It likely comes as no surprise that nutrition impacts women’s health in many diverse ways. Indeed, nutrition plays a critical role at every stage in a woman’s life starting from her earliest years to starting menstruation to perimenopause to life after menopause.
Yet women are often given generic or weight-focused advice instead of real, evidence-based guidance on how food supports their hormones, energy, and long-term health.
For women, the healthcare system can be dismissive of their symptoms. Sadly, we still have a thread of assuming women have hysteria rather than considering that maybe a woman might actually be able to know when something is wrong with her body.
Too often women are told that their symptoms are “normal” for someone with a uterus and given only a few options that do not address the real issue: antidepressants, birth control, are advised to lose weight (without any information on how to do that), or offered a hysterectomy.
Enough is enough. There is a connection between your nutrition and your health, you do not need restrictive diets to heal. This very scenario is why it is our mission at IFxN to empower women with evidence-based nutrition strategies that support your wellbeing – physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Let’s explore how nutrition is directly impacting your health and what you can do to support your body with functional and intuitive nutrition strategies.
More than Emotions or a Mood: Hormones and Nutrition
A lot gets blamed on a woman’s hormones: her “mood”, any physical symptoms like fatigue, and often any behavior that society has decided to frown upon at that moment. While this is unfair and often leaves women feeling less than their male counterparts, hormones really do impact a lot when it comes to our physical and mental function and nutrition is important to help hormones work well.
Here are a few examples:
Blood Sugar and Hormones
Blood sugar balance directly impacts your insulin and cortisol levels. Most people already know insulin and blood sugar balance are important, but are surprised that your stress hormone cortisol gets very involved when we aren’t eating enough.
Blood sugar also directly impacts how testosterone works in the body. This is why clients with PCOS are told to cut carbs out to manage blood sugar (p.s. This is not a super effective strategy…eat your carbs! Your body needs them and wants them). Which leads into the next point.
Menstrual Health and PCOS:
Periods can bring on a lot of unwanted symptoms. There are many nutrients (omega-3s, B vitamins, magnesium, fiber, etc.) that can help make your cycle more manageable and regular.
Nutrition also plays a key role in the management of conditions like PCOS or endometriosis. Optimizing your nutrient levels can really make a difference.
Fertility and Pregnancy:
Your nutrition is critical for egg quality, hormone regulation, and fetal development. Having your nutrition working for you is really essential during preconceptions to set you up for a better pregnancy and to give the baby the best start to life.
Now I want to pause here for a moment to acknowledge that often women feel extreme stress to eat “perfectly” before and during a pregnancy. That sort of stress is going to cause more harm than enjoying a peanut butter cup.
If something does go wrong with a pregnancy or birth I have seen how mothers to be and mothers blame themselves, and in fact society often reinforces this narrative. While nutrition is definitely important, it will not fix everything and you are not to blame. Your body is not to blame. Making “perfect” food choices likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Again, it’s not your fault.
Perimenopause and Menopause:
Food and lifestyle play a big part as we go through “the change.” Your food choices, how you eat your food, and how often you eat all support estrogen balance and reduce inflammation.
Importantly, as you approach these middle years of life your stress also plays a significant role in how this stage of life goes for you. If your adrenal glands are overtaxed because of high stress levels you may experience more symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, and more bone loss.
Regular meals will stabilize blood sugar patterns which will help your adrenal glands out a lot so they can take on producing the estrogen that protects your bone health as your ovaries retire.
Here’s another thought for you: many women dread this time of life for fear they will gain weight. Fat cells in our body produce estrogen though, which actually helps to protect your bone health. In addition, studies show that women who are not “too thin” tend to have the best health outcomes for much longer. Maybe your body actually knows a thing or two and is working for your good.
Gut Health Supports Our Overall Health & Impacts Our Hormones Too
Gut health is a pretty hot topic right now in most health and wellness spaces, and for good reason. So much happens in the gut! Nothing in your body functions in a vacuum. Meaning, your organs and systems all communicate and influence one another.
Your gut houses the majority of your immune system, produces the majority of the serotonin in your body, and communicates directly with the brain. The gut is thought to have its own nervous system that operates somewhat separately from your brain.
Without going too in depth here (though we certainly need to explore it more in another post) let’s briefly explore the microbiome. Our body plays host to trillions of tiny microorganisms. If you feel squeamish after reading that, know that you are not alone, many have that same reaction.
Yet, as we look deeper at the microbiome it’s actually pretty amazing. This symbiotic relationship has evolved over millennia and is far more sophisticated than we have been able to really study or grasp. We really know so little.
The majority of these microorganisms live in your gut. Your microbiome influences everything from your immune system to your gut-brain axis. It also impacts…drum roll…your hormones and vice versa (1).
Constipation
Let’s start with Serotonin. We typically think of serotonin as the feel good chemical in the brain, but in the gut it helps with motility. Meaning, it is critical to keep you from getting constipated. Now constipation on its own actually influences your hormone levels as well.
Your body uses bowel movements as a way to clear out excess or used up hormones including estrogen. When you can’t go you also can’t get rid of these products. They sit in your colon and slowly get reabsorbed back into your system causing excess and the symptoms that accompany it.
Inflammation
Inflammation is influenced by the gut microbiome which impacts your body and many of the organs (2, 3). When the body is inflamed chronically your body will respond by increasing cortisol levels, estrogen, testosterone, and thyroid hormones.
Some microbes will promote inflammation while others are going to promote lowering inflammation (3). How the inflammation impacts you personally often depends on a lot of factors including genetics.
Symptoms I see often with my clients from chronic inflammation include:
- Increase in anxiety and depression
- Worsening concentration
- Chronic pain
- Joint pain
- Fatigue
- Hormone dysregulation
Malnourishment
You likely have a picture in your mind of what it looks like to be nourished vs malnourished. Yet, even in affluent communities malnutrition does happen.
Having access to food is critical to health, but you also need to be able to digest and absorb what you eat. If your gut is not functioning to full capacity you may be missing out on some vital nutrients.
Your body can only work properly when it has the proper ingredients. If you want fully functioning hormones then you need to be absorbing all the nutrients needed to make and use those hormones.
In our thin and size obsessed society what I see often is that not only are people struggling with a properly functioning gut, but they are also way under-eating. It almost always comes as a shock to my clients when I tell them they are under-eating. We all assume we are eating too much, but honestly, the majority of my clients aren’t eating enough–and it is far more common among my clients in larger bodies to be eating too little.
Hormones are a luxury. If there isn’t enough in the bank then we don’t get luxuries. You need to give your body enough and have a healthy gut so that your hormones will run smoothly and to your benefit.
Understanding the Relationship Between Nutrition & Other Aspects of Women’s Health.
Thyroid Hormones
Your thyroid is a pretty sensitive organ, and what is happening in the gut matters significantly to your thyroid.
You need your gut to absorb critical nutrients like selenium, iodine, zinc, and iron so the thyroid can create your thyroid hormones. The thyroid produced mostly T4 (the inactive form of thyroid hormone) and some T3 (the active form).
In order for the T4 to be activated and become T3 you need to have the right gut bacteria. Otherwise, you will be struggling with hypothyroidism where you are left exhausted all the time, need a sweater even in hot weather, can’t get enough lotion, and find yourself living in a haze.
Blood Sugar
Research is finding that our gut microbiome is involved in glucose metabolism (4). This has huge implications for conditions like type 2 diabetes and PCOS. Blood sugar balance helps to keep testosterone in a normal range.
Adrenal Glands
Your adrenal glands help you respond to stress by increasing or decreasing your levels of cortisol. We want our cortisol levels to start off higher in the morning and taper down throughout the day so you can sleep at night.
Many of us struggle with chronic stress, though. Our cortisol levels don’t really come down but always stay elevated. This will impact how well your gut works as higher cortisol causes more gut permeability and changes the microbiome in problematic ways.
As we already stated above, the gut being unhealthy is another cause of higher cortisol levels that eventually lead to chronic inflammation as well. Chronic inflammation leads to the development of some pretty awful medical conditions.
Women’s Health & Mental Health
Conversations about women’s health are not complete unless mental health is included. They go hand in hand together, and we cannot ignore or minimize this important connection
Mood
We already know that you need nutrients to help your body function. You also need nutrients to support your mood. Nutrients like your B vitamins, magnesium, and omega-3s have profound effects on your brain and mood.
Blood Sugar
Circling back to blood sugar, when we have poor blood sugar balance we may find that our mood changes as well. Low blood sugar can contribute to mood swings and energy crashes.
Overcoming Gaslighting Culture
Lastly, health care for women is lacking. We lack studies that really dig deep into conditions specific to those who own a uterus. We lack empathy among healthcare providers.
Women often find themselves not being believed and gaslit when they seek help for their symptoms. This wreaks havoc on mental health. You deserve compassionate care that is willing to explore and get to the bottom of your symptoms.
How we use nutrition to support our physical bodies will impact how we feel on a day-to-day basis, and if you have experiences where you feel like something is off, or not right, it might be time to look further at the connection between nutrition and your overall health. I promise I’m here to see you, believe you, and help you. You aren’t crazy, and there can absolutely be something else going on.
Long-Term Well-Being
Looking at all the ways nutrition impacts women’s physical and mental health I hope it is clear that nutrition is worth considering. But before you start looking for the “best” diet there are a couple more things I think are important to consider.
Why Diets Don’t Work
Most adults have tried to diet at least once in their life. Or maybe it wasn’t a formal diet, but you may have tried to change up your usual routine to something that you thought was more health promoting or would result in weight loss.
Diets really are the most deviously marketed products out there. Diets don’t work. You may initially lose weight, but you will inevitably gain it back and usually a little more. But who do we blame for that? Ourselves. We never blame diets and the fact that we know and have seen over and over again in research that diets do not work. They do not promote better health.
Here’s what the research shows:
“there is considerable evidence that the focus on weight and weight loss is linked to diminished health
(Tylka, 2014).”
“Against a tradition in science which assumes that there are no treatment effects until they are demonstrated, there is an unchallenged convention by which weight loss interventions are presumed effective unit there is explicit evidence to the contrary. The reality is that we do not have effective treatment to offer, and we should be candid about this until there is reliable evidence to the contrary. To avoid confronting the failures of obesity treatment is to mislead a public desperately waiting with cash in hand for an effective treatment
(Rothblum, 2018).”
“emphasize the need for health promotion efforts to empower, not stigmatize, those they are designed to benefit. This is especially important given that communities with low incomes and Black and Indigenous individuals and people of color systematically experience higher weights. Therefore, unintentional harm caused by obesity-focused public health interventions may incur double jeopardy, disproportionately and unacceptably further burdening Black and Indigenous individuals and people of color and low-income communities.
(Richmond, 2021).”
“By all measures the BMI is an extremely poor test to be used as a basis for public health policy and clinical interventions. In Summary, although having a body weight above the “healthy weight” BMI category is said to result in poorer life expectancy, mortality, and morbidity, the evidence from the literature does not support this claim.
(O’Hara, 2018).”
“There is promising evidence that supports shifting from a weight-centric to a weight-inclusive approach when supporting patients in improved health and well-being. In two different systematic reviews of nondiet interventions, both sets of authors reported nondiet participants experienced improvements in psychological health in all studies that tracked such outcomes, along with no worsening physical health.”
(Mauldin, 2022)
My Soap Box: The “Health” Industry is Failing Women
This makes my blood boil. This is just a small sampling of the research emphasizing that weight loss as a way to gain better health is actually harming us. This is not true nutrition, this is yet another way to subjugate and control. If women are too distracted by needing to lose weight we aren’t out there living our lives and making the huge impact that we could and should be having.
Restriction is Harmful & Can Lead to Worse Health and Disordered Eating
Dieting and losing weight is all about restriction. Sure some diets are promoted as allowing you to eat enough or to eat what you want, but somewhere in the program something is being restricted.
Restriction and skipping meals leads to chronic fatigue, added stress to your body (which we know increases inflammation and harms the microbiome), and will lead to hormone dysregulation. Your body senses danger when there is restriction. It is going to do everything in its power to keep you alive. So while you know there is food in abundance and you won’t starve to death, your body only knows that it doesn’t have enough to go around.
You will become tired because you cannot afford to burn more calories when you aren’t consuming enough. You will start to obsess about food because your body needs it to live! Your body slows down your metabolism to keep you alive.
When you break and start eating normally again your body knows that it must prepare for the next scary event like that. So you find yourself hungry all the time and you eat. Often a lot. And your body stores up.
This cycle causes damage to your heart, thyroid, adrenal glands, and your metabolism, and overtime can lead to disordered eating or eating disorders. These efforts to get our health under control and to feel better backfire in big ways for our physical health and also our mental health as we blame ourselves and spiral into shame.
Long-term shame around nutrition is not going to empower you or help you get what you need to regulate your hormones, have the energy you want and need, or enjoy life’s little moments.
We take an Integrative, Functional, & Behavioral Approach
Rather than follow fad diets, here are a few things to consider when seeking long-term well-being.
The Functional Side
Your nutrition needs to be personal to you. You can work with a provider to assess your symptoms with conventional labs as well as functional labs. This is a great place to start if you are dealing with symptoms right now.
Pay attention to your digestion and how it feels. Stay curious about how you eat your meals. Do you always get gas and bloating when you eat on the go? If you are stressed you will not be able to digest as well.
We want to broaden the lens and consider that nourishing our bodies isn’t only about food, it is about many other things as well such as the environment in which that food is eaten, or the general state of our body.
Behavioral Side
If you have read anything on my site you will likely know what comes next, but here we go: You need to tune into your individual body needs. External rules about food will not serve you.
Here’s an example: generally we are told to eat more fruits and vegetables. That is sound advice for most people, but I know people who get horrific stomach aches when they follow that advice. So for them, fruits and veggies may not be something they can digest and therefore not good advice.
Your body knows what feels good and what doesn’t. It knows when to eat and when to stop eating. So rather than looking in the mirror and gauging success based on what we see there, we must shift our focus internally to how we feel inside and then adjust as needed from there.
The more we check in with our bodies the easier it gets to communicate back and forth. As we improve our interoceptive awareness our overall wellbeing improves as well.
Nutrition for Women’s Health
Nutrition is powerful and important in promoting long-term well being for women and their health. While nutrition is not a quick fix, it is important to remember that being restrictive will ultimately set you back. There are better ways to approach your health like: practicing more intuitive eating and movement. Along with creating sustainable ways for you to support your physical and mental needs.
Here at Integrative Functional Nutrition, we have helped hundreds of clients to find their unique pathway to nutrition and overall health. Together we look at what you specifically need, address your concerns, and we find creative ways to support you.
Overall, Integrative Functional Nutrition exists for all people to have access to professionals, resources, and education that focus on weight-inclusive nutrition.
We set the standard on weight-inclusive care. All people deserve to be seen, heard and helped. No one should be excluded from the opportunity for health, well-being, and a great quality of life. Integrative Functional Nutrition is here to treat each person holistically since nutrition is about more than what you eat.
It’s easy to get started on your journey to better health, simply schedule your free consultation, where we will talk about what you need and want support in and what it will look like to work together.
Don’t forget we do take insurance, and we provide services right in our Bountiful, UT office.
References:
- He S, Li H, Yu Z, Zhang F, Liang S, Liu H, Chen H, Lü M. The Gut Microbiome and Sex Hormone-Related Diseases. Front Microbiol. 2021 Sep 28;12:711137. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.711137. PMID: 34650525; PMCID: PMC8506209.
- Mancini A, Di Segni C, Raimondo S, Olivieri G, Silvestrini A, Meucci E, Currò D. Thyroid Hormones, Oxidative Stress, and Inflammation. Mediators Inflamm. 2016;2016:6757154. doi: 10.1155/2016/6757154. Epub 2016 Mar 8. PMID: 27051079; PMCID: PMC4802023.
- Al Bander Z, Nitert MD, Mousa A, Naderpoor N. The Gut Microbiota and Inflammation: An Overview. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Oct 19;17(20):7618. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17207618. PMID: 33086688; PMCID: PMC7589951.
- Palmnäs-Bédard MSA, Costabile G, Vetrani C, Åberg S, Hjalmarsson Y, Dicksved J, Riccardi G, Landberg R. The human gut microbiota and glucose metabolism: a scoping review of key bacteria and the potential role of SCFAs. Am J Clin Nutr. 2022 Oct 6;116(4):862-874. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqac217. PMID: 36026526; PMCID: PMC9535511.
- Tylka TL, Annunziato RA, Burgard D, Daníelsdóttir S, Shuman E, Davis C, Calogero RM. The weight-inclusive versus weight-normative approach to health: evaluating the evidence for prioritizing well-being over weight loss. J Obes. 2014;2014:983495. doi: 10.1155/2014/983495. Epub 2014 Jul 23. PMID: 25147734; PMCID: PMC4132299.
- Rothblum, E. D. (2018). Slim chance for permanent weight loss.Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6(1), 63–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/arc0000043
- Richmond TK, Thurston IB, Sonneville KR. Weight-Focused Public Health Interventions-No Benefit, Some Harm. JAMA Pediatr. 2021 Mar 1;175(3):238-239. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.4777. PMID: 33196761.
- O’Hara L, Gregg J. The war on obesity: a social determinant of health. Health Promot J Austr. 2006 Dec;17(3):260-3. doi: 10.1071/he06260. PMID: 17176244.
- Mauldin K, May M, Clifford D. The consequences of a weight-centric approach to healthcare: A case for a paradigm shift in how clinicians address body weight. Nutr Clin Pract. 2022 Dec;37(6):1291-1306. doi: 10.1002/ncp.10885. Epub 2022 Jul 12. PMID: 35819360.
