that's because our body's probably not been as looked after as much as it could have been. So what we need to do is nourish our body. We need to give it the nutrients that it needs to function properly. We also need to allow our body to rest and recover. So sleep is incredibly important. We have to have sleep. It's where we repair, it's where our immune system kicks in, and if we don't get sleep, it can impact our food choices, our hormone regulation and it's just a knock on effect to everything. So you have to think holistically, so it's like the different pillars of health. So you need to nail your sleep, your stress levels and your nutrition and movement Gen and movement yes, got it.

Chantelle: 18:39

And then there are any sort of benchmarks for those areas, always like don't be stressed or reduce stress, getting a particular number of hours. There's always a debate about sleep, I feel like. But is there anything that people can actually start to focus in on, to set themselves some goals for with that?

Marie: 18:54

Yeah, so sleep. I guess the rule is. You know, the recommendations are always between like seven to eight hours, seven to nine hours. I would always recommend from a sleep hygiene point of view, like, get off technology before you go to bed, especially if you're someone who struggles with sleep. You know, if you struggle with sleep, then technology is not your friend.

Marie: 19:14

So many of us now have our phones next to our bed. You know, put them on airplane mode. That's going to disrupt your sleep if it's there. And you've got to think as well about the network. You know it's constantly trying to connect to a network and I also recently have said to a few clients to remove them smartwatches at night, and I know everyone I mean not many people are going to like this. The reason I say it's just because that watch is constantly trying to reconnect back to your phone or Bluetooth and I'm just like and you sleep with it right by your head and you know the the waves are omitting, they think a lot lower than a phone, but then a phone isn't on your body 24, seven and I think from an energy point of view it could be disrupting for people and so you don't really want Wi-Fi around you and I put your phone on at least airplane mode, and some people recommend, like switching off your Wi-Fi at night.

Marie: 20:05

That hasn't quite happened to my house, but you know there's things like that that can affect your sleep. And, of course, when do you last eat a meal? You know what kind of food are you eating in the evening? Are you drinking alcohol, like? All these things can disrupt your sleep. So sleep is where we start, and because all of that can then have a knock on effect to your mood and your food and your energy levels, which then impacts what exercise you do. So stress wise.

Marie: 20:29

You know the recommendations are always like do something really chill and relaxing, like meditation and yoga, go for a walk, and if that's what brings you joy or floats your boat, then do it. But it's something that allows you to switch off and wind down. So I could actually quite easily just go out on my bike and do a 20 K on a road bike and but for me that's mindfulness, because I've switched off, because I don't get hit by a truck or something. You know I'm, I'm focusing on riding my bike and it brings me joy. It's also physical, so you know door fiends and all that. So it's got positive effects from so many angles, but that's my mindfulness.

Marie: 21:08

So I think it's important for people to find something that brings them joy and not say, oh, I've got to go and do meditation or yoga, although they are, you know, they're very beneficial, but I just feel like some people just might not do those things. I think that's the only way to wind down or relax. It could just be getting space from your family in a room with a closed door and having a cup of tea and reading the book. But there's great meditations and things that are short and everything on headspace, calm, timer. They've got really short meditations you can do. That can be really helpful and I think, yeah, there's lots of things you can do from a mind perspective.

Marie: 21:48

So you'd need to just find ways to wind down, and women in particular are always spinning too many plates. They always like I've got to do this, this, this and this and this, and we have so many things going on. And now we're like mums. We're, you know, we've got our own businesses. We've got either teenagers, small kids. We're just running around all the time because we always have to be busy. We want our kids busy. Everyone's got a minute. What club are you driving your kids to today? What activity are they going to do Then? What activity are you going to do? Oh, you've got to cook everyone this amazing meal. There's so much pressure to be perfect and busy for women, yeah, and it's actually incredibly detrimental to our health, like we really need to chill Even those without children in that regard.

Chantelle: 22:35

You know there's other pressures of the whole dating scenario and building the stress up for there, and I suppose that when you link that back to the work that I've done with women before about that, you know, getting stressed over a situation you can't control, it brings back to what you were saying in a different context of but you can't control your relationship status to a particular degree.

Chantelle: 22:53

You have to be able to let go of that and accept it and find the things that make you feel happy, that you can get joy from it, whether it is riding a bike, whether in my case, it would be like go along to a social or go into a solo trip and do something that like fills your soul up whilst reducing the opportunities and triggers for stress, which in in the case of like children is, it's a lot harder and having now the equivalent of Stepchildren around, I realized how they're just always on, especially when they're like under 10.

Chantelle: 23:20

But when it comes to when you're single and don't have that going on in your life, it is reducing it through the conversations with family sometimes, like sometimes you have to step away from your wider family life and see people less often if they are causing you stress in your life Unnecessarily so. Finding people for that right kind of support and this kind of goes probably regardless of menopause. It is that bit of Ensuring that you have that in place ahead of menopause, so you've got the right support networks, you're as chilled as you can be and you're building up all of these habits In my case over the next 10 years to sort of counteract Any of those effects that are going to be coming into play just because of hormones and that period of time.

Marie: 24:03

I was just gonna say it's about building resilience. It's like building your tank resilience to prep to get you through that transition. Yes, because if you don't do that and you go into perimenopause and like this is, you know, I did that, I'm, I'm building my back up and I've fallen. You know, I've gone back and forth a couple of times because life Happens. But it's like if you've done everything you can to build that tank up, when you've got no hormones to fall back on and you've got no resilience, that that's your resilience. Yeah, and if you don't even have any of that stacked up there to support you through that stage, then you're gonna have more symptoms and more struggles. So it's like you are, you know, building your resilience for your 30s to hopefully smoothly transition through your 40s into menopause.

Chantelle: 24:50

Yeah, and I think that's why this episode is so important, because it's easy to think that the menopause is, as you described at the start, for people with gray hair. It's for the people in their 40s that are gonna stop having periods and not able to have babies. But actually the work to prepare for that can potentially come now to have that smooth transition. And you mentioned headspace and other apps to use for meditation in terms of Knowing more, learning more about perimenopause, menopause itself and anything to help with that. Where can people start to look to get more support and understanding, particularly for those in their 20s and 30s, but in general otherwise?

Marie: 25:32

I'm just gonna point because I think you said at school was the last time you talked about I don't actually think menopause was spoken about at school. I think it was. I think I may have mentioned that that's when your periods stop or something like that. I don't remember it being spoke about at school because even periods were just Tinely. I don't even remember them being hardly spoken about. So we know that education in schools is a huge thing that needs to change and there are people here about at the moment who are trying to push for change.

Marie: 25:58

An easy book to probably look at is Maisie Hill. She did the period one, might be period power, but she also did a menopause one, and they're probably some Easier books to look at for if you're in your 30s, which just probably start to introduce you through, because the other books like cracking the menopause yeah, it's about Mariella Frostrape, so that's an older woman recalling her journey. So maybe Maisie Hill was a good starting point. I want to say I'm not sure there is any books targeted specifically for 30s. I feel like it's for people who are actually during, like in the In perimenopause, menopause. So I Like Laura biden moon. I don't. So she's got hormone repair manual and she's also got a period one as well, and her books are brilliant and they do Go into all the detail and they're easy to flick through as well for your symptom or what you're dealing with. So she's excellent and most people in my industry reference her, or the professor that she quotes quite a lot, who does lots of studies.

Chantelle: 27:08

Amazing. So it looks like Maisie Hill's got a whole podcast on period power helping women facing your problems. So all of those I'll put a link to in the description in case anybody wants to look at it. And hey, I've done my bit to bring the menopause to the attention of people in their 20s, that is, and there's listeners that are in their 40s who might just be interested in picking up on those, because they're actually Starting that experience now. So a big thank you to you, marie, for coming along. If people want to find out more from you, not just about menopause I know that was sort of a an aspect you were putting out there because of menopause awareness but if they want to find out any more from you in terms of women's health coaching or the nutritional therapy that you Provide, how can they get hold of you?

Marie: 27:47

So my Instagram handle is Nutricor underscore health. I also have a free Facebook group for women actually, and I do have some people in their 30s in it and that's called Nutricor women's health hub and that's a really like safe Place and supportive group where people can just ask anything and I will respond. And that's just a free Facebook group which I started this year, which I'm trying to build up a nice community in there and it's really good, it's quite interactive and Otherwise you can reach me at WW dot neutral dash core dot code at UK. But you can put that link in. That's a bit of a mouthful. I need to change that, you know.

Chantelle: 28:27

No worries at all. And for those that listen to the single girls guide to life before, you'll know that community is one of the most valuable things that I believe in. It's one of our core values Hent to single girls club. But this kind of stuff is not the stuff I know in depth. It's the reason I bring guests like Marie on to Tell you more about it.

Chantelle: 28:43

And if you think that that's going to be a community that's going to support you, then go and find that, because your tribe isn't just single people, it's other people maybe that are managing their health and finding ways to deal with it through diet and lifestyle, and Finding those little other tribes that are going to help you support yourself through the next 10 years or more, make friends, get support, and in a safe way as well. So thank you again for providing all of that information. Thanks for sharing the links there, which I will put in the description for everybody and for anybody listening. Any questions, feel free to connect with Marie on all of that. That was detailed there. But until next time, everybody keep celebrating single life together.