Welcome to Healthy Ish. Yes you have joined us on the daily podcast and Body and Soul.
How are you?
I am Felicity Harley and joining me today is of course, our fabulous digital editor Holly Berkleman. And oh have we got some stories for you this week? Yes, we're chatting through the three hottest stories in health of Honest this week. Oh hey, Holly, welcome to Healthy Ish. Thank you for joining us again on this episode.
You feel like I've had five million meetings a day at the moment that I'm getting through, how about you?
Yeah, A bit like that at school holidays, and it's always an extra juggle. I mean, I also hate lamenting how busy busy we are, because we're all busy, but it's just that little bit extra, right it is?
And I do feel like, aren't we meant to not be as busy in winter?
Is that a thing? Oh? No, I feel like summer is meant to be busy but.
Winds into the slowdown, which doesn't really happened.
Cool.
Well, I've never been less slow in my life, but that's fine.
Okay, Well hit us up. What's happening in your world this week?
Well, finally, the story that I found the most intriguing this week was TikTok's obsessed with high cortisol. But how bad is it really? From a personal standpoint? The answer is very bad, but let's take a look into it. So we spoke with founder of Body Clinic Sydney, Sydney's premier health coaching of physiotherapy clinic, Nigel Morgan, who did a bit of myth busting on cortisol for us. So basically, TikTok, yeah, they don't think that maybe cortisole is as bad as
people say it is. I tell you straight up that it is bad for you to have high cortisole continuously, and then.
Yeah I love that. Just love everyone together and say TikTok.
Just TikTok people.
Yeah, but for a little bit of a down low on cortisol. It's our primary stress hormone and that's what kickstarts the fight or flight response when we perceive something to be dangerous or threatening.
But since all.
Stresses activate the same system, our bodies are not great at differentiating between real and perceived threats. So you know, something might spike our anxiety, but it might not actually be something that we need.
To stress about.
As I'm sure many listeners will know and as something that I can attest to for sure.
So is high quartersol really that bad?
Yes, because it can impact your health quite a bit if.
It sticks around for long periods of time.
So it can spike anxiety, it can cause depression, but it can also lead to lower immunity and increase in IBS symptoms and nutrient malabsorption.
It can increase your.
Risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and hard attack. And it can even damage to the hippocampus which impacts long term memory in your brain.
Myth past did Hey, yeah, myth is busted. So there are, however, some things you can do to lower your quartersole levels.
So Morgan suggests going out of that fight or flight state and into the rest and digest stage, which you know, obviously that's what we'd all like to be in, but it's a stage where your body is not like trying to run.
Away from that.
You know, that threat, and is actually able to repair itself and actually yeah reset. He also suggests things like nasal breathing, slow nasal breathing, and regular exercise and healthy living to help reduce your stress response. So we're not reinventing the wheel here. But I do think it's important when these things come up on you know, social media, and it's like, oh, it's not actually that bad, that it's.
Good to talk to an expert and bust those myths.
Yeah exactly. And look, I mean I know you, Holly, but often I feel like I'm just living in this. I wouldn't say higher cortisol stress state twenty four to seven, I'd say medium.
So next time I would say high.
Is someone on the medium corter cel stress state and see if that's going to lead to long term health issues?
Please a great idea.
I'll touch base and I'll see how bad quarter levels of cortisol are for you, and I'll report back.
I mean, doesn't everyone else feel like we just live in this this medium level cortisole stress state all of the time?
I mean I hate it, Yeah, absolutely, And I do think that like so easy to blame things on social media, but I think when you're constantly in that state where you're scrolling, you're being stimulated, it's really hard to find, you know, that state where your brain can actually switch off, And so it's so easy to be in that constant stress state.
Absolutely, well, I want to talk about something that perhaps might help you well get into the rest and digest state, and it's essential oils.
Do you use the holy Oh I don't.
I'm essential oil with Jason. I'm just like, I'm not hugely into the smell of them.
Yeah, I know, I kind of dabble here and there, but and I often want to do that actually work?
Yeah, I like the idea of them, yes, we do. Well, No, I love the idea exactly. Well.
So I saw a new systematic review pop up about essential oils and I went into a bit of a deep dive and I have to share, well what it found really because I'm a bit lucky. I think I want to use it. Well, I'd like to use them, I don't. Do they actually work? Is it worth my while? And I've actually seen some products, beauty products specifically, popping up with different types of oils, things like rosemary oil for hair growth, coriander in face oil, black human seed oil for skin.
So now, oh yes, yeah, have you seen these things?
Definitely?
And we all of the ASoP is it parsley seed oil? Yes, well that's another lovely yeah.
Yeah, So I mean we all know that essential oils have been around for well hundreds and thousands of years, if not millennia, and you know they're used in healing and bathing rituals across many cultures, so we all know anecdotally they can work. You put some but you know, essential oils in your bath and you feel amazing. But there's certain oils that have been studied extensively as well, and they're things like pepmine oil for ibs, lavender for sleep.
But this new review actually looked at a specific bunch of essential oils that perhaps we haven't heard that much about, only on products coming out, things like lemon, orange, cuman, cinnamon, coriander, rosemary.
Thyme, and parsley.
So interesting what it found. So basically as this I can't even s that word systematic, well a system review just to give you, you know, remind you what it is.
It's a mega review of all the studies. So it's just been published in the journal frontiersy Medicine, and it focused on the anti inflammatory effects the nutrisceutical God, I just can't be my ways ound there selling nutraceutical properties, antioxidant and antibacterial activity of all of the essential oils I just mentioned above, and the researchers looked at things like present in your diet, their effect that whether they
actually can work on your health the most important active compounds. Now, the search was actually conducted in the pub Med database, which is worth going into if you're into that, if you geek out in science, and it looked the last twelve years of publications around studies to do with these oils. And yes, it found that essential oils do have many therapeutic benefits and they are beneficial to human health in
many ways. However, these particular essential oils such as coriander, parsley, rosemary, and thyme need more research so.
They Okay, they could have potential benefits.
I'm saying that in air quotes and that comes to that's that's actually verbatim from the study. So I don't know, Hold up, would you hold off on buying the rosemary or shampoof for now?
Maybe? Maybe not? We still don't know whether it actually works.
Okay, this was a good deep dive for list.
I think, yeah, so maybe we put a hold on how effective we think they are. But they can be used still, just if you like a bit of self care and you just like the smell of them and they're a bit nice.
There's value in that.
Too, absolutely and actually interesting.
I did come, I did do a few other looks into other studies in the placebo effect of you know, smelling essential oils and using them can actually can vouch for a lot for the therapeutic benefits if that's what you're using them for.
Yeah, the placebo effect is so interesting. I'm fascinated by the power of the human mind.
Exactly now, just quickly before we go, give us quick rundown of most click story of the week.
This is a pretty grim one, I'll be honest.
Okay.
The headline is penis cancer cases are surging around the world, is why so if you didn't have spiked cordinal before you will now apologies in advance, but this is important health journalism. So according to an investigation by the BBC, penis cancer is expected to surge a staggering seventy seven percent in the next twenty six years. And I know
it's crazy, like that's a huge jump. And just for like comparison as well, cases in Germany alone increased by fifty percent between nineteen sixty one and twenty twelve, and the UK has also seen a considerable spike, so there's been a massive jump over the last Oh god, don't make me do the math, but.
Like fifty one ish years.
Yep, fifty one ish years and it's going to continue growing at an even higher rate. And Brazil is one of the countries that has the highest rates of penis cancer too, and doctors believe that low HPV vaccination rates could be contributing to this interest. However, there are things that you can do to lessen the rates and your risk factors, which include not having unprotected sex and specifically like making sure you're using condoms and you know, just looking at your hygiene levels as well.
Good point, general health and wellness factors do play in Meanwhile, other doctors also say that an aging population is contributing to these case numbers too, so have a read.
You can look at the actual data behind it on body insol dot com dot au and stay vigilant people do your self checks.
Nice reminder, howe, I think we'll leave it at that. Thanks for joining us today on Healthish, and I will to all of the above in the show notes. If you did enjoy this chat, tell us rate and review this podcast of course, or subscribe and then you know exactly when we drop a new WEP. Remember you can join the conversation via Body and Soul on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok bodyansoul dot com Dot you, of course, is the website you need to go to grab our print edition,
which is out in your local Sunday paper. Thanks for listening and stay healthy is