hello henry hi hayley how you doing i'm good thank you and i hope you're okay and we are going to be
talking today about exercise and how it can be used to manage menopause symptoms so after this
episode we are hoping to bring in the benefits of exercise of why do we need to do it and in which
way does it help control or manage menopause symptoms and talking about the food side of
things as well in terms of what we should be eating to kind of complement or go alongside
the exercise that we do and that's where you're going to come in henry as well and by the end of
it we can discuss um other top top tips in terms of how you can be the perfect husband helping
your wife go through menopause and setting you apart because it's really important we we hear
this in clinic actually and we do get asked for bi men to go through and try and understand
what their wives or partners are going through because it is quite a transition for a female
body and there's a lot of information out there and there's a lot of noise out there in terms of
what can help and what doesn't help and you know I always say to the patients in clinic that if you
could kind of put exercise into a tablet it would be the biggest or the most sort of well-sold
drug if you want to call it that in the industry because the benefits are huge and yeah very very
little side effects if any so so yeah that's what we're going to talk about today so we know
um that currently as we're talking right now henry probably about 13 million people are going through
either perimenopause or menopause um and i don't know how much you know about menopause symptoms
henry and we're gonna i'm probably gonna scare you with some of them um and we're not going to
go through them uh one by one because there's approximately do you want to have a guess about
how many symptoms there might be of menopause how many different i'm guessing it's going to be
I'm guessing it's going to be more than five, but maybe under 20.
I actually don't know.
I don't know.
The ones I think of, hot flushes, that's the one that comes to mind.
Yeah, absolutely.
So in the research, there's anything between 34 and 66 different scientific symptoms.
So there are a lot.
Is this a pre-warning of what's to come?
Yeah, this is like, yeah.
Yeah, pre-warning what's to come.
what's coming and um just to get a list on the fridge get a list on the fridge and start ticking
them off but it's also really nice i think for men to understand because then you don't just
you know the woman doesn't then feel like they're going crazy and the man can understand that it's
not his fault because you do hear you know that husbands get a bit of a battering or partners get
a bit of a battering because they just don't know how to do what to say how to how to help support
the person going through it um it's tough and as we talk about it you'll have a new understanding
and a new appreciation as to you know why why the body is doing what it's doing and yeah how it's
not the lady's fault and i think that's a a good place to start because we don't realize some of
the impacts and things that are happening in our body as we go through the menopause. And if I
wasn't a physio and I wasn't studying this and I wasn't in clinic helping patients with this on a
day-to-day basis, I'd be oblivious. And it's quite scary because for the first 10 years after
entering into menopause, a lady's risk of heart disease is extremely high. So we know the effects
of oestrogen so we know i think we've mentioned this in the past henry about oestrogen is that
hormone that depletes in menopause yeah and oestrogen has all these nice protective effects
in our body and one of them is that it has a cardio protective effect so it protects our you
know sort of blood pressure systems and our cardiovascular system but as that depletes it
leaves the lady a bit vulnerable so it can cause arterial stiffening um and and that's why ladies
and more at risk of heart disease.
And that's a bigger risk than even cancer risk
at that particular age range.
That tends to sometimes get a little bit more of the limelight,
but it doesn't underestimate the importance
of trying to tackle the cardiovascular system.
And that's obviously something as simple as exercise
and doing different types of exercise
can actually try and reduce your cardiovascular disease risk.
And that's what we want to try and do.
but that's a can i ask a really can i ask a really it's probably a really dumb question so i guess
for me that the menopause obviously it's not something i think about very often obviously
women in my life who have possibly gone through it maybe maybe i noticed something i don't know
i mean i guess my mom went through at some point but she probably didn't talk about it
and but it's definitely something within work like we've had to do a bit training around
you know as people go through the menopause etc is it is the menopause it's not avoidable is it like
you you have to go through it it's am i right in saying that yes yeah yeah absolutely right yeah
so um every female will go through the menopause okay um okay some some uh ladies might go through
it earlier because um they might have had surgery to you know and that might have caused them to have
going to sort of like a surgical related menopause and early onset but otherwise yes every female
will go through the menopause and even whales go through the menopause oh wow okay okay so it's um
well we'll have to come on to whale exercise on another podcast um and so is it is it more because
you know it's coming that it's more about how to manage that journey going through and i guess
it's i'm assuming it's different for everybody but there's things that you can do to make sure
that that journey is as you're ticking off as little of the side effect or the symptoms or or
is it not as simple as that i don't know yeah so every lady so with the amount of cited um side
effects or side effects or symptoms of menopause uh every lady will be different predominantly i
think it's about 75 to 80 percent of women will experience um hot flushes or hot flashes they're
actually called yeah so that is a predominant well-known um symptom and then it can range from
things like um low libido it can be issues with sort of bladder and pelvic health problems so
like incontinence you kind of typical thing that people always think that ladies have stress
incontinence after childbirth as well as you know anxiety depression um they might suffer
with palpitations, all these kind of various organ system changes.
But specifically to what's happening to the actual body from an exercise or muscle and
bone and tendon and joint perspective, we've touched on previous episodes about bone density.
And obviously that is a huge factor for menopausal ladies, but because that will be declining,
the estrogen will be declining and we know we have estrogen receptors in our bones and we also
have estrogen receptors in our muscles and we have we we deplete in things like vitamin d receptors
in our muscles and bones and even calcium as as we go through east as we go through the menopause
so there's lots happening and on top of all of that you're losing roughly the statistics of
something like 0.6% of muscle mass is lost per year after menopause.
So menopause being a rough average age of 51.
Um, so every year you get to lose 0.6% of your muscle mass.
We know we've got different types of muscle fibers.
We've got type one and we have type two and that's a type two is actually
divided into a further type two, a and type two B muscle fibers.
and the the roles for those two different muscle fibers are different from sort of slow contraction
and low force high force that sort of thing so whether you're doing weight training or a more
endurance exercise but it's really important that we try and hold on to our muscle mass because it
is declining as we hit those ages so the work we can do in perimenopause which is the 10 years
precursor so 10 years before a woman goes through menopause is really important to be doing that
work and putting the effort in now and we here in clinic there's a huge demand for ladies coming
into clinic suffering with joint problems or musculoskeletal pain so they're seeking physiotherapy
because of that and they might see things like shoulder pain is a common area of symptoms so
often ladies will start saying my shoulders are just not very good they're aching that don't know
what to do I can't do the exercise I used to be able to do they have a lot of lateral hip pain so
it gets termed different terminology but we tend to call it gluteal tendinopathy in physio and
also greater trochanter pain syndrome so it's all pain on the outside of the hip so that's the
common common site of injuries um and and we we sort of see various things from ladies feeling
weaker just generally they just don't have the same muscle strength um or the force they can't
put the same force through the muscle they might have more insertional or tendon related injuries
as well um so that the bodies are more at risk of those types of injuries as well through menopause
So this is where exercise is so crucial because we need to exercise and try and maintain our muscle mass.
So you know that it's going to be reducing.
So it's kind of like it's not like you can just stay still.
Actually, you need to be keeping it either at a level, offsetting what you're losing and then hopefully increasing.
so i guess it's even more important because you're kind of you've gone over the top and now
you're on a decline so you've got to try harder so it's more important gotcha and then so so is
so again it's right that if you're pre-menopause so you're that 51 age um you want to be entering
into it fighting fit so you're kind of so knowing that you're going to be losing some mass so
do you kind of want to go into it like a bit more stacked than usual knowing that you're going to
see a decline on the back end but at least you're not kind of if i got that right yes absolutely
because we we know for sure that if we do resistance exercise um you will improve your
bone mineral density so your bone density by one to two percent every year if you maintain it
so um there's definite benefits the same same with muscle you know muscle is so perfused by blood
that our muscles stay as strong as we keep them so there's no reason why we can't maintain and we
need that muscle strength to support our joints and that's where that comes into it um but we have
so many other benefits from just doing exercise in itself so we know that um by exercising during
the menopause you can actually reduce your instance of hot flushes by 20 to 30 percent so
you can actually reduce them down so a lot of people don't know how to control their hot flushes
exercise is a proven tool that can help reduce them um and it's difficult because ladies there
are barriers to why women might not want to exercise when they they have hot flushes you
know, because they already feel hot or they worry that an exercise might make them go into a hot
flush. But actually, the opposite is true. Exercise can actually really help suppress them because the
way that our body responds when we exercise. So it's all to do with how when we exercise, we tap
into our hypothalamus in our brain, into the pituitary systems, into lots of different systems
that can help control and regulate all our bodily systems our metabolic rates um it can also even
help things like um when you're exercising releasing things like serotonin um and actually
reducing cortisol in your body so stress because one of the biggest complaints that ladies will say
is that when they hit menopause they notice um a laying down of fat around their middle like it's
you know like everyone goes oh you know i get that kind of tie around my middle and yeah the spare
tie yeah i don't know how to get rid of it and you know they feel really low about themselves
because they can't shift it um and there is a reason why that happens and that's because our
body tries to store as our body reduces in declines in estrogen our body tries to store
it in our fat cells and it dumps it more around our middle um the other problem is that our body
will try and store fat more around our visceral organs as we go into menopause and through
menopause so this is where we need to be as healthy as we possibly can as you mentioned
henry the better we are before it and maintain good habits our healthy bit habits um the better
you're going to be through it but you you probably can actually improve a lady's experience of the
menopause everything's going to work better and if ladies choose to take HRT or not we
always say what HRT is that is that a hormone replacement therapy so the kind of patches or they take medications or it a prescription something the doctor will give a lady to try and give you that
hormone or replacement so it's basically topping up your estrogen to try and get you through the
menopause and um and there's there's lots of information out there and obviously we can't
advise on any prescriptive forms of hrt however we do get asked a lot about how it works and you
know what does it do and also a lot of ladies choose not to use hrt they have been scared by
some of the research because it was associated at some point back in the history of time with
its link to breast cancer but that has been negated and there are some benefits of taking hrt
but some ladies just choose that that's not the route they want to go down and that that's
absolutely fine and we come from this from a very much a exercise um and we're here to help you from
a physio point of view we're going to look after your muscles we're going to look after your joints
bones tendons ligaments we can help fix so many musculoskeletal injury and talk about the
importance of why exercise is so good so um and it really does it really does work i mean it's one
of the most evidence-based things that you can do um there's so many options for what you could
choose to do is exercise so not everyone you know you really want to fall in love with something that
you enjoy doing so I love Pilates it's really good I don't know if do you do any any exercise
Henry do you do you do like an exercise regime or anything no I I do exercise I actually I did
used to do Pilates I had a really bad back so not the menopause but um and it was because I was
doing too much office work and then aggressive gardening not a euphemism on the weekend basically
I was chopping a load of wood and I completely did my lower back in and um and I think it was
just those extremes so the physio I went to then recommended I did Pilates as a kind of ongoing
thing and that really helped I don't go anymore because the class I went to stopped and then they
moved it to a time that I couldn't make it to but um but it was it was really helpful it was uh um
uh yeah I'm not very flexible I'm a bit I'm a bit um I'm a bit like an oak tree and um so I think
any kind of stretching is is good for me but back back to your yeah with the the so so with so with
the menopause so there's no defined time is that like it can come whenever but is there like does
it generally last like is it is it like a number of years or is it kind of like a um a six-month
thing or does it go on forever i'm certainly asking this to kind of prepare myself but what
is there like a kind of average yes so so the average age of onset of menopause is is about 51
but that that doesn't mean saying everyone's going to hit 51 that's when your menopause is
you know if you're if you're roughly sort of 45 and you're suffering with symptoms
some people decide um ask their gps for blood tests but it's not always necessary
we say if you're 45 and you're suffering with some of the symptoms that if you google all the
symptoms you'll go oh i've got a few of those it might be things like heavier periods or you know
migraines or palatations those sorts of things they'll say well just assume you're perimenopausal
um but if you're if you're really struggling obviously you need to speak to your gp or a
professional who's um like a menopause doctor or something like that but generally is is signaled
by um a stopping of a woman's period so that's what so that's that's the sign stops bleeding
yeah she's stopped bleeding and the bleeding has stopped for 12 months that is the duration okay so
it's quite a long window now would if you if you were using contraceptive like the pill for example
you might not know or would or would there be the obvious signs if you were still using
contraceptive yeah so um if you're um so what what can happen is with with perimenopausal or
as you enter that phase of menopause, if you're thinking you're getting close to it,
and some people choose to talk to maybe mums or grandparents and sort of roughly see if there's
any family history about how they coped and what symptoms they had during menopause.
The other thing is that you can have periods of time with, literally periods of time without
periods, or bleeding. Somebody might go three months and not have a period, and then all of a
means that they haven't entered menopause because it hasn't stopped entirely they have to have stopped
for 12 months but usually um ladies have decided to stop with contraceptive um protection around
those times to kind of understand what the body's doing fine okay some people don't some people use
it because they might be on contraceptive medications for other reasons they might be
suffering with endometriosis or or something that requires them the doctors advise that they continue
with them they might be using other other kinds of methods so they might have got like the coil
fitted or something like that that's other forms so not maybe a tablet form so there's so many
different variations as to what method of contraceptive a lady might be choosing to use
but yeah around that sort of time you are really going by symptoms and periods and and bleeding
and that's what you're kind of defining um as as the as the menopause there and obviously like
like you asked before that is a kind of system and a progress of symptoms that you're going to
go through because a woman has to go through the menopause it's there too and no woman's going to
go through this without noticing are they like they're going to be aware well you know you do
you don't get the odd person or story and you might hear about it i've never come across anyone
who said well i just didn't hear sometimes oh i just sailed through the menopause and i had no
problems at all um you do get that you you do hear about that you know that's very lucky for
them or for that particular person the problem if another lady hears that um is that they can
feel quite bad about themselves if they yeah totally yeah and it's not a um it feels it feels
to me i'm sorry yeah it feels to me my experience on the other end of see childbirth and i know
it's obviously very different but still involves a lady there's so many like different routes and
like oh ours was really easy or you know or we prepared or we didn't you know there's all these
different kind of options and they ultimately have you know hopefully a healthy baby at the end
but i guess the experience i got was there was so much it followed so much pressure of like you
know what what is a good child birth or like what is the right way and like this is the optimum and
and i kind of saw it from my wife's point of view that you know she was you know it was obviously
occupying her entire body and mind for nine months in the lead up and um and it's like this massive
thing and i guess you know obviously we you know she's not gone through the menopause yet but i
guess you know we've got that coming you know at some point in the future and but the the kind of
what i've heard around you know when i've heard people talking about the menopause it's like this
this big thing and uh and it's a bit of an unknown and i guess i probably haven't sat down with my um
um man friends whose wives have been through the menopause they're gonna get some advice but maybe
i'll do that but yeah i don't know it feels like there's pressure you know um and always like
heightened aware i don't know but i guess if if you can enter into it with a kind of
a bit of a game plan i don't know or just be prepared for it you know so that you're giving
yeah i think right i think they're all brilliant points by the way as well henry like and it's
really interesting the link you've made with reflecting back to the child childbearing ages and
the range of experiences and it's exactly the same for a woman going through menopause it'll
be very different from person to person and i think the best thing you can do as a female but
also as a supporting and loving husband uh is to have that edge yeah of course is to have that
education um and understanding because like you say if one lady sails through um and another lady
has a really difficult time um you know be being there and understanding and like you say if you're
talking to your man friends at the pub and you know so and so says oh do you know what my wife's
fine she's no problems at all or you know oh she just gets a bit hot every now and then and then
you get another man who's really struggling because you know his wife is maybe suffering
with some depression or anxiety yeah suffering with a multitude of symptoms maybe not tolerating
certain you know prescriptive medication or hrt or whatever or maybe they are or maybe they're on
that and the other lady maybe can't take HRT if there's a history of cancer or it's a hormone-fed
cancer. Sometimes there's reasons why people can't have particular prescription types or they might
just be suffering, you know, we haven't really touched on as a form of exercise is pelvic floor
exercises and people always just think it's for controlling leakage and that sort of thing but
actually there's benefits for engaging your pelvic floor muscles both for females and for males
for sort of sexual function and that's a common problem that again isn't discussed isn't talked
about you're not taught it at school you're not um it's something that as a as a couple you might
go through and you know a lady can can suffer with all kinds of various issues down there which
so they they might you know struggle and and not be very comfortable with any kind of intercourse
and things so having that understanding as a man that you know it's nothing wrong with you
it's nothing wrong with the woman and talking about you know different maybe different what
things need to change um and actually sort of looking at what what products are out there that
can help but from what i love about physio is that you know pelvic floor exercises can help and
you know and not putting up with symptoms and what kind of bladder habits do we need to look at so
that's something else that women's health physios will look at bladder habits looking at overactive
bladders looking at what can you do to keep yourself hydrated making sure you're not causing
irritation there's a lot of things that women do where they use products to clean themselves and
actually any gynecological consultant or doctor will tell you you don't need to use anything to
wash down there which women do so you know so um so that could be causing them irritation
we hear in clinic ladies have suffered with cystitis this sort of thing and a lot of them
are frightened you know they feel like their husbands won't love them anymore yeah if they
come back to them and say look i can't do anything um or you know i'm sore or whatever and they just
they just don't know what to do so um it's so we need to do some couples pelvic floor exercises
couples pelvic floor because men think that they don't need to do them no well it's when you
mentioned it when you mentioned it and the two so i was straight away thinking because obviously we
did this in pilates it was obviously a lot of you know engaging your core and swinging the bucket
and all that kind of stuff and um and the class it was there was probably three men and mostly ladies
in the class. And I, when you mentioned pelvic floor, I was thinking my wife would be thinking
about, I assume she'd be thinking about leakage and I'd be thinking about sex. But maybe that's
the way our brains work. But I guess, I guess if it's an exercise that you get benefit in both,
then great, you know, two birds, one stone. Absolutely. Yeah. And there really are.
There's a, yeah, I mean, you could talk for a whole topic on pelvic floor and why it's helpful,
But even things like we've talked about vitamin D from a bone density from the previous episodes, why that helps your bones.
But actually, vitamin D, we know we need it for our muscles.
And we also know that vitamin D is such a good vitamin because it can do about so many.
It's responsible for so many different functions, probably about 500 different functions in the body.
One of them being it can help with sexual function, which, again, people don't think that they take vitamin D for that.
And actually, it's really good for that. And it's really beneficial for a lady to be thinking about the vitamin D levels through menopause, because vitamin D is responsible for protein synthesis, it's responsible for gene expression, it's responsible for muscle repair and growth.
and it enhances the calcium that we absorb from our intestines and how we can take that into
our body. So if we're low on vitamin D going into menopause and we're not sort of thinking about
whether we need to supplement and actually the recommendation is that all adults should be taking
vitamin D from September onwards to March and it's a simple thing you know it doesn't cost very much
money it's a it's a safe vitamin to take people need various levels um sometimes if they're
particularly borderline or low and obviously blood tests can help you with that um or if you're known
to have been low in vitamin d then obviously that will that would make a big impact we know it's
really important for our muscles so we won't get the most out of the exercise we put in if we're
running low on on these kind of levels so um so yeah really really important that and and the
benefit is that you know we know the link with um pelvic health which yes win-win yeah perfect and
with the vitamin d obviously you can get that obviously sunlight is the obvious one uh not so
sunny in the uk um in the winter um so therefore that like you said the benefit of taking the
supplement is that and i'm assuming you can also get vitamin d in your in your diet through certain
foods yeah yeah like egg yolks for example have got um vitamin d but yeah you can um yeah there's
certain um food types that will also help you um even and you want the vitamin d with your calcium as as well so it sort of not just sort of vitamin d on its own you need to think about how vitamins work together and how calcium
wants to be absorbed and and how even vitamin k i think we've talked about that before so vitamin k
can help vitamin d get into your bones you want your calcium because vitamin d and vitamin and
calcium work together. So if they're in balance, then our muscles work better as well, because
the two rely on each other. So that's just from a muscle perspective. So yes, otherwise, if you're
sort of low in vitamin D and your calcium is not being well absorbed, you could suffer more with
muscle cramps. And we do, ladies will come into clinic and say, I'm getting more muscle cramps
and aches and pains. And, you know, they often will Google magnesium because that's quite a
hype at the moment on social media and yes magnesium has a place um especially some of
the muscle rubs and magnesium um creams and things can be quite good these out for is it sleep
sleeping is that i heard someone saying that they take magnesium at night to sleep better yeah yeah
it can be used for all sorts of things really even you know people who suffer with migraines can um
sometimes yeah you know take take magnesium and is that well function is that due to the
And again, what I've heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's less magnesium in our foods because the quality of our soils aren't so healthy.
Because from my baking point of view, we do a lot of organic bread, but also we sell a lot of bread from conventional farmers.
But there's this new movement around regenerative, which is kind of trying to restore healthy soils again.
So a lot of farming practices, for whatever reason, they put a lot of inputs in, whether that's fertilizers or pesticides or glyphosate.
So, you know, also the whole mirage of things that you probably don't actually want to eat and is sprayed all over our crops to increase yields and stop, you know, beetles and all sorts of stuff.
And actually, but part of that is, is OK, not great to eat it, but also it's killing the soil.
so then the soil becomes less healthy and therefore it's got less nutrients to pull on
so then you get a less nutritious crop so you might have you know vegetables or fruits or
wheat or whatever you're growing that look great and they taste it right but actually they
they've got less nutrition and but one of the ones i had heard was that there was less
metals in the soil but particularly the magnesium i think i got that right and and so you you needed
to supplement it or potentially supplement if you're not getting in your diet just one of the
wonderful issues of modern modern food and what makes it so complicated absolutely i think that's
where it comes down to making sure you have a well-balanced diet so make sure you're eating
different food sources and food types and not trying to omit a particular food group because
that can be detrimental to to general health so it's it's um kind of yeah trying to eat sauce the
best food you can if possible you know organic wherever possible sometimes but that's not always
possible for people you know it might be a financial reason you can be quite selective in
the the types of foods that you might choose to go organic with if you think if you and then who
knows really when you buy them are they sometimes my concern is you know is it truly organic you
know where is it yeah yeah um you know we try and grow some stuff ourselves but you know again you're
relying on the soil that you either have in your garden or you're buying from peat-free compost
whatever you're using but i think you can only you can only go so far with it can't you you can
only do what you can so trying to take the control into your own hands within my exercise and the
food types and that's where you know you're we talked um before about what types of food might
be helpful during the menopause and you know using whole grain foods and recipes and beans
and lentils and pulses and whatever protein sources in there um yeah all of all of that
is really good and and that's where we can bring it right yeah well i well i had i had a thing you
know quite often it revolves around what i want to eat for dinner and i was trying to imagine well
if i uh if i was approaching the menopause what would be a a good thing to um and i think yeah
yeah yeah totally yeah well i'm always preparing but um i guess uh
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned, you know, that kind of whole whole food diet, you know, and again, I would always iterate, you know, try and buy the best quality you can. And it can be difficult. And sometimes it is more expensive. But but but and often when you buy whole foods, it does require more effort and more time to to make it because, you know, it's not ready prepared. And so that might feel even harder. So not only can I not just get something from the freezer or from a packet, like I can just open up, I've now got to source it more carefully. And then I've got to cook it, you know, it feels like I'm not going to cook it.
a lot of effort, but actually if, you know, alongside with exercise, actually, you know,
it's always trying to think like, okay, not only is it going to be delicious now, because obviously,
you know, I strongly believe that good ingredients could, well, taste nicer, you know, they'll leave
you more satisfied, but actually longer term, you know, if it's going to help you go through this
period of life that by what you're saying, it's, you know, sounds like it could be quite difficult
for the men and the ladies and the men. So like, actually, if we enter into this together,
um and you're at that bit before where you can make some changes or do some little things that
can help then that seems to me that seems smart i don't know whether you know and and of course
no one knows what the future is going to hold but at least you're giving yourself the best chance and
um and um and also you know maybe it's that wake up call because i i know i'm someone who needs um
you know sometimes you just need that reminder or you know whether it's going to the doctors or
seeing a friend who's going through it who's you know a bit older than you and and it doesn't look
like they're having a great time and be like i don't want to be that person but that that's not
the future that i want and we all of us can take you know have that agency in our own lives to like
do something about it and you know it's um and it doesn't have to be it all at one go it can just be
a little little thing each day but you know and i guess that's the the name of the podcast isn't
it it's like do do a little bit and slowly they'll stack into uh you know something impactful so
anyway so on that i was thinking about when you mentioned about the the kind of the veggies and
the beans and legumes and then and then also fish and um i guess like you'll hear a lot around the
kind of the mediterranean diet of like you know that's a really good diet i guess because it's got
lots of lots of hedge lots of beans lots of fish lots of good meats olive oils etc and and and i
guess you know when when i think about holidays in the med it's it tends to be a kind of you get
a good variety of stuff on your plate so it's not just you know one thing or like a couple of things
actually there's a kind of an abundance and so I guess kind of think thinking about that and what
could be a useful thing so um the the food that I'd quite like for dinner would be um there's kind
of two options you can kind of play it either way one would be like a really nice uh like hearty
fish stew so you know with that you could have lots of um lots of great veg at the base
there's you know courgettes in my garden are still growing in this kind of
indian uh indian summer we seem to be having uh yeah lots of you know start to make a base lots
of olive oil get loads of garlic onions etc a bit of chili maybe uh sweat that down and i'd go
more olive oil than you think you know none of that kind of one spray cow stuff you know we're
talking a good couple of glugs get some good color onto it good caramelization and you can
put some fennel seeds in or something and then you could start adding your courgettes your peppers
you know if you've got any tomatoes that you've grown or just you know good old tin tomatoes work
perfectly fine here and start building up a really tasty base essentially you could put some
nice herbs rosemary or thyme or something like that some bay leaves and then to this so you could
you could go two ways one you could you could go veggie and you could add lots of beans at this
point you could add you know whether it's tins of chickpeas or cannellini beans or you know even
lentils would be nice or a mixture you know you can you can buy like my wife got off and buys those
kind of um bean mixes from the health food shop and then you just soak them and you've got like
seven beans all in one and um some of them are nicer than others but you know you're kind of
you're getting variety i guess and it's a fairly cheap way of doing it and do you do you soak all
of your beans henry first yeah yeah i well okay so we always have canned beans in the in the fridge
in the fridge in the cupboard because they're incredibly useful if you like quite often we live
a fairly hectic life like kids are like shooting all over the place and sometimes you're organized
sometimes you're not so a can of beans is a great thing to have it's like it just needs some filler
and it's going to be quite tasty and actually they're fairly inexpensive so we always have like
cannellini butter beans chickpeas etc and there'll always be some again they're like tins of tomatoes
they're just good staples but then it's always like it's cheaper to buy the like it's like a kilo
bag say the dried ones and then you just soak them yourself so you just take out you know a couple of
scoops and you soak them overnight so really it needs kind of 12 hours in plenty of water and then
they just swell up and then you cook them and the key with cooking beans is that you want to cook
them gently with no salt so you mustn't add salt at the beginning because it um it toughens the skin
and then you get really kind of like um they never go fully tender and uh an al dente bean
is not very pleasant like you don't want it to be like mushy and horrible but you uh you don't
want it to be al dente i think you want it to just be cooked through um so you just season the last
like 20 minutes so once they're almost cooked you just add some salt in and then that would just you
know they'll absorb that salt and they'll be nice and tasty and you can add some garlic and some you
know herbs and stuff like bay leaves or thyme etc and depending on the bean you know they might take
three hours to cook they might take
an hour and a half but they do take quite a long time i actually use a pressure cooker which kind of
cuts the cooking time almost by a third a half to a third so much much quicker and um maybe the
threat that it might explode always adds a bit jeopardy to the kitchen but um they're pretty good
these days so that you don't have to worry about that um but yeah so so beans are a great thing
and then you just add them in and then you just cook it really slowly you could pop it in the oven
and bake it if you want or or um just let it stew but again i don't mind a bean stew but i also
really like um fish um you know that'd be my preference would be the fish one you know a bit
more premium and i guess i just whatever fish you've got so go to this you know we we've got a
morrison's uh in our local town and actually they have quite a good selection of fish we haven't got
a fishmongers nearby um and you know they've quite often got other stuff on offer but you could you
know you can get a white fish you know you can get a nice sea bream or sea bass or they've got
often got prawns or you know mussels anything really just like get a get a selection as long
as it's fresh you know it's it's going to be fine and then you've kind of got two options you could
you if you wanted to be like a bit chefy you could um pan fry them first just to get a bit
color on them and um and that would kind of heighten the um they call it the maillard uh
reaction which is i think it was like a french chemist but basically it's when you cook meats
or proteins, the outside start to caramelize and you get that coloration, but it kind of
boosts the flavor.
So it's why like a boiled steak versus a charl grilled steak, the charl grilled one tastes
nicer because it's got that maillard.
And it's the, essentially, I think it's the sugars and the protein caramelize and taste
nicer.
So if you wanted to put that extra effort in, so personally, I would put a frying pan
to the side and brown off the fish just a little bit, just to get some color and then
pop it into the stew just to finish off.
probably if my wife was doing it, she would just put the fish straight into the pan because it's quicker.
And it would still taste nice. You'd still get the same benefit.
You just, you know, just that little extra, little extra flavour.
And then to finish it, sorry.
Sorry, Henry. On the fish point, do you cook your fish in a pan with butter or olive oil?
Or do you have a particular preference?
Probably for this particular dish, I'd probably just go with olive oil.
I tend, yeah, I mean, it's a bit, it's probably a bit sacrilegious to cook in extra virgin olive oil.
The coconut oil is quite a good fat for frying in.
I guess with butter, you wouldn't want to go fully butter because it will burn.
So like ghee, which is just clarified butter where they've basically taken the buttermilk out.
You can then fry with that.
But I might finish it with butter.
So I'd maybe start with oil.
And then this is at this point, my wife would be like, it's a Tuesday.
why are you using so much butter as i'm like throwing in knobs of butter and you know getting
that lovely kind of frothy butter but that's more like a kind of cardiovascular this is a
yeah yeah yeah yeah it does make it it does make it taste great
so yeah that's how i do it in a restaurant is you'd finish it with butter and then probably
a squeeze a lemon or a little splash of um sherry vinegar is wonderful like there's some uh um it's
just got a lovely they basically make the vinegar but it's held in a sherry barrel and it's just got
it's a slightly milder white wine flavor and it just works really well with like fish or all those
kind of mediterranean dishes and there's some beautiful vinegars you can get there but a squeeze
of lemon perfect just freshens it up and then you add that into the into the stew and then just i
probably just turn the heat off leave the lid on and just let it just kind of relax in there just
so then the fish cooks through and then any juices come out kind of seep in and it's just perfectly
done and then i again i would just season it finish it with some lemon maybe a sprinkler parsley
and then you just put that on the table and then to serve it to serve with it with the fish one you
could just go like a dollop of yogurt you know a nice bit of greek yogurt protein etc but uh what
would be really nice would be like a nice um like a kind of south caper salsa verde so you can lots
of garlic so you chop up garlic capers you could add some gherkins if you wanted but again not all
cornichons, not not not necessary. Lots of parsley, maybe a bit tarragon if you've got it, or a bit of mint,
but definitely parsley, and then lots of olive oil and a little bit of vinegar. And so you've got this really kind of pungent sauce.
Oh, and some anchovies, if you want.
That sounds good That really good It very because it cuts through any kind of like you got this really rich stew and then you just got this really kind of sharp
refreshing kind of herby dressing.
And the answer is, I love the answer is,
my wife, I'm not a massive fan of them,
so I'd probably put them on just, you know,
I'd just have the answer is on top for me,
because they've got that real kind of salty,
umami kind of flavour bomb.
And that would make the, you know,
if you felt that the beanie stew was a bit,
a bit underwhelming like you know you were like oh it could do with a bit of chorizo or like you
know just a bit a bit of extra flavor but you wanted to keep a veggie actually you know doing
like a nice kind of um salsa verde or something similar just gives you that real kind of boost
of flavor that um makes it delicious and um and then you know and if you wanted to go the formal
you could make some uh uh like wholemeal flatbread ciabatti kind of things and i think you've
mentioned you made them where you just you know like home of flour greek yogurt a bit of bit of
salt and olive oil mix it together to a kind of stiff dough and then just you could like rest it
for a bit or just roll them out and then just cook them in a dry frying pan just for a few minutes
each side and you've got a really quick kind of wholemeal flatbread which you can then just use
for mopping up and um yeah i mean that again you know maybe maybe for a tuesday night that's that's
too much effort but uh but um but the nice thing with the particularly with the beanie one is you
could make a big batch of it like with the fish one you probably want to eat you know if you've
got muscles and stuff you probably want to eat them that that day and maybe the next day you don't
have that hanging around but actually the beanie one again you could make it's quite easy to bulk
that out and then you could use it you know as the base for something else the next day you know
you could you know turn into a bit of a chili or you know you could use it as a pasta you know you
could kind of uh i'm a big fan of like you know if you're making something tasty make it bigger
something left over and then you can spin it into something else actually there was um i'll go on
tangent but yeah that that would be it um uh and then you're ticking all the boxes you've got you
know great fish you've got good good bit of um plenty plenty of different veggies you know get
lots of courgettes peppers etc in at the base yeah trying i guess it's getting those those numbers
that diversity in number count up and uh and you know that's going to leave you feeling you know
hopefully after you've done all of your pelvic floor exercises and and the other exercises uh
you know nutritious dinner to finish your day i was gonna say i think henry you'll you'll be
onto a winner if you can prepare your wife that meal and uh you allow her time to go off and do
pilates or an exercise-based program it's a win-win perfect husband you already probably
are perfect husband um well i don't know about that i have to ask her tasty food um and that
kind of combination of ingredients that you've just mentioned because um you know a lot of foods
people don't always realize but they have phytoestrogens in them and polyphenols and all
of these which are very good for hormonal balance so yes yeah we win and you know if you can get that
calcium in and the vitamin d rich foods and the vegetables and fish and the pulses and beans and
the mediterranean diet a win-win then that's what you do and it's going to have that protective
effect for the brain as well so um with the olive oil so yeah that's a fantastic recipe and i think
as per other episodes you
have produced very
kindly and very helpfully
a sheet with how
to make those recipes haven't you as well
Henry? Yeah totally
can access through
is it through a website?
Yeah so just
currently they're just on
my feast website so it's where I do
my, host my supper club
it's henryherbert.co.uk
it's got blogs
and tickets for the supper club and stuff.
But then I've also, I've put on a healthy bit section
and it's got the episodes
and then I just attach a downloadable
that's got the recipes.
And the one thing I would add is I know that
if I put that plate in front of my wife,
she'd be like, where's the greens?
And so, you know, just some kale or spinach
or chard on the side, you know,
and then you've got the full package.
Then you've got a really happy wife.
Yeah, a great happy wife.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
the parsley is not enough yeah yeah i would i would consider the parsley enough but that wouldn't
yeah yeah she'd want more more green so yeah good to keep and um and i was just gonna add to the i've
heard and this might this might be right or might be wrong but you're supposed to cook fish low
temperature is that right you mustn't cook it too high or is that is that well no i uh i yeah
But so if you would, if you look, say you've got a piece of fish and you want to caramelize it, then you have to cook it at a high temperature because to get that caramelization requires a high temperature.
There's lots like fish requires a bit of thought.
So it's, you know, it's quite you can very easily overcook it and then destroy it.
And the nice thing with fish is it shows you when it's overcooked.
So say you take a piece of salmon, for example, it's probably the easiest one.
piece of salmon with a bit of skin on uh you want to get it nice and crispy okay so you've made your
nice beanie stew and you're just going to serve it with a piece of salmon on top you need a high heat
to crisp up the skin so the first thing i'll do is you want to make sure your skin's really dry
so quite often if it comes from a packet it'll have like some cling film over the top you just
need to take out the cling film and then just dry the skin with a bit of kitchen towel just to get
the moisture out because of course if you've got skin moisture hot pan the first thing that's going
happen is the water's going to bubble and it's going to steam and then you're not going to get
that crisping so the so you want to get rid of as much moisture as possible and quite often you know
if i was doing if i was cooking fish in it like to get crispy skin i just take it out the packet
dry it put it on a plate and just put it in the fridge for half an hour like just you know um um
because the fridge naturally is like um it's like a dehumidifier like it's always removing moisture
and that's why it has that little heater thing at the bottom um with the drip tray so the fridge is
naturally a dry environment so it'll just help dry that skin out then you get your pan nice and hot
now whether you've got uh i would always avoid non-stick pans particularly the teflon ones because
anyway another episode um but if you've got like a cast iron or um or a stainless steel or one of
those modern pans that isn't full of cancer um or chemical or toxics um get the pan nice and hot
then in with your olive oil you know and then you want to put your fish down skin side down
and then obviously season it always season it first and then you just want to hold it down
either with a palette knife or like a plate just something to kind of get as much contact
of the skin onto the frying pan and you also want to hold it there for about 20-30 seconds
and that just gets really good contact so the heat is getting into the skin and keep it high
like you don't want it smoking hot but like you know a high to medium heat and then cook that for
about let's say three to four minutes and what you can do is you can just watch the protein in
the salmon start to get to the cook up and um once it gets all the way to the top the salmon will then
eject a load of white stuff and that's basically the proteins in the fish i think the word is
coagulating you know so they get basically like it just comes out now your fish is overcooked
now depending on my mother-in-law would be very happy she likes her fish fully cooked through
i however would think it was a bit overcooked so what you as um as a diligent chef about to feed
your your your menopausal wife trying to keep her healthy and happy you want to just watch that fish
really carefully and um and it normally takes about let's say three minutes or so three to four
minutes and and when it's about three quarters of the way through very carefully with a palette knife
get underneath the fish flip it over um because you want to get a bit of color on the other side
and at this point you could turn the heat off or just turn it down low and now this is the
point when you could put a knob of butter or you could put if you wanted or just a nice squeeze of
lemon and um and that will release any kind of like caramelized bits on the pan and bring them
all up and you know lovely flavor the the acidity will just kind of enrobe the fish and it'll just
cook through for another 30 seconds and then take it out and you could put it just straight onto your
dinner and the fish will just need to rest for about three four minutes but normally by that
point you'll like getting the nice forks out you know plating up or pouring a glass of wine whatever
you're doing um and you then should have nice crispy skin and then which obviously the skin's
got lots of collagen in so that's good good again and then you should have that uh like cooked
through so when you cut it with a fork it should just break apart and it should be nice and um
like silky inside like it shouldn't feel kind of dry and fibrous it should just be lovely and soft
exactly the wonderful thing about fish is there are like thousands of fish and they all require
A slightly different cooking.
But mostly it's like, you know, for me it would be like,
get some good heat on it and then just cook it gently
and just watch it carefully because you can overcook it really quickly.
I love those special tips there, Henry,
because I definitely get that oyster that you mentioned on the fish.
And clearly overcooking the fish.
And I never think to dry it.
I mean, what a simple strategy that would make such a difference
to just that taking it up a notch from, you know,
this is what i love about this because you know you can you know that's what you want to eat and
i'm all i'm all for practical tips as you can imagine so i love that and i love the fact that
you can carefully watch it time it and flip it um and yeah and you won't overcook it because you
would think otherwise four minutes isn't enough no yeah well it's it yeah fish is it um often
recipes like overstate how long to cook things for so some things they're like they're massively
under but something like like it was a brisket they would like be like oh it takes three hours
you know and it definitely takes eight hours and then like fish oh it takes you know 15 minutes in
the oven you're like no it doesn't but then of course you know it depends on your pan depends
on your oven depends how thick the fish is you know so you know if you've got like a piece of
salmon this thick it's going to take longer than a you know the tail end that's wafer thin so again
it's um you have to use your you have to use your noggin and follow it but also you know
yeah you sort of want to make sure and I guess you know if it's undercooked Henry what would be the
apart from probably the obvious is it it'd just be raw yeah yeah it would just be yeah it'd just
be it'd just be a bit raw I think the there was a bit of a fashion when I was younger there was a
method of cooking that I think they call it em palpia where essentially you like it's it's like
fish in a bag so you you make I think maybe Jamie Oliver kind of made it a bit fashionable so you
basically you you get like your salmon or your cod or whatever and then you put some herbs and a bit
veggies and stuff and then you make a basically like a little a little um uh little uh duvet for
it out of tinfoil and grease proof and then you pop it into the oven that is really hard to get
perfect because you can't watch it it's inside a a bag that you can't see through and everyone's
ovens are different like you might have a really good fan oven mine might have the fan might be
bit broken it might not you know the oven might lie it might say it's 200 actually it's 170 so like
and like i for me personally would find that like a challenge to cook uh or tell you how to cook it
because you'd have to just try it and be like oh actually i thought it would take eight minutes
but actually took 20 minutes because i've got a rubbish oven or you might have a really good oven
and i say it takes 20 minutes and actually only takes eight minutes whereas when you're doing
something in a pan or at least you can see it you can you've got visual markers you know you can at
check and probably it is a lovely way to cook it because you get that lovely kind of steaming and
whatnot but it is you know um it's probably easier to either overcook or undercook it
what would normally happen is you'd undercook it take it out oh it's raw put it back in the
oven and then overcook it and then and then yeah i should have just fried it yeah listening to you
i think i slightly overcooked the fish already but um i'm going to try all those things i can't
actually really excited to try and have a go with that okay yeah absolutely and um yeah the variety
of beans and the recipe looking forward to um to doing that and the kind of dip thing that you
talked about as well with the capers and everything yeah yeah so i'm going to give that a whirl
i think we can always make um positive change and i think any any change is a good change and i think
um yeah anyone listening hopefully will try something that we've talked about today and
and it's only going to benefit their health.
So, yeah, that's brilliant, Henry.
Thank you for all that information.
It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
And I hope your wife will appreciate your new understanding of menopause.
And, yeah, she's going to be, she'll hopefully sail through with your support.
And I think it's really lovely.
You're going to take on board all that information too.
So that's really good.
Definitely.
Thanks, Hayley.
And I just want to say just as a call out to the listeners, it's been really nice hearing some of the feedback from people kind of online who've listened to the healthy bit and, you know, either message personally or message yourself.
I think that's often, you know, I really enjoy these chats and don't always think, oh, actually, someone's going to listen to it.
But it's encouraging to know people are enjoying it and getting more from it.
And I guess it's that kind of cheesy one, isn't it?
Please share it with your friends if you have value in it and do comment.
And also feedback is good because I guess we can kind of talk about anything really, can't we?
And I'm a big believer in that we should, if people have got good suggestions, well, hey, let's throw it into the mix.
You know, I kind of feel like I'm on a journey and, you know, chatting to you is really interesting.
through so yeah thank you for feedback thank you everyone and absolutely we're learning from each
other aren't we Henry because we were interested in each other's areas of expertise and that's
why it all started and we thought we'd do it just to learn from each other and if anyone is
listening and thinking that they're really picking up ideas then yeah that's that's what we
aimed to do wasn't it so fantastic thank you so much and I'll look forward to chatting to you on
the next episode Henry.