It's Women's Health Week and mental health always matters! Join us as we discuss what the evidence says when it comes to nutrition and depression & anxiety. We also look at a new study that was published in the Lancet comparing lifestyle (diet and exercise) and psychotherapy interventions.

We cover:

• WHO definitions of depression & anxiety
• Rates of depression & anxiety in NZ and Australia
• Mediterranean diet & mental health
• New Lancet study around nutrition & mental health

One-liners you don’t want to miss:

“Across Australia and New Zealand, rates of depression and anxiety are ever-increasing.”

“Overall, research shows that diet is important to mental health, the same way it is to physical health. Eating healthier positively impacts mental wellbeing, such as improving depressive symptoms.”

“Over eight weeks they found that those assigned the lifestyle intervention had a 42% reduction in symptoms of depression and a 37% reduction in the psychotherapy program.”

References
https://theconversation.com/food-and-exercise-can-treat-depression-as-well-as-a-psychologist-our-study-found-and-its-cheaper-235952

What exactly is the Mediterranean diet? Easy adjustments you can make now to reap health benefits

It’s Women’s Health Week and Clare Goodwin, the PCOS Nutritionist and founder of Ovie is here to answer your questions on PCOS. We cover it all, including how PCOS affects weight and fertility.

We cover:

• What is PCOS?
• How common in PCOS?
• Does it matter if someone remains undiagnosed?
• Causes of PCOS
• Main symptoms of PCOS
• How PCOS affects weight
• How PCOS affects fertility

One-liners you don’t want to miss:

“For years and years women have been treated like hypochondriacs and so a lot of that stems from this women not being taken seriously with pain, especially period pain and being told that this is normal when it is absolutely not. And thinking we need to dull down our symptoms.”

“PCOS isn’t a particularly well named syndrome as a lot of the emphasis gets put on the “cysts” on the ovary which are just follicles and just a symptom of what was going on.”

“We know that insulin and testosterone both cause body fat gain in females. So then we have this weight gain, and with this we get more testosterone and more insulin resistance, and this again causes more weight gain. And so it is this vicious cycle and in our body there is no negative feedback loop for this.”

References

https://www.ovie.io/

It’s Women’s Health Week and endocrinologist, Dr Megan Ogilvie is with us and flipping the script on menopause. Megan draws from other cultures and looks at menopause through a positive lens. A must-listen for all women that will leave you feeling aspired!

We cover:

• What is menopause? And what is “normal” for women?
• How do you think women should view this time?
• What does this time really mean?
• Menopause myths
• Menopause and belly fat, why?

One-liners you don’t want to miss:

“In the 1800s life expectancy was about 45-50 years, we all died of our postpartum haemorrhage having our eighth baby. In 2024, life expectancy for women is about 85 so we can all expect very reasonably to live about 1/3 of our lifetimes in our postmenopausal years.”

“Increasingly, science is showing us that this midlife time that is often the menopausal time for women, is a real window of opportunity to shape their health and wellbeing and therefore quality of life over their postmenopausal years.”

“All of this talk around menopause which is so vast now is mostly good, but it’s a very negative Westernised narrative out there at the moment. It’s all about you’ll get this symptom, this symptom and this symptom then you get old and you become invisible. All tied up with Western ideas of ageing.”

References

https://www.menopause.org.au/health-info
https://erhassociates.co.nz/curated-resources