Welcome to Healthy Ish listeners. Hope you are having a fantastic day. This is, of course, the daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am Felicity Harley, host of this podcast and joining me via our online studio today is doctor Cecilia Kittik. She's a gut health expert and exercise physiologist who has published more than eighty research papers exploring things like inflammation, nutrition, the endocrine system and of course
the gut. She knows this stuff. Basically, she joins us to discuss how your gut health impacts your period health. Have you ever thought about this? Neither did I? And of course how to improve the health of your microbiome. Also, if you are taking special care of your fertility, make sure you're listening to extra Healthy Ish, where she shares her advice on how to create a fertile gut. You can grab that wherever you get your podcasts. Ce Celia,
thank you for joining us on Healthy Today. Finally, we've been trying to do this interview for a few months.
Now, let's make it worth it, Felicity, Yes we will.
Listeners. We are here to give you all the info about gut health and how it affects your period health. I mean, what does what's the connection between these two What does gut health have to do with menstrual cycles?
So they may seem like they're sitting in quite distinct locations, but these two components are very intricately connected. So the health of our microbiome does influence us having a healthy,
reproductive menstrual cycle. Essentially, when we're talking about what a healthy cycle is if someone's not on any hormone or contraception, it's really looking at the fact that that menstrual cycle comes regularly, maybe every twenty six to thirty five days, that it's moderate bleeding, so nothing too excessive or heavy flow, you're not experiencing any excessive pain or severe mood swings or other debilitating symptoms. And importantly, a healthy menstrual cycle
is one in which you ovulate. Now that may sound a bit unusual because while you bleed each month, you won't necessarily ovulate, and the research actually supports it in about sixteen to thirty seven percent of menstrual cycles. Population actually doesn't take place. Yeah, but it makes sense when we start to understand mechanistically what's going on and how
we ovulate, and what supports that process. So importantly part of that is the communication that happens between our brain and our ovaries and how well they're talking to each other. Looking at the hormone levels that we've got circulating around, nutritional adequacy, how we're feeding our body and providing nutrients,
and our immune system as well. Now all of these things are influenced by our resident microbiome, so that is the populations that we have living in our gart They're responsible for regulating sex hormones, how well we extract and absorb nutrients from food, our higher brain centers, our immune system,
and these are all connected. So when there is a bit of disruption in that gut microbiome, it can be associated with missing or irregular menstrual periods, experiencing greater pre menstrual symptoms, the presence of fibroids and polyps, which can be contributed to really heavy bleeding during a cycle. And we know those disruptions are seen in conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis.
It's amazing, you know. I obviously listen to a lot of other podcasts and just hearing you speak, there's so much we're learning about the gut and how it's just so central to everything. I mean, I listened to something the other day about it being central to heart health and now menstrual cycles, the link between the two, it's just it just blows my mind absolutely.
And a lot of this comes down to looking at the processes of inflammation and oxidative stress. Essentially, these are processes that we need in our body and they're really important. But if they are left unchecked, you know, or they get a bit out of control, they can cause a bit of damage to our tissues. And so when we're looking at a lot of those disease processes diabetes, cuttingo vascular disease, autoimmune conditions, there's always an element there where
inflammation is a bit disrupted. So it's the same when we're talking about our gut health and our menstrual cycle. We actually need really tightly regulated inflammation as we're growing a follicle in our ovary, and in that follicle is where we're going to find our egg. Now for that egg to be released again, we need really great communication coming from our higher brain centers to our ovaries, and when there's disruption in that communication, that pathway alone between
our brain and our ovary. About eighty five of failures in when we don't ovulate are contributed to those pathways. And those pathways and what's going on in our brain
is influenced by what's going on in our gut. So, particularly when we're thinking about our immune system and the process of inflammation, what happens is when there's a few when there are a few more populations living in the gut that tend to promote disruption or inflammation, that can lead to changing the structural integrity of our intestinal wall, so that leads to an increase in permeability, and we might actually have things coming from our gut into our
bloodstream that can be really immune stimulating, things like endotoxin or these little components of bacterial cell walls that really trigger and activate our immune system to cause a lot of inflammation. So just even the presence of that bacterial components in our blood stream that is associated with reduced ovulation and impacting then even levels of pain that we
might experience in our menstrual cycle. So when you look at the gut of women that do experience pre menstrual symptoms or having irregular cycles, there seems to be often an enrichment of populations like Prevtella that drive a bit of inflammation, and we also might have less of the good guys in there, so less of the bacteria that produce things like butyrate, and butrate is a short chain
fatty acid, which is really beneficial for our health. And when we start to appreciate that's getting produced in our gut, you know, in the large intestine, but that is absorbed systemically and influencing our cardiovascular health, our brain health, the health of our muscles, and how strong we are, how well our pancreas is working. All of these are impacted by those metabolites that are getting produced within our gut.
Now talk to us about birth control. Can this impact gut health? I mean, what role does this play? And also things like medication, I mean, and how does this affect our gut?
So this is definitely an emerging space when we're looking at oral contraceptive pills. So our microbiome can influence our sex hormones, particularly things like estrogen, but our hormones can also influence our microbiomes. So there's definitely this by direction and communication that happens. Yes, and so when you're looking at putting in exogenous hormones, like with the oral contraceptive pill.
What the research shows it's quite limited at this space in looking at the gut microbiome in particular, But what the research shows is that gut community might be pretty stable, but their function might change. And a lot of this is in very specific populations, like, for example, women that have polcistic ovary syndrome, so they might have some changes
in amino acid metabolism and other functions. But ultimately, when we're thinking about what can really disrupt the microbiome, there are absolutely other medications that will tend to be more disruptive, and one of those is very commonly prescribed, and these are proton pump inhibitors. So typically they might be prescribed to treat gastrosophagy or reflex disease, or you know, getting your doctor you say I've got heartburn and they're like, oh, here,
take a PPI. Very disruptive because it's changing levels of stomach acid and that's potentially enabling the growth of opportunistic pathogens or the transit of more pathogens getting from our upper gastrointestin trapped and making the way to where they probably shouldn't So antibiotics are another component that are often essential and life saving, but there is absolutely research showing that that can disrupt the gut community, and some work even shows it might take six to twelve months to
restore the gut community.
Goodness, I've just come off following antibiotics, okay, But on the flip side.
There are definitely supportive mechanisms in place that can help you as you're restoring your community. And one of those looking at the incorporation of particular probiotics into your diet that has been shown to reduce antibiotic associated dysbiosis or that disruption and the gut microbiome, and the same with proton pump inhibitors. We know that dietary and lifestyle changes can be effective in managing reflux disease.
Now, just quickly before we go, you have to give me this answer in a couple of sentences. But if we are trying to you know, get pregnant, that's your expertise. Or just improve our reproductive health our you know, help our cycles become healthier or healthy is so to speak. How can can we improve the health of our microbiome today.
Have a consistent supply of probiotic fiber in your diet. And if you want to make that really easy and accessible to you, there are ways you can do it despite even having a coco late for example, at the end of your day. So even in healthy individuals, selected probiotics are going to really further enhance your gut community and promote the growth of those beneficial species. And if that is the foundation for our brain health, metabolism, immune function,
endocrine function, reproductive health, we want for all the benefits. Yeah, we want all the benefits that come to us.
A few more foods that have these probotics in it.
Yeah. Probartics are found in things like lots of different fruits and vegetables, things like onion, chickpeas, b troot, whole week. You know, our grains are really important as well, bali rye. So again looking at a really great plant based focused you know, lots of diversity in what you're reading, and abundance in those whole foods and plant based foods will be nurturing your microbiome.
Fora Celia, thank you for joining us on healthy Ish.
Thank you Felicity.
Well, time and time again, we are reminded that good health starts in the gut. Hey, Cecilia does have a book out. She has an online course as well. Her book is called Create a Fertile Gut. I will leave a link to both of them in the show notes. If you did enjoy this chat, if you've got something out of it, tell us rate and review this episode,
or of course, you can subscribe to this podcast. Anything else, head to body insoul dot com dot you followus on socials, Grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay healthy ish