Trish Tucker May; Nutrition Gut Specialist

Imagine waking up to a life where the haze of alcohol no longer clouds your clarity, a life where wellness and sobriety walk hand in hand. That's the transformative journey Trish Tucker May, nutritionist and founder of Passion4Juice, shares with us in a revealing conversation about the complexities of alcohol addiction and the pursuit of health. Trish lays bare her own struggles, from the grip of 'mummy's little helper' to a powerful rebirth into sobriety, offering a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone navigating the choppy waters of stress management and addiction.

Our chat with Trish isn't just about the challenges; it's a roadmap to rediscovering peace amid the storm. She equips us with her personal wellness toolkit — think tapping, meditation, and Wim Hof's ice baths . These are the very practices that have steadied her through times of anxiety and menopause, proving that there's life beyond the bottle. Her story is a testament to the strength we all possess to rewrite our narratives and emerge healthier, happier, and more in tune with our bodies.

But what about the unseen consequences of that glass of wine with dinner? Trish enlightens us on alcohol's little-known assault on gut health and nutrient balance, shining a light on how sobriety can be the missing piece for those struggling with menopause symptoms, gut issues, or just an overall feeling of malaise. Her candid revelations about the impact of alcohol on our bodies, coupled with her expertise in nutrition, make this episode an indispensable listen for anyone ready to leap towards a truly nourishing lifestyle. Join us as we explore the profound shifts that come when one embraces a life free from alcohol's deceptive embrace.

Website: https://trishtuckermay.com/

MEG & BELLA

Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub

Isabella Ferguson: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Instagram: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Instagram: @kidsandalcohol

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:02

Hello everyone. Today on the podcast, I'm interviewing Trish Tucker May. Trish is a nutritionist and founder of Passion4Juice. She is an award-winning nutritionist of the year 2019. A gold medal winner in the Janie Lee Grace Wellness Industry Awards Plus, trish is also a judge for the UK Narrish Awards. Welcome to the podcast, trish.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Thank you so much. It's so good to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:30

So good to have you on and have you in Australia, because you are Australian but you live in the UK. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yeah, I'm Aussie well and truly, through and through. I'm from the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales. I'm currently in Tunkari Been for a beautiful swim at the Rockpool this morning and I miss it so much. You know, for 20 years I did summer in the UK and summer in Australia and I travelled around. There's mobile juice business called Passion4Juice and I travelled around and I kept people healthy at all the big festivals like here I did Woodford and Womad and Rainbow Serpent Festival and Matrae and a whole heap of other doofs and things.

Speaker 2: 2:11

People are healthy and, yes, we had this golden dream life travelling around in a converted school bus and homeschooling the kids and doing summer, summer. So it was the endless summer. It was such a dream existence. I couldn't have made up a more perfect life. And then, of course, covid sort of ruined all of that. So now I've been stuck in the UK. Well, I've got to stop saying stuck because I'm not stuck in the UK. I'm choosing to live in the UK at the moment. My kids are now in high school and we've settled down and now I just focus more on online coaching and focus on getting my book out there. And yeah, but yes, aussie living in the UK, but happy to be home for the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Amazing, yeah, that summer, summer lifestyle sounds pretty brilliant.

Speaker 2: 2:58

It was.

Speaker 2: 2:59

I mean it took a lot of organising because we had a house in both countries and the kids did go to school for summer that time in both countries and and then we'd be on the road.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Like we would come to Australia in November and then we would travel around and do those festivals and sort of partly homeschool the kids and then the kids would go to school for about three months of the year here and then we would pack up the house and rent the house out and do the same again in the UK and we did that for 20 years.

Speaker 2: 3:27

So you can imagine I mean I was using alcohol to push on and to cope and to manage all of that stress and and yeah it was it was an amazing life but it was looking back, it was a really stressful life as well, like it was a lot of change and a lot of disruption and a lot of excitement. It was one big long adventure. But when you're running, when you get to the menopause and fair menopause and you're running on, this adrenaline and adventure and sort of it was sudden to catch up with me. So COVID was almost a bit of a blessing. Where we had to, we were forced to slow down and stop in one place and it was a bit hard to begin with, but it was the golden life for 20 years, I must say.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Amazing. Well, speaking of alcohol, can you take us back and tell us a bit about your journey around alcohol?

Speaker 2: 4:18

Yeah, absolutely, and really interesting, like a real love hate sort of thing over the years. And so I first I can remember so so vividly and clearly my first taste of alcohol, and I reckon I was about maybe five or six, wow, and we were living in Sydney at the time and my dad was a regular, like a daily beer drinker. He was, he was a tradesman, he worked on the traffic lights, he worked outside and at the time there was a two is KB gold gold can. Does anyone? I'm sure there's listeners that will remember this yeah, and I've got a twin brother and we've renamed that beer KB gold, we've renamed it Kids Beer, kb for Kids Beer, wow, and my dad bless him, he passed away now 16 years ago, malanoma, which I'll tell you about. Like, I honestly think that working outside and drinking beer every day is a perfect storm for Malanoma. I can tell you that.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Anyway, my dad would often, like every now and then, open a can of beer. I can remember the sound of it, I can remember the smell of it, I can remember the cold drops drizzling off the cold gold can and he would allow us to have the first mouthful of the can. So I can remember that, like it was yesterday. I can remember the sound, the smell, the taste, where we were sitting in the old hold and the smell of the old hold and seats and he'd go to the bottle shop or the other thing was he would go to the pub and go in with mum and he would and we'd be sitting out in the car and he would bring us a bag of chips like Sam boys or whatever Miss chips and I can associate that first mouthful of beer and I was sure there was maybe about six, you know. So there we go. That was my first relationship. My second, my first time getting drunk was another, like catastrophic, awful. But I can remember it like yesterday went to stay at a friend's house overnight, decided to go camping. I was in the year, I was in the year nine, so it would have been what? 15, I think. First experience of deliberately getting the neighbors the neighbors water to go and buy us alcohol, golden gate, moselle, a Rific, a cask in a tent in the backyard, getting and drinking and in Tupperware cups and getting so drunk that I vomited. Like I was funny. We were rolling around in the tent outside talking to the cows Hilarious, like you know, really, yeah, I so funny.

Speaker 2: 7:10

But then the monumental headache, hangover from hell the next day, so so sick, couldn't go home. My mum had to come and pick me up. The her father actually gave me grated apple to help with the hangover. Wow, now also around about the same time and again you think back on this and think, oh my God, I was on my bike down the road from my house and a friend's boxer dog came out of their front yard and bit my leg, bit my thigh, went straight through my jeans and and put, you know, a fairly decent bite mark in my leg. And the owner of the dog took me inside and, to calm me down, gave me a what would have been then a pint of can or a bottle of apple cider. Oh, I can imagine that now someone's friend bites someone's friends dog, bites you, and you take them inside and give them alcohol to calm them down. And so all of these experiences, and they're all so clear in my mind.

Speaker 2: 8:20

So my first real experience of getting drunk, so so sick, but you know, then became like, just you know, social, social drinking, like parties would go out. But you know, by the time 18, 19, I found I didn't really like alcohol. It didn't agree with me. It didn't feel right in my body and it would always make me feel really sick. Even I've off a few drinks would be really, really sick, like hungover for a couple of days. So in my 20s I didn't really drink. I smoked plenty of pot and I dabbled in plenty of amphetamines. Living on the coast of New South Wales, that's what people did. We took speed, we smoked bongs, you know, but I never really drank. I didn't like the feeling of being drunk and I didn't find anything that I liked the taste of. I found that the smell of most of the guys around here would drink Bundy, rum and coke and the smell of that was disgusting, like it was just so off-putting. So I would go out and I would drink mineral water, and that was my early 20s. I really found that that was my thing and that's what I liked.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Now. Then I finished university and I went travelling and I worked in bars in Austria, like in the Alps. I often worked in bars and I worked in a bar that was an American style bar that was, and we would get the party started with a case of tequila, a case of Omega Gold. We would have to give away to get the party started every night. So we would start our afternoon of work, our evening of work, with a shot of tequila and then again, you know, I'd go to Copenhagen in the summer and I just would have a mark of a whole summer of alcohol.

Speaker 2: 10:03

I didn't really like it, like I didn't really like the effect, but I found that I was being inclined into drinking because of work, or drinking because of friends, or drinking because of the environment. I didn't really like it and I didn't like the taste of it, etc. But that all changed. I had a corporate job. I ended up living in Melbourne and I worked in financial services with Zurich financial services, and I lived and we would started going out to the Yarra Valley and I discovered fine wine. Like I started discovered, you know, that financial services success, boozy lunches and that Yarra Valley experience of fine wine and you're successful, and we go and visit vineyards and we spend, you know, quite a lot of money on fancy wine. That was my thing. I was like, oh wow, finally I can find something that I really enjoy drinking. And there was no looking back at that point.

Speaker 2: 11:04

I moved to Sydney. I got a promotion in Sydney Again. I was working in marketing financial services around 1999, 2000. We had long boozy lunches, like we would finish work on a Friday. We would go to go out for lunch and we wouldn't come back and we would, and then we would go out and we could continue going out into the evening and and that was, you know, we're all of the bosses, the marketing directors. That's what we did, you know, when we were entertaining clients with boozy lunches and we had a marketing budget that included, you know, a case of Chardonnay to drink on the veranda overlooking Sydney Harbour Bridge Opera House on a Friday afternoon. That was what we did.

Speaker 2: 11:44

Now, when I moved to, I think, I got a promotion and I moved to England and, interestingly, at this point I went off into university. What I really wanted to do was have a mobile juice business. I sort of got a bit sidetracked in the corporate world and I got a promotion and I moved to Cheltenham in England and I got there and there was no juice bars anywhere. But at this stage also, I was still in financial services and I was really toying with the idea of importing fine Australian wines to the UK. I was running masterclasses on Australian fine wines. I was teaching people about all the different regions of fine wines in Australia and I almost so so close to deciding to market fine wines, australian fine wines, in the UK. But at the same time I had this burning desire to start this juice bar. So an opportunity came up to take voluntary redundancy from Zurich and I took that and I started a mobile juice business and I got over there. There was no juice bars anywhere and at the time here there was already like every kebab shop had a juice bar, every. I think this was before the time of boost, but there was still a lot of juice bars in Australia. So I get over to the UK. There's no juice bars and I finally leave the corporate world and I start this mobile juice bar.

Speaker 2: 13:05

My first festival was Glastonbury, which was amazing, you know, it was just like mind blowing. And soon after that we did the Edinburgh Fringe. And soon after doing the Edinburgh Fringe we realized that there was an Adelaide Fringe and we were asked to come and run the mobile juice bar at Adelaide Fringe. And so then we had. We saw this, we had this circuit. We had this six months in the UK, oh my goodness. Six months in Australia. I've got the really good excuse to come home. Wonderful time, really wonderful time.

Speaker 2: 13:36

A little bit of drinking, a little bit of pushing on, nothing too crazy, just normal, occasional drinking. You know, occasional, possibly binge drinking, always maybe drinking a little bit too much, always ending up with a pretty bad hangover, but never really thought anything of it, just thought, oh yeah, this is what everybody does. So fast forward, running the mobile juice bar for nine years, fast forward to when I was 39. And I had my first son and he was born in Newcastle in Australia and had really good break from alcohol pre and post birth, like a good maybe six months beforehand. And then I was breastfeeding for two years for him, so didn't drink at all, didn't think anything of it.

Speaker 2: 14:21

And then my second son came along three years later and he was born in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Fringe, and I think this is where things started to change. Both my babies were almost 11 pounds, so Jack was 11 pounds and Rory was just over 11 pounds. And he was born in the middle of the Edinburgh fringe in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and we were living in our motor home in the University car park and one of the midwives came to visit soon after, like day two of having my second son, this big baby. And she said, oh, you've got a really big baby here. You need to keep up your milk production. You should have a Guinness a day. And I'm like, oh great idea, a Guinness a day, what a brilliant idea. It's really good for iron production, right? And she said I didn't have plenty of dark chocolate. I thought, what brilliant advice. So here is me with a 11 pound over 11 pound newborn drinking a Guinness a day.

Speaker 2: 15:26

Now, this little fella didn't really sleep very well. He had a bit of a twist in his spine. He puked every, every time that the last few mouthfuls of every feed he puked. So he was vomiting a lot. He was not sleeping. He was a big baby. He wanted to feed seven times a night and we had three years of major sleep deprivation During this time.

Speaker 2: 15:48

This is when my relationship with alcohol started to change. I definitely started to use it as mummy's little helper. We were still on the road, we were still traveling, I had a baby that didn't sleep and I was not coping. I definitely look back. I mean, it was 42 years old. I look back now, knowing everything that I know about nutrition and menopause and hormones. I was postnatally depressed and I was very, very deplete, having been on the road at this stage by already 12 years, and I was starting to use alcohol as part of my support to definitely mummy's little helper, you know and I started to realise that I felt like I really needed it, like I wanted my wine. But at that five o'clock I started to mirror my father's drinking behaviour. Like he was a five o'clock drinker. He would never drink before five o'clock, he would come home, he'd have a shower and then he'd have his knockoff drinks. And I was starting to mirror that behaviour. It was pushing on, it was helping me cope, it was enabling me to cope with this, you know, complete sleep deprivation. So that was really interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Now, when my son was three, I took myself off to a detox retreat, a juice retreat, to wean him, because I just he was wanting to feed so often I just said I've just got to stop feeding this breastfeeding child. And I went off to a juice retreat and there I met a nutritionist and she, you know she's saying, you know what is it? Is this something that you want to change? And I thought really at that point it was my biscuit habit, like the three-pot biscuit habit of having the tea, the shortbread biscuits in the tea, and.

Speaker 2: 17:33

But I was always fascinated with nutrition, like I had had a massive health transformation at the age of 32. I had chronic asthma, anaphylaxis. I peaked at 12 anaphylactic episodes in one year. I had shingles as an adult, twice I had Ross River fever. I had all this stuff going on and I, at the age of 32, I intuitively found my way to a nutritionist who diagnosed me with Candida and a hookworm, and so we did all this work for six weeks and transformed my health. And thank God, I did all that work before kids.

Speaker 2: 18:09

So I'd already had this experience of massive transformation, wanting to go deeper in nutrition, and then talking to this nutritionist about oh there's a really good course that you might like to study, and it was the Nutritional Healing Foundation Diploma in Nutritional Therapy, and so I was really fascinated with that and I thought, yeah, actually you know what I'm going to go and do this. I want to go deeper. I would. You know, I was already fascinated with that power of healing and I did want to make changes in my life, but I wasn't really aware at this stage that I was using alcohol as a crux as a way of pushing on and getting through. So off I went and I went and studied, and it was in my first year of study that it was starting to be really eye-opening about how much alcohol puts a strain on digestion and how it interrupts sleep and causes hot flushes and skin reactions and how much it aggravates stress. And I know that I was using alcohol to relax me. But understanding that alcohol really does the opposite, knowing that it's really dehydration and dehydrating and it can, you know, have such a harmful effect on the brain, the liver and the hormone production. But at this point I was still drinking, like I was still occasionally having my glass of wine. Probably three or four nights a week I would have a couple of glasses of wine and then I like this is so.

Speaker 2: 19:35

This is nine years ago I really started to change my relationship. I started to observe how addictive it had become for me, how I would use it to switch off, to switch off my brain, to stop working, to push on when I had to, you know, do another couple of hours of work. And I really started to become aware of how much I was choosing alcohol over wanting to read to my kids or wanting to. You know, read a bit. I'm sorry, I'd be wanting to rush through it because I wanted to go back to my wine and I started to observe how it was making me feel and how curious I was around, that need for something to switch my mind off, like I'd found the thing that I really loved the taste of which was wine, particularly red wine, and I definitely started to feel that the substance for me was addictive. So curiosity got the better of me and I thought right, I'm going to take a tactical break. I'm going to take a three month break from alcohol, which I found really hard. I found surprisingly hard. I found that doing a dry July or a October or October or January was really beneficial, but how quickly I wanted to go back to drinking afterwards.

Speaker 2: 21:14

I played the observer for a long time. Having a break from alcohol in my pregnancies and breastfeeding was not really a problem until my second son, until I was, you know, my hormones were so all over the place that I really needed to take a break. But how difficult taking a long break could be. So I found myself doing this pattern of three months, seven months, six months, one month, and then going back to drinking and then picking up exactly where I'd left off and almost binging more than I would, and then having the hangover from hell. And so many of my friends if any of my friends that are going to be listening to this they'd be like. Even I caught up with a girlfriend from school here last year and she said you know what? You always had the hangover from hell, like we'd all be fine the next day and you would be dying for two days. So I really started to realise that actually it doesn't suit me. However, giving up is really really hard. So at the moment now I've been 11 months sober and I've never been able to sort of crack that seven month mark.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Like I'd always have something that would draw me back in and then I'd pick up exactly where I'd be, I'd left off and I'd be like, right, and then I'd just be, I'd binge, you know I'd maybe be drinking back to drinking three or four nights a week and then, before I know it, I'd be, I'd have a hangover on a Wednesday morning and I'd be like how the hell have I got back here? You know, I'm back. I'm back. You know, despite everything, I've learned everything. I've studied all the quick lip books that I've read, I'd always be back right back where I started, something that I've really that dawned on me.

Speaker 2: 23:01

I did some family constellation work and something that really dawned on me was, firstly, I was almost addicted to the struggle of the day one like that. First, you know how the first 30 days is the hardest. There was something about that struggle that really held me going back to that place and there was something about learned behaviour from families. So there is alcoholism in my family and I did a family constellation which I thought was going to be about my dad, which turned out to be about my auntie and my great-great grandfather and the victim perpetrator relationship between the Irish and the indigenous Australians and my auntie standing there going. I took the hit you don't have to struggle anymore and it was, oh my God, so emotional but realising that actually there is something in it for me that is addicted to the struggle. So that's, that's what I'm at now. I've been doing a lot of work around.

Speaker 2: 24:03

You know how that presents, what triggers that, how you know how hard it is for me to let that go and you know, I know all the stuff. I know that the alcohol affects the liver. It causes inflammation. It causes dehydration, especially in the brain oh my God, the brain fog, like I was. That was really a good reason to stop drinking. I know it destroys the gut lining. I know it causes stress. I know it's addictive. I know it's, you know it's. It impairs the memory. I know all of these things from a nutritional point of view, but I was still going back and making those same choices, even after having a break for 10 months or 11 months or seven months. So that's where I'm at now is really trying to break that cycle of like. No, do not need to go back and do all those day ones again. I've been through that so many times. You know I'm, I'm stronger, I'm better. I can just let that pattern go.

Speaker 2: 24:59

So yeah, that's, that's you know a bit of a snapshot of my roller coaster experience and relationship with and observing, playing the observer for so long, like knowing that, as much as I loved the wine, I got to a place where it stopped loving me back.

Speaker 1: 25:19

Yeah, wow, that's an amazing story, trish, and well done on 11 months alcohol free that's amazing, really interesting about that family constellation you were talking about and digging into that and learning from that. As a, as a coach, we focus on thoughts and beliefs to really help with the long-term change of behavior, rather than just changing a behavior, because that ends up using just the willpower, whereas once we start, like you just said, getting curious that's our top pointer for clients is get curious. You know, really have a look at when you're drinking, why, how it's making you feel, what you're wanting it to do for you, that kind of thing. So I mean, basically, you've just summed up everything that I did and I do and, yeah, really amazing and really shows how it's helped you longer term by having a look at these things.

Speaker 2: 26:23

And I tell you, one of the things that has become very obvious to me is and particularly since the COVID, and particularly in permanent pause I had in on the 6th of January 2021, I had a panic attack and out of the blue, and it was something I was triggered by having an argument with my eldest son, who loves his very provocative, he loves a good argument Boy. He's probably don't know what he's going to end up doing, but he honestly debating team or that sort of thing, but lots of good things and I had an argument with him and it was there was something that he said that triggered me into getting very upset and we were right thick in the. You know, we were the just had the third lockdown announced in the UK and we were having another three months of homeschooling. We've done a lot of homeschooling, but our version of homeschooling looked very different to homeschooling that was happening in COVID and I had this panic attack and I realized from that point that actually, even as a kid, I can remember feeling quite nervous and a little bit just I wouldn't say I suffered with anxiety, but feeling those anxious feelings and I think that that was always something that triggered me back to drinking, whether it would be awkwardness in a social situation or feeling like my coming from a place of low self esteem and lacking in confidence, feeling that I needed to mask that, or I wanted that feeling to go away. And there was no sure way to help that feeling disappear in a flash than with a glass of wine.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Because you've suddenly used and I never really associated with the other numbing, like I didn't have something to numb. I always used it to push on and give me a bit more energy and and and help me get across the line. Like work. Another couple of hours or something will take. Definitely take numbing pain, definitely like chronic pain. I did break my neck in my late twenties and so I've had residual chronic pain that I've had to manage to. Definitely numbing pain. But the more I've done the work I've realized that numbing social nervousness definitely was a trigger, is a trigger for me. So now I've got to go. You know I do a lot of tapping and I do some meditation, I do visualizations, I do vision boards. So I've got my book launch coming up this Saturday and I'm very nervous about it and I'm like look how far I've come, look at all the work that I've done. Look at the person I've become, look at everything that I've achieved out of that feeling of not feeling good enough. The alcohol is wrapped around that 100% yeah. And now it's going okay.

Speaker 2: 29:20

Having other tools that you know, having a, you know that that switch off. Okay. So switch off, switch, stop working. Change your state, change your space, change your location. Go and have a walk, do a meditation, just sit down and have cup of tea. You don't have to sit down and have a glass of wine.

Speaker 2: 29:41

Changing that space, that, yes, using that to switch off, doing a small meditation, doing legs up the wall, doing yoga, do it. Just getting outside, hugging your tree, whatever it is now that's in my toolbox that I use to enable myself to switch off, is so much better than you know. Three glasses of wine and they're waking up at three o'clock in the morning with anxiety and Appetitions, and you know all that worry. So, yeah, but it's still. I mean, it's such a work in progress, you know, because, as a functional nutritionist, I know all the damage that does.

Speaker 2: 30:13

But it's and and and this was said to my clients as well Willpower is not enough and you're trying to lose weight where you've got to go deeper into what's keeping you in those patents. What's keeping you? I'm just trying to Continue in going back over that old ground and and it's interesting being home. There is triggers here, like watching my mom and watching insecurities of my mom and how I've inherited those insecurities, and just watching them and not having to do anything about them, just watching them, just observing and going, oh, that's that, that's where that comes from. Right, I don't have to act on that, it just is what it is. I'm just trying to get my hands on it and just be able to tap through it and go oh, even though I'm feeling really anxious today and I'm feeling really nervous, I, I deeply love and appreciate and accept myself and that's it, like I don't have to do anything more.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Oh, hit the nail on the head. I mean, the toolkit you have is incredible. It's very similar to mine and what happens is, you know, it leads to everything you said physically, or the new tools which actually lead to a healthier lifestyle tapping, breathing, walking, you know all things like that. Um, it's so good for us, but Habitually we've gone to, I guess, what was easy at the time, but over time, like you said, drinking to help you socially over time. The last podcast I did was about how that led me to isolation.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Absolutely. I definitely isolated myself. I was drinking alone. In the end I was drinking on Wednesday night I'll have two glasses of wine Just to switch off and I was, and I wouldn't go out, I wouldn't do anything, I would, just I wouldn't do my yoga, I wouldn't do my dancing, I wouldn't do my all, I wouldn't go to the book club, I wouldn't. You know, I wouldn't do any of those things because I, just I. You know, I felt almost too nervous because I was, I'd had too many, too many wines, or you know, it's funny that it does take that away. I tell you one other thing that's in my toolkit. In England more so, I do swim here every day, and the other morning it was a little bit fresh and I thought what about thinking? In England I do ice bars.

Speaker 2: 32:21

Wow yeah, out there in an ice bath at two degrees, three degrees, four degrees, and that really helps with that feel, that fizzing feeling that you know if you've got too much cortisol. Have you been? Your adrenals have been under the pump for as long as mine have, like living in two countries and that sort of thing coming from a quiet and pushing on using alcohol. I think that does definitely deplete the adrenals. The ice baths have helped. So much.

Speaker 1: 32:47

Yeah, well, you know what we've got. It's kind of a bit of a trend here as well. So on Saturdays at Manley I was really into the ice baths. It was beautiful down on the beach jumping into the ice bath, but absolutely brilliant and and in helping with you know the vagus nerve and getting back into the Prefrontal cortex, and so I love a good ice bath. I can't I think it'd be really cool to do it in somewhere like England where it's cold as well, like you have to crack the ice off. Yes, oh, my goodness, it's on my bucket list. I want to go somewhere where yet, literally you Crack the ice off.

Speaker 2: 33:22

Yeah well, we did community festival with Russell Brown and Wim Hof for a couple of years in a row and meeting Wim Hof and breathing with Wim Hof and and doing my first ever ice bath with Wim Hof.

Speaker 2: 33:36

Oh, that's awesome, it's blitz and that's what got me into it. And I just thought, oh my goodness, within that first minute of being in an ice bath, my whole the holy cortisol, that whole calming that comes over the body, after about a minute you just feel like, oh, wow, just so relaxed, so, and then feel so euphoric for the rest of the day, like, wow, that mental clarity that you know, and that's something that alcohol will never give you. You know that that true feeling of calm and happiness and peacefulness and clarity that you can get from five minutes in an ice bath is Totally and it's, it's kind of mind-boggling, because alcohol does the opposite.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Yet We've, you know, use it for so many things that it's only ever going to end up taking away from us. And then, like you said, five minutes and you've. You've achieved way more and you feel better. But even if you don't have access to that, another tool in my toolkit might be really cold water on your face or a minute at the end of a shower. Even if you start to get cold water on your face, a minute at the end of a shower, even if you start with 10 seconds of cold, yeah, so it's all another tool that's really helpful. But you mentioned Every you know earlier on knowing all the health information. But not, it didn't, it's still.

Speaker 1: 34:58

You still went back to the drinking and I Definitely relate to that, as do, I'm sure, many of our listeners. So I found that because I, a lot of people who I meet on this journey, have always been interested in health, ironically, and Good nutrition and and alcohols. What's been holding us back? But, interestingly, so many people say I changed everything. I was so healthy, but I didn't think about the wine. But what I found now is on the flip side, is all the information I did learn beforehand about health Didn't Wasn't the reason for me stopping, but it certainly is something that keeps me going. Now, and I find even more interesting, I really love to know that I'm two years two months alcohol free and I love to just sometimes reflect on oh, then I've really helped my brain, or, um, I've helped my body. But you speak about Gut health and I'm just wondering what effect alcohol has on gut health.

Speaker 2: 36:01

It massive. So I do comprehensive microbiome tests and of course, in the whole experience of functional nutrition I did a lot of those tests on myself and I've seen how that has progressed. So I had, I had Candida, I had parasites, I had a low, low, very compromised mucosal barrier, which is where a lot of the immune system of the gut is stems from. You know, you need that good, robust mucosal barrier and mine was really deplete and I also noticed that and this is my first test that I did a few years ago and how much is this has changed. So that alcohol depletes your dead digestive enzymes and of course ladies, particularly in the perimenopause and beyond you, your digestive enzymes reduce. So a life changing strategy for some people can be adding in digestive enzymes, like taking digestive enzymes or having a bit of food, but alcohol particularly diminishes the digestive enzymes, it degrades and compromises the mucosal barrier and it will deplete the microbiome. So we can see particularly one of the key micro microbes in the gut that are the commensal bacteria, the good, beneficial bacteria, is Archimanccia and alcohol will deplete Archimanccia and Archimanccia is a crossfeder for other good bacteria and it's also in that mucosal barrier is where the GLP1 molecule resides, which helps the metabolism and the insulin resistance and your short chain fatty acid production. So that has a big knock on effect on your mitochondria and your energy and alcohol depletes all that and I can see that in tests and I can see it in my own tests how, from when I was drinking alcohol and what my mucosal barrier was like then and what it is now. And so there's no denying that. There is no, we know that there is no safe level of alcohol use, despite all the health claims of like, oh, the polyphenols in my wine and all this nonsense. So I was, in the end I was drinking bio, dynamic red wine, organic red wine. You know, now I do love, like I love, all the botanical functional drinks. I love, love, love them. Yeah, you know they are nourishing for the gut but not nourishing for the mind, but also, you know, not destroying the microbes. Yes, we can see that that's what it does.

Speaker 2: 38:42

And the other thing that does, particularly in the perimenopause and the menopause, is it can contribute to the brain fog and the hot flushes and the. You know we become much more sensitive, so skin reactions and all of a sudden you're becoming allergic to a ton of different things. Well, alcohol will exacerbate that. You know, alcohol puts such a strain on the liver and it's through the liver like we've got to make all these hormones and we have to metabolize our hormones. So if we are becoming deplete in estrogen progesterone in the perimenopause, then this is where we manufacture all those hormones. So alcohol diminishes your ability to do that. But then also the clearance of hormones. So in the perimenopause we see a lot of women that are estrogen dominant and they're having this is, you know, painful breasts and polycystic ovaries and weight gain like that belly weight, the bum weight and the brain, you know, severe brain fog and insomnia.

Speaker 2: 39:44

What's I say to my clients? Like at least two, three months of alcohol and notice what, how many of your symptoms will disappear. Because that is about that phase one of the detox pathways within the liver that become compromised because you're adding in a poison all the time and it's giving your body, your liver, so much more work to do when the body needs to be and the liver needs to be metabolizing those hormones. So you know it's yeah, there's so many good reasons why, but it's when you experience those benefits for yourself and you think, oh, yeah, actually life is so much better and my health is so much better. My gut health is so much better, my menopause symptoms are so much better and, interestingly, my most of my menopause symptoms were in my head, meaning that they were. It was the self esteem, it was the, the confidence, the anxiety that was all in my head and the insomnia. You know, like not, I wasn't.

Speaker 2: 40:41

I didn't struggle with insomnia, but I did struggle with early hours awakening with the you know, the heart palpitations. Now I don't have that anymore. You know I sleep, I sleep well, you know. I go to bed at nine o'clock, I wake up at six o'clock and I feel good, you know, the more I'm a majority of the time. Sometimes I still get nervous, but I think that's as I say. You know, nerves is excitement without the breath. So just breathe through it, have a deep, deep breath and focus on its chi, its excitement. It's good, it's, you know, just a few deep breaths.

Speaker 1: 41:12

So, yeah, yeah, amazing, and I can relate to so much like I. I'm I don't know what you call it now, but I'm not perimenopause, I'm postmenopause, I don't know, but I'm, I'm, I'm down the track and I feel like I don't really have any symptoms. I didn't have a lot the symptoms I had, so I do now have itchy ears and it drives me insane. It's a lesser known menopause symptom, but that's what I'm dealing with and I can cope with that if that's all it is.

Speaker 1: 41:45

When I stopped drinking, I feel like I had a deep dehydration. I I had intense pain in my legs and I had trouble getting out of bed. I couldn't walk more than 10 minutes, and this is someone I'd been doing 55 kilometer walks for coast trek, you know, years before, in my 40s and early 40s, and then in my late 40s I couldn't walk. So I put that that was something that can come up in menopause, but this alcohol had dehydrated me. I feel that rehydrating and giving my body what it had been missing. I've seen naturopaths as well and and work on gut health. I feel, like you just said, like I sleep well. For the first time, I don't have symptoms of menopause. I got through the leg pain really, with just really working on hydration and some magnesium. But I feel like I've I almost feel like I've got too good health because I rehydrated my poor, depleted, disability, dehydrated body. I mean, do you think dehydration has a lot to do with issues with menopause or with health?

Speaker 2: 42:58

Oh, absolutely so. What I'm fascinated with is when I look at all the symptoms of menopause and I look at all the symptoms of a sluggish liver and I do also look at all the symptoms of poor gut health and parasites. There is so much overlap, right? So if you're, you know, if you're struggling with irritability, insomnia, skin rashes, allergies, brain fog, accidental weight gain, teariness, breast sensitivity, that can also. They're all the same symptoms of a sluggish liver. So if you've got to the perimenopause and you've never done any liver work, you've never done a liver cleanse or a juice fast or anything, and I highly recommend doing those things once or twice a year. Where you do right, I'm going to do a week of a juice fast, or I'm going to do a liver cleanse and I'm going to do some colonics and I'm going to just really focus on supporting my liver then it could be that your menopause symptoms, your perimenopause symptoms, are actually just a sluggish liver.

Speaker 2: 44:00

So if you've been caning the alcohol for four decades, by the time you get to menopause, maybe it's your liver just saying please give me a break and do some work. You can like do some work and decongest those biopathways and rebuild the microbiome and get some digestive enzymes and and, and add in some bit of foods and get the body hydrated. Because we, you know, if we're chronically dehydrated, that the thirst, that that thirst feeling thirsty, has been turned off. It's been turned off for years. And then we're, you know, we're, we're caning the coffee and then maybe the sugar because we're hungover, and then we're we're drinking alcohol every night, which is depleting all that gut, gut microbes and putting an extra strain on the liver. Yeah, Dehydrated, causing constipation. And then, and then we worried, you know, like ladies, worrying about thinning hair and headaches and sleepless nights and and, and joint pain, and dry skin and and and sluggish metabolism. Well, that's all a sign that the liver needs to work.

Speaker 1: 45:04

Yeah, and you know what I found interesting? So with the hydration I thought, oh yeah, I'm drinking alcohol a lot, but then in the next day I drink so much water but it was never going to touch the sides because I was that dehydrated and, like you said, I wasn't thirsty most of the time unless I woke up gasping for a drink of water. But I never rehydrated and that was the mistake. I thought no, I'm drinking water during the day, at work, I am so hydrated. And then I went on to a bottle or two of wine at night, like there was no chance I was rehydrating.

Speaker 2: 45:38

Yeah. And also, what about all the nutrients that have been depleted, like your B vitamins, your D vitamins, your magnesium, like the calcium? Alcohol strips all of that out of your body. It strips it out of the bimins, it strips it out of your cells. And we need all those, particularly the B vitamins. They're vital for hormone production. So you know, that is the shore, it's the one thing that alcohol definitely depletes, as your magnesium and your B vitamins and I see a lot of women that are nutrient deficient, like they're struggling their irons on the floor. Their B vitamins are on the floor and you need the B vitamins to metabolize the hormones. So that phase two of the detox pathways, where the metabolism of your hormones takes place, needs B12, needs B6.

Speaker 2: 46:23

And that is the number one thing that alcohol will do to your body. First and foremost, it will deplete the nutrients as well as then cause these other better joint pains, skin rashes, attention, anxiety, night sweats. Interestingly, I did have night sweats for a little bit, but it was related to stress and wine. As soon as I took out the wine, what night sweats went on a?

Speaker 1: 46:45

subtle step. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I didn't have night sweats except when I was detoxing from wine. So, you know, go bigger. But I did get onto the B vitamins and the magnesium, and I'm sure that's what, and the hydrating is what helped me get rid of all my symptoms. But the other thing I want people to be aware of is when you, when I was drinking and I went for a blood test occasionally, it always came back that my liver was okay. But, like you're saying that it was still sluggish and I don't know how my liver was okay. But I know a lot of people go oh, my test is fine, I can keep drinking it. It mine wasn't, even though it said it was in the blood test, you know. And when I say that it's just like, oh, your liver looks fine from the doctor. So that's a thing that's true.

Speaker 2: 47:29

Yeah, that is absolutely a thing. So you're you know, through the NHS or Medicare Australia, if you're doing a full blood panel with your GP they are looking for are you sick enough? Do we have to treat you further? And when we're, when we're looking at functional and optimum nutrition, we are looking at the markers ever so slightly different, the ranges that we slightly different and we're looking at are you functioning optimally? So our ranges will be ever so slightly different to the GP for that reason that we want you, we want you to be functioning optimally or the organs to be functioning optimally, and so those ranges will be a little bit different. And you know you could be, you could be at the low end of a B12 or a vitamin D or your iron ranges and be well within the range of the Medicare range. Like, oh, you know, you're fine. You're fine.

Speaker 2: 48:23

And we know, obviously, countless women that say I've been to the GP. They say everything's fine, but you know that you're not fine because you've got a myriad of symptoms. Where you know, I say that the body whispers a long time before it starts to shout. And they've got, I've got women coming to me that are shouting they're, they've got so many symptoms of sluggish liver or the hormones are out of whack. The gut health needs some work and that's not going to be picked up by the GP. So it is worth working with a functional nutritionist to you know, if you do want optimum health, health to to have a look at those, those private labs, to have a look at those markers and make sure that you are. And especially, you know, if you've recently given up alcohol, I think it's very worthwhile to nourish and to focus on the nutrition component. And I've also done like I've done my neuro-transmitters, I've done every test that I could possibly do my neurotransmitters, my dopamine, my you know, my melatonin levels, or my, my Dutch tests at all my hormones.

Speaker 2: 49:23

And it is fascinating to see what is depleted and what may have been depleted that may have been driving your propensity to drink. You know, because we see that. You know, particularly with paramanapals or women, the neurotransmitters may be a little bit out of balance and therefore you're you're seeking that dopamine hit or you're seeking that serotonin hit that you're thinking alcohol gives you. Well, you know, changing up the magnesium levels, taking some herbs or some supplements like five HTTP, can be very beneficial. So it's very good to know that you know, even changing your B vitamins, having, you know, 400 milligrams of magnesium and some liquid vitamin B12, can be so beneficial for your neurotransmitters, because that's the key element that the neurotransmitters need.

Speaker 2: 50:14

So if you're really struggling and you're on the floor and you're feeling like very low mood and no motivation and those sorts of things and you're and you're drinking alcohol because of that, then it's very worthwhile having those nutrients that those those neurotransmitters and the. You know your full blood count, getting that measured, because you may be deplete and you know you're reaching for a, for a synthetic substitute that is tricking your brain into thinking it's getting what it needs in that short term. And it's when you close the gap on what those nutrients are that are really needed that's when you start to feel optimum positive. You know, got a spring spring back in your step, so it is worth closing the gap and doing that work with someone who knows, who knows how to measure that, and you know how to get how to achieve optimum health.

Speaker 1: 51:11

Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree with that. I and I think I look back and I think, thank goodness I've found all my journey with alcohol has come to you know, stopping because I dread to think where I'd be if I kept going. Health wise, it was like you said, it was whispering, then it was starting to shout. If I kept going, that that's when, yeah, the test will come back from the GP that it's too far gone at some point.

Speaker 2: 51:37

Yeah, you do not, you do not wait, need to wait, you do not want to wait for diagnosis. That's life threatening, you know, and that was always my biggest, my biggest motivator, that I thought like, like, if I was diagnosed with some sort of cancer, I'd be like the first thing I would do would give up alcohol. Well, why the hell am I waiting for a diagnosis? I mean that's ridiculous, you know, just give it up now. And for me it was always.

Speaker 2: 52:03

You know, if you had, like it was like the same studying the juice, but like I had this burning desire, I knew deep in my heart that alcohol was the big thing, that I had to go. You know, it was like that. You know, if someone asked you okay, what's the what's the one big thing, I knew that that was alcohol, that I was not standing in. My power wasn't, I wasn't standing in my integrity as a nutritionist. I felt out of alignment. And I've had coaches. I've had so many coaches that are in the nutrition world, that are big drinkers, and I always it was a bit of a glaringly thing and it was always like, oh well, that's okay, they drink, so that's okay that I drink. But I knew deep down in my heart, it wasn't okay.

Speaker 1: 52:43

Yeah, yeah, and I had that. I think I think deep down. You know, I said that I tried everything all my life. I was so interested in it all because I think I do think deep down. I was looking that if I can fix everything else, I can continue with alcohol.

Speaker 2: 52:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:58

So I think a lot of people do, subconsciously or back somewhere in their mind. They can hear that voice and I always say if you can hear that voice, it's only going to get stronger. Have a look at it now. But we? I could keep talking to you honestly for a long time but I'm going to have to end it just because you know we've got time being here. But where can people find you, trish, and I know you have an ebook, so I'm going to put that in the show notes, but can you tell us where to find you and what you offer?

Speaker 2: 53:29

Yeah, probably the best way is by my website, trishtuckermaycom. So you will find a copy of my book Nauri Shilgut for a positive menopause there, and you will find a copy of my free ebook, which is around beating the belly bloat, which is such a big symptom for all of us ladies in the perimenopause and the menopause. So I'd love for you to connect with me there, and I do have clients in Australia and in the UK is where I focus most of my functional medicine and functional nutrition tests and programs. So, yeah, I'd love for you to connect with me and thanks so much for having me on. I could talk absolutely for the hours with you as well. It's such a fascinating subject.

Speaker 1: 54:09

Oh, it absolutely is. Well, thank you so much, trish, and everything will be in the show notes. So thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 54:16

You're welcome.