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Powerful Not Tired - a conversation with author Lauren Callahan
13 Plays14 days ago
Lauren Callahan is a gut health expert and the founder of Goddess Health
Lauren is passionate about helping women find their best health in midlife and beyond.
In this episode of the Abeceder health and wellbeing podcast Fit For My Age Lauren explains to host Michael Millward the phases of female ageing and how every woman has a different experience of major body changes like menopause.
They discuss how as our body changes both men and women need to adapt their habits to accommodate those changes rather than believing something is wrong with them.
Lauren explains the different stages of successfully adapting our lifestyle and habits to accommodate how our bodies are changing.
The first step is understanding how our gut works and focus on managing or working with our gut so that it can adapt to the changes in our bodies.
Lauren mentions the Profit First book by Mike Michalowicz, as being an inspiration for her approach to health and well-being.
Find out more about Michael Millward and Lauren Callahan at Abeceder.co.uk.
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If you would like to be a guest on Fit For My Age, please contact using the link at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, the health and well-being podcast from Abysida. I am your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysida.
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, my guest is Lauren Callaghan, the gut health expert. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Fit for My Age is made on Zencastr.
00:00:32
Speaker
Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms. Zencaster really does make making podcasts so easy.
Meet Lauren Callaghan
00:00:47
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using zencastr is it Zencaster, forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysseedah. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:04
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. Very importantly on Fit for My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:01:18
Speaker
Today, my guest, who I met on Matchmaker.fm, is Lauren Callaghan. Lauren is a gut health expert, a Reiki master, an ultra runner and the owner of Goddess Health.
00:01:33
Speaker
Lauren focuses on helping women in midlife and beyond boost energy, mood and performance. Lauren is based in Alexandria, Louisiana in the United States.
00:01:48
Speaker
Alexandria is almost the exact geographic center of the state of Louisiana. So the center of things, so to speak, which makes the fact that I have never visited even more surprising.
Exploring Gut Health and Holistic Wellness
00:02:00
Speaker
If I ever do visit Alexandra in Louisiana, I will be sure to make all of the arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels and holidays.
00:02:13
Speaker
You'll find a link and membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make this episode a fit for my age. Hello Lauren. Hi, Michael. Thank you. It's so good to be here. Thank you very much. i really appreciate you having the time available to have what I'm hoping is going to be a very interesting conversation because we're going to be talking about something that I know very little about.
00:02:38
Speaker
Before we do that, please could you give us a ah short introduction about your career today and what's led you to establishing Goddess Health? Long story short, I was a therapist and i loved being a therapist.
00:02:52
Speaker
But along the way, I started getting curious about about gut health in particular, about my physical health, and went on this journey of discovering some very pervasive healing practices.
00:03:05
Speaker
And I couldn't help but share them. i had to move into a holistic wellness space where I could share with women in particular, pervasive healing practices that would allow them to get to this time in midlife and not think, oh my God, what is happening to me? i guess I just have to deal with it.
00:03:25
Speaker
So that that was the beginning of God is Health. and And I'll throw in a little bit about the name. God is Health came because over and over again, when I talked to women, the The primary things that I hear are, I'm so tired.
00:03:39
Speaker
I'm so stressed. I'm so tired. I'm so stressed. I feel awful. And I thought to myself, this is not the life of a goddess. And each one of us, you know men and women, we are powerful and perfect at our core, just the way that we are. And I want to help people embrace that and live that way, um to live like the goddesses and gods that we
Societal Pressures and Women's Intuition
00:03:58
Speaker
are.
00:03:58
Speaker
um So that is where the name came from. I help people find a holistic health and wellness in their lives. And that's why I mean when I say it's something that I don't know very much about because I'm a man and I don't know very much at all about women's health and I'm imagining that it's very different.
00:04:16
Speaker
But listening to the description that you've got there about goddesses and gods, it made me think that Lots of the media tries to tell us that we have to be these gods and goddesses. We have to be the domestic goddess running the home, working full time, running the home, raising a family, being fit and healthy. It's all prescribed by someone else as to what we should be.
00:04:40
Speaker
And yet we are all, I think, within ourselves, our own version of what is the right for us, our own version of what makes us a god or a goddess.
00:04:52
Speaker
is is defined by us. I love that you say that because that is a huge focus of what I do is not adding ah tools or adding ideas or adding strategies to your life um on how you can be more perfect, for example.
00:05:11
Speaker
Actually, it's the opposite. you know I help people tap into their natural intuition and their natural healing abilities and you know what is what is truly just innate to us as human beings.
00:05:23
Speaker
Tapping into that and shedding the things that are not serving our highest good. For example, you just said it, like you could just be too busy, right? we We could be trying to aspire to this thing that we have seen on social media and and just end up being too busy or or spending our lives too much social media.
00:05:43
Speaker
other people, for example, or what we think we need to be. And so a lot of what I do is help people to turn back to themselves, to love themselves in a way that maybe they have never
Midlife Health Challenges
00:05:53
Speaker
done. Again, to tap into their natural intuition and in natural healing abilities so that they can just be the natural powerhouse that they already are, not what has been prescribed to them by somebody else.
00:06:07
Speaker
As soon as you said those words, social media, I thought thought there's so much negativity in that space. What you're talking about is finding the positivity in our own space.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, I love that you put it that way. i think what I wanted to add too, and well, this is really what you mentioned a second ago about how you as a man feel that, you know, this is something that you are uneducated on.
00:06:32
Speaker
and And I think what I want to throw in is that a lot of women are as well. And that's another reason why I'm so passionate about what I do, because a lot of women have no idea some of the changes that they are experiencing and how it's impacting them. I mean, a lot of women come to this midlife space and think, what is wrong with me?
00:06:53
Speaker
Like something must be wrong with me. And that's not it at all. You know, they they just, again, are also um like I was uneducated on some of the things that are happening to us very physiologically and that they're very simple ways to heal and and to nurture our bodies and our minds um through that process. Right. So just.
00:07:14
Speaker
men know that they are not the only ones in the dark, that women can be too. We get such mixed messages when it comes to our health. One of the reasons why i started to Fit for My Age was because you reach a point in life where things that worked a few years ago don't work quite the way that they did. You can't run up the stairs as fast as you used to be able to. You don't sleep quite as well as you used to. You wake up not as refreshed as you used to be. Everything is different. And You've made me realize, I think, just there, that you're not alone in not knowing. You're not alone in not understanding. And nobody does enough talking about it to share their experiences to then help the next people that are coming along. So life is full of surprises because nobody really feels comfortable talking about it.
00:08:02
Speaker
And equally, if somebody did talk about it, would we feel comfortable listening to it? Oh, that yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. If you're listening now, you're going to work find out whether you're comfortable listening to it or not, because we're going to talk about it.
00:08:15
Speaker
And let's be honest, let's what we're talking about as women age, they will go through various different stages. And then they get to this point where menstrual cycle starts to change. They go into something called the menopause.
00:08:27
Speaker
You know, menopause, um there's a very clear definition around that. That is when a woman has not had her cycle for an entire year.
00:08:38
Speaker
And so the day that marks the one year mark of of her not having a cycle, we can say that she is in menopause. And then the very next second, we can say that she is in post-menopause.
00:08:51
Speaker
Up to that point is the point that is very, very gray for a lot of women during that time period are going to have declining levels of estrogen and progesterone. Okay. So these are just the hormones that are related to everything for us as women and that are associated with the typical kind of symptoms that you just might, even without knowing a lot about it, that you might associate with menopause, like the hot flashes or crying what seems like no reason.
00:09:21
Speaker
Having a hard time sleeping, right? So, so these hormones are are related to all that. Now, the thing about perimenopause is that for some women, it's very clear. They have a, they have a change in their cycle. It starts dwindling.
00:09:33
Speaker
um They don't get it as frequently. It might, you know, it's not in that every month cycle anymore. you know, maybe they have a few months in between. And that's a that's a pretty good indication that you're in perimenopause. You have some very changing hormones.
00:09:46
Speaker
What I've heard from women is that that perimenopausal stage is actually worse than menopause itself. that it's It's that transition period that is just so difficult.
00:09:58
Speaker
But here's the thing. A lot of women don't get those telltale signs where their cycle changes. Actually, they continue to have a cycle. Some cases it even gets heavier. Thing is, a woman can be going through perimenopause for, I'm not kidding, for anywhere from four to 12 years.
00:10:17
Speaker
It's a long time. Yeah. And I mean, again, so many women don't don't even know that they're in it because they don't have the clear signs around it. And so what happens is you have the changes related to to perimenopause, but a woman doesn't know that she's in perimenopause.
00:10:33
Speaker
I mean, midlife, I mean, we say that term, it's so broad. I mean, we can be talking mid thirties, we can be talking mid fifties, close to 60, you know, can be anywhere in there that a woman can come to a day where she's saying,
00:10:46
Speaker
I can't sleep. i can't fall asleep at night. i have no energy. and they have no idea that this is is quite possibly related to perimenopause. and And the other thing that I add is they're also unaware that there are actually some very simple solutions.
00:11:01
Speaker
I'm not talking about hormone replacement therapy because that is not my scope of practice, but I'm talking about just very natural solutions for balancing your hormones, balancing your energy for for getting your sleep back to where you know you're sleeping again, right? There are very natural, simple healing practices that can get you feeling pretty much back to normal, right? Where you're not having these hellacious kind of symptoms associated with perimenopause.
Adapting to Hormonal Changes
00:11:31
Speaker
I suppose that as we go through life, we get into habit around what we eat and how we behave. I suppose when our environment changes or our body changes,
00:11:47
Speaker
we need to adapt in order to maintain the same level of and performance or efficiency or health as our body changes. That's what you mean, isn't it? It's like we fall into habits, the habits have to change because our bodies are changing and we need to be aware of the signs of change and even no matter how faint those might be,
00:12:12
Speaker
but also then as you're saying the sorts of things that we can do to balance things out again great and this kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier that things that used to work for you as we age sometimes we find oh that doesn't work the same i hear women saying what is wrong with me but i want to shout out there is that there's nothing wrong with you I was just going to say exactly the same sort of thing.
00:12:37
Speaker
What you're explaining is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are just changing. Yeah. and in And case in point there, you know for women, when we are younger, our progesterone, so one of those hormones we were talking about, is produced in our ovaries.
00:12:55
Speaker
But as we age, and that production of that progesterone actually shifts to our adrenals. Now, here's why that matters. Because our adrenals are also responsible for producing cortisol and which is our stress hormone that shifts in your body. So when you're younger, you get stressed and your body just produces cortisol and you deal with it. But when you get older, if you get stressed,
00:13:22
Speaker
If your body has the choice to produce and process progesterone or cortisol, it will always choose cortisol.
00:13:33
Speaker
So what that means as a woman is that your body is consistently, constantly trying to fight off stress if you know if you're stressed. And it basically throws out these other hormones that are really important to you like progesterone. So it's like you don't even have them.
00:13:50
Speaker
So you've got a woman in midlife who her hormones are out of balance and she's completely stressed and and crying and has no idea. yeah Nothing changed um externally.
00:14:00
Speaker
it was just that her body physiologically
The Foundation of Gut Health
00:14:03
Speaker
has changed. And now we need to work with that, right? Instead of working against it by saying, oh, I just need to try harder. Yes. What are some of the things that women can do to rebalance their bodies?
00:14:16
Speaker
One of the first things I do is we heal your gut. Scientists are calling the gut your second brain, and there's a really good reason for that. And and that's just because your gut is truly related to everything.
00:14:32
Speaker
Your gut is related to your energy. It's related to your sleep. It's related to your mental clarity. It's related to inflammation and your hormones, um your cortisol levels, your blood sugar levels. It's related to your emotional balance. You know, little known fact, 90% of your body's serotonin is actually produced in your gut.
00:14:55
Speaker
When we go in and work to heal and repair and nurture a healthy gut, It is so pervasive. It touches everything in your body. And what I find over and over again is that people who come to me that are concerned about certain symptoms, those symptoms begin to naturally disappear because they work to heal their gut.
00:15:16
Speaker
And in the process, they find that so many other things improve as well. Yes, I suppose it's a bit like when you talk about ah computer program. If you put rubbish in, you're going to get rubbish out. You have to treat your gut by with respect and and feed it the right types of of food so that it can heal. it And I suppose that involves almost like an element of cleansing the the gut as well.
00:15:39
Speaker
It does. And um surprisingly, you know, yes, nutrition is of primary importance when it comes to healing your gut. But actually, um there are many things that are really important to heal your gut that have nothing to do with nutrition. And I'll just...
00:15:58
Speaker
Kind of, you know, put this out there really quickly on my website, goddesshealth.org. You can only get like a checklist of five things that you can do to help your gut that have nothing to do with nutrition. So, you know, my point there being, yes, nutrition is huge for our gut.
00:16:13
Speaker
But I think what surprises my clients um a lot more than anything is that there are things that have nothing to do with nutrition that are really important for healing your gut. um Such as, for example, stress, right? Like stress is actually a huge issue with inflammation in your gut.
00:16:30
Speaker
So reducing stress and improving your body's ability to respond to stress are usually a major factor whenever I work with someone in healing their
Prioritizing Self-Care
00:16:41
Speaker
gut. So the first thing that we've got to do is heal our gut.
00:16:45
Speaker
What's the next sort of thing that we should do? And want to say right off the bat, I think some people here in mindset focus, they sort of want to take it as, yeah, that's really great, but it's not as important as things like healing your gut. But I will tell you that in my experience, the people that I work with that get this mindset principle, that um they are the people that truly, truly succeed when it comes to um healing their gut and improving their overall health and well-being and just getting to a place where they feel good again.
00:17:20
Speaker
This mindset shift that I'm talking about, and i I really go into depth about this in my book, Powerful and Not Tired, as well as gut health and and the third pillar. I call it the goddess first principle.
00:17:33
Speaker
There's a book called Profit First. It's by a guy named Michael, something that I can't pronounce afterward, his last name. So what you're saying is that the amount of income that you generate either as an employee or a business or that's whatever it is that you're doing to generate income,
00:17:53
Speaker
do you take the profit out and that's left with the expenses. So you're deciding how much you want to have left over at the end and then cutting your suit according to the the cloth that you've got, which is the amount of revenue that is left after you've taken out the bit that you want.
00:18:12
Speaker
So which is different, very different to saying, yeah, we've got all these expenses and that means the bit that's left over from our income is what we call profit. It's like you start almost with the idea of this is what I want the outcome to be.
00:18:29
Speaker
So if I want to achieve that, then i've got to do it with this amount of money rather than I'll do all of these things, spend all this money and see what I have left at the end.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yes. As far as my understanding of it goes, that's exactly it. And when I heard this, I thought, how interesting, because this is exactly how we as human beings, and and really, i'm I'm going to speak directly to women here. I'm not saying that men don't do this, but...
00:19:00
Speaker
ah really, I find it over and over again with women is that this is how we tend to look at ourselves and and what I'll say our self-care, right?
00:19:11
Speaker
We tend to look at the you know the amount of time and energy that we have to start with, you know just the normal amount of time and energy that you have in your day. minus the energy and time that we have to put toward everything else and everybody else and all of the things that we have to do and all of our responsibilities.
00:19:33
Speaker
And then equals whatever we have left at the end of the day is what we have to give to ourselves to nurture our bodies, to you know that to that self-care.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yes, it's it sounds a bit like the reality is going to be that most, and let's talk about women. Yes. Most women are going to be left with very little at the end of the day for themselves and will just simply collapse because they've done their boss, they've done their children, they've done their older relatives, they've volunteered at the church, at the school, at the Wherever it is, there's always been somebody else pulling on their time, pulling on their resources, their energy.
00:20:15
Speaker
when it comes down to it, it's like, just let me sit down. Listening to you, I'm reminded of that thing when you get on the airplane and the safety announcement, it says like, if the oxygen masks drop, put your own on first before you help someone else.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's that same sort of principle that you're talking about, isn't it? Yes, I'm so glad you said that. I actually used to use that illustration a lot with a lot of my clients um and surprisingly found lot of people, you know, I'd ask them, who do who do you put the mask on first?
00:20:46
Speaker
And most people said well, you must put it on your child first. And, you know, the answer is that you put it on yourself first or else you cannot care for that younger child or, you know, that other person in need.
00:20:59
Speaker
That's exactly right. That's beautiful illustration. Yes. Yes. and so And so what I found um is that if things are going to be different, if we are going to change our health and our energy um and even our ability to love and be present with others, if we're going to change that, that we have to change that formula for ourselves. We have to turn it around others.
00:21:24
Speaker
that time and energy that you start with minus first, what you put toward your self care equals what you have left over to give to everything and everybody else. But here's the caveat is that what I know happens and what my clients have found happens is that it's when you do this, it's not a subtraction equation anymore.
00:21:49
Speaker
It becomes an addition equation. That the time and energy you start with plus what you create and give to your self-care equals now you actually have exponentially more love and energy and time and presence to give to other people. And and I say that with so much confidence. I mean, I've worked with women who truly on paper had no time for themselves. I mean, they had young children and families and very demanding jobs.
00:22:21
Speaker
and careers, but they knew that this was true. They knew that they were going to completely let themselves and their health go. And so they made this principle primary in their lives and and they would come back to me and say, Lauren, I am so a much more present for my children now. I'm so much more present and effective in my career.
00:22:41
Speaker
i do a better job everywhere I go because i have learned so to put my self-care first. It literally makes so much sense to me. Put yourself first and that equips you to be better for other people. You can't do the everything you want to do unless you are fit and healthy physically and mentally.
00:23:04
Speaker
You are going to be restricted unless you can be the best version of you first and then you can be supportive of other people as well. That's right. It's fascinating. And you've explained this in in your book, Powerful Not Tired.
00:23:19
Speaker
We'll put a link into various different places where people can can get the book in the description. But I came into this sort of thinking, what are we going to talk about?
00:23:30
Speaker
I'm putting myself out there and saying, I do not understand how I am aging and the various different things that are happening to me. I had this realization that I was getting more information from comedians on streaming services about the processes that I'm going through as a man.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I know nothing about how women are aging. And yet I've spent my whole career working in HR, which is a female dominated career. And at times I have been the only man in the ah HR ah department.
00:24:03
Speaker
And I should have known more. And knowing more would have made me perhaps more understanding of my colleagues. Although we've only spent a short period of time, I think I do. i understand. This is what is happening.
00:24:19
Speaker
These are the outward signs of this is happening. And it gives me some idea like I just need to be patient. I just need to be understanding. I just need to think about other people a little bit more.
00:24:32
Speaker
But just as you say, a woman needs to think about themselves, do profit first. What is it that they need to be fit and healthy physically and mentally?
00:24:43
Speaker
And then they can do more. I also need to do the same sort of thing. I need to think about my gut health, think about what I want out of any situation and make sure that I am fit and healthy mentally and physically, which would then enable me to be more present and more supportive of my colleagues.
00:25:06
Speaker
I wasn't expecting to, but I have learned an awful lot. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. That's that's really beautiful. And you know truly in the end, i believe that you know there there will always be that gap between you know us and what we understand about somebody else's experience. But I truly think that when we become more compassionate with ourselves, you know changing that mentality of, oh, what's wrong with me, right? Whether you're a man or a woman,
00:25:35
Speaker
um You know, it's not about what's wrong with you, right? There there are physiological and mental, emotional changes that are that are happening in your body.
Concluding Insights and Encouragement
00:25:43
Speaker
When you can truly bring ah new level of compassion to yourself, we automatically become more compassionate and present and understanding and patient and tolerant of the people that are around us.
00:25:56
Speaker
Very much so. Very much so. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having conversation with Lauren Callaghan of Goddess Health.
00:26:13
Speaker
There is a link to goddesshealth.org in the description, along with a link to abecida.co.uk, where you can find out more information about both of us. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for in introducing me to Lauren.
00:26:28
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if, like Lauren, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made.
00:26:41
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. At Fit for My Age, our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health, and that is why we recommend the annual health test from York Test.
00:26:59
Speaker
York tests provide an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin D, vitamin B12, liver function, iron deficiency, inflammation, and a full blood count.
00:27:13
Speaker
The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory.
00:27:29
Speaker
You can access easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime via their secure personal wellness hub. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
00:27:43
Speaker
If you're listening to Fit For My Age on your smartphone in the United Kingdom, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
00:27:57
Speaker
There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:28:10
Speaker
That description, just like Lauren's book, Powerful Not Tired, is well worth reading. If you have liked this episode of Fit For My Age, please give a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:24
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:28:36
Speaker
Until the next episode of Fit for My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.