Women Are Not Small Men: Women’s hormones vs men’s hormones

Do you know that most of the advice given to women was actually tested and created for men?

 

This is the reason that 80% of women at some point in their life will struggle with hormone imbalances. That number in men goes down to 10%. In this episode, I'm going to dive deep into the science behind why women need completely different approach to health than men from sleep to fasting, exercise, and even cold plunges.

 

Welcome everybody to episode 67 of Feel Better Be Better. I am feeling amazing. I have started my period. So I'm on day three, which is typically when my energy starts to go up. So I feel very energetic to record this podcast for you today to talk about the topic that I feel like needs to be covered way more.

 

And we'll certainly dive into it. But before I do, I wanted to give you just a little update on what's been happening with me. I just got back from Paris after spending an incredible weekend with Ben's family. We explored Paris, I went to my first ever ballet performance. If you have never been to ballet, I highly recommend.

 

And Ben and I also celebrated our 6th year anniversary. Actually I want to tell you a funny story. Ben and I met. through Hinge, which is an online dating app which is how most of the world seems to be dating now. And I actually almost cancelled on our first date. I remember that particular day, like it was yesterday.

 

At the time, I was working for a company. I was a marketing manager. And on this date, when we meant to have our first date, I hosted an event at work. And I got back home just exhausted. And I remember sending a message to him saying that is it okay if we reschedule he got my message on whatsapp and you know how you see the blue tick when people open your message so he got it but the message never actually been blue ticked until 20 minutes before our date he finally messaged me to say that he's actually almost at a restaurant where we agreed to meet at but he said oh no worries if you're i guess i'll just go home.

 

Obviously, as any normal person, I felt terrible, so I was like, no, no, no I'm just gonna be a few minutes late, but don't worry, I'm just gonna get ready and I'll be there.

Luckily, we didn't live far away, I got ready, got to the restaurant, we had an amazing first date, and on this date, he tells me that he actually has seen my message the moment I sent it, which was a few hours before the date. And when I send it, he just decided that he's not gonna blue ticket until 20 minutes before the date where he's still gonna be home, but he's just gonna respond to me and tell me what he told me and see what I said.

And he basically told me that he just really wanted to make sure that this date happens and he was really excited about it. So that's why he decided not just go on with my suggestion, which was amazing. Obviously now, six years later, we have been together. We have lived in three different countries, traveled to so many more. We share such amazing memories, and I love that I get to share my life with him, who is just such a kind, supportive, creative man that always pushes me beyond my comfort zone, and it's just so fun to be around. So here's a lesson, don't cancel on your dates, whichever lesson you want to draw from this.

 

But Ben actually is a big part of why I started my business, because it was him who taught me to actually look at food and nutrition as abundance versus restriction and diet is how I used to look at food, and I also think him being French and having such a love for food, it really transferred to me, and that's when I realised that food can be medicine, food can be a massively healing tool.

 

Learning how to nourish our body is missing in our society where we eat on the go where we're not really paying attention to what you eat But food is actually mastering the nutrition can be solution to so many prevention of diseases and just feeling good every single day.

 

Another thing that Ben got me into is long distance running for my birthday this January, he actually gifted me Garmin, which is a watch where you can go and run. And it does very accurate traction of your kilometers and of your time. And he gave it to me and I love it for running, but what I love Garmin watch for is its sleep tracking functionality.

 

It basically tells me every morning what was my sleep score? How much I slept?

 

And for some people, it might be anxiety inducing, but I work in health. So to me, this sort of things is very important and very interesting. And every morning Ben and I wake up and we usually measure our sleep score. I have this score.

I have this score. And for those I don't know.

 

There are four phases to your sleep through which we cycle multiple times during the night: there is deep sleep, there is light sleep, there is REM sleep (which is rapid eye movement sleep) which is when we dream. And there's also an awake time.

 

And it's been such an eye opening to really compare our sleep scores to each other because they are in fact so different.

And I'm going to touch on today why.

 

Because men and women actually have such a different we sleep differently.

 

We have different needs for the amount of sleep. And I'm definitely going to talk about it today in this episode which actually leads me into the topic of today's, what we're going to talk about.

And it's the fact that. I want to highlight the differences between women's and men's physiology and how men's and female's body truly needs such a different support. It does seem obvious when I say that men and women are physiologically different. However, the problem is that for many years, A lot of the health advice that women have been given has actually been based on male physiology and it's actually been causing a lot of health issues and hormonal imbalances in women.

 

This is why today we see 80 percent of women will struggle with some sort of hormonal imbalances at some point in their life, while that number in men is about 10%.

 

So there's a huge discrepancy. And it is because we live in the world designed by men, for men. And it's not like it was done maliciously on purpose to hurt women.

At least I don't believe so, but it's been done because all of the clinical trials for a very long time it's been done on male bodies because male bodies are easier to measure. It's easier to study. Men's hormones fluctuate on a 24 hour cycle when female hormones fluctuate on 28 day cycle. But I really want to take a look at the male hormone cycle just so you kind of have a picture of it.

So for men in the morning, they typically wake up with their testosterone peaking and it really helps men to get up. and get ready to hustle and to go after their date, which is why oftentimes things like morning fasted workouts are encouraged and work great for men that don't work so well for women.

Then, so men wake up in the morning with testosterone ready to hustle. In the midday the testosterone sort of plateaus. And at that time they have fairly good energy. In the afternoon, testosterone starts to fall. So men begin to slow down and at night around 8 PM, this is where men's testosterone is actually at its lowest.

So it's really the time to rest and to wind down. And the next morning men wake up testosterone refilled, and they do it all over again.

And when every day you have the same process, same things, it's really easy to follow the same diet, same exercise regime. And it's also, for doctors, for clinicians, it's easy to study when the body is so predictable, does every single time, every single day the same thing.

Female body, however, doesn't work like that. Our hormones don't just go up and down every single day. On top of our regular waking sleep cycle, we also have menstrual cycle or as we call it the infradian rhythm. And this particular rhythm is activates at the time of our puberty and takes us all the way up until menopause.

 

Women's hormones fluctuate every 28 days versus men's hormones which fluctuate every 24 hours.

 

For that reason, women were harder to study. They have been historically harder to study, which is why we didn't study them. Is it good enough reason? I don't think so, but that is what we have to live with.

 

And for so long, women have been following advice that is geared towards men, and it's clearly not supporting our health, yet we still do it because we've never been taught of our differences in a very clear and simple manner. Which is why in this podcast, I really want to highlight those differences and also show you why you should be kinder with yourself, especially if reaching your health goals, your weight goals might take a little bit longer and also help you grow appreciation for your body and for it's differences.

 

So I think nowadays and then what I'm seeing this on internet is that we're waking up to the fact that more and more women starting to get curious about their bodies and the more we get curious the better we work with our female body, the healthier generations we will have, and the healthier women we'll have, and when women are healthy - communities are healthy, it basically has this ripple effect, which is why it's so important that you understand your body.

 

For as long as we had the medicine, it's always been tested on male bodies and it actually wasn't until 1993 that we started to include women in clinical trials and in 1993 the law has passed that women have to be included in clinical trials, but it actually wasn't until 1998 when the first women actually physically walked into a clinical trial.

And as I mentioned before, women have different hormonal fluctuations, but yet another reason that female body hasn't been studied is because women also can get pregnant. And we also go through peri-menopause, menopause, our bodies are less predictable, which made doing clinical studies even more complicated.

 

When it's more complicated - it's more expensive. It takes more time. So naturally women sort of been shafted. it which is now we're feeling the effects of it. And there's actually some crazy things that doctors used to believe about the female body for a long time because of that. So the word hysteria actually derives from Greek and it means uterus.

 

For a very long time doctors actually used to believe that women get hysteria or become hysterical, basically having this behaviourally crazy mood swings because they believe that our uterus actually disconnects and it starts running around our body, up and down, making us crazy and hysterical for, in order to treat it, the most common thing was hysterectomy, which is the removal of the uterus.

It was actually surgically performed. Uterus removal surgery (hysterectomy) has been one of the most popular surgeries for a very long time, because that is how we used to treat emotional outbursts.

 

And later on, that is how we treated a lot of women's health issues. We just thought that, well, if we remove an organ, things will be fine.

 

Obviously, now we're sort of starting to wake up to it and realise just how crazy that notion was. But that is what we used to believe because we just didn't have enough knowledge. When we don't know how our bodies work, we start to make up those stories.

 

Surprising fact that I also just find so shocking is that a lot of medication, well, all of the medication has been tested on men, including the medication for menopause.

 

Menopause. Let me repeat that, a transition that only a woman can go through, the medication for easing of symptoms was actually tested on men, which is, again, just mind boggling, and as a result, not knowing how our female body functions for a very long time, the way that We women take medication is actually quite different medication impacts women differently simply because women have more fat tissue in our bodies, which is genetically predisposition to having more fat tissue and Medication gets stored in fat and it has a very different reaction for women So for a very long time we believe when it came to medication When it comes to women, we just have to give them a smaller dose.

 

But the truth is that women are not small men. We react to medication differently. We don't need a smaller dose. We just need a different approach where we understand how our bodies work. That's typically when we're able to take the right measures. And another thing that affects women and men differently is heart attack symptoms.

 

There's actually a very different way in the way that men and women react to experience heart attack symptoms and seven out of ten major heart attack symptoms that men experience, women experience less of. The symptoms in both genders actually look quite different, yet we assume they are the same.

 

And for that reason, women weren't able to get as good of a care for heart attacks. And there's a big awareness piece that is being brought to it at the moment, just to educate women that actually we have a very different symptoms. And so then another thing on top of it that I want to discuss is that the crazy diet time in for any of you that grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, we had this huge obsession with slimness.

 

And I mean, we still do, but that was the time when it really came to fruition with a lot of the magazines, this whole heroine chic look.

 

For those of us, and I know myself 100%, I went through it just being obsessed with slimness which drove many of us to dieting, to crazy HIIT workouts, to CrossFit workouts, intermittent fasting, paleo.

 

All sorts of diets have been brought into the market. But once again, all of those things have been tested on men. They have never really been taken in consideration the female cyclical nature and how it affects women which as a result has created a lot of women with a lot of hormonal imbalances with.

 

Symptoms of physical and also emotional discomfort, and in particularly the intermittent fasting when it got so popular, it actually showed reduction in fat, but also an improvement of insulin or the blood sugar levels.

 

But what we weren't told is the fact that all of those benefits have been tested on men, and actually for women, if we fast the same way for half of our cycle, we're actually increasing the level of stress that we put in our body because for female body in the second half of our cycle, when we don't have enough nutrition and our metabolism is faster, it will put our body in stress.

 

Response and when we stress our cortisol goes up when our stress goes up our blood sugar goes up so it actually creates more insulin issues for women than For men in the way that and that is the sort of the portrayal of intermittent fasting that this is what it will help with So the person who made intermittent fasting the person that made it popular Even said it himself that it may not work the same for women yet women still go on intermittent fasting because it promises this weight loss and other benefits.

 

And it may be true for women that have gone into menopause and they no longer have these transitions of menstrual cycle, but for cycling women intermittent fasting, and I see it over and over in my practice, it actually tends to damage our hormones and creates a lot of imbalances down the road.

 

The truth is, once again, women are not small men. Our bodies are wildly different and the way that we support them has to be different.

 

There's so many studies to show that women also process nutrients. We respond to exercise, respond to sleep. We process toxins. Our. our of our bodies is very different because once again we have this hormonal fluctuations of our menstrual cycle and because all these practices that fit for men are not doing women any favors it's really important to seek the support from a practitioner who is a female or practitioner who is very familiar and has studied female bodies for a long time because you'll just simply get so much better care.

 

And of course, if you do need support, you're welcome to work with me because this is my world and I understand it very well. But truly, if you do want to have more energy, sleep better, wake up rested, actually love your body, get rid of the rigid diets and restriction, fasting, and crazy workout plans that fit the male body.

 

Because men, once again, don't have the same hormonal fluctuations. You have to learn about how your body functions. You have to understand what is the nutritional needs that you have. Does your body absorb nutrients? How do you align with four phases of your cycle? And when you make this changes. And when you start to work with your hormones rather than against them, you'll start to feel healthier, more vibrant, happier, and just more confident in your body.

 

Research actually suggests that women need by up to an hour more sleep per day than men, according to a study done at Duke University 

So at the beginning of this episode, I spoke about the garment watch and I want to come back to sleep and the differences that we have between men and women based on some of the research. So research actually suggests that women need by up to an hour more sleep per day than men, according to a study done at Duke University that showed that women are tend to be more sleep deprived because we follow the same recommendation of seven to eight hours that is given to men when women actually need closer to nine hours, even 10 for some women, it will really depend and it will impact their whole our health more severely if we don't get enough sleep than men's because when women don't get enough sleep, we start to see more inflammatory markers.

 

We start to see higher inflammation levels, stress, and also increased risk for cardiovascular issues. And women also have progesterone, which is this hormone that we increase in the second half of our cycles or it peaks a week after we ovulate and it tends to have this sedative effect. So women need more sleep as a result of that during that time and when you are on your period your body does have to work harder as it's literally Shedding and healing its lining of the uterus and because of that your energy will naturally get a bit depleted So you do need a little bit more sleep to regain that sleep also plays an important role in How you clear and get rid of the toxins in your body and women usually have a much higher toxic burden because we naturally have a higher fat storage.

 

We have more fat on our body, it's normal, and toxins love to be stored in the fat. So for that reason, we retain toxins longer and for that reason, we can slow down our detox pathways. So actually by sleeping more, we're helping our liver to clear out the toxins and to jumpstart this process.

 

Women have typically higher cognitive load because tend to multitask much more than men on average, which can also lead to fatigue and increase our need for sleep as well.

 

And some studies also show that women are 40 percent more likely to suffer from insomnia and. For that reason, women just need to be more careful about their sleep, because when we are sleep deprived, we also, our mental health gets impacted.

We get more depressed, we get more anxious, which is why sleep hygiene, sleep is just so important for every single woman. Now, let's talk about food and nutrition and how it's different from men, in particularly diets, calories, food. fasting. So cutting certain food groups like carbohydrates seem to be a very common one or Restricting calories can be beneficial for certain health conditions.

However, it is much more complex for women, particularly because of the hormones that we have that are quite active, and that's cortisol and thyroid. Cortisol is the hormone that's responsible for our stress, and thyroid is the hormone, it's sort of like our, thyroid is like an engine of your body. It gives you energy, speeds up your metabolism, or it does the opposite.

And when you fast, your stress hormones go up and those spikes in cortisol in women are usually much higher and as a result that can really dysregulate our stress response, making us feel more on edge, making us feel more easily get irritated, frustrated. And when that happens, it also impacts your thyroid, which is responding to Then in turn will slow down your metabolism will actually get you to put fat on the very thing that you want to avoid with cutting calories is actually backfires.

 

Fasting can negatively impact women's fertility.

 

When women go without food for a long time, it immediately screams to your body danger because any sort of starvation will scream danger to your fertility. Because when you don't have much food, it can disrupt.

ovulation and ovulation itself is a very energy intensive process and if you don't have enough food you don't have enough energy as a result you start to feel just lower at your ovulation disrupts and as a result you don't produce as much hormone called progesterone and progesterone is the hormone that you need to get pregnant and to stay pregnant and very important thing for women to consider when fasting is doing it with your cycle, if you engage in it, in the first half of your cycle.

After your period, for about a week or so, your body won't be impacted as much if you fasted for more than 12 hours. Yet, as you enter your post ovulation, luteal phase, fasting will actually be much harder on your body, because in that luteal phase of your body, your body in general needs more energy. I would just, in general, not recommend 12 hours, which is between your dinner and breakfast.

It is plenty if you're eating Supportive balanced meals throughout the day 12 hours is usually plenty. And it won't affect your weight It'll support your hormonal balance It'll support your stress levels and overall health if you are following the right and supportive diet for your body and of course for women that are going through perimenopause and menopause, which is when your hormones just wildly different.

Not eating can really impact that transition to perimenopause and menopause, making that transition harder, creating more symptoms. And you want to avoid that. You want to feel balanced. You want to feel good in your body at all times. The next thing I want to talk about is exercise and how exercise is different in women and in men.

So in women, our hormones massively impact our energy, our strength, and also our recovery throughout the menstrual cycle. So we really have to optimize our workouts and our movement based on each phase of that cycle. So let's look at our period. During your period, typically you Energy, you probably noticed it's a little bit lower because we lose blood.

So focusing on lower intensity workouts, like walking and yoga is a really good idea. Once your period is finishing and you enter the follicular phase, your estrogen starts to rise and with it will rise your energy and endurance and your muscle recovery. So it's a really good thing to lift weights, maybe do more. Intense HIIT workouts. Once you've ovulated, you can still keep up with that high energy exercises, but as you enter the late luteal phase, a week before your period, your energy will naturally start to go down and you will need to shift to a higher workouts like yoga, strength training, and just more supporting to your recovery kind of exercise.

So it needs to go kind of slow down, go up, and then go down again. It has to follow this cyclical nature. And One other thing that I'll mention is the very popular ice baths or the cold plunges that have gained just insane popularity lately and there are many benefits to it and it's definitely and it's actually something that I've started to do this year in Nice swimming in Mediterranean Sea and in general cold exposure is a very positive thing because It activates what's called brown adipose tissue or brown fat.

And when we have enough brown fat, it actually tends to boost our metabolism, our mitochondria, our energy goes up, our focus goes up yet. How does it impact female hormones? Again, if you guess different. It is different because women generally have much less muscle than men when you are in cold water for a long time.

It can be much more exhausting for your body, particularly in the second half of your cycle when your body's resources should really go towards producing progesterone.

 

If you keep cold plunging for too long during that time, your body will start to increase cortisol and when your stress hormones go up and there's too much stress in your body - what will happen is what's called progesterone steal where cortisol or your stress hormones actually starts to steal progesterone.

 

Meaning you'll be left not only more stressed but also more irritable frustrated exhausted and with hormones that are imbalance now and we have less progesterone.

So during your period and luteal phase I'd recommend if you do like cold plunging is shortening its time to maybe a couple minutes maximum. During follicular and ovulatory phase you can once again increase the exposure to five to seven minutes. I don't personally do ice baths. I don't like them and they're quite cold.

I actually think it's not pleasant, but what I do like is I like swimming in the sea, which is about 11 to 14 C. So if you're able to keep your water at a bit of a higher temperature, trust me, you'll still feel it. It'll feel nice, but it'll be much healthier and gentler on your body and of course as we discussed the way that you support your female body It should be different to men's and because of that progress might also look different for female muscle growth It might take longer to lose weight but You're not in a hurry.

 

It's not a problem. Just take your time build that long term health.

 

You're not in it for a short while you're here in a lifestyle adjustment and the more you work with your body.

 

The nicer it will feel to live in your body I do remember with this whole progress on the weight and the muscle thing when I used to go to the gym with With Ben and we would be like both working out the same It was frustrating that he was growing his muscles so much faster than me And he was able to drop weight so much faster than me And it doesn't say anything about how good or bad or lazy I am It just talks it just basically means that our physiology is different and working with your female body is fun.

It's so nurturing. It's so supportive and it really supports you in the best way possible and it does so now if you start it now and it will do so for years to come. So if you do want to work with your female body and if you want to support it and implement the simple habits in the most female centric way and you want support, accountability, guidance, structured program, apply to work with me one on one.

by going through the link in bio and scheduling a discovery call with me, and I will help you on this journey. This food, the movement, lifestyle, bio hiking, bio hacking, not bio hiking, bio hacking, cannot be a linear process in the same day, day in, day out for women. It really has to be cyclical. It has to be changing regularly to support your ever changing body.

 

Stop following the one size fits all approach.

 

Your body is unique and if you need support creating those habits, I will be more than happy to support you. So that way you have foundations for years to come and With that I want to thank you for tuning into this episode I hope it's given you some insights in the next episode next week We're actually gonna dive deeper into the four phases of your cycle and how your body changes and what you need to do So make sure you subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode because it really helps me to spread the message and I can't wait to keep exploring the fascinating female body with you.

 

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If you love learning about women's health - make sure to check out other episodes of Feel Better Be Better podcast by going here to learn more about your female body.

 

If you'd like to learn how to work with me 1:1 on balancing your hormones - apply to work with me here by scheduling a free consultation.