Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Q&A with Nika: Essential Tips for Nutrition and Hormonal Balance with Nikki Durkin

• Nika Lawrie, Nikki Durkin • Season 2024 • Episode 94

Share episode

Ever wondered how to truly balance your hormones for optimal health? In this episode, Nikki Durkin flips the script and interviews Nika Lawrie to dive into the fascinating world of female hormone health. Together, they break down the ebb and flow of hormones, tackle common misconceptions, and highlight key indicators of hormonal well-being like regular cycles, quality sleep, and maintaining a healthy body weight.

They also explore the impact of hormonal birth control, the importance of understanding your unique menstrual patterns, and how modern stressors affect women’s health. From stress management to holistic approaches, this episode is packed with practical tips and insights for embracing natural wellness and achieving hormonal balance.

MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:
Nikki's Episodes: 

Yuka App: https://yuka.io/en/

Birth Control Documentary: https://www.thebusinessof.life/the-business-of-birth-control

CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie

SUBMIT A QUESTION OR REQUEST A TOPIC:
I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie

DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business, personal, or wellness success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.

AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:
*Some of the resources and advertisements shared throughout the podcast episodes may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission.

Nika Lawrie:

Nikki, welcome back to the show. I'm so happy to have you here today. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, so for the listeners, viewers we are flipping the script today, so I invited my dear friend Nikki back onto the show. She was on the podcast a couple weeks ago talking about Gamism AI. If you haven't listened to her episodes, please, please, go listen to them. There's two. We had to split it up into part one and part two because we just went on forever and it was amazing. But I tell you, her episodes will completely change your life, so please go check them out. I will link to them in the show notes. But today Nikki is coming back to get the download from me, asking me questions all about hormones and female reproductive wellness and that kind of stuff. So, nikki, with that, I'm going to turn it over to you. I am your guest. You ask away.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay. So it's quite cool because when I met Nika and she was telling me like everything that she knew and she had all of this knowledge about, like functional health, and the thing that was really interesting to me that I asked her about was hormones, because you kind of hear all the time like exercise and sleep and and I think specifically for women's health, which is something that I wasn't educated on in high school or by society is like hormone health. So I thought maybe you could just kind of give me the download. What do I need to know as a woman? So I thought maybe we could start by looking at like what are the signs that my hormones actually are healthy? Yeah, and like it's like nothing to worry about, like it's it, this is like functioning fine.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely so. There's bunches of different signs, but the first thing I want to say is balancing your hormones is kind of a misnomer, so we always hear you know women should balance their hormones. Your hormones are going to ebb and flow every day. They're going to ebb and flow throughout the month, so they change as you sleep versus you're awake. So there's not really a balancing of hormones. They're always going to increase and decrease depending on what's going on or what time of month or day it is. So that's the first thing. But there are very key indicators of ranges that your hormones should be functioning in, and that's really the area that we want to consider when we're thinking about quote unquote balancing our hormones. Are our hormones, even though they kind of ebb and flow, are they staying within the healthy ranges? And that's the big thing that we want to look at. One of the biggest things to look at specifically for women and hormones is our menstrual cycle. And I'm going to say this with a caveat If you're on hormonal birth control whether that is the pill or an IUD or some kind of insert like the hormonal IUD there's a copper IUD that doesn't mess with your hormones, but the hormonal IUD well, any of those are going to impact how your hormones function throughout the day or throughout the month, and so your range of hormones is going to be different and function different than the average woman not on a hormonal birth control. So that's the biggest thing to understand. So women who are often on hormonal birth control or the IUD that has hormones, don't have any periods. They can go six months or five years without a period and we can go down that rabbit hole. I've got a bunch of issues with that, but to stay within the conversation right now, the biggest thing to understand is that the hormones from the birth control are stopping your brain from sending hormonal signals to your reproductive system to then release an egg and go through the whole period process, the menstrual process. So one of the biggest signs if you're not on a hormonal birth control is your periods and are you having a regular period, and that can range very differently for women. It can range from every like 20 days to every like 45 days. It can be a big range. So that 28 day you know every 28 days you should have a period. That's just kind of a ballpark. It's not an exact science. Every woman's going to be different and so if you're having a regular period every, you know, four or five weeks or so, and it's your regular system, so you. So for me I sit around like 32 days, and I've always kind of been around that, and so I have a period ballpark every 32 days or so, and so whatever that is for you, as long as you're having that normally, then that's a good sign that your hormones are fairly healthy.

Nika Lawrie:

The other two pieces that you really want to consider and there's other factors too but is your sleep? How is your quality of sleep, especially as women start to age? So, are you waking up in the middle of the night? Are you having a hard time falling asleep? Are you sleeping like, is it light sleep, where you're not feeling rested in the morning, or you getting that good quality, deep sleep where you're ready to go in the morning?

Nika Lawrie:

If you're not, that's a good sign that some type of hormone in your body is dysregulated. It's not where it should be, and there are several that play a role in that too, which we can get into. And then the last one, I would say it's a big one. Especially as women start to hit ths and 40s, it'll start to change a lot. Is your weight? Where is your weight at? And each woman's healthy body weight is going to be different. There's not a specific weight range that a woman should be in in the sense of the global picture, but each woman will have a range based off of her specific body type. That's healthy, and if you're outside of that healthy pocket of range, a lot of that can be contributed to hormonal dysregulation, where your hormones are not where they should be. So, weight gain, sleep issues, menstrual cycle those are the big three that you want to consider when thinking about your hormones.

Nikki Durkin:

And okay. So let's say I was to notice something's kind of off with those things. If I was to just go to a doctor and say, you know, like I'm not sleeping well during the night or like, notice weight gain, is it common to be misdiagnosed with something else, like does this get kind of okay? Do you want to tell me about what to watch out for?

Nika Lawrie:

yeah, so, um, so I know. So you're in columbia right now. I'm in the united states, um, so it can be different depending on where you are around the world. So, kind of speaking to global population, I I know here in the United States a lot of women are struggling. They go to their physician and they say I have one, two, three symptoms, whatever it is, and the doctors are not listening to them or maybe they're misdiagnosing them, or maybe they're attributing those symptoms to something different and they're being misdiagnosed. So this is a very, very common issue. I know it's very prevalent here in the United States.

Nika Lawrie:

I hear from women around the world struggling with the same kind of thing, though it's kind of different country by country and health system by health system. But a lot of the time people will say you know, maybe you are having a hard time sleeping and you're craving sugary foods, and so they'll be like oh, maybe you're just closer to your period and your body's just craving that kind of thing. Or they'll say your sleep issues are caused by stress, when reality it's a hormone deficiency or a hormone issue, and so there's a lot of back and forth pieces. It's kind of hard to give specific examples because each person is going to be different, but the key, what you want to do is have a conversation with your physician or your medical provider about where your hormones are at and actually have them tested. It's simple blood work, it's not complicated, it's usually one or two little vials of blood and they can test the different levels of your hormones. The biggest ones to look at for women are estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and understanding where those are.

Nika Lawrie:

Women often don't think about testosterone, but if your testosterone is too low, you can have sleep issues, you can have lethargy, you can feel like completely unmotivated, just kind of blah health issues depression, anxiety, those kinds of things and so it's really key to make sure that you know, say, you go in with depression or anxiety symptoms and then they give you an SSRI to help support the depression, but then they don't actually test your hormones. That just medication that they've given you for depression will not actually help address the root cause symptom, which is like the hormones being off, and so then you need to find out are the hormones off? And if they are, let's deep dive or dive deeper and find out why are the hormones off. What do we need to do? Does that make?

Nikki Durkin:

sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So I'm curious. It sounds like, obviously, I mean, we're talking about the human body, which is this self-organizing system. Yes, so, um, like stress being linked to hormones. Um, it sounds like that's kind of like a vicious cycle, because it's like are my hormones off because I'm stressed or am I stressed because my hormones are off or I don't know? Like, yes, you want to like elaborate?

Nika Lawrie:

yeah, it's kind of a chicken and an egg situation. Um, each person you know you'll probably hear me say this a billion times each person is going to be different. But if you are really stressed in life, if there's a lot of, you know, emotional going on maybe you've experienced some trauma. Even past trauma, like childhood trauma can still be causing that stress. If you're in a stressful work environment, an unhealthy relationship, you're dealing with a familiar drama or stress, that way, all of those are going to play a big role. They're going to increase your cortisol level, which is your stress response hormone, and that can cause havoc in your health or in your body and really disrupt how your hormones are communicating throughout your body. And so, yeah, so it's a little bit of a chicken in the egg which comes first, but I would give more preface to if there's external stress factors, that's likely playing a bigger role than you just being concerned that your hormones are out of whack and you need to fix something does that make sense?

Nikki Durkin:

oh no, it totally makes sense, and I brought back to like periods of my life where, if I was like very stressed, I could put on weight. Yeah, I would eat this like same thing, but I would just my body would do this like protective thing where it's like, well, I'm just gonna put on all the armor and then that's actually your like, even though we hate it.

Nika Lawrie:

That's actually your body working the exact way it's supposed to work. It puts on's like a. It's a stress response to fight or flight, like our bodies don't understand that. You know, an argument with our boyfriend is different than a lion attacking us right or starvation, there's not enough food around. So our bodies are going to react the same way they did a hundred thousand years ago right, we're going to. If we're we feel stressed from not enough food, our body's going to store fat on our on our bodies so that we have food, we have enough energy, basically to keep going Right, and so that response, even though we hate it, is totally normal. So the key there is to figure out how do I reduce the stress, calm that fight or flight and reduce the cortisol response, and then your body will kick back into a healthier functioning system yeah, like I did a complete.

Nikki Durkin:

I had to completely change my lifestyle from high stress like ceo running, running business, yeah, and then I was like, I was like you know what I want?

Nikki Durkin:

The soft life like just, and once I did that, I just I'm like I can't, I can't go back into that whole like grind, grind, move, move, move. Like that pace which I mean, if we're talking about women and men and the difference between like different needs and how the system's built and stuff. It's just like the more I've grown up and seen both sides of that world, like the mainstream society which is like it's built on men's schedules, like let's be like very consistent in our work, and like 24, 7 and push and grind and whatever. And I was just like, oh my god, I'm exhausted, um, and then, uh it for me it was like when I allowed myself or gave myself permission to slow down and like I was like I need to get stressed out of my life. It's like my body just naturally came into alignment. I didn't have to like control it, I didn't. I was like naturally, it's just like eating healthier, my body just let go of like all this stuff that it was just holding on to. So, yeah, it's fascinating.

Nikki Durkin:

It's like, yeah, it is, and especially because I think, like I don't know about you, but for me in Australia, when I grew up, grew up, it was like um, very much a paradigm of like having to control your body, like your body is bad and you need to like like whip it into shape and control it and earn, like earn a healthy body, rather than like no, no, you have a healthy body, you just have to like not do stuff that makes it unhealthy, like yeah, like like, like, and so I just I find it I don't know if you want to elaborate on that of like um, I think this like more peaceful, holistic caroline, of like that I perceive now my relationship with my health, which is like how do I nourish myself with food and water and exercise like and I only like to exercise most days a week, just like enjoy and like I don't force myself and like removing stress and stuff, and so like, how do you see those two like um, those two paradigms like pushing up against each other?

Nikki Durkin:

And then how can women embrace this paradigm that's better, like, more natural for them, but society's telling them it's like no, you have to like control, and like push and shove and take medication.

Nika Lawrie:

I love. I mean, I could go on and on about this, cause I think this is such a key thing. One of the things I was thinking about when you were speaking a minute ago was actually women. When we think about stress, the way society is set up, women have so many responsibilities, right, like we're we're now. You know part of the being the breadwinner, right, we have to go out and make money and have so many responsibilities, right, like we're now you know, part of being the breadwinner, right, we have to go out and make money and have the job. And then we also have to grow the child inside us. We have to give birth to the child. I mean, that stress alone is a whole other ballpark, right? So we grow the children, then we give birth to the children, and then our bodies are never the same. Our bodies are still like changing and transitioning after we give birth, so that's a stress and trauma on the body. Then we have to mentally carry the stress of raising a child and keeping this other human alone, while still trying to figure out how to take care of us and how to take care of our partner and how to keep our job going and how to keep the house running and how to keep the pets alive, right, like you have to do the grocery shopping, like there's so many stress layers that come with just being a woman in society, right, and so you know you and I have talked about vibrations in the other podcasts, but understanding the vibration level that we're at just being women in this society is huge, and so that stress vibration runs throughout our day all the time is huge, and so that stress vibration runs throughout our day all the time, and so whatever we can do to reduce that you know, unhealthy stress vibration as much as possible is really really key to overall health, and I love that. You brought up the idea of you know being healthy is not being forceful and like winning the award because I grinded out in the gym, I restricted this many things, and so I'm healthy because I did this and I get the award. Instead, it should be a conversation about how do I bring in healthy foods into my life to nourish my body.

Nika Lawrie:

How do I bring in if I'm going to eat a sweet treat? How do I bring that in a positive manner? So, like an example is my husband and I try to do a date night at least once a week. It's usually every other week because we have a pretty crazy schedule, but we always do a date night and when we go I'll try it. We usually go to a nice restaurant and if they have creme brulee it's my favorite dessert I'll always order the creme brulee and I don't worry about it and I don't stress about it, because it's like this joyful thing that I'm experiencing with my husband and it's a date night and we, you know, are enjoying time together and it's like a bonus that goes with that.

Nika Lawrie:

And so it's not about restricting sugar. It's about appreciating and bringing in that positive, almost like feminine, but like that soft energy of enjoying that sweet treat in that moment with my husband. Right, or yeah, or like thinking about working out. Like working out. It's less about like let's go to the gym and grind and work out. It's like how do I move my body where it feels good? So if it's like yoga or, you know, a long walk or a light hike in the foothills or whatever, right, like it's figuring out how do I keep moving my body in a way that makes my body feel good, have that positive energy, that kind of runs through your body after you've worked out. It doesn't mean that you have to, you know, run on the treadmill for an hour and a half, which I absolutely do not recommend.

Nika Lawrie:

But you know it's figuring out those much more. It's like listening to your internal energy of like, what is going to nourish my body, how do I feed my body, and then doing those things.

Nikki Durkin:

Mm-hmm, like what kind of? Because I think like so much of how we respond to life is based on, like, the questions that we're asking ourselves. And so what kind of questions would you shift into to shift out of the paradigm of, like, controlling, restricting, like just formulate, kind of like I need to like, exercise this much and do this much and eat any, eat these number of calories and whatever, like, for example, I've I started asking myself it's like, uh, what feels nourishing to me? Or it's like, it's like meditating on these words, like nourishment and joy, and like what is joyful to me, like when I go to the gym.

Nikki Durkin:

If I don't want to go to the gym, I don't, I don't go to the gym, but I want to go to the gym because it's like, because it's like I like making my body up with been sitting down and it feels like an expression of who I am. And there's certain um, you know, thought structures that I deliberately like will save myself before I go to remind myself that you know I get to move my body and I don't have to like or just like. So are there any kind of like mind tricks or um framing or tips that you have the audience about how they can shift their energy into more of that softer, like holistic paradigm that you're talking about.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, so there's two things. There's one that I've been recently really thinking about, kind of a paradigm shift for myself, but there's a saying I always say to myself when I like thinking about working out, is you can either have a short-term pain for long-term gain or you can have long-term pain for a short-term game, and what I mean by this is okay. So a short-term pain would be I'm going to go work out in the gym for half an hour, right, I'm going to go hard, you know, strength train, feel good, right, do that, and it's like it sucks for it really only sucks for like the first five minutes. When you get to the gym. Once you're in the mode, you're just like I can knock this out, right, but it's the short-term pain for a long-term gain. So like, if you do, you know, 30 minutes three times a week, your body's going to keep getting healthy and staying healthy and staying stronger, and so that's that long-term gain right On the opposite side of that.

Nika Lawrie:

So think about a short-term gain for a long-term pain. So thinking about and I'm not totally trying to hammer on sugar, but sugar is such a good example of this so like a short-term gain is like I'm going to drink a soda, right? Like you get that dopamine spike and you're like, oh, like that first sip with its little bubbles in your mouth, it's so good, right. So you get the short-term gain. It feels good for a few seconds. Even by the time you get to the end of the soda you're like, ugh, this is gross, I don't want any more. Right? So it's this short-term gain. But the long-term pain is like, if you keep drinking it every day or whatever, it leads to potentially diabetes or heart disease. Or you know, sugar plays a role in cancer. There's, you know, weight gain issues, there's all these other factors that, like, if you keep giving yourself that short-term gain, you're going to have that long-term pain.

Nika Lawrie:

Where, if you look at it on the other side, short-term pain is working out. Or you know, eating the vegetable that you don't like the way it tastes, but you know it's good for you. The short-term pain for a lifelong of health and wellness. So that's a big thing that I think about when I'm like, not convinced. I want to go work out in the gym and like, okay, short-term pain, long-term gain, right, it's just a little thing.

Nika Lawrie:

The other piece that I've really been working on, or like something that I've really come into my own over the last few months, especially recently is really looking at what I'm calling the positive energy principle. And so when we think about like you were talking about how do I nourish my body, so you have to learn to start to kind of listen to your body and kind of your body will send you those internal messages, right, and sometimes it's going to tell you I need to just rest and lay on the couch and like doom scroll, you know whatever your favorite social media platform is, or watch a you know a Netflix series or whatever it is Like. Sometimes that is the best, most nourishing thing you can do for your body. But maybe after you've watched four episodes of an eight episode series, your body's like you need to get up and do something, right, and so it's going to tell you it's time to move. You need to move and so instead of staying there for the next four episodes which I've honestly done myself, but try not to right, yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

Get up and move, go for a walk, eat some you know, cook a healthy meal or something, do something. And so it's listening to your body. It will tell you, you know, this feels good, which is positive energy, or this feels bad or uneasy, which is negative energy. And if you just listen carefully and you keep following the positive energy path, your body is going to tell you what you need, keeping in mind that your body's going to say, oh, I want sugar, but what sugar really is is oh, I want something that's going to feed my body and give me energy. And so there's a couple little you know caveats that you have to learn there. But really listening to what your body's saying and following what feels, ask yourself the two questions Does this feel good? Do I want more of this in my life, or does this feel bad? Is this leading me down an unhealthy path? And following the positive energy path, I think, is really really key.

Nikki Durkin:

Yeah, I mean it's been oh no, I'm just saying like in my life, like I think, transformative in terms of the relationship with my body and peace. It's like I just want peace, like give me peace in my life and my relationship with my body when I was like 21, it was entirely through the paradigm of like how do I control, restrict, you know, take some formula and like eat this amount of calories to do that, you know, like I have to do. I have to like fit into this narrow box and now it's like I just eat whatever I want, whenever I want. It's just like I don't want to eat junk food. Yeah, exactly, yeah, you know. So I'm like I want just eat whatever I want, whenever I want.

Nikki Durkin:

It's just like I don't want to eat junk food. Yeah, exactly. So I'm like I want to eat like delicious salads and wraps and like super nourishing, nutritious food, but I can eat whatever I want. I just don't want to eat that stuff, and then when I do want to eat it, I eat it, which is so much peace.

Nika Lawrie:

Oh my gosh. I think the big big thing, too, is that following you know, this like positive energy path gives you the freedom to like if you just want to eat something crappy every once in a while, it's okay. Don't do it all the time, but every once in a while, like, don't ride yourself and feel guilty and all these horrible things doing it, but it like 99% of the time, try to eat something healthy. But it's. It's giving you freedom from like I have to restrict calories here, or I have to cut these types of food out of my body or out of my diet, or I have to follow this strict keto diet or whatever. It is right Like you can cut out all of the noise of the health and wellness industry and start to listen to how do I nourish my body Like what is actually going to give me good quality energy. And if you don't know, then come talk to me and I'll tell you you know what fruits and vegetables and different things to eat. But really it's pretty straightforward common sense.

Nikki Durkin:

So okay, we kind of veered a little bit away from hormones. So let's go back, yeah something you were saying when we're talking about the gym is. You said oh, like I wouldn't go and run for an hour and a half on the on the treadmill, so like, are there certain ways of exercising or not exercising? That might be like overstressing the body or like claustrophobic hormonal imbalance.

Nika Lawrie:

Yes, so one of the biggest issues that I see when it comes to women's bodies and health and working out is we've been told for so long that cardio is the answer. Right, like go run on the treadmill for an hour and a half so that you can burn, you know, 200 calories, or whatever, right it's this.

Nika Lawrie:

It came from like the 80s, 90s like let's burn calories figure out how to do that so everyone got into running and treadmill and cardio and all these things, and that's not actually how our bodies work. The key thing that we need to understand is we have to have muscle on our body in order to burn the fat, to use the energy that's stored in our body, and when we have low muscle mass, our body is not going to burn energy as well. It does the opposite, actually. It starts to store energy, and stored energy in the body is fat, right. So the better option to do is to strength train for women and when I say strength train, a lot of women are like oh, but I don't want to look like a bodybuilder, unless you're taking growth hormone and crazy amounts of testosterone and all of these things. You're never. Your body is just not meant to look like that.

Nikki Durkin:

it's not gonna happen I love it when, like men respond to that. It's almost like a meme where it's like women are kind of like oh, but I don't want to look like a bodybuilder, and you've got these men there. That's like they like I'm a man and I spend my entire life dedicating to eating, perfectly, I'm working at the gym and I still don't look like a bodybuilder. And they just laugh at this idea that it's like you think this happens easily. Yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

Like that's never going to happen, like you have to go down some crazy rabbit holes to make your body look like that. What's going to happen is that you're going to have better energy, you're going to feel better, your body's going to be more tone, so you'll just look better, you know, for your body type. You're gonna sleep better, you're going to probably digest your food better, like it's so helpful to have good muscle on your body and it's literally it will help you so much as you age, because as you start to move into your 30s and 40s, you start to lose muscle tone and so the more you can do now to work on that and to strengthen your muscles and to really support their structure, the better off you're going to be as you age and the less issues you'll have as you age too. So strength training is the biggest thing I would say. You know you can do a lot of strength training just at home with light weights. You can do body weights. So, like squats and different, like pushups, different things like that, strength training is the biggest, best way that a woman can support her body and help her maintain or lose weight and maintain and support her hormones.

Nika Lawrie:

When it comes to exercise, running cardio for long periods of time. Some cardio is okay. You want to have good cardio, that's important. But being on the treadmill for like an hour, an hour and a half or whatever it is, is not going to help you burn those calories.

Nika Lawrie:

First off, you might burn a little bit, but not enough to actually like make a difference and really like getting tone or losing weight or whatever it is you're trying to do. But it puts a lot of stress on your body too, and that stress we talked about it earlier raises your cortisol, and when your cortisol is high, you're more likely to put on fat, and so it becomes this whole unhealthy cycle. And so, instead of running for long periods of time, instead consider yoga, like the strength training. Like I mentioned. Pilates is a great option because it's kind of that in between going for a nice brisk walk. You can walk fast if you want, but getting outside and experiencing nature while you do walk is actually even more beneficial. So those are the things that I would recommend, opposed to doing a heavy cardio workout.

Nikki Durkin:

How do you feel about like like sprints or things that are interval training?

Nika Lawrie:

So interval training is really key to this is a great way. Interval training is really key too. This is a great way. So one of the best things that you can do is do something for like 45 seconds to a minute and then take 30 seconds or a minute off and then do something else, and so it's the. The key is to have the peak, the like, the, the big push, and then take a break and let your heart rate drop down to normal and then back up again, and then let your heart rate drop back down and back up.

Nika Lawrie:

And the reason this is such a great thing is when you know, we go back to, you know primitive times and we think about the lion coming after us.

Nika Lawrie:

Right, humans back then did not run, you know, a marathon a day just to lose weight.

Nika Lawrie:

Right, the only times that they got up and run were like animals were coming to attack them, or like they had to run over to grab something, or you know what I mean. And so we think about how our bodies were actually designed to function. And it's having those, those sprint moments where we run really hard, full out, do as much as we can, and then we come back down to neutral and we let our heart rate rest and we and we pause and you know, control our breathing again and then we do it again, and so doing something like that that's actually a really great way to do a workout if you have a little bit of time. So it's something I'll do when traveling is I'll do a hit know where I do like 10 push-ups or you know 10 squats, and then I take a break and then I do something else, or I jog in place and take a break, and so it's a great tool to shorten your workout time okay, um, okay.

Nikki Durkin:

So can you tell me about when we go back to hormones, like what are some things that you can do, or like lifestyle changes to kind of balance your hormones, as you say, without having to get medication anymore?

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, so I know I keep coming back to it, but the biggest one is to reduce sugar as much as possible. Um, and when I talk about sugar, I'm talking about, you know, white refined sugar. We're going to talk about sodas and sugary drinks, candies, those kind of things. And then the thing that people don't think about the most is highly processed foods. So we're thinking about, you know, crackers and potato chips and granola bars and kind of, if it comes in a box, it's probably ultra processed, it's probably highly processed.

Nika Lawrie:

And so reducing that as much as possible as well, because the way that functions in your body, as it functions as if it's a sugar, it just burns up in your body quickly. You know, you might get a little boost of energy from it burning, but then the excess from that then gets stored as fat and the more you have of it, the more your hormones can become dysregulated. A lot of women will have, you know, issues with having too much sugar and then their testosterone is too low and, like we talked about earlier, when their testosterone is low, then they have lethargy and brain fog and lack of motivation and then that leads to a whole unhealthy cycle, right? So sugar and highly processed foods, reducing that as much as possible. And I, like we talked earlier, I will never say don't have any, because sometimes I just wanna have a creme brulee with my husband at dinner, but I am also not telling you to go drink, you know, a can of soda and a bag of chips, right Like. So really figuring out how to manage that in a way that again nourishes your body, manage that in a way that again nourishes your body.

Nika Lawrie:

On the flip side of that, there's actually a lot of foods that you can bring into your life that really help. So nuts and seeds have a lot of different beneficial factors to help, kind of quote unquote balance the hormones. Again, it's really trying to keep those hormones in those healthy ranges. So there's different nuts and seeds that you can have, there's different vegetables that can help as well, and so instead of kind of going down that whole, you know, eat this for this one and eat that for that one, because you can just Google it and there's a ton out there it's really understanding how to transition the diet to healthier food options and removing as much of those unhealthy foods as possible so just in terms of like, like for me, I know, to keep my life really convenient, I tend to eat more or less the same thing every day, like god.

Nikki Durkin:

So I'm currently in tolambia. This is this one place where it's just like, it's all, just like really healthy food. I used to eat there three times a day, which was kind of embarrassing, and I would walk in and like, oh, nikki's here for breakfast. They just like bring it out, and so I was like super predictable. But even if I'm eating, like you know, a salad for lunch and a wrap for dinner or whatever, is it bad to eat like the same thing every day, or should I be trying to get more variety if, like, what I'm eating is healthy, like it's, you know?

Nika Lawrie:

So it's a relative question. My answer is variety is usually better, but let me give you one example of why I say it's a relative question. So there is a man named Brian Johnson. He is a biohacker who is on this extreme diet where he literally eats. They've mathematically figured out meals for him to eat in a very short period of time I think it's a six-hour window that he eats each day and that's it. He fasts the rest of the time and in that period of time he eats. I think it's two meals. It's like a drink and then like two meals and then that's it. But they figured out how to get all the vitamins and nutrients he needs from those two specific meals a day, every day, and that's all he eats. And his goal is his. He wears t-shirts that say don't die, and so his goal is to live forever. So we'll see. You know, hopefully someone will see I don't know.

Nika Lawrie:

But so if you figured out really how to eat that completely supports your body, then I'd say it's probably okay to eat close to the same thing every single day. He also takes like 60 to 100 supplements a day.

Nikki Durkin:

I can imagine, yeah, and so you know it's a relative answer.

Nika Lawrie:

On the flip side, for us everyday normal people, I think variety is really key, and there's two reasons for that. One variety is key because you get different vitamins and minerals and different nutrients from different types of food, right? So different colors of food. So you're thinking like purple carrots versus white carrots versus orange carrots all have different vitamins and minerals in them that do different things, and so you know that's an example of one one vegetable that has different things, different colors. You know different grapes are different colors, those kinds of things right. So that can give you a range of vitamins and minerals that come from it.

Nika Lawrie:

But the other side of that that most people don't talk about is actually the bacteria that come with the food that you're eating, and so your gut microbiome is massive in your overall health, and your gut microbiome actually controls how a lot of the hormones in your body work, and so if you want healthy hormones, you need to have a healthy gut, and in order to have a healthy gut, you want a diverse population of probiotics, prebiotics, and that comes from different types of food that you eat. There's actual bacteria on all the food that you eat, and so it'll come from, that. It comes from the soil that the food was grown in, and so that matters. It comes from the water you drink, the environment you live in, the animals that you're around. All of those play a factor in how healthy your gut microbiome is.

Nika Lawrie:

And then, for a whole other episode, we could go down the rabbit hole of the different chemicals that we're exposed to in the foods that we eat, the products that we use, the makeup that we wear. All that stuff can actually damage a lot of the bacteria in our gut and can cause issues with our hormones as well. But that's a big thing. So my overall suggestion is to eat diverse and eat. Eat clean, eat diverse and then know as much as possible where your food is coming.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, okay, cool yeah, so well, okay. So this is the question that's this is coming.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, okay, cool, yeah, so well, okay. So this is this little question. This this is coming up for me at the moment is, um, hunger, hunger's a hormone like ghrelin, ghrelin what's it called? Ghrelin, ghrelin, yeah, ghrelin. So I was curious about this because maybe like a month or two ago, I was on antibiotics and um, I and I forgot that I was on antibiotics. I'm like, oh my god, I want to eat everything I was. I was so annoying like I would sit down and be hungry again. I hated it. Um, and then when I went off them, it's like I don't know, for some reason at the moment, it's like I don't need to eat till like 2 pm in the afternoon, like I'm just not not hungry, I don't really want to eat. So it's like I don't eat. Is that bad? Like as in, as in, should I be? Should I be going? Okay, I'm not hungry, but I should eat something in the morning. Or do I listen to my body? It's just like I'm going to. We're not hungry. Like, how much should I cross that?

Nika Lawrie:

So, first, the antibiotics um, probably wreaked havoc in your gut because it kills off good and bad bacteria, right, and so it's important to eat diversely and eat if you can eat things that are fermented and things like that to help rebuild the microbiome after you've been on antibiotics. So that's a big part. First, talking about your hunger levels and how they change, that is totally normal, and so there are. So some people just have no interest in breakfast in the morning. I'm not usually a breakfast person. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I'm like this morning, for example, I was hungry, so I ate breakfast. A lot of mornings I'm not hungry until like 11 or 12 in the afternoon, and so that's when I decide to eat.

Nika Lawrie:

And so, as long as it's not negatively impacting your life or you know you're not starving, then I think it's okay. I think it's okay to listen to your body. The two caveats I would say with that is if it becomes a long-term issue where you're headed towards like an eating disorder or something like that, then you definitely want to avoid that and make sure that you get a healthy eating cycle in place. But and I'm not saying towards you, I'm just saying it kind of in general but the other thing that I will say is that, oh man, I just lost my train of thought. Anyways, ask me another question and I'll come back.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, so, um, we've talked about, like, eating, exercise, we talked briefly about sleep, stress, um, environmental toxins. Stress, um, environmental toxins, what, what? Because that feels like another, like unknown, like something I don't know, I don't know, and it's just like permeating my environment and like, for me, I feel like I don't use a lot of products, like I, I'm pretty, I'm fairly minimal, but I'm sure there's like things that I can improve on that I don't even know about. So what are the what's like, the 20% that would give me 80% of this?

Nika Lawrie:

Okay, so I could do a thousand shows on environmental toxins, because it's so big and so profound and so massively important when it comes to our health. But to give you that 20%, that's going to give you the 80 overall right. So environmental toxins are a range of different chemicals that we are exposed to through different means of life that impact our health in different ways. The most common ones that you'll hear about are called endocrine disrupting chemicals, so EDCs and our endocrine system is our hormone system, and our hormone system is our signaling system. It's our messenger system of the body, so it tells everywhere in our body what to do right, and so there's hormones that come from places in our brain. There's hormones that come from our gut. There's hormones that come from different glands throughout our body, and so there's hormones that come from places in our brain. There's hormones that come from our gut. There's hormones that come from different glands throughout our body, and so all of those tell our body to do different things, and when those get messed up, when they get disrupted, our body doesn't function the way it's supposed to, and then we start to have different issues like weight gain or bowel issues, or lethargy, or brain fog or whatever it is right, infertility is a huge one, so different things like that. So these endocrine disrupting chemicals, these EDCs, are in all different kinds of things in our world now and unfortunately it's getting bigger and bigger and worse and worse as time goes on. So currently there are probably about 90,000 chemicals. The last I heard was like 86,000 or something registered chemicals that are used. Of those 86, there's about 41,000, 42,000 that are in active use, meaning that they're used in products and food and things that we buy and use every day. Many of those chemicals I'm not saying all 46,000, but there are thousands of those chemicals are endocrine disrupting chemicals or chemicals that are impacting the body in a negative way. Somehow. Many of these chemicals have not been regulated at all in the US. There's only five actually that have ever been restricted in the United States. To give a comparison, in the EU and Europe about 1,500 have been regulated. So five in the US, 1,500 in Europe, and then different countries vary. So I'm not sure what it's like in Colombia and in different countries vary. So I'm not sure what it's like in Colombia. I know Australia tends to follow more of the UK EU guidelines, but there's tons of chemicals out there that are still impacting us in a negative way, like artificial sweeteners, colors like yellow number five or yellow number six.

Nika Lawrie:

There's lots of different preservatives that are put in food that will impact us. Another example of this are things that are used in personal care and beauty products. You'll hear about things like phthalates or parabens. Most of those are associated with the scents or the fragrances that are in these chemicals. You'll see them in cosmetics as well. Body washes and even in our makeups have fragrances, our face creams have fragrance, like everything right, and so, understanding that these chemicals are a lot of different things, I'll give you one more example that's a really prevalent one.

Nika Lawrie:

Is plastics, so you have BPA. Is plastics, so you have BPA. So there's actually a whole series of BPA to BPZ, and there's some others between there as well. In BPA, you'll see a lot of companies say, oh, it's BPA-free, we don't use it, but what they've actually done is just transition from BPA to like BPS or BPF like Sam is in, or S is in Sam or F is in Frank right, and so BPA is still an unhealthy chemical that can impact your hormones, and even though it's BPA free, it doesn't mean that it's BPS or BPF free. So it's a really common. So it's like a marketing thing.

Nikki Durkin:

BPA has like a bad rap. So they say oh yeah, we don't use BPA, but they're still got the underlying.

Nika Lawrie:

Exactly, yes, so, yeah. So the best option is then just don't use plastic. Opt for stainless steel or glass. And so when I, when I talk about this, think about like your water bottles. Try to avoid plastic water bottles as much as possible. Food storage always keep your food storage in a glass Tupperware, especially if it's hot. The last thing you want to do is put hot, like, say, lasagna, like hot, fatty, greasy food in a plastic Tupperware. Like my soul dies when I see things like that, because it's leaching the chemicals from the plastic into the food and then, when you heat the food, you're digesting those chemicals and then those chemicals are going to impact your hormones and cause those issues.

Nikki Durkin:

Good to know.

Nika Lawrie:

Avoiding fragrances as much as possible. So this was one of the hardest ones for me, because I loved perfumes, but once I learned this I was like, oh crap, I have to get these out of my life. So really trying to take perfumes out of your life and different fragrances. So laundry detergents are a big place you'll find those fragrances. Shampoos are a big place you'll find those fragrances. Shampoos, makeup, body care products, those kind of things. So opt for options in the personal care and kind of cleanliness industry that either don't have fragrances or are using essential oils as their fragrances and it's not an exact science with essential oils, but that's the biggest thing is try to go. If you have to have the fragrance, try to do something with essential oils.

Nika Lawrie:

This can be kind of a big crazy thing to navigate, but the awesome thing is there's several apps that you can just download and then you just scan the barcode and it'll give you a scale of like red, yellow, green or like one through 10 of like this is clean. This is okay. This is not great, but you know, use discretion or avoid red flag, don't use. And so, um, some of those apps are think dirty, um, yuka, uh, environmental working group has two different ones, one for, like uh, personal care, and the other ones for food, um, and so those are a couple apps that you can use. Yuka is my personal favorite out of them. How do you spell that y-u-k-a? Okay, yeah, and it had. I haven't looked at it in a while, but it has a little uh carrot on it, like a little fake carrot, so that's a big thing yeah, okay, okay, that's, that's good to know.

Nikki Durkin:

And then I guess, like the other, maybe like one of the final things is like, um, things like birth control. So how does that, um, how does like the hormonal medication kind of like affect all of that? I know we talked about it briefly, but is there anything else to add?

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, so one of the things I'll actually just say is, like, if people are interested to learn about hormonal birth control and like how it's impacting your body as a woman and like the history of it, there is a incredible documentary. It was done by Rikki Lake. I don't know if you know who Rikki Lake was. I know she was a tv host here in like the I think, mid 90s or something I remember as a childhood.

Nikki Durkin:

I remember my. No, I remember my um. My babysitter used to what like when I was home with her in the middle of the day. Yeah, that's the only reason.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, so she was a tv host here, you know, and it was like kind of a you know sort of cheesy talk show back in the day. But she's gone on this whole journey with one of her business partners to really start to inform women about different health issues that are impacting them, so that women have. One of my biggest things I always try to say is informed consent, so that if you decide to use these medications or prescriptions or whatever, you understand the potential side effects of them.

Nikki Durkin:

We're not telling you not to.

Nika Lawrie:

It's just understand the impact, right. So they did this incredible documentary. I cannot think of the exact name of it, but if you look up Ricky Lake birth control documentary, it'll pop up. You'll find it. I will also put it in the show notes of this episode so that listeners can find it. But Ricky Lake birth control documentary it looks like it's the business of birth control.

Nika Lawrie:

Yes, okay, business of birth control, that is it. So that is so phenomenal I think every woman needs to watch it. It will give you the history of birth control. It will help you understand how it's impacted our health and our lives over the years.

Nika Lawrie:

The biggest thing for those who don't go watch the documentary to understand is hormonal birth control is controlling the way your body is communicating throughout the body. Does that make sense? It is impacting all your hormonal signals throughout the day, and so it's not giving you a clear picture of the health that your body is actually at, the level of health that your body is actually at, and then it can also have some serious long-term side effects. It can actually play a role in infertility which people don't know. I mean, that's a big piece that we're not educated on, which people don't know I mean that's a big piece that we're not educated on.

Nika Lawrie:

It can cause issues with depression and anxiety. There's a whole host of other issues that can come from being on hormonal birth control. So I always recommend if women can transition to a birth control that is not hormonal. The copper IUD is one example. There's some other options out there as well. That is the best option for your overall health is to remove those hormones from your body and then allow your body to function as it should.

Nikki Durkin:

Okay, and it's probably like one of the final questions is like how can women work with their healthcare providers to kind of monitor and manage their hormone levels effectively?

Nika Lawrie:

So it just doesn't become an issue in the first place in your conversation with your physician, look at your physician as your health partner, not a educated superior above you. Right? Do not let your physician tell you or dictate what you're going to do with your health. This is a conversation where you're going to work together to support your overall best health. They are your health partner, not your superior. So that's the biggest thing is have those conversations and come in ready to ask questions and demand real answers. And if they can't give you those real answers, then ask them to find out and come back or find a physician who can support you in that.

Nika Lawrie:

The second part of that is testing is really key. So I would recommend people to have a full health workup every six months at minimum once a year. But as you're aging and moving closer to perimenopause menopause, those kinds of things you want to do it every six months so we can see how those levels are changing. If you can do it so different healthcare systems are different. It's harder in the US than in the UK and other places.

Nika Lawrie:

If you can do it quarterly, that's phenomenal because then you can see how your hormones are ebbing and flowing throughout the year and really understanding that. And again simple blood tests, sometimes a saliva test, depending on which one you're testing, but that's a huge piece. And then the last thing I would say is, as women are transitioning to perimetopause and menopause, is to make sure also this is really key for women who are looking to have children sometime in the near future is to really understand where their hormones are at as well. So it's kind of all women, but if you're looking to have a child sometime in the next two or three years and then if you are, you know there's no reason for women to suffer and struggle and feel like crap when there's really great options out there for hormone replacement therapy.

Nikki Durkin:

Um, so those are the big three, I would say right, yes, oh well, I feel like I feel like I'm quite educated of, like I'm like okay, like I know what to look out for, I know like where I can make tweaks to my lifestyle to make sure that things are kind of like moving along well.

Nika Lawrie:

So thank you so much, you're welcome. Well, thank you for interviewing me for the show. I truly appreciate it.

Nikki Durkin:

A lot of fun great.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nika Lawrie

Host