Inflammation in Midlife: The Fire Under Your Symptoms

From the video captions, as spoken.

The physical layer is the layer that answers to numbers. Ferritin at 70, not 17. Vitamin D at 60, not 22. Alright? So I want to start by talking about inflammation because everything downstream runs through this. Now, when we think of inflammation, oftentimes we think of something red, hot, and swollen, like a banged up knee, okay? Or a zit.

Inflammation is so much bigger than that. Here are some of the ways that inflammation presents in the individuals. Colds that linger for weeks. Sinus headaches. Migraines. Constipation, bloating, hair loss, fatigue, brain fog, allergies that come out of nowhere, the joint pain, the aches and the creaks that you just kind of figured this is what happens as you get older.

Do you recognize any of those symptoms? So why I go into detail about this list is because oftentimes Women hear the word inflammation and they think, well, that my digestion is fine, so I mustn't have inflammation issues. But that's how inflammation hides in plain sight, okay? And it contributes to hair loss, fatigue, if I didn't mention that. So every symptom when we started this conversation can be traced back to inflammation, among other things. Now, where does inflammation come from and how does it happen in the body? There's a chain reaction that I want to just spell out. It's very straightforward.

Okay? So here's how inflammation happens. Sugar, processed foods, and chronic stress. They push the body toward insulin resistance. Now, insulin resistance means your cells, they stop responding properly to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells for fuel, okay? So your body compensates by pumping out more and more insulin.

And that excess insulin itself is inflammatory. Now, let's talk about sugar. The biggest addiction in our culture that nobody talks about. We all accept it as normal.

The recommendation to not exceed for sugar for a Woman on a daily basis is 25 grams. Okay, that's 6 teaspoons. One cup of morning orange juice has 21 grams. Okay. Now, your bloodstream does not look at guidelines or where the source of sugar is. Red grapes and chocolate cake. I'm not talking about nutritional value.

I'm talking about sugar is sugar. Now, stripped of its fiber, that healthy glass of OJ, it hits you with a close to a full day's worth of sugar before the day has even really begun. Now, let's add in the hormonal piece.

Estrogen drops in Perimenopause. Estrogen is one of the body's brakes on inflammation and that comes off. So the same diet you ate in your 20s and your 30s produces a very different result at 47, okay, because the brake system changed. Now, and I I said this already, you know, it's worth repeating. How we lived in our 20s and our 30s reveals itself right here in our 40s and our 50s, okay? See if you can relate to any of these. Late nights, maybe some dieting, the coffee that you use to kinda boost your energy, rounds of antibiotics, the day-to-day stress that you carried and you just called it like this is normal living because everybody around you is also carrying stress too.

So none of that showed up on our labs at 28 because we had a hormone buffer thick enough to absorb it. And that buffer is what thins in Midlife. Now, we don't get to go back and live our 20s differently, okay? But how we treat ourselves in Midlife now sets the stage for the decade after that and the one after that. And whatever you change from here counts way more now than it did at 25.