Alcohol and Coffee

Okay, so we've talked about all the different macronutrients, proteins, carbs and fats. My favorite superfoods to include in the diet on a regular basis. Let's now talk about a little bit of a controversial topic, alcohol and coffee. Let's start off with alcohol. Alcohol is a little bit controversial and I find that this is something that is really important for women to understand, especially in our midlife years and especially if you've been struggling with hormonal health. What do we do about alcohol? There's such conflicting information about, you know, oh, there resveratrol in red wine is really helpful and anti inflammatory, other people saying completely avoid it, etc. So what do we do about alcohol? This is my, this is what I've come to realize. You know, as I said, an avid party goers, I was younger, um, and alcohol. And I wanted to explain to you why, if you're experiencing hormonal issues at this time and if you're really struggling through perimenopause and menopause, what, how alcohol might be contributing to these issues. Now again, I'm saying this not in a way of like, you'll never have to be, never drink alcohol ever again, but I want you to explain what's happening behind the scenes, what's happening in the body, so that you can make the decision yourself about whether alcohol in this particular time in your life is actually serving you or not. So alcohol have, has an impact on hormones in a variety of ways. First and foremost, it impacts our blood sugar balance. And as we know, blood sugar balance and hormonal balance go hand in hand. When we drink alcohol, it actually can cause a blood sugar spike. Alcohol is very quickly assimilated into the body as well. And it is assimilated as a sugar. You know, it's broken down as a sugar. And so it can cause blood sugar imbalances throughout the body. Like, you know, in our body can cause us, to go on a hormonal blood sugar roller coaster. And when our blood sugar is, you know, drops, as we saw earlier, it can cause cortisol and adrenaline to get it back up. And that's going to be at the expense of our progesterone production. So if you're struggling with progesterone production and you're wanting to optimize progesterone production, alcohol, especially if you're consuming large amounts of it or having it without any food, for example, is going to be impacted your blood sugar balance, the other thing that alcohol does is it has an impact on the liver which then has a knock on effect on our hormones. Let's not beat around the bush here. You know, alcohol is a toxic substance. And you know again the dose is in the poison is in the dose, but it is a toxic substance. And when we consume alcohol, our body will prioritize the detoxification of this substance to before anything else. And as we saw earlier, the main organ of detoxification is our liver. And our liver is a really hardworking organ. It does so many different things. It as we saw it stores nutrients, it helps with T4 to 3 conversion, it helps contain extor glycogen, all these kind of things. One of the main obviously store functions of the liver is detoxification. So if we consume alcohol, the body's like, well, toxic substance here. We need to you know, prioritize the detoxification of this. So that's going to be prioritized at the expense of all these other functions that the liver has. And for a hormonal point of view, you know, if we're busy detoxifying alcohol, we're not going to be able to detoxify estrogens in our, in our environment and in our system that needs to have been used and that need to be excreted. And so they will then recirculate in the system causing this estrogen progesterone imbalance. It's also going to not prioritize the conversion of T4 to T3 in the liver. And so that's going to have an impact on our thyroid which will then obviously have an impact on our metabolic rate, our metabolism, everything slows down, but also on our estrogen progesterone ratio as we've seen in previous modules as well. So it's, you know, if we're burdening them, if we're wanting to obviously optimize hormone detoxification and thyroid function, we don't want to be overburdening the liver with other toxins. And one of those is alcohol. One of the things you may notice, and this kind of goes into the blood sugar balance and the liver point, the point of the impact that it has that alcohol has on these, on these systems is that I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but I noticed this and I see this with my clients as well. Every time you have like a alcoholic drink, usually you wake up between one and three o'clock in the morning, needing to go to the toilet or just waking up and like ping Eyes pop open and you can't fall back asleep. Sleep. This is working on two systems. So when, first of all when our blood sugar is all over the place throughout the day and in the evening as well, then we're not going to have stable blood sugar to carry us through the night. And that's where you see people waking up in the night, especially between 1 and 3am but from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view as well, that 1 to 3am timeframe is the liver's time. You know, from a traditional Chinese medicine we have like the traditional Chinese medicine organ clock where each time throughout the day is dedicated to a specific organ that's functioning at its best at this time. And 1 to 3am is liver. So if we're burdening the liver and we're seeing ourselves wake up at this time in the morning, that could be that the liver is kind of, you know, kicking in and struggling during this time to detoxify that alcohol. So it has an impact on our blood sugar, it impacts our liver which is then going to have an impact on our, on our hormones. And the final thing is that a lot of alcoholic substances are actually estrogenic. So specifically the most, the most estrogenic types of alcoholic substances are wine and beer. So both for men and women, not necessarily something that we want to be consuming on a regular basis if we're wanting to balance out that estrogen progesterone ratio. Because as we've seen in perimenopause there's a lot of unopposed estrogen, not enough progesterone. And in menopause there's hardly any progesterone even if estrogen levels are low. So we want to really prioritize, focus on progesterone production and of optimization versus estrogen. So we want to reduce any excessive estrogenic substances and things like alcohol is one of them. We saw seed oils before as well, soy in large amounts, um, can be estrogenic as well. So we want to be avoiding those. So make it, make of it what you will, but what I see a lot in my practice is a lot of women that are kind of running on adrenaline all day long because they're under fueled, they're over committed, they're doing everything. And so you're running on adrenaline all day and then in the evenings you need something to calm you down, that alcohol to kind of help you calm down. But then it's disrupting your sleep and obviously further exacerbating your hormonal issues can cause hot flushes all these kind of things. So by focusing on nourishment and balancing blood sugar throughout the day in the ways that we talked about already, that's going to be really important. That's going to help you. And also including, carbohydrates in the diet in the right way is going to help you to keep your blood sugar balanced, to keep cortisol levels low so that you don't feel the need to reach for alcohol in the evenings. Again, I've experienced it on my own, you know, by myself as well, on myself as well. That sort of five o'clock, like, ooh, need that glass of wine. Once I started working on my blood sugar and it added carbohydrates back in, all of a sudden that it wasn't as appealing anymore. But also when you're working on lifestyle shifts, which we'll see in the next, module about how to create boundaries and lower stress and optimize sleep, etceter, extra light exposure, then cortisol levels won't be as high. We won't need to resort to alcohol. But this is not to say that you can never have alcohol ever again in your life. Choose your moments and also decide whether, you know, if you are, you know, if you are experiencing a lot of, symptoms with alcohol, sorry, with your hormones, and you are also drinking alcohol on a regular basis, maybe it's not the right time for you to include it in this, in your life at this stage. So experiment with taking it out and seeing how you feel and then just choosing your moments when you do consume alcohol, consuming, having some fruit with it or fruit juice, can actually help to detoxify the alcohol quicker from the liver. I'm not saying like, hey, let's all go out and have fruity cocktails every day. But you know, just some things to keep in mind. But yeah, it's up. You know, take this information and decide, is alcohol serving you at this moment or not? And experiment with taking it out. Now, the other controversial topic is coffee. And again, I hear a lot of people saying, oh, coffee, you know, great, coffee is terrible. You should avoid. It's great for metabolism. Hey, I'm Italian, I love coffee. And I personally think, and I've also seen research that coffee can actually be very supportive to metabolic rate and to thyroid health, but it needs to be consumed in the right way. And what I see a lot of people doing is actually consuming it in the wrong way. That's actually exacerbating their issues. Issues. So what I normally see in my Practice. And this was me as well. So again, no judgment. Coffee in the morning on an empty stomach. No food in the tank. Going out, doing an ex, you know, working out or running to your busy work, you know, to your office, not having any food. Coffee, coffee, coffee. Having maybe one or two coffees in the morning, having a tiny, tiny lunch and then some more coffee. And then you're kind of all up and down, up and down. So you're like on, running on adrenaline all day long. And this is not the right way to consume coffee. If you consume it, you know, if you are having it on, it's on its own on an empty stomach, it can actually exacerbate cortisol issues. It can actually cause blood, you know, exacerbate blood sugar issues. Might see drip blood sugar drops as well. You know, that adrenaline that you feel, that sort of, you know, energy is usually adrenaline. And we know that that's something that we don't want to be spiking on a regular basis because it's going to come at the expense, expense of progesterone as well. So that's, that's not how to consume coffee. First of all, coffee is not breakfast. You know, it can be part of breakfast, but it's not something that I would consume on an empty stomach. So if you are, if you love coffee, and again, coffee is if, if it's made in the right ways and if it's consumed with a meal or after a meal, it can actually be supportive to the thyroid. It can help with digestive symptoms as well. Making sure that if you are consuming coffee and you love it, have it with or after a meal, never on its own. Making sure that you're well fueled. Because if you're having it on its own, it's like putting the foot on the gas pedal with no fuel in the tank. That's going to burn out your engine, right? So have it with a meal. And personally I think it's important to include, include some collagen, maybe some. A good carbohydrate source with it as well. So some sugar, honey or maple syrup, and if tolerated, some milk or coconut milk. Makes it a more, easy to digest and more balanced way of consuming coffee than just having it black with no sugar. I've had clients say to me before, oh, I've just, I've trained myself to not put sugar in my coffee. I really like sugar in my coffee. I was like, well, how many coffees do you have a day? And then she says, well, one like hey, if you're having one coffee a day and you're having it with or after, ideally after a meal when you're well fueled, put some sugar in it. The sugar actually, or the sweetener, the carbohydrate, the maple syrup, honey, molasses, whatever it is that you want to put in. It actually helps to counteract and, and keep your blood sugar stable if you're having it with a meal or after a meal and having some collagen in it as well. Extra way of getting that gelatin and collagen into your diet. Milk again, if you're, if tolerated, or maybe some coconut milk. That's a nice way of consuming coffee. The way not to consume it is to live on coffee and nothing else. Again, you're putting foot on the pedal with no fuel in the tank. That's not the way to do it. It can be part of a nutrient dense diet, if consumed, you know, responsibly and obviously not relying on it as your main source of energy. Rely on other foods, balanced meals throughout the day and then having coffee, you know, with or after it, to help with digestion for life's little pleasures. So that's all I've got to say on coffee. Now let's finish off this module with a note on calorie restriction and weight loss.