An EGG-celent guide to healthy hormones

Hooray for Amy Shah’s Hormone Havoc. In all the heat around women’s hormones – and HRT (or MHT, Menopause Hormone Therapy, as it is in the States) in particular – here is a voice of calm reason.

Dr Amy Shah

Shah acknowledges how female health – the menopause especially – has been hijacked and monetised ‘shamelessly’ by some influencers. MHT, she says, can decrease the severity of hot flushes, alleviate brain fog and help protect your bones. And ‘You can rest assured that MHT does not cause breast cancer’. But nor is it safe for everybody, and it definitely ‘doesn’t restore youth’.

Let me be clear, she writes, ‘MHT is not good or evil. It is purely a medical treatment to alleviate discomfort from hormone-related symptoms.’

I’m going to listen to a lady with such a balanced position.

Shah describes the hormonal lives of women as a ‘continuum’. She’s right; our hormones make their presence – and then their atrophying absence – felt as they surge, then fall, through various transitions of our life: puberty, pregnancy, periods, peri-menopause and post-menopause. It’s why her approach to hormones is both sensible and sustainable.

Shah is a ‘double-board-certified doctor of medicine… nutrition specialist who trained at Cornell University Division of Nutritional Sciences’ and, perhaps most significantly, a woman on this continuum herself who has devoted her career to studying women’s hormones.

She advocates several healthy-living hacks that will have a positive impact on hormone levels whatever age you are, wherever on the arc of that ‘continuum’ you find yourself. And those hacks – if they become habits – will support good health long after menopause.

The main tenets of the ‘Shah Protocol’ include observing night and day as our ancestors did – get up with the light, get out into it. Treat sleep as sacred. The brightness of day and the darkness of night serve good, primal reason, she says. Eat well for good gut health. A healthy gut microbiome has a positive impact on whole-body health, not just hormone health but weight, mood and insulin resistance. Move daily, and with intention: long brisk walks, strength classes, a sprint once a week – even if, as she says, you probably haven’t sprinted since childhood.

She has designed the 30-30-3 diet. That’s 30g of protein as early in the day as you can; 30g of fibre throughout the day – almost none of us eat enough of it – and three helpings of fermented foods: yoghurt, kefir, kombucha, say.

I must admit to being mildly intimidated by the high protein so early in the day: all those eggs! A tough option for somebody who doesn’t like eggs much. However, her meal plans – which helpfully indicate the amount of protein each contains – are an excellent guideline. I don’t have to have three eggs for breakfast; she offers plenty of other protein options, such as a smoothie using protein powder.

I especially applaud Shah’s encouragement to be strong, not small. I welcome it in the face of all the women being disappeared by Ozempic. Strength sustains, smallness doesn’t. As you shrink, so do your muscles and bones.

We have 4,000 weeks of life on this Earth if we’re lucky, she writes. ‘As women, nearly half of our weeks are spent living in various states of transition. Let’s make all those weeks the healthiest, most fulfilling and meaningful that we can. And let’s start now.’