Glowing Beyond 40 Holistic Beauty and Wellness Insights

Bettina M Brown: 0:04

Hello and welcome to In the Rising a health and wellness podcast for those going through and those supporting those going through cancer. My name is Bettina Brown and I'm board certified in physical therapy, wound care and lymphedema, and you know, for me, cancer is very personal. It's affected my friends, my immediate and my not so immediate family, and therefore I created this podcast and fit after breastcancercom to address the multiple dimensions of our lives during and after recovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of In the Rising podcast, year four, still talking about health and nutrition and how it relates to our everyday life. I had a unique opportunity to speak with someone who is currently living in Stockholm, sweden, my first Swedish podcast, us Swedish podcast but also is from England, so she has that wonderful accent talking about nutrition and her experience of working with clients all around the world. Listen into the end of this podcast because I have a gift for you as well, from me to you All. Right. Well, thank you, allison, for being part of In the Rising podcast, and I understand that you are also really focused on helping others rise in their own nutrition. Before we get into all of that, there's usually a spark that started somewhere in your life that led you in the direction that you're in. Can you share about that?

Alison Bladh: 1:47

My journey was quite long, but a short version of it was when I was a teenager I suffered from very bad acne. That's a hard time, isn't it, as a teenager, on its own, without suddenly having problems with your skin, and that, even at that young age, led me down that road of looking into more holistic ways that I could improve my skin through nutrition, through lifestyle. And what I did really, really helped. And that's when I started my career, initially as an esthetician, so as a beauty therapist, specifically working with women's hormonal skin problems, and that very soon led me into perimenopause menopause, because a lot of women in this area or this time of life do suffer from skin problems. I very soon came to realise that you can work on the outside with aesthetic treatments, but you need the inside piece as well. You need the nutrition. So that's when I went back and studied nutritional science and have been working in women's health, specifically in women 40 plus, because there's a lot that happens in our bodies and with hormones and everything Just in the power of nutrition, mindset and lifestyle, so we can thrive through this next phase of our lives.

Bettina M Brown: 3:12

Well, thank you for sharing that, and it goes back to that saying so within. So, without you know that you can see when someone's really happy they glow, and it is not just the skin. When you touched on something where you said the hormonal aspects, do you feel that, whether it's education, whether it's commercials or what have not, on both sides of the pond right, I'm sure you have clients everywhere by pond I mean the Atlantic Do you feel that women tend to focus on is it dirt, is it extra oil? Or do you feel that hormones, even, are top in the top five conditions that they think about are causing skin changes?

Alison Bladh: 4:01

Yeah, that's a good question. I think women are becoming more educated in skin Now we're obviously talking about skin health, but they understand a lot about skin health due to the amount of information that is out there in magazines, on television, social media and I think that they understand now that there's something you know isn't just about what's happening to your skin from a environmental aspect. There is something going on you know inside with hormones and what you're eating and what you're doing and how you just, exactly, as you said, how you feel, if you're happy, you can really see that in someone's skin. So in answer to your question, I would say that a lot of women do think about hormones. Now I've managed a fair bit. I've been working in this industry for over 30 years and I've seen how people understand you know things a lot more. They don't just put it down to oh, am I using too many oily products on my skin or is it something to do with when I'm out in the garden? I don't think people think that way anymore as much as they used to.

Bettina M Brown: 5:18

So that's good news to hear that you know hormones and the inside of us is also being recognized, not just all the endless products we need to put on top. You have done. I mean, you've gone into chemistry, you've gone into biology so you have really pulled and been drawn into the desire to learn more of what's going on inside. You also grew up with a mother who was a professional chef. One thing that I hear common and I will say this for myself is I know I'm supposed to eat well and it will make a difference, but the energy right. I work with a lot of people who are low on energy for various reasons, one of them going through cancer treatment. But are some hacks that you feel would be helpful to make nutrition more accessible on an energetic level?

Alison Bladh: 6:16

I'm a huge believer in everything should be easy and realistic and, like you say, I was very lucky to have my mother who taught me to cook. You know, as soon as I could walk, I was in the kitchen with her. What I say to people is what I say to my clients that the majority of people that I work with are overwhelmed, they're stressed, they're exhausted, they're lacking in energy. You have to make the effort to go shopping, get away from that. Well, we can now, can't? We can order online and have it delivered, but you've got to do that kind of. You've got to go in and order what you want In your fridge. Just have things, healthy things that you can take out of your fridge, put together, you know, within five minutes, 10 minutes and an eight. And to give you an example of that, now, I appreciate everyone has different eating styles, whether you're vegetarian or you eat more plant based or meat. For example, if you have, if you roast a chicken and you have that in the fridge, and then on Monday evening, when you're exhausted and you haven't, you don't think, oh, I just can't be bothered cooking. You take the chicken out, you cut a piece of the chicken off, you have some salad in your fridge. You take the salad out handful of seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, maybe. Chop up a tomato celery whatever you've got in the fridge, put some olive oil, maybe some vinegar over it and there you are. You've got your chicken breast. You've got a nice healthy salad with that. It doesn't take any time. It's having the raw ingredients. You don't have to cook a big fancy dinner every night. It's the same like with fish. It's so much easier to eat if you have raw ingredients that you can just and with that I have adopted, you know, the cooking on the weekends.

Bettina M Brown: 8:07

I literally have a crock pot for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I eat for all of the week and if I have some extra and it frees up so much time that the time it takes on Sunday to make breakfast, lunch and dinner is nothing because I'm already chopping and doing all of that. It frees up so much time and energy and I don't feel the rush in the morning and I don't feel the rush in the evening when I get home and that's absolutely time to spend with family or doing what you really like. You also talk a lot about self-compassion and mindset. Would you share a little bit more about that and how it relates to what you're noticing in clients, with how they feel on the inside and how it affects their skin?

Alison Bladh: 8:54

How we are like, how our emotional state is. It affects our skin. I mean, it affects everything. And there's actually new research coming out now I have to get this word right. It's called psychodermatology and they're finding you know, psychotherapists and they're really looking into this the connection between our mental state and our skin. And there is, of course, a big connection. You know, if you're not well or you're feeling down or you're depressed or just not feeling happy in general, that in turn has an effect on our skin. You know that is the. It's quite new research coming out now, but it's very interesting and exactly as you said earlier, somebody that's happy and you know that the body is in balance and you feel great and you've got energy, your skin looks fantastic. So when I work with clients not just for skin health but for many, you know, hormonal menopause, perimenopause we really look at that mindset piece because you have to get that in place as well. It's kind of a bit like a jigsaw puzzle the nutrition there. You know you need to look at lifestyle. How do I feel about myself, how do I feel about you know my life and am I actually happy? So what I tend to do with clients is really just sit down and have an honest conversation with them how are you feeling? And it's amazing how I think we don't really always talk about how we feel. Do we Really like, truthfully, how we feel when someone asks you oh, how are you doing, how are you today? We always say, oh, I'm fine, I'm great. But that isn't always the case, is it? Probably a lot of the time it isn't the case. And then you know, one of the most healing things for people when they may be feeling, you know, emotionally down, is to be able to talk to someone about it, that is so someone that listens to them and understands. It's so healing, it's so beneficial. And then really, you know, talking to them and giving them actionable things that they can do to make themselves feel better. Because during as we age as women and during menopause, we can really lose our confidence. We can suddenly become anxious. This is for women that were very confident and had no problems before. There's many factors that come into play, but one of them is the decline in hormones. So, really, just looking at small things that you can do to make yourself feel better, like allowing yourself time, you know, but having self-care every day, even if it's just for five, 10 minutes. You know, doing something that you enjoy for yourself is very, very important on a daily basis.

Bettina M Brown: 12:10

Absolutely, absolutely. We need to do that and we tend to not do that very often, but you're right, and you mentioned that your group is your focus. That you have been drawn to serve are women, usually 40 plus. A lot has usually happened by that time, and you also talk about the importance of having a positive attitude with nutrition and positive attitude with your food. Do you feel that we are starting to swing in the direction to have more of a positive relationship? All right, you're back. I'll see you, isabelle, with food.

Alison Bladh: 12:50

Okay, I think that it's happening slowly. I'm thinking, okay, I'm looking at your. I mean, I work worldwide, so you know, I see it from many different countries. It's happening. It's when we look at the state of our health in general, worldwide. We're very sick. There's a huge amount of chronic illness. It's very difficult because we're living in quite a toxic food environment. There's food everywhere. Isn't there. Everywhere you go there's food and it isn't necessarily, you know, whole food, it's ultra processed foods and we're eating too much because there is food everywhere. It's heading that way, but there's a lot of work to be done, to play. But there's definitely a momentum there of people understanding we really need to change the way that we eat. But it's not there yet. It's quite a small percentage, I would say, of the world's population that really are behind this.

Bettina M Brown: 13:57

Yes, I think that's. It's also big to acknowledge where people are financially, where they are physically. We have food deserts where we have a lot of food, but it is someone's call that fake food. It's not real. So I really appreciate you sharing the importance of that. What would be one thing or one idea that you would like to convey to women, Like when you look back on all of your work that you've done and what you're hoping to do, what do you feel like you'd like to convey?

Alison Bladh: 14:30

One thing, okay nourish your body. You know, choose to nourish your body with whole foods. You know, don't go down that route of eating foods that aren't full of nutrition. Make that little bit of extra effort to really feed and nurture your body, Because when you come into midlife and you're coming into the menopause, you need to just take more care of yourself. And it's doing that. It's your daily habits that mount up, that really add up to your overall health.

Bettina M Brown: 15:11

I think that's it. Nourish your body. Feeding and nourishing are not necessarily the same. So to nourish your whole body your mind, body and soul, acknowledge those hormones changes and have a positive attitude that your body is here to support you as you can learn to support it. So what are things that you got out of this podcast? I would love to hear from you at Batina at intherisingcom. You can also just message me on my website in the risingpodcastcom. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you so much for your time. If you did enjoy this podcast, I encourage you to share it. Give the gift of giving the blessing of caring about someone else's health and caring about them in general. If you would leave a review, a positive review, it would do so much for this podcast to raise it up and put it in front of the people who would need it the most. Since this podcast was about nutrition, as promised, I have a gift for you, which are 12 Mediterranean diet recipes Actually good ones, because I've had all 12. It's a gift for you, just so that you have some idea of what is helpful, what is evidence-based, science-based, to help provide you some better nutrition to fuel you and reduce inflammation and all the other things we can go off on a couple episodes about. So thank you, and until next time let's keep building one another up.