The Hidden Menopause-Weight Connection: Why Your Gut Holds the Key

Are you eating "healthy" but still struggling with weight gain during menopause? You're not alone.

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Orlena reveals the hidden science behind why menopause makes weight management so challenging - and it all comes down to your gut microbiome.

Discover why declining estrogen doesn't just affect hot flashes, but fundamentally rewires your digestive system, tipping the balance toward inflammation and weight gain. Learn about the crucial F/B ratio (the good vs. bad bacteria battle happening in your gut right now) and why most women unknowingly sabotage their efforts by expecting quick fixes.

Three game-changing insights you'll learn:

• How menopause disrupts the estrogen-gut connection, making your body a fat-storage machine
• Why you might not be eating as "healthily" as you think (and the specific nutrients that can turn things around)
• The truth about timing: why gut healing takes months, not weeks - and why that's actually good news

Whether you're in perimenopause or beyond, this episode provides the scientific foundation you need to work WITH your changing body, not against it.

Sign up for the Stop Dieting and Start Thriving Video:

https://www.drorlena.com/stop-dieting

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/positively-healthy-chat-with-dr-orlena-fb

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing today. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about menopause. How it has a huge impact on your biome. And also I want to talk to you if you are one of these people who says, I eat really healthily, but I want to lose weight.

Now, I am not saying that you aren't eating healthily. It's very difficult for me to tell if you're eating healthily, if I cannot talk to you and see exactly what you are eating. But what I can tell you is so many people that I work with start off by saying, oh, I'm eating healthily. And I'm like, okay, just do things like this a little bit.

And as they go through my program, they're like. Oh wow. I thought I was eating healthily, but I see that I wasn't eating as healthily as I possibly could have done. And [00:01:00] basically, in other words, there is room for improvement. So instead of saying to yourself, I'm eating healthily, one of the things I think you can ask yourself is, can I eat more healthily?

And that is a much more empowering way than saying, you know what, I'm doing everything right. In terms of healthy eating, it must be something else. Now, obviously if you have been listening to me, you know that I teach four pillars and all four pillars are really important when it comes to both health, long-term health and weight loss.

They are nutrition. Exercise, sleep and stress, emotional wellness, mindset, all of those good and interesting things here. But here's, and, and all of these are important and all of them are interconnected, but one of the things about nutrition is it is a really big piece of the puzzle. You know what they say?

It's 80% nutrition and 20% exercising. And I think this is [00:02:00] really true that we really need to get our heads around this. I'm not saying you shouldn't exercise, but what I am saying is if you really get your nutrition you should be a healthy weight. That the other way of looking at it is. If you have got excess weight, that means that at some stage, things have happened normally within nutrition as well, but things have happened that mean that you aren't leading your healthiest life and that weight has crept on, and it's one of the big reasons why I think it's really good to take your mindset away from.

It's all about the weight to fixing it to healthy and strong and really focusing on you being your healthiest person. And then the weight will fall into place. Okay, so let's have a little think about menopause and the gut bio. And one of the reasons I bring this up, because it can be a little bit complicated [00:03:00] in terms of science, but I do think it is one of those things that is.

It can take a time to change this. There are some significant changes that happen as we go through menopause that really affect our biome for most people. Not for all people, but for a lot of people. That's what happens. And when we try and change this, yes, you absolutely can change it, but it's not something that changes in a week or two weeks.

It takes a lot of time to change, make these changes, and I think what happens to people is. They wanna try something for two weeks and then go but I tried it for two weeks and I didn't get any results and so therefore it's not working. And I'm like, wait, it doesn't happen like that. When we go through menopause, there are certain.

Things that are happening underneath systems that are basically changing, that mean that it is much easier for us to put on weight and some of those systems can take a period of time to reverse. So you might be doing all the right things and it [00:04:00] being great and actually things are happening underneath your improving your gut biome, but you are not noticing any difference in terms of weight because.

Once you have got your biome back to where you want it to be, it's suddenly gonna be so much easier. So let's do some sciencey things. I like sciencey things. Okay, so here's basics of science. So you probably know that estrogen is made by your ovaries. Now what you may not know is that. In order to be active, it needs to go through your biome.

So when it is released, it is bound to something called sex hormone binding globulin, which means that it can't interact with all of the receptors, the estrogen receptors in your body. Your liver creates something that goes into your gut and in your gut. Basically your biome uncouple these and then releases the estrogen.

Estrogen goes [00:05:00] back to the rest of your body where it then has all the wonderful effects that estrogen has on your body. However, when we start to have declining estrogen, and just side note, actually. We talk about menopause, which is like the last time, like a year after you had your last period. But most women put on weight in those five years leading up to menopause.

So in the perimenopause at age, we're looking at 45 onwards, and then 50 is like the average age of menopause. So as you are having declining estrogen, that means that we don't need these bugs. And we get an increased gut permeability as well, which is not so good. And this can lead to inflammation all over our body.

So essentially. What happens when we have good bugs in our body? There's so many benefits of having good bugs in our body. They basically release these things called [00:06:00] short chain fassy acids, which have really good effects on our body, so they have a positive effect on our appetite, troll control. They prevent other bad bugs from being around.

They're also involved in the synthesis of neurotransmitters. Such as acetylcholine, which is used for muscle contraction. So that means we're gonna have stronger muscle contractions. Also, things like dopamine and serotonin. So serotonin is about learning and memory and happiness and regulating body temperature and sleep and hunger and sexual behavior from the short fatty acid.

We also get. Production and recruitment of immune cells, which helps us with bone mineral density. And they are produced from the dietary fiber, which is in our deep gut and low levels of these things are associated with. Disease basically. So the good things of [00:07:00] having a healthy gut reduces inflammation, improves energy and fatigue, helps us with improved body composition, with bone density, with nutrient absorption and utilization with vitamin production, with better sleep quality.

So many good things, however. Menopause. Hello? What happens in menopause? It's almost like menopause is like this huge great obstacle that says we are gonna make it so much easier for your body to put on fat. And we're gonna create these systems where like you put on a bit of fat, which like gets a little bit more fat, which gets a little bit more fat.

So when we go through menopause, we have some changes. The bugs can get into the rest of the body. This is not good. And increases inflammatory response, which we don't want. So that means that you can have a worsening of an existing disease. So for example, it might be that you have low bone mineral density or pre-diabetes, [00:08:00] or it might be that you.

Are predisposed to rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, but you are not actually showing any symptoms of them. And, but it can trigger those symptoms. It can also start diseases such as metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases and also some cancers and. It can affect our brain function as well.

So it can negatively affect our fine motor skills, our cognition, depression, anxiety, and risk of Alzheimer's disease. So this is definitely something that we don't want to happen to us. Even if we are not really worried about body composition, you might be going my body composition is fine. You still want all of these benefits.

So one of the big thing happens. With the bugs is there are two bugs, and this is called your FB ratio. Now take a pause because it makes, basically sounds like we are entering into the movie June. So you [00:09:00] have something called facu, which are like basically the bad bacteria, and you have something called bacteria dease, which is the good bacteria.

So if you've got a low. So you've got less of the bad ones and lots of the good ones. You've got a low FB ratio. That means it's much easier for you to be lean, have good insulin sensitivity, to have good immunity, to have good brain health. But guess what menopause means that. The bad bacteria, the facu goes up, and guess what?

It can take a year to change this. It can take a year to really reverse this process. Now the question is how do you change it? Exercise. Exercise is good. Not extreme exercise, but moderate exercise is good for you. Then there are two different bits. So we can talk about probiotics, which is really gonna help the upper gut.

So those probiotics are taking the actual strain of the [00:10:00] bacteria. But really the big piece that you want to focus on is what is called prebiotics. And that's really getting down to that lower gut and prebiotics are basically thinking about it's like fertilizer and making sure that your fertilizer is.

Good that your soil is good to put your seeds in. So what kind of things are we looking at in terms of prebiotics for our lower gut? Fiber? Fiber. Fiber and fiber. And so this is one of the reasons why eating the right amount of fiber is really beneficial. So 30 grams of fiber a day, and we are looking at colorful fruits and veggies.

So you've obviously heard of. Eating the rainbow, and one of the things that I recommend is eating 30 different plant sources. Now there is a particular thing called polyphenols, so this is gonna help you tip. Strengthen your good bacteria. Where do you find polyphenols? [00:11:00] You find them. They're the colorful red things.

So you find them in, for example, red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar. Cocoa is a really good source of polyphenols. Fruits and berries, green tea, cloves, soy cloves, not clo, clove, the little. Spicy things nuts, tea and coffee, olives, flax seeds, thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage, nuts. And really, you don't have to have loads and loads of these things.

But just incorporating them into your diet is really going to help. And another thing actually is brassicas. Brassicas are very good. So a quick rattle through the biome. And are you really eating healthily? As healthily as you possibly can. Or is there room for improvement now? Exciting news. I am going to be doing a week intensive, exciting event starting the 15th of September, so [00:12:00] I'm just letting you know about it.

Now I'm busy working in the background. To make sure all of it is working and signing up is all doing so much work, I promise you. But in the next few weeks I will show you how to sign up for that, and that's gonna be amazing. They're gonna be live events. We're gonna be really diving into things like this with an opportunity to ask questions as well.

And obviously, if any of you haven't seen the video, stop dieting and start thriving, I really recommend watching that video because. It really gives the framework of all the things that you need to be doing. If you are a woman who is peri or postmenopausal and you want to either lose weight or lead your healthiest life in a way that is enjoyable, and if you would like some help creating your system, then book a call and we will chat and see if my program is the thing that is gonna spark your joy of.

Changing from, I can't do this. This is too difficult. I'm stuck to, oh [00:13:00] my goodness, this is so easy and so fun, and I really enjoy it and I've got all the tools to keep going. So my friends have a lovely day and I look forward to chatting to you soon.