The Wellness Scoop - Working with your body, finding courage and celery juice with Hazel Wallace

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

I’m joined by Dr Hazel Wallace, medical doctor, registered nutritionist (ANutr), best-selling author and founder of The Food Medic. Hazel is currently leading the conversation on making women’s health count within medicine and healthcare. We discuss: The power of understanding your body and cycle How hormones influence mood, digestion, and sleep How to work with your body to improve your health Gender inequality in biomedical research and healthcare Why mental health and mood changes are more than just biology Finding the courage to pivot professionally and personally Each week I unpack a wellness trend with GP Gemma Newman. This week on Fact or Fad we’re looking at celery juice. Does the research back the ‘healing elixir’ claims? More about Hazel: ‘The Female Factor’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Female-Factor-Making-womens-health/dp/1529382866  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Wellness. What on earth does it mean? And why would we need to unpack it? With over 58 million hashtags on Instagram, the topic has really never been more prominent. But, and there is a but here, three in five of us feel that wellness

is incredibly confusing. We want to feel healthier, we want to feel happier, but we have no idea what's clickbait and what's genuinely health enhancing, who's an expert and who's peddling absolute nonsense. And look, I am right here with you on this. At times, I've also found this world really hard to navigate. So welcome to Wellness Unpacked, our new podcast hosted by me, Ella Mills, author author entrepreneur and founder of Deliciously Ella. This series aims to do just as it states unpack the world of wellness with expert guests. These guests will be sharing with me and with you their three pieces of advice for a better life, to feel healthier and happier. This is a show and a conversation that's about progress. It is not about perfection.

It's about helping you make small, simple, sustainable changes. And within that, I'm going to be testing out a different wellness trend every single week. Intermittent fasting, celery juice, collagen, ketogenic diets, CBD, you name it, I'll try it. I'll then unpick the trend separating fact from fad with my friend and NHS GP Dr Gemma Newman and together we'll be equipping you with the tools that can genuinely make a difference to your life and well-'ll be equipping you with the tools that can genuinely make a difference to your life and well-being and equally helping you potentially put to one side the trends that may make a little bit less difference. So are you ready for episode four? Our fourth guest on Wellness Unpacked is Dr Hazel Wallace who some of you might know as the food

medic. Hazel has pivoted from nutrition in recent years into women's health. She recently published The Female Factor, which is a comprehensive guide to understanding women's health. And I'm genuinely not just saying this, I think it should be a must read for every woman on the planet. And Hazel uses her three piece of advice to discuss lots of the learnings that she's had firstly the importance of understanding our bodies and our cycles and the impact that has on our health secondly why clinical studies have so far been so focused on the male body and why that is so important that we know that both as men and as women and finally the concept of pivoting both in your life and your career and

where that can be both really hard and scary, but also so, so worth it. So I hope you enjoy it. I certainly took a huge amount from this. Hi, Hazel, and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It is such a pleasure. Your new book arrived on the desk a couple of months ago and there were some things in there that really blew our minds collectively in the office. So I've got a lot of questions. I'm super, super excited to get into this. But before we get into knowing your body and why that's so important, I'd love to start with the question that we ask absolutely all of our guests, which is what does wellness mean to you? I always find this really hard to

answer because I don't really feel comfortable using the term wellness and I don't know if I like it very much. And I think it has its place. But the reason that I say that is because I feel like because it's not really well defined, it can be hijacked to mean anything and it can be non-scientific unbacked by evidence type practices once you slap the term wellness on it then people just think that it is and like that it is health promoting but we both know it's not always that but I think in that in this context and in episode, if I was to think about what wellness means to me or my interpretation of how to promote health, it's not just how I'm supporting my physical health

but also my mental health and also my emotional health. And I think that's something that I've learned more and more over the years, probably with age because in medical school, you learn that health is free of disease and illness but I think it's so much more than that and I realize you know that I'm in my 30s that it's not just always looking after my physical health and going to the gym and eating all the healthy foods and getting enough sleep it's also like how am I feeling in myself and like how that contributes to my physical health as well.

I couldn't agree with that more. I spoke to someone the other day for the show who was talking about the importance of emotional and mental flourishing. And I think we often forget that facet of wellness, which is obviously the whole premise of this podcast, trying to unpack all the different elements of it. And as you said, I think sometimes it's too simple too focused on a kind of magic silver bullet that would answer all your questions and and that's never the case and that does lead me on really nicely to your first piece of advice because I think nothing summarizes that sense of total emotional physical mental wellness more than the idea of working with your own body yeah absolutely I think this is something that I've learned more than the idea of working with your own body. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is something that I've learned more in the last three years writing the book in particular.

Obviously, like I've gone to medical school, I did a biomedical degree before that. So I know a lot about the human body. But what I didn't realize is that the female body is very different. Like, obviously obviously there's important differences that we're all aware of, reproductive differences, but not on a physiological level. And I realized that our hormones and our physiology actually change how we respond to drug treatments, how we feel in ourselves across the menstrual cycle will have changes. And that's not just endohormones, but hormones have a huge part to play. So typically across the menstrual cycle, we have that ebb and flow. And it's not just changing when we ovulate or when we have

our periods. We have those sex hormone receptors on all organs of our body. So it's changing how we sleep, our temperature, our heart rate, how our gut functions, our mood, all of those things, which is why we should be tapping into that. And actually, there's been a call from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology to start including the menstrual cycle as the fifth vital sign in addition to things like heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure and things like that. So that when you come into the doctor, if you raise an issue with your menstrual cycle, we know that something's off because it's almost signaling that there's a wider systemic issue. And so learning this over the last couple of years has been really insightful

for me. And it's why I've kind of stepped into that field of female health. And I use the word female health quite loosely, because I think when we think about women's health, we think ovaries and babies, but we are more than our reproductive capacity. And for so long, female health has been neglected. So within that, I guess as a top line, because as you were saying, I think so many of us are quite far removed from actually that knowledge and that understanding of what's going on in our body. And I think one of the things I'm really keen that this show and obviously within that very much this episode does for our listeners is normalize those fluctuations. That it's normal to be bloated sometimes or to have spots on your skin or to feel a little bit more moody or irritable.

Also equally to feel more confident, more excited, more energized. But it feels like if we don't understand where that's coming from it's really hard to dispel that myth of quote-unquote perfection yeah I think that's such an important point and not just for women but for men also to like understand that it's it's okay to feel the feels even if you can't put your finger on it and there may not always be a physiological reason for feeling emotional. But I think when it comes to women, there are these important hormonal milestones, let's just call it that, in a woman's life around the menstrual cycle, namely premenstrually, pregnancy and postnatally, and going through the menopause, where we see women are more vulnerable to certain things like insomnia,

anxiety and depression, changes to their strength and muscle mass and bone health. And so they're really important things that we need to be aware of. And I think for women who are listening who have a naturally fluctuating menstrual cycle, understanding that that cycle is able to tell you things about you and where you are and tapping into that and tracking that and tracking your mood alongside that is such a powerful tool because I think we're often told that like hormones and having a period is a nuisance or going through the menopause but if we flip it on its head and think about how we can use that information to better improve our health. So in the second half of the menstrual cycle, which is the luteal phase, our body temperature will be a half to one degree higher. And how that manifests will be largely in our sleep.

And women tend to report insomnia-like symptoms in that second part of their cycle. And if you're aware of that, then it could be that you make sure your room's slightly more cooler or you choose a different pair of pajamas or you have a warm bath, which will help you cool down before you go to bed. But I don't think women are aware of those things. And so they might just think, you know, it's just part and parcel of being a woman I should just get on with it and so I think that's why I really wanted to write this book to help women really fully understand their hormones so that they can better improve their health in the long run. I would absolutely love to expand on that and give people a few more of those kind of key pieces of information. What do we see in terms of our mood or potentially

in terms of digestion during different parts of the cycle? Yeah, that's a really great question. I think mood is something that women collectively will put their hands up and say that they experience changes across their cycle, especially just in that late luteal phase before your next period. And I know people use terms like, oh, it must be because you're coming on your period and it's just hormones and things like that. And there's actually 150 different premenstrual symptoms that women have reported. So, you know, everything from breast tenderness to bloating to mood changes. But the mood changes is really interesting. And there's been quite a lot of research into this.

And one of the biggest studies actually found that the biggest predictor of our mood is not our hormones. It's actually our social support. So the people around us and our relationships. And I always caveat this with, I'm not negating the fact that your hormones can influence your mood and you may feel very emotional before your period. But if you have a really, if you've got people you can lean on who can support you during that time, actually, that will help buffer those symptoms. So I think that's a really important thing for women to be

aware of. When it comes to gut issues, I don't know if you've ever experienced anything yourself when it comes to your period, but there's a common term called period poop, which is basically during your period, you have all these prostaglandins in your body because it's such an inflammatory response. Your womb is basically shedding. So there's loads of inflammation, lots of cytokines and other markers flying around your body. And that basically causes your bowels to be very loose and not absorb as much water. And so a lot of women will experience that. They'll have diarrhea for those days. Just before your period, when progesterone is very high, women tend to retain a lot of water. And so they get a lot of bloating. And I think we sometimes pathologize that. Bloating is not always normal, but also a

little bit of bloating is to expect it. And if you know that in those couple of days before your period, you might get a bit more bloated. It might help you rationalize why you're feeling that way. And so during that time, it might be that you're having a magnesium salt bath, you're reducing the salt in your diet, you're getting out and you're moving your body to help reduce those symptoms and maybe wearing comfier trousers. It's just incredibly empowering, isn't it? And obviously that's the premise of your work,

but to just truly understand what's going on in your body, why that's going on, as you said, those simple pieces of advice that people can take on board to kind of mitigate some of those symptoms that they might not enjoy as much. I just think it's brilliant because there's this kind of sense that we've all got to be what's normal and what's not normal and there's trying to be the very best versions of ourself all the time and that actually it's just so normal to feel different every day. Yeah, yeah, it completely is. I would agree with you. And I don't think it's all bad,

like hormones aren't all bad. And just as they can make us feel slightly worse at certain points of our cycle or across a female lifespan, they can also make us feel better. And, you know, people talk about the ovulation glow, which is when oestrogen is really high and progesterone is quite low. And that boosts your mood. It makes your skin look better. Women are typically stronger in the gym during that time. So there's times we can also like really harness that hormonal energy and kind of use it to work for our advantage. It's a bit of a superpower, isn't it?

Yeah, I think so. And that leads us on very nicely actually female superpowers to your second piece of advice in what I think might feel quite groundbreaking actually to a lot of people listening that a huge amount of the science that we've probably collectively come across probably in the mainstream media so far, has actually been built around research on men, not on women. Yeah. I think, I mean, I've been, I just published the book, The Female Factor, which is based on this, and I've been writing it for three years, but started researching it maybe four or five years ago. And around the time, there was a lot of information coming out in

other areas where there's gender gaps like technology and politics. And I wanted to understand how it applied to women in medicine and health care. And I was completely shocked because I didn't learn about this at medical school. We didn't talk about it. It wasn't talked about in the hospital. It wasn't really applied in a health care setting unless it came down to something that was like a reproductive difference like women and their ability to conceive or breast health but everything else was the same and like we said at the start like women are much more than their ovaries and ability to conceive. And so what I found is that most of the

kind of biomedical research we have today is based on a male body. And women have been historically excluded because of their fluctuating hormones, which are in research world a bit of a nuisance because they could cause interference in the data. And also they've got the ability to get pregnant, which from an ethical point of view isn't great. And women tend to be primary caregivers. So recruiting them for trials isn't always easy. Now, in the last 10 to 20 years, things have changed and researchers and kind of medics across the world have been like, realize this is an issue. We need to recruit women into trials where it's relevant.

But between research coming out and changing clinical practice takes years and years. And so I think in the next couple of decades, we'll see that lots of our guidelines in the hospital will change to be better suited for the differences between female bodies and male bodies. I mean, personally, I was astonished kind of unraveling all of this in the research. And it's not just, you know, human trials. It's also animal trials. Like in eight out of 10 areas of biology, they will choose a male mouse over a female mouse. And the same as in kind of pharmacology trials,

so drug trials, there's like five to one male to female ratio, which is shocking because women are twice as likely to experience an adverse drug reaction to a medication. And so because of this, like in the last 20 years, so many drugs have been pulled off the market in the USA because they've been harming women. And it's not just because we're smaller versions of men. We have smaller livers. We metabolize drugs differently. We've got a slower gut rate. We excrete them differently. So all of these things stack up and it means the drug will accumulate in our body and cause adverse reactions in the long run. So yeah, thankfully things are changing. But I think what I want from this book is for women to be aware that we aren't small men and we're very different.

And I want healthcare practitioners to start thinking about this even before we have good enough research to start changing practice. I think women are not small men is about as good a quote as you can have. I wondered within that, are there any kind of really clear examples of how clinical practice could change or why kind of key piece of guidance at the moment that maybe our listeners have seen or heard or may have given themselves may not be quite right? Yeah, I think the one area of research which really comes to mind is that in heart health. And if you think about any public health campaign for heart attacks or heart disease it's always an older white man clutching his chest and because of that there's been a lot of women who have experienced heart attacks in

England and Wales and have died as a result because they weren't aware that they could have a heart attack and so the British Heart Foundation have really rallied in this field and have done a lot more research into why women are dying needlessly, because heart disease is the biggest killer in men and women across the world. But when I say that, women are shocked because they don't think that they could have a heart attack. But in the UK, over the last 10 years, women were twice as likely to die from a heart attack than men were. And it's not because they're coming into hospitals and we're not treating them. It's because of both biology and bias.

So when a woman experiences symptoms of heart attack, she's more likely to think it's something else like anxiety or heartburn. And so she'll put off going to the hospital or she'll try to self medicate or she'll put someone else before her. And these are research based reasons as to why women, these are reported by women who have had heart attacks as to why it's taken them so long. When they get to the hospital, they're more likely at 1.5 times more likely to be misdiagnosed with something else because of the biases that doctors hold as well. Because typically we've been told that men are more at risk. And if you have that in your head, it's very hard to unravel those biases. So by the time you're doing the tests and everything, it's another delay. And when it comes to heart attacks, in medicine, we say time is muscle

because you need to get the heart reperfused ASAP because it will just the tissue will die basically and so essentially from onset of symptoms to discharge women aren't getting the same treatment and not in a timely fashion so that's just one area that I am really passionate about getting the message out about and actually one woman messaged me over the weekend. She sent me a direct message. I asked if I could share the story so she's given me consent and she said I was at my sister's wedding over the weekend and my mum was experiencing chest pain and she was like, I'll be fine, it's just heartburn, blah, blah, blah.

And the girl said that she had just read my book that week and had read that story about women and heart attacks and she was like, no, you're going to the hospital. Turns out her mom was having a heart attack and then went on to have reperfusion therapy and was in hospital for a couple of days and now is fine. So the fact that that message changed that narrative just shows how much we have ingrained in ourselves that it's not us. It's not shouldn't happen to women but it should we're just as likely to experience it got full body um yeah goosebumps when you said that I mean you must be incredibly proud of of the book and and this shift in

narrative that you're creating for people yeah I think I didn't really realize until that moment. And I also, when I was reading it, was like, holy crap. Like, this is, like, mind-blowing because I don't think that me working as a doctor, seeing individual patients could get that message across as powerfully than having a book that's out in the public space. And knowing that's impacting women already is you know it you know yourself writing a book isn't easy and actually I would say this was the most challenging piece of work dissertations or anything aside that I've ever done because there wasn't really there was so much out there but also so little and to condense it into a book that was practical and not just like activist was a very hard thing to do so I

think I'm really glad to be getting that feedback. As you were kind of knee-deep in this research for three four years as well as the research that you were doing on women and heart attacks were there any other studies or papers or conversations that you came across that you just had that kind of heart-stopping moment and thought, why doesn't everybody know this? I think that one of my chapters is on mood. And I found this the most interesting chapter to write because it uncovered a lot about me and also my female patients. And there's a statistic that I knew already from med school

and that women are twice as likely to experience anxiety and depression. But I never questioned it. I never asked why and until I wrote this book. And what I found really interesting is, yes, hormones are to play and there'll be particular times where women are more vulnerable. So we're very aware that there's mood changes around the menstrual cycle after having a baby, women experience very big shifts in mood and also going through the menopause. But it doesn't fully explain everything. And what I found is that women are more likely to be given a psychiatric diagnosis for a physical problem than a man is. And oftentimes, women, if they come into hospital, given a diagnosis of anxiety, can often act as like a red herring. So when they come back

the next time, if they've got like, I don't know, abdominal pain, the first kind of diagnosis on the top of the health professional's head might be, oh, she's just feeling anxious and this is how it's manifesting again. But we wouldn't really do that with a man. And so I found that both infuriating, but also really interesting in like the kind of narrative that we have about men and women and what they experience. And I think it really like stems back to hysteria, which was that like made up medical condition from years ago where doctors described this condition that women experienced and I looked for the book I like looked at the symptoms that they describe in it and they absolutely make no sense like it could be everything and anything and they basically say that like a woman acts like unruly or upset or emotional or whatever it might be because of something

originating in her womb. So there's this idea that women are emotional and all over the place because of their womb. And it was just very bizarre. And the treatments they even had for them was just like out of this world, insane. And it wasn't until like the last couple of decades that they actually removed that diagnosis from kind of a diagnostic criteria. So I think there's, while we have made big movements in the last couple of years, I still think that there's this idea that women are emotional and don't have control of themselves and their hormones dictate everything. And what I say to that is hormones definitely have a place, but they're not the loudest voice in the crowd and we have far more control over them than we think.

And I also think it's a disservice blaming everything on our hormones when people are saying, oh, it's probably because you're having a baby or it's because you're going through the menopause. Actually, what else is going on in your life and how can I support you and I think that's a much more helpful response to that. It's so crazy it almost feels so far-fetched it's hard to imagine that it's reality and it's only very very recently that we're starting to unwind that and obviously you're doing an unbelievable job at that and I guess just to clarify for our listeners it's absolutely correct that women do experience

more anxiety and depression I think that's a great thing to note as well just again in terms of normalizing different experiences and different moods and different emotions because of that we shouldn't dismiss physiological issues or see ourselves as these kind of whirlwind out of control hormonal messes that there's nothing we can do about. Yeah, exactly. I guess the message is, like when it comes to mood and mental health, like it's never just wrapped up in biology. It's very multifactorial. And when it comes to mood changes between men and women, and we're not just thinking about like our biology, we're also thinking about our cultural and social norms, like women tend to internalize their feelings and ruminate, which is why they experience those conditions like anxiety and depression. Whereas men tend to

have externalizing behaviors. So they're more likely to die from suicide, for example, they're more likely to turn to drugs and alcohol when they're having mental health issues. That's not just biology at play. That's also like social acceptance, what we think is normal. We think it's normal for a woman to cry. And we don't think it's normal for a man to speak out about how he's feeling. And I definitely think that's changing. But those things all contribute, which is why we're probably more likely to diagnose a woman with anxiety or depression. But that's not to say that she's not actually experiencing that. And I think we need to unravel those biases and both as ourselves and in the healthcare kind of world to ensure that we're actually diagnosing people with the diagnosis that they have.

And if they are presenting with a physical symptom, look into that. Because the tricky thing is when it comes to anxiety, you can't even present with physical symptoms. Like I experienced anxiety myself and I have had panic attacks in the past and I know I will get sweaty palms. My heart rate will start racing. I might get some chest pain. But even if that is what you're experiencing, it's still important to talk about it because it could be something else. And so what I would say is just don't always assume it's your hormones. Yeah, I think it's incredibly, incredibly important advice. And I guess that shifting of the narrative and the importance of changing conversations leads

really nicely into your third piece of advice and in the idea that it's OK to change directions, to pivot, which is not something that I think we often feel we're able to do both personally and professionally. Oh, hi there. I'm Norma, the unofficial mayor of the town of Destiny. Speaking of, FanDuel's Kick of Destiny 3 is happening live Super Bowl Sunday. You should watch. It's going to be a hoot. While you're at it, download FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on touchdowns, turnovers, heck, even total kicker points, don't you know? Anywho, enjoy your podcast or whatnot. Please play responsibly.

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Yeah, I think we like identify as something or someone or someone gives us that identity or that label. And it can be very hard to change that and I you know started the food medic 10 years ago as a medical student and I have always identified as an NHS medical doctor with an interest in nutrition that has been who people know me as. And writing this book changed my direction a little bit. And there was a lot of conversation within the team and, you know, publishers of me writing this book, like, am I the right person to write it because people know me for food and nutrition. And so I had to kind of overcome that. But it also caused me to take a shift in the direction of my career and kind of see myself in a different way. And as we were talking about before we've come into

the studio, I also have taken a step back from the NHS. And that was almost the biggest identity crisis that I ever experienced, because who am I if I'm not my Scribbs every day and seeing patients one-on-one? Am I therefore a doctor? And I think once I took that leap and stepped into this new area that I'm working in and really pursuing the nutrition side of things and the female factor book and writing that, I felt like I just was carrying all this load that I didn't need to carry. And I've thought about it a lot. And I think it's to do with identity. It's also to do with age.

And I'm in my 30s and I feel like it can be really terrifying in your 30s to change what you're doing because what if it doesn't work out? And one of the messages that I wanted to share as part of this podcast is it is okay to pivot a little bit and to change direction and I actually think that's normal because I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago I was only 21 then I'm completely different I've got a completely different life experience and I actually feel like I've finally found what I'm meant to be doing or what the area of research that requires my support more is. But yeah, I think you have to go through a huge process of like unshedding that like former self. It's like even going through like a breakup. You have to change what you thought your life was going to be like and see how it's going to be now.

But I would say, you know, and this is all credit to you, always easier said than done. And I wondered, you know, I think it's incredibly brave in two ways, really, like number one, you know, really challenging the status quo with what you're doing, which, again, is just massive credit to you. It's not easy to say, I actually think huge swathes of the medical profession and the institution actually is incorrect. And we really need to change that. But also on a personal level to step away from something that, as you said, has defined you for so long and have the confidence to do something differently.

And in that sense, kind of go against the grain. As I said, it's easier said than done. And I wondered if you had any advice for people on having the confidence the vulnerability the belief in yourself to go and do that yeah I guess I mean just to be clear the reason I left the NHS because it might be assumed that I left because I think everything's incorrect it's not love, love being a doctor. I just, I worked as a COVID doctor for 18 months and I did every job that you could do. ICU, COVID clinics, COVID ward. I even worked as a nurse. Like I did everything and I came out completely burnt out. And that was the reason I had left because I wanted to step out of it. I think talking about the inequalities

in healthcare has been hard because I feel like I am talking about my own people, but I know it's not the people within the NHS or within the healthcare system. It's years and years of ingrained biases and repression of women that like we've gotten to this point because no one's questioned it and I'm not the only one questioning it but I think when it comes to being brave enough to go against the status quo and do what you really want to do like life is too short for what ifs and that is kind of the message I kept telling myself like it got to the point where I think I was trying to do it for years but COVID was the straw that broke the camel's back and I was like if I don't do it now I'm never going to do it and I don't want to be on my deathbed and think oh like why didn't I just stop caring what everyone

else thinks and just go and do what I'm really passionate about but I think going back to the identity thing you know if you're in a job or in a profession or doing a thing that people think is very prestigious or whether that's being in a marriage because it's very acceptable or whatever it is or getting a mortgage and you actually don't want any of these things, it can be very hard to say, no, actually for me, success or happiness looks a bit different. I think that's the really hard thing. I feel more and more people are redefining it and you know I've been largely single for you know the last couple of years and being a woman who's single in her 30s who's successful is also like you know you go into a podcast or onto an interview and people are like

you know as a woman who's single in their 30s and like it's like almost like this thing that's like rare or like like you're doing something bold but actually I'm just busy focusing on me so yeah I think that's I think that answers your question it absolutely does me I such respect for the confidence in it and I hope you don't mind me asking this question but I follow you on social media and I'm sure lots of people listening do as well and if you don't you should but I remember you you do lots of Q&A's and I do remember you saying on one of them like will you please stop asking me if I have a boyfriend very politely and I just remember like thinking this madness of the the constructs that we've created and I think the constructs you're creating

obviously in the kind of medical world and dismantling that is just really symbolic of as you said everyone should live the lives that they want to live and focus on their life and what works for them and I think it's just really brilliant life advice for everybody listening it doesn't matter what that is but it should be what you want it to be not what society expects it to be in both facets of your life personally and professionally yeah I agree I think we still like see being in a relationship as like a symbol of success and I think it's fantastic to be in a relationship that's loving and you really want to be part of that's a fantastic thing to find and I'm in one now but it's not that I was like searching for it or putting my life on hold. And I think so many people put their life on hold and it's the whole fallacy of I'll be

happy when. I'll be happy when I have the job. I'll be happy when I have the person or whatever. And then you just end up wishing your days away. So yeah, I kind of put my foot down about that and wanted people to see that like you know I don't need someone to make me happy or make me successful yeah quite right I have to say the number one question I get is how many more children are you going to have when are you going to have more children are you having a third baby I say it's like 50% of my questions I'm like I had two children in two years I'm back at work like have as many children as you want but I just yeah I'm just fascinated by the fact there's almost like an expectation yeah because a man wouldn't get

that question yeah no exactly exactly um but Hazel honestly I can't thank you enough for how open and vulnerable but also how empowering you've been today I feel like yeah taking a lot on every single level from this conversation. Thank you. As you guys have probably picked up on by now listening to the show, I am really fixated on the importance of empowerment in our health and well-being and why knowledge really is power. And I think Hazel's work is so incredibly important, both for us as women, but also for men to really understand what's going on in our bodies in order to make healthier, better, much more compassionate decisions. So I hope you got as much from that as

I did. And it is now time for fact or fad, where as you might have realized by now, every week we'll take a trend and Dr. Gemma Newman and I are going to dissect it and find out whether that trend has lots of basis in fact, or maybe it's more of a passing fad and our fact or fad for this week is celery juice and let's be honest there is a lot to say on this one celery juice has been a wellness trend for a while i first heard about it and tried it back in 2019 it apparently relieves digestive disorders flushes out toxins and even supposedly heals symptoms of eczema, acne, addiction, diabetes, autoimmune disorders. It's pitched as a bit of a miracle cure. Here's what Hazel had to say on the topic. I've got friends who like enjoy having

green juices or celery juices in the morning even though they know that there's no kind of medicinal cure for it and they don't forego medical treatment as a result and that's fine it's when you start replacing it with things that we know that work and that are evidence-backed and could you know save your life then it's a bit tricky so is it a fact is it a fact? Is it a fad? Let's find out what Dr. Newman thinks. Hey Gemma, how are you? I'm very well Ella, how are you doing today? I am so good, I'm really excited to talk about this one because celery juice as a trend has been around, I was trying to think back when we first saw it, but it was the year I got pregnant with Sky because I tried it then, so that was kind of back 2019. So it's been around for a little while. I've checked 1.2 million hashtag celeries on Instagram. Wow, that's incredible.

It's nuts. So it's gone quite big. I'm sure all of our listeners have kind of seen, heard of celery juice. I guess worth having a quick pickup on where the trend came from. Yeah, absolutely. So from my knowledge, it came from Anthony Williams, the medical medium. And he talked a lot about celery juice in his books and about its healing powers. And what's interesting is that from what I can tell, he says that his wisdom comes directly from spirit. So he writes down exactly what spirit tells him. And that's what his truth is. And that's what he tells everybody to do based on spirit. And he calls it like a very special elixir. There are undiscovered sodium salts, special sodium salts that have healing properties. And it's not ordinary water in celery. It's a special kind of, how did he describe it? Let me see. He called it a hydro bioactive water within celery. Now is hydro active water within celery something that exists in the current scientific realm? No, it's not in the medical lexicon. And there's no obvious evidence for

its efficacy that I'm aware of. Having said that, you know, it's a really healthy juice. And I know lots of people who've tried it and enjoyed it. And, you know, even I remember going through a phase a couple of years back where I bought myself a juicer and I was doing celery juice with other mixed juices as well and really loving it. And I've kind of stopped doing it. I think that's what happens over time, isn't it? You sort of take something up, try it for a bit,

and then, you know, see if it works for you. But it's been a really interesting phenomenon online. Like you said, so many people have talked about it, saying that it's purportedly helped with their autoimmune diseases and psoriasis and acne and cancer and reflux and goodness knows what else. And these are all claims made based on Anthony Williams' book, really. So I tried it, as I said, all the way back in 2019 when it was a big trend because I was just fascinated. I saw it everywhere. I did buy the book because people were asking me what I thought. And I am.

I'd like to see myself as a very unjudgmental person. This was nuts. And I'm also someone that does believe very much that we shouldn't throw things out because science sometimes takes a minute longer to catch up with anecdotes you know people be meditating for thousands and thousands of years obviously it's you know predates christianity yeah and yet we're only more recently through you know amazing breakthroughs in technology and science understanding truly what's happening in our brains when we meditate. So the potential power of it. So I do believe in kind of holding off on all judgment until we get there. That

being said, this book was insane. Like it truly, you were very polite. It is, you know, and if you, if it helps you, that's great. But there was a kind of madness to it. That being said, I found two interesting things when I did the celery juice. The first was I did actually feel really good. But the second was I found getting up in the morning and making a really conscious decision that I'm going to look after myself that day. And I'm going to do something that's a kind of pointer. I found the rest of my day unfolded with a healthier lens. So true. And I think that's one of the great advantages of doing something like this is if you decide I'm going to start my health kick, I'm going to feel good about myself, I'm going to do something healthy for me, it kind of has that knock-on effect doesn't

it for the rest of the day. And for all these stories and I've seen them too of people saying it's really cleared up their skin or supported reflux, why might it be working? I think basically because it does have lots of healthy things in it and people are making perhaps healthier choices throughout the day. Interestingly, Anthony Williams says you must only have celery juice on its own, as far as I can tell. You can't mix it with any other juices. And to me, that's contrary to general medical advice and dietetic advice is to really broaden the amount of healthy foods that you eat. And there's no scientific reason why you shouldn't have a little bit of carrot juice mixed in with your celery juice or, you know, maybe some apple juice if you want to make it taste a bit sweeter. So I think bottom line is people are

making healthier choices perhaps throughout the day. Like you said, once they've, you know, they've made that decision first thing in the morning, I'm going to have my celery juice, start my day off right. They make healthier decisions, I think, perhaps for the rest of the day. So would it be fair to say your advice is, if you feel that you need a bit of extra support, that hydration first thing, making a healthy juice could be a really fantastic thing. But it could have cucumber in it, it could have carrot, it could have beetroot, it doesn't need to be celery alone to reap the benefits. Exactly. And I'd say, you know,

there's no harm in trying it, especially if you already have a juicer and you want to give it a go. It's a great thing to do. Why not? But don't be caught up in the miracle cures because what I'd hate for people to see is, you know, if they're vulnerable and they, as I said, they sort of deny a medical treatment for it. So yeah, my bottom line is enjoy it. Help it to sort of give you a healthy day and have fun with it. But it's also okay if you would like to park it. I would definitely like to park it. I think it tastes disgusting. I like it with cucumber and lemon and apples just alone that I would park it. So we were going to have to classify it fact or fad. Where are we going to go? Well, I think it's a fad. What do you think,

Ella? I think it's a fad. I think the thing I would take from it is that any tool that gives you the prompt of looking after yourself and nourishing your body is a fantastic thing. Yeah. But the roots to which it was an elixir feel a little cloudy oh definitely very cloudy more cloudy than your cloudy apple juice so that's the end of the show I hope you learned a lot from Hazel from Gemma and you feel empowered leaving this episode as always I'm just genuinely so grateful that we're all on this journey together I take so much every week into my own life and I really hope you're feeling the same. Let me know if you are or if there's something we're missing, something else you want to hear. You can find us on social at Deliciously Ella and you can email us podcast at deliciouslyella.com.

And always just remember, if you're making big changes to your lifestyle, always going to be worth just consulting your gp next week we're going to be joined all the way from america for our first virtual guest of the series we've got dan butner who you might know as the absolute expert on the blue zones the areas of the world where people are living the longest and he's been trying to find out their secrets to long lasting good health and then in fact or fad we're going to be looking at cold water showers which i'm just going to preface is not my cup of tea so i'm going to see you back here thank you for listening rate us review us share us with your friends and massive thank you to curly media our partners in this production. pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn

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