Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball - 110: DIG IN: This Episode Could Change Your Life

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Jo and Zoe have spoken to some amazing experts on the show and their advice has really stuck. This episode is dedicated to their wisdom: a ‘best bits’ of life lessons, sage words and helpful tips. From the simple ways to feel happier every day, managing the menopause, living with anxiety and leading a stronger, fitter and happier life, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, Dr Naomi Potter, Owen O’Kane and Liz Earle have you covered. The next 35 minutes really could change your life.GET IN TOUCH📧 Email us: [e-mail]📱 Text or Voice Note: 07477 038795💬 Or tap here to send a voice note or message on WhatsApp:⁠ ⁠https://wa.me/447477038795SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR This episode is brought to you by EE📱 EE Get the edge with 5G+ on EE, the UK’s best network – search EE Best Network to find out more and check availability in your area.CREDITSExec Producer: Jonathan O’SullivanProducers: Harriet Thurley & Samantha Psyk Assistant Producer: Eve JonesTechnical Producer: Oliver GeraghtyVideo Editors: Cameron Laird & Jack Whiteside 

Coming up on Digit. I think having some intentional time to yourself without your phone every morning, as hard as that can be, can be very, very helpful. I'd encourage you to do the opposite. I want you to go out today. I want you to go towards the discomfort. And I want you to do the opposite of what your anxiety is telling you to do. Viginal estrogen is amazing.

It can be brilliant at helping with urinary symptoms of menopause. It can help with vaginal symptoms. It can literally be life-saving. Daylight is massive. It's been shown to be so important in helping with low-grade depression, for example, and anxiety. I think getting outside is just such a tonic.

Some of our favourite expert moments from Digit coming up right after this. You hear that? That's Rogers Red Partner Program at work in your business. Bringing more customers through your door with additional cashback for eligible Rogers' red credit card holders.

and more savings to your bottom line with lower transaction fees. Give your business a real edge with Rogers Red Partner program. More than a point of sale, a sign of smarter business. Learn more at rogers.com slash red partner. Hi, diggers. Welcome to a very special episode of Digit. We have been lucky to have some amazing experts on the show and some of their advice has really stuck with us.

So we thought it would be well worth sharing the best moments from those chats. From the simple ways to make you feel happier every day with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, to managing the menopause and everything that comes with it, all the joys with Dr. Naomi Potter. We've got you covered. First up, have you ever had one of those days where you feel overwhelmed before you've even left the house?

At the start of the year, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee shared a concept with us called micro-stress doses. And once he explained it, we couldn't stop noticing it everywhere. I would say stress is probably one of the first. of the biggest issues I see for health and happiness. And I think you can look at it in several different ways, Joe. I think stress, we know, is responsible for 80 to 90 percent of what a doctor sees in any given day, which is remarkable, yeah? In some ways, responsible. And that's because the stress response affects every organ system in the body. So just, you know, a quick primer for you

guys and your audience, because I found this super interesting. And my patients really love to understand what stress actually is, stress is there to keep you safe. That's what your stress response is designed to do. So 100,000 years ago, we're hanging out on our hunter-gatherer tribe, you know, doing our thing, digging tubers and, you know, making fire, whatever it is. And if we see a wild predator approaching the camp, our stress response would kick into gear and several things would happen. Our blood sugar would go up so more glucose gets to our brain. Our blood pressure would be. Our blood pressure goes up so more oxygen gets to our brain. Our amygdala, which is our brain's emotional center, goes onto high alert. So we're now hypervigilant so we can hear any pin drop sound,

if there's any threat coming from somewhere else. Now, if you just think about those three things, those things are really helpful in the short term if you really are in danger. The problem today, guys, is that for many of us, there I say it, most of us, our stressed response has been activated by the state of our daily lives, email inboxes, elderly parents were trying to look after at the same time as trying to bring up young children, four social media platforms, we're trying to keep up to date, whatever it might be, those things are psychological stresses, but our physical body starts to react in the same way. So those three things that I mentioned, and I could mention 20 different things, but those three things I mentioned,

which are helpful in the short term, become really harmful in the long term. So your blood glucose going up for 20 minutes while you're running away from a tiger or you're doing your spinning class at the gym, no problem. If that's going up every day because of the state of your life, it causes fatigue, weight gain around the belly, and ultimately talk to diabetes. Your emotional brain going into higher life. and you being hypervigilant, that's no problem in the short term. Long term, that's what we call

anxiety. So once you understand how the stress response affects everything, it's very hard for me to say that the number one factor getting in the way of our health and our happiness is stress in my view. I can see that completely. We all have to recognize that the modern world, for many of us has become incredibly stressful. But the exciting thing for me is that there are so many things you can actually do about this. First, you have to recognize that chronic stress may be playing a role in my life. And then you have to get to the next step, which is, okay, well, some of these stresses I can

change. Some of them I can't. Okay. So even if I can't change some of the stresses, are there things that I can do in my life? that help me reduce the impact on me. And I think one of the most helpful ways I have figured out how to explain this to patients over the years is where the concept that I call micro-stress doses, would it be okay if I just sort of try and paint a picture?

Yeah, please do. Tell us how to do this. Yeah, this is great. Okay, so what is the micro-stress dose? So a micro-stress dose is a little dose of stress that in isolation you can handle just fine. The problem is when they all make. mount up because when they mount up, you get to what I call your personal stress threshold. And when you hit your threshold, that's when the problems arise. That's when your back goes, your neck goes into spasm, you respond reactively to an email. Not that you guys have ever done anything like that before. Oh, yes, I have.

But the point is that these things... Tick, tick, tick. These things are a result of our stress states because we literally see the world through the state if our nervous system. And so I paint a picture for people and say, these days, many people are exposed to 20 micro-stress doses before they've even left the house. Wow.

So I'll give an example. Let's say you've had a busy day at work. You're tired in the evening. You have a couple of glasses of wine to unwind, and you stay up a bit too late watching something on Netflix. Right. So it's midnight and you look, think, damn, you know, I need to be up at half six.

I've got to bed. Right. So you go to bed. And let's assume you've had a good night's sleep. Now, here's the problem. You're in a deep sleep. 6.30 a.m. your alarm goes off, usually on people's phones, right? That's what I call micro-stress dose number one or MSD number one.

And you look at your phone, you go, oh, you know what? I'm knackered. I put a snooze on. Okay, so you doze up again six minutes later, the snooze goes off. Microstress dose number two. Then you pick it up and you just, you know, in your haze, you open up, your email, oh, damn, the sweet emails I didn't get to you yesterday, I need to do today, micro stress dose number three. Then you quickly go to your social media platforms and see that

someone's left a nasty comment for you, micro stress dose number four. You go on the news website and see tales of wars in foreign countries around the world. The point I'm trying to make is often before you've even left your bed, you've been exposed to maybe 10 micro stress doses. And what does that mean? That means you're closer and closer to your stress threshold. So you have very little headroom left. And so here's a massive problem. You now don't need much stress in your day before you tip over that threshold.

So for many of my patients, that really helps them understand that all of these different inputs, particularly first thing in the morning, are kind of setting me up for failure here. Yeah. So for some people, I think having some intentional time

to yourself without your phone every morning, as hard as that can be, can be very, very helpful. So you're not necessarily having, it's not as though you're tackling each one of those MSDs one, you're just going, if I don't go on my phone for the first 20 minutes of the morning, I'm naturally staying at zero. I'm naturally, you have to do one thing, and that will immediately reduce 10 or 15 of those micro-stress doses. I ask myself three questions every single morning with my morning cup of coffee.

I literally write down in my journal three things. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? What is the most important thing I have to do today? And which quality do I want to showcase to the world today? And I promise you, those three questions have changed my life. It's just a very intentional way of starting each day. The first one is a question of gratitude. The second question, in a world where everything feels equally important,

it makes you choose one thing. It doesn't matter what you choose, but the act of choosing it. So sometimes it will literally be, it will be a work thing. Sometimes it will be, you know what, I'm not really seeing my wife properly for the last few days. We've just been so busy. The most important thing I need to do today is when my kids go to bed is spend some quality time with my wife, or whatever it might be.

It just helps you choose what is important. And the third question is probably my favorite one, which quality do I want to showcase to the world today. So much of who we are is simply who we were yesterday. We're just repeating our past behaviors. But I honestly believe, Joe and Zoe, that you can change your life any time you want, but you've got to spend a bit of time thinking about that. So I'll often put down in the morning, I want to show the world the quality of compassion today or patience. And all that means as if in the day I'm tempted not to, I'm tempted to be reactive, it's just a little reminder. Hey, Ronan, you know, you said this morning, you're going to be compassionate.

Why don't you turn the other cheek here? Why don't you look at this a different way? So I love this. I hope that all makes sense. These simple things, they do make a massive difference. Recently, we spoke to psychotherapist, Owen O'Kane. He spoke so eloquently about understanding and living with anxiety and explained what we can do when anxiety is in the driving seat.

When an anxious thought comes along, they're the most tantalizing thoughts ever. I joked about it once, and I said, it's kind of almost like porn for the brain, because anxiety thoughts are, they're quite appealing in some way because we latch on to them and we think, God, I wonder is that true.

And then we start to question the thought. And of course, the brain will then give more information and then suddenly it's spiraled into something, you know, very, very different. So it's teaching people that these thoughts that you have, we have two types of thoughts. You've got functional thinking, which is the everyday stuff. What am I having for dinner? You know, I'm having a party tomorrow. What do I need to plan for that? That's very normal, functional, everyday thinking. Whereas our anxious thoughts are very, very personal and we get caught up in them. We believe them to be true. They often exaggerate. They often move very, very quickly.

and it's teaching people that actually the majority of these thoughts have no relevance or significance. 90% of what we worry about in a lifetime doesn't come to any fruition. So it's the art of kind of learning to watch, all right, okay, this is just an anxious thought. I don't need to get over involved. It's okay for me to step back and almost kind of watch the thought and allow it to be. And that's difficult for most people because they want to get involved. Whereas actually when you teach people, it's okay, you can stand back. you don't need to get deeply involved,

then they can allow the thought to come and go. And similarly with the emotions, I mean, anxiety comes with the in-laws. It doesn't come as a singular emotion. You know, it brings fear, it brings dread, it brings overwhelm, it brings exhaustion. There's a host of emotions that anxiety comes along with. And most people, when you're working with them,

and you say, okay, what happens to you when the emotions come up? They will immediately say to you, will I try and stop them? Or I try and push them down. or I try not to feel them. They might have a glass of wine or do whatever it is that they do to not feel the emotion.

Whereas actually, when you think about emotions, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And emotions need a natural flow state. And what most of us do is we jump in, believe in the emotion shouldn't be there. So again, it's teaching people. I mean, literally what I'm saying here is you're teaching people to get out of their own way.

Yeah. I think anxiety often brings a powerful message. there's often an underlying message about something that we need to be doing, we need to slow down, we need to re-evaluate, we need to tweak, we need to look at ourselves differently, we need to look at our lives differently.

So if you're willing to work with the kind of the gold that anxiety often brings in, not only is it useful, but actually it's teaching you something as well. I mean, two of the most common behaviors around managing anxiety or reassurance seeking and avoidance, you know, there are the two things more. people will do because I think, okay, well, if I avoid it, then I'm safe. If I seek loads and loads of reassurance, then I'll feel better. But actually what we know is that it

maintains the anxiety longer term. So I guess one of the most powerful things you can do is like, say, for example, somebody was stuck at home and they can't get out or they don't want to go out. What I would say is, I'd encourage you to do the opposite. I want you to go out today. And even if that means that you literally walk around the block, I'm not saying that you do something, massive that's going to flood you. But what I want you to do is I want you to go towards the discomfort. And I want you to do the opposite of what your anxiety is telling you to do, even if it's a small step, because then what you do is you work against the pattern and you start to create new patterns. And like inadvertently, every time you do that, you then, there are these changes in our

neural pathway. So like every single action, every new behavior, every new reaction creates a new response. So what you're saying to people is like, I know it's going to feel uncomfortable. I know your brain will be saying don't do it. I know every part of you will be finding reasons not to do it. But then when the person does it and they're able to move towards it, then the sense of triumph that I've managed to do that today. And this is a step in the right direction for me. And I think that is the one thing about this work.

It doesn't have to be massive steps all at one time. It can just be okay. What would one next action look like today? And this is the key thing to say here. That doesn't mean that it's going to make you feel joy. joyful and on top of the world, it may make you feel uncomfortable and it might make you feel uneasy, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. It just means that, okay, you can learn to recognize that that emotions come in and you can learn

to work with it and you can learn to get comfortable with it. And then most people can adapt quite quickly to that. And then when they do take the action and think, God, I managed to do that or like that was a massive step for me today. Then suddenly they feel liberated. And of course, then it frees them up. to think, all right, okay, maybe tomorrow I can do a bit better, or maybe tomorrow I can do a bit more.

So it's such as kind of gentle steps. You know, the next step, I say this in every part of my work, the only step worth managing is the next step, that's all. You manage that next step. Yeah. And that's, that could be enough for now. And that can then create a new foundation and a new sense of stability.

And then, okay, I wonder what the next step looks like. And then from that there, then you see progress. what I do know about life is that no situations are permanent and that, you know, if things feel awful in the moment, that doesn't mean that that's a permanent state. So you're helping people see that whatever's going on at the minute, this will transition. I don't know what it transitions into, but it will transition. And there are always way through. And we're just going to manage this bit by bit, one step at a time.

So I guess in some ways what you're doing is you've been present for them, you're being available. But you're not trying to rescue or salvage the situation. or create an immediate solution that doesn't exist. Because inadvertently what you end up doing is, you end up colluding with that belief that certainty should be there. When actually, like the one thing I've really learned about life, the older I get is, you know,

the reality for all of us is that we're just getting through and we're working our way through and none of us have a clue sometimes what we're doing. And none of us know what's coming next. And actually that's how life is meant to be. It was never meant to be completely ordered. It was never meant to be completely predictable. No one said that it was going to be perfect and that everything was going to go well.

So actually, it is that, okay, I wonder can I just work with what is at the moment? And that can be enough. And whatever comes next, and I don't know what that looks like, I'll manage that when it comes. So it's just kind of learning that. You know, that's great enough. There's a brilliant analogy, actually, it's just come into my mind. You know when you watch somebody who throws a brick or a stone or something? and into a lake and you will immediately get ripples in the lake.

Okay. And those ripples will, they'll settle down eventually. Now, what most people try to do in life is when they're going through a crisis or a big moment or their anxiety has swept in, what they try and do is if you think of the lake and the ripples, most people jump in and try and stop the ripples from happening. And of course, the opposite happens. You know, it's like we create chaos. More ripples.

So it is that, you know, it's really learning. this is where the anxious brain and anxiety management get into conflict because the anxious brain is all about solution. The anxious brain is all about getting answers. The anxious brain is all about getting outcomes where actually the real essence of this work is about actually being steady and being able to be around what is. It's never about getting the immediate solution or getting the immediate answer. So often what we're doing is we're acknowledging that the brain is automatically going for fixing the solution or finding a solution

whereas actually sometimes the real power is found in that place of steadiness, that place of stability. Yeah. So I wonder what it's like to just work with life as it is without feeling the need to jump into the lake and control the ripples.

One thing we hear time and time again from our diggers is that there are menopause symptoms nobody really talks about. So we put all the questions you've always wanted to ask to menopause specialist Dr Naomi Potter. Jeanette had a few questions about vaginal estrogen. What are the benefits of vaginal estrogen? And can you use it alongside having the coil and also using HRT gel?

Is it a separate thing for a separate set of issues? When does it go in? And how often does it improve your sex life? Jeanette, it's a great question. And there's a lot of questions within a question, which we all have. Naomi, what have you got for us? It's a brilliant question. Viginal estrogen is amazing.

The only downside to it is it's not massively glamorous to use. That really is the only downside. So some women just find it a bit of a hassle, a bit of a like, oh, God, can't really be asked with that. But otherwise, it's a terrific product. So it acts on, so it comes in various forms that you can have. have it in a peccary with an applicator, a pesery without an applicator. It comes in a gel, in a cream, in a ring.

So there's all sorts of ways that you can introduce this wonderful product. And it works locally. So basically, even if you're on systemic HRT, so the gel, the patch, the spray or oral HRT, sometimes that's not enough for those local tissues. And so it's a way of giving the vagina, vulva and the whole urinary tract an extra little boost because all of those tissues love estrogen. They work best when there is estrogen around. It's an undisputed fact that they work better with estrogen around.

And it's just a very safe way of re-estrianizing that whole area. So it can be brilliant at helping with urinary symptoms of menopause. whether that's going more often getting urinary tract infections, leakage, urgency. It can help with vaginal symptoms. So, soreness, dryness, discharge, pain during sex, itch. It can literally be life-saving. And women who get recurrent urine-neutract infections, there is an associated mortality with that. And it can really just stop those UTIs in their tracks.

It's brilliant product. The Pessery-wise, there's products called Vagyfem, Vagirux and Imvagis. And there's an estriol cream. And there's a new product called Intra Rosa, which actually it's been out a couple of years, but it's not as well known about, it's slightly different. It's a slightly different hormone that's basically metabolized within the cells to give local estrogen and local testosterone. Any of those products should be available on the NHS. And dosage wise for the peceries and the creams,

a standard starting dose would give you three weeks worth of using it daily and then dropping down to using twice weekly. But you can use more under the guidance of your own doctor if you feel that you need a bit more. I normally use the analogy of your flower beds if you go away for two weeks in the summer. When you get back, you need to do a lot of watering to get that flower bed rehydrated.

But then even if the weather stays the same, you don't need to give that massive rehydration. When you're home, you can just water it twice a week, three times a week, depending on how hot it is. But you probably- Really appreciating the gardening analogy. That's great. But that's kind of how you should think of it.

So it doesn't matter if you forget to water your garden, you know, a couple of times a week. It doesn't matter. you should be able to gauge how much watering it needs. It's important for us all to have these conversations that it shouldn't be scary and overwhelming and terrifying because it can be a really tough time in a woman's life. It's like us girls talking about it more and more and more

and also talking about it with the men in our lives as well. Our sons and our partners and other dads, you know, I've had quite a lot of men come up to me who say, thank you for talk about the menopause, because actually I didn't really understand. understand it and it's really hard to know what my wife's going through and you have a bit more of an understanding of it because it is something that's going to happen to all of us girls and it does affect the men in our life as well so it's good to have these chats it's a proper fact of life isn't it

it's an open conversation constantly in our house i've got two girls two daughters and i've got two sons my husband and we just all yeah we just generally have this conversation all the time they're totally aware of what we're all going through as girls when it comes through our hormones and that's incredibly important fascinated to learn if a bell goes off one day you know me and says, ding, ding, ding, you're done. You're through the other side. Menopause is over. Do we know when it's over? Is anything happened to you and you're like, oh, I'm over it now? Or do you never really know? Well, you don't go through it. You go into it. Yeah. So you go from having working ovaries that are producing hormones to not working ovaries that are not producing hormones.

So if you were to not take HRT, so you can see what's going on with periods and having them or not having them, then yes, at some point you will become postmenopause, you know, 12 months after your last, you are postmenopausal 12 months after your last natural period. Okay. But if you're on HRT, then you won't know when that was. And it doesn't mean that your symptoms will necessarily stop. Sometimes they do kind of peter out. but the rate that they do that is just totally dependent from person to person.

Okay. Aging can sometimes feel like a conversation full of things we're supposed to fear. But when entrepreneur, author and well-being expert, Lizelle joined us, she completely flipped that idea on its head. She shared why she believes women can actually become happier, healthier, and get more confidence as they get older. Do you know, I think it's really important for midlife women and older because we get cut a bit of a raw deal as we age.

You know, our hormones decline, or, I mean, frankly, drop off a cliff sometimes. And with that sandwich generation, we brought up kids, we've got elderly parents, you know, we've contributed to families and work and all the rest of it, and we get squeezed out of it. And then when you look around at what society tells us to expect, it's like, blammy, seriously, you Google images of old ladies

and you get, you know, mobility scooters and, you know, grey perms. And you don't get, you know, women lifting weights in the gym and having a rocking great time. And I think that needs to change that narrative because for me in my 60s, I am so much fitter, stronger, happier than I was in my 40s, my 50s. And, you know, I hope I can be sitting here in 10 years time and say, hey, my 70s, poth, 60s, forget about it. You know, I'm so much happier in my 70s. Why can't that upward trajectory continue for women? We don't have to inevitably decline. I feel really strongly about that.

This is very interesting because I'm 60 and I feel very different to how I was when I was 50. And I really have, over the last year, struggled with inflammation in my joints. I struggle with fatigue, with feeling tired all the time. I look at myself in the mirror. I don't particularly like what I see some of the times. So I'm interested to know your age now. I'm now very nearly 63. So what has changed?

What have you done to be feeling this great at 63? What do we get in this book? Yeah, we all want to be like Liz. What do you do? Because I want to be like you. Oh, well, what do you do? No. Well, what do I do? Okay, so the book I wrote before was called A Better Second Half, and that was kind of like a midlife manifesto for women. And that's based on really simple pillars, which are still really important. So exercise, lifting weights, diet, eating more protein, cutting the carbs, prioritizing sleep, connecting with your community,

staying connected to loved ones, having purpose in life. You know, those are kind of key. pillars to living well and aging well. But then when I kind of wanted to move on, I became much more aware of some really simple fundamentals that we're overlooking. Things that our ancestors knew, things like our relationship with light, sunlight, particularly circadian rhythm, and how that impacts our cells as we age. Because in our cells, we have these little batteries called mitochondria. And they are literally like the batteries that power us. They give us brain energy and they give us muscle strength and all of these good things. And they decline as we get older.

And we become indoor beings, haven't we? Very much. We're indoors most of the time. We go outside. We shield ourselves from the sun. We don't look at daylight. We wear sunglasses. And actually, it's that relationship with light

that talks to our mitochondria. So a lot of the book is actually about circadian rhythm, to be honest. So things like hydration. You know, water is really important. We really need so much more water, particularly as women as we age. we tend to be less hydrated.

And also our sense of thirst declines as we get older. So we don't realize that actually we're becoming dehydrated. Interesting, Joe, you talk about inflammation. So mitochondria are really key parts of being involved in the whole inflammatory process. So I talk about other things, maybe like some different supplements. I don't know whether you've tried things like curcamine and turmeric. That's highly anti-inflammatory. There we go.

The list, Joe. Get them on the list. Yeah. Yeah, I'm mainlining turmeric at the moment. I am. I really am. Because I never know when it's going to flare up. I never, and there never seems to be any rhyme or reasons as to when I get a flare-ups.

And that seems to be the same for other people who get inflammation. So I was really interested about how to live a more anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Yeah, but I mean, people talk about inflammation, don't they? Yeah, it's kind of the drivers of ageing. Yeah, is this low-grade chronic inflammation. So you're unfortunately suffering from the flare- which is the acute sign of inflammation. But most of us walking around today

are living with this low-grade chronic inflammation caused by eating too much rubbish and alcohol and poor sleep and our mitochondria giving up. You know, all of those things that create this inflammation within the body that is there all the time. And it might not necessarily be visible. We might not necessarily manifest itself in pain, but it's there.

So things like an anti-inflammatory diet, eating lower inflammatory foods, lots of olive oil. Yeah, this is something brilliant that I'd learned from Julia Bradbury. She was like, you know, a spoonful of olive oil. And I bought myself a really good olive oil, have a spoonful of that. And then there are things that I always, I think, and you talk about these in your book, having some sort of vitamins and supplements that are non-negotiables, and I've been really good.

I've been trying to stick to it. I'm terrible at drinking water. And I really have to have a word with myself. Sometimes I look in them around and think, oh, my. Lord, and I realize it's like you're just massively dehydrated. And the lodger's always saying to me, drink some water. It's like, so it's like I have peppermint tea or whatever it is. You know, the last thing I want to do is to put pressure on women because we have enough of that

already. It's not about you've got to look younger, you know, you've got to do this, you've got to start your day and hour earlier to fit it all into your routine. Yeah. It's simple stuff. Open a window. It works. It works.

Brilliant. I mean, that's free and easy and quick. And it works. Yeah. We're wondering, actually, we've got lots of diggers have asked questions, especially for you. Joe from Bath has this question. She says, Liz, what should we change in our skincare routines as we move into perimenopause? Well, I'm kind of counterculture, really, when it comes to skincare, because I think that less is more.

I mean, I actually buy very little. I think you don't want to disrupt the skin. The skin's got enough hormonal changes going on, frankly, so you don't really want to be adding more stuff in or regressing it. So always use a creamy cleanser. I mean, I'm not connected to the beauty company anymore because my partners and I sold it in 2010, but I still love my cleanse and polish. You know, that's like my baby. And it's a creamy cleanser.

So whether you're using a balm or a cream, I think that's really good. I don't actually use anything that foams on my face because I find it can strip the skin. So it's all about nourishing and putting stuff back. I think peptides are really interesting, you know, particularly copper peptides. They're signaling molecules and you can find them in all sorts of. of different formulations, they needn't be expensive. And I love a good facial oil. You know, I do a bit of facial massage first thing in the morning

because partly that gets your lymphatics going, but also, you know, some of that will get absorbed into the upper levels of the skin. It'll help to plump it up, something maybe with vitamin E and rose hip oil. I think these are really great oils for perimenopausal skin. Little tip, if you're going to do facial massage, always start here at your clavicles.

I always used to start up here, but here. So our lymph nodes are here and you need to activate these first because the whole lymph system, which is kind of the body's clearance system, it all drains up here. Interestingly, it all goes round and round and this is this is the point where it drains. So just tap here first. Really gentle. It's like fingertip and then you can go all around here and out here and here and just, you know, drain to these points.

And if you wake up puffy, it's such an easy, quick, quick thing to do. It takes no time. Erica asks, do you feel more confident now than you did in your 30s and 40s, or do you just feel differently confident? How do you feel? I definitely feel more confident. I think I kind of lost my way in my 40s, to be honest. 30s, I don't really remember. I was too busy working and having kids and kind of getting on with life.

40s, I guess, perimenopause. I didn't recognise it at the time. But had I known back then and taken hormones earlier, that would have really helped me. But I was really struggling and I lost my way. I look at pictures of myself. I have actually very few pictures of myself back then because I was quite overweight. And my marriage was breaking down.

We were selling the beauty company. It was a very stressful time. I had sick kids. You know, it was difficult. And I don't really remember having any time for me and certainly thinking about confidence. It really wasn't there because I didn't feel that I was thriving outwardly.

I probably looked as if I was quite successful and had it all. But inwardly, I really didn't feel that at all. And I think as we age, confidence is something that comes. It's kind of an unexpected blessing in a way because we know ourselves, don't we? We know what we like. We know who our close friends are that we can rely on. We know hopefully what our purposes in life, what our goals are. We know simple things like what suits us, you know, how we want to dress, how we want to be. And I think that does give you great confidence. So I would say to anybody who's listening,

who's struggling, perhaps in their 30s or 40s, you know, don't lose hope because things do get better. You know, they can definitely get better. And it's about reframing what you think is important and how giving your body the best chance to thrive. Because if we can thrive physically, I think that affects how we feel on an emotional and mental level as well. Fantastic. If you ever find yourself in a bit of a fug or, you know, if you get down or if you get anxious or anything like that, What do you do, Liz? How do you get yourself out of that?

Well, daylight is massive, getting outside, getting outdoors. It's so underrated. You know, it's actually formed part of social prescribing. You know, doctors need to do this more because it's been shown to be so important in helping with low-grade depression, for example, and anxiety. And there are so many reasons why it's partly the impact of daylight

that we're seeing this light. Our eyes have light receptors in the retina that talk to the brain that sets up our hormone balance and our happy chemicals, serotonin and all of those things are really improved by the daylight that comes into our eyes. But also just being out in nature, you know, there's a lot of evidence showing that even looking at green things, whether there are leaves on the trees, you've got these amazing patterns in leaves and grass called fractals that the body instinctively recognises as being friendly and calming. The whole area of sort of natural wellness

is fascinating once you dig into that. And I think getting outside is just such a tonic on so many levels. Even you're not in the countryside. And it's great. And you're moving as well. You know, you're actually moving your body, which is good for your lymph and good for your motivation. I love having meetings, actually. We do just with my team.

I just do walk and talks because he's sitting around a desk under artificial light is just, it's not great, is it? So if they want a meeting, it's like, let's sleep. Let's go around the park and chat about it. Digit team, we're doing that. Thanks again to Dr. Ronggan Chatterjee, Owen O'Nokein, Lizzo and Dr Naomi Potter for their brilliant insights. And if you want more information on any of the subjects we talked about, you can go back and watch or listen to the episodes in full wherever you get your podcasts. Hope you enjoyed watching. Bye, Diggers.

See you next week. Digit is a Persefonica production.