She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.

I'm tiff.

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Doctor livywem Welcome back to the show.

Oh tif, It's such a joy to see your face again.

Thank you having me.

I've been so excited today, and you know, I was just trying to figure out when I've had someone on before, and then trying to figure out light I've had them one before.

We're gonna have another conversation, and I always think we'll give it.

I'll give myself a good solid three minutes of deciding what.

You know, You're doing a bit of planning around this because this time.

You can't just wing it because it's because you've had a conversation.

And I jump over to your website and I'm like, I want eighteen conversations already, Like it's so hot.

You've got so much awesome knowledge, and you've written all these blogs and I'm.

Like, I want about that.

I want to about that.

Oh and I've got to tell Libby about all this shit I have been going through.

And I don't even know where to start with you.

So I want to just hang out all day and do a series right now.

We can do that.

We've pleasure.

Oh well, for any listeners that haven't haven't that aren't familiar with you, firstly, where have you been?

Guys?

Come on doctor Libuwia.

She's amazing.

But introduce yourself.

How do you how do you describe yourself?

Just a human being?

Try to a human being who can't bear unnecessary suffering, and so the work I do in the world, I try to alleviate that if where I can.

But yeah, I went to UNI for fourteen years, tiff, which I know makes me sound really thick and like I failed everything or went to the pub too much, which may or may not be true.

And so I originally studied nutrition and dietetics and then did honors and then did a PhD in biochemistry, So lots of science in my background.

But since then I've worked with people one on one for twenty five years now and that's where you get to obviously see what really makes a difference in people's lives and also what doesn't.

So I've combined my fourteen years at UNI with my twenty five years of clinical experience to create what I call my three pillar approach.

And those three pillars are the biochemical, the nutritional, and the emotional.

So I look at everything through those three lenses.

And yeah, I've written fourteen books and my latest one is called Fix Iron First, The One Thing that Changes Everything.

So I'm very obsessed with helping people to firstly find out if they have iron deficiency and if they do, getting on helping them get on top of it.

So that's my latest mission.

That was on the top of my list, that iron levels.

Where did you do Where do you think you did the most, the most learning or the most beneficial learning in the university years or in the clinical years.

Well, I wouldn't have both.

I feel like I probably couldn't do one without the other, because even more so now there's so much information out there that are fads, And obviously social media has a lot of benefits, but it also has a lot of drawbacks.

And I feel that my grounding in that university world can help me discern a bit more about what's a fad and what's real, because there's a lot of nutrition science out there that's kind of marketing these days rather than rather than actual robust with robust research behind it.

But in saying that I learned more from my patients than I kind of yeah, could have done in any other setting, it was the humans.

Is that humans teach you so much about yourself but also about what works and what doesn't.

Do you think do you reckon that academia People are going to academia and dive down that PhD kind of rabbit hole, and have I feel like I've always thought, you have to, you really have to put the blinkers right on and focus in this one tiny area.

And if you don't step back out of academia and you just stay in that space, do you think that creates a lot of bias and a lot of potential misinformation or blind spots for it.

I think it can create blind spots definitely, but also we sort of need research takes a really long time to come out into the world, and like I can remember learning about fol late being really important for pregnant women, and I'm learning about in the eighties and the nineties really important for pregnant women, so that the prior to conception and during conception for the prevention of spina biffitter.

And yet we know we'd actually known about that for more than fifty years prior to that sort of becoming public knowledge.

And that's where my.

Frustration is is that it can take so long for things to become I guess accepted.

But also where I think academia can get really wasted is if it's not translated into real world terms.

So when I was doing my PhD at the end of my second year, you have to stand up and present all your data to the faculty.

So it's full of you know, there's medical doctors, there's research scientists, there's imminologists, biochemist blah blah, they're all there.

You've got to present your data, so it's very science y.

And after I did mine at the end of my second year, one of the one of the people in the audience put the hand up and set and I thought it was going to be a question, but he said, that's great, we've heard your data.

Great.

Now I want you to pretend that the six o'clock news has just shoved a camera in your face, and I want you to explain what you just told us.

I want you to explain it to the public.

And that completely put me on the spot.

But I did it, and I don't think I would be doing half the work I'm doing today had I not done that, Because I suddenly that massively hit me that it all gets wasted if you don't translate it into real world, practical terms and then share it with people.

So it was why I Yeah, one of the reasons why I really wanted to write books was because you can obviously reach a lot of people through the written word.

All Right, tell me what took you down the iron rabbit hole?

TIF my gosh, where do I start.

So it's the most common nutritional deficiency in the world, and I feel like it's being missed.

So right now, we hear endlessly about the importance of having enough magnesium, vitamin D, protein, creutine.

So there's a lot of kind of nutrients that trendier right now, and we're forgetting some basics, and one of them is iron deficiency.

So it was firstly that I wanted to sort of bring a bit more of a common sense conversation back to the importance of this, and particularly for women, because our requirements are actually quite substantial across the menstruation years.

And then the second part of it was a conversation around perimenopause, which I know is going to be close to your heart, so I'll dive into that a bit more deeply.

So not very long ago, perimenopause was a word that only health professionals knew about, but now it's everywhere.

And that's great because a lot more women now understand this transitional period between regular menstruation and then menopause and being postmenopausal.

So I'm not taking away from that for a second.

It's fantastic and women finally are getting the help and the support and the understanding that they deserve.

One of my concerns with the direction when the perimenopause conversation has gone in is that when we say, I'll ask you this, So when we say something, let's say we've got a new symptom, We're having a new experience in our body that's really uncomfortable, and we're aged between thirty eight and fifty five, and we go, oh, it must be perimenopause.

What are we saying that the symptom must be caused by If we say it's perimenopause hormone?

Yeah, spot on, so the changes in our hormones.

But what if it's not that?

So my big worry is I meet a lot of women who are not nutritionally that healthy.

They're not metabolically that healthy.

So they might have insulin resistance, they might have they might have had an ultrasound done on their liver, they've got fat accumulation in the liver.

They're thyroid, they might not have a thyroid disease, but it's not working as well as it once did.

There's so many other.

Things that can be going on across the transition, and so an iron deficiency was one of them.

And I was meeting.

Female after female who was saying to me, it's perimenopause.

It's perimenopause.

And I'm not taking away for a second about the powerful impact that changing hormones can have on us.

Of course they have a written books about it, but I was really concerned that something as basic as iron deficiency was being missed.

And what I was saying clinically is that if your.

Iron is low or low end normal, I was observing.

There's no this is not a research paper I'm published, but my observation was perimenopause was a lot harder.

So ferretin is our iron storage, and I think of it like a backup battery, and when ferretin is low or low end normal, it's harder.

Because if women are having really big bleeds or bleeding multiple times in a month and they're losing a lot of blood, they might have already been iron deficient, and now they might end up with iron deficiency anemia the most intense, the worst form of it.

And your thyroid gland literally needs iron to produce its hormones.

You need iron to be able to produce dopamine for motivation, gabba, the very calming neurotransmitter, serotonin, melotonin for sleep.

There's literally nothing iron isn't needed for inside of us.

And so I wanted to shine a light on it and hope that if people are iron deficient, they fix that first and then see what's left over.

And of course there might still be symptoms that need addressing.

Absolutely, but when people have better iron status, a lot of their suffering is less.

Anxiety is less, depression is less.

That's all really well researched.

So when I was thirty, I was training for my first amateur title fight, not a style to fight, and I had to get my blood's done for this.

And when I went in to get my results and get ticked off that, yeah, you got no crazy diseases.

You're allowed to bleed all over people when you get punched in the face, that's cool.

He goes, oh, you've got no iron.

And I was like, oh, didn't you take the didn't you take the test for And he goes, oh, no, no, you've got no iron.

I don't know how you're training like Ferret and level was.

I think from memory five, this was three weeks out from the fight, and I remember lib I thought like I was.

I was getting home from work and I was collapsing face down on my bed, and I was dragging myself to training and I was training, and I would get There were times when the training was so intense that I would just get I would get panic attacks.

I would get emotional and I would get anxiety, which was so not me.

I was like, I'd burst into tears from overwhelm and I was like, I didn't know what that was horrific.

So I agree, like when I reflect back at knowing what that felt like to be that iron deficient, horrible, It's horrible.

Yeah, when I when I started experiencing the perimenopause, I look back now and I keep saying, it took me two years to land on perimenopause because I was ticking off.

But it's a good hearing.

You just then made me go, well, that was a good thing.

You didn't rush in.

But I was like, okay, am I just burnt out?

Or is this emotional?

Is this emotional and psychological because of the work I've been doing and now I'm stepping back into the boxing ring to fight, and there's all these metaphorical kind of ideas and concepts that are coming up subconsciously for me.

Maybe it's that, maybe that's what's getting me emotional.

And it was all this, you know, So it took me two years before I went okay.

But I might get my hormemones tested and I might check out this this hit thing.

Yeah, So it's been brutal for you, Tiff hate yeah.

Yeah, and for so many like I was, because I'm a bit of a chatty kathy and like to tell the world what's going on in the land of Tiff.

It's been great because so many people around me were like, oh, thank goodness, someone's talking about this, like so many people suffering from you know, versions of it around this age bracket.

But like you said, it's just and it's so hard to find good, good help, help you can trust.

You know.

I was getting a lot of my information from great resources and podcasting and people and then seeking out, well, who do I go to and then taking that information and what I already the path I already had been advised I should take.

Yeah, And it still took me a long time to land on solutions.

And you look at you're a really resourceful person, You're a really clever person.

So and you're very applied.

You know, you get an idea, you research it, you're very thorough, you're very considered.

But you keep going and you think about all the people out there that don't prioritize it, or they don't know where to go, they don't know where to start.

So it's hard.

It's been hard enough, by the sounds of it, for you as a really knowledgeable, connected, resourceful person.

It's been hard enough for you, let alone for you know, just an order person trying to navigate it.

So it's why the work you do and the podcasts and the sharing of that information is so important.

Yeah, do you find GPS doctors or nutritionus or people in general wherever people are going when they're getting these symptoms.

Why is something as simple as iron not being checked?

Do you know?

Well, again, I feel like it's just missed.

It's not thought of anymore.

I remember growing up and I remember my mother in the eighties taking me to the doctor because she's like, there's something going on here.

So she noticed this change in me, and yeah, it's just not I don't know why.

I can't explain it, but it's not always thought of.

And then there are other doctors who will test for it.

And then the normal ranges are not the optimal ranges.

So I'll use ferretin as the example.

So for an adult female, the normal range for ferretin in Australia is twenty to two hundred and twenty micrograms perlitas that's a really wide range, and so if you have a ferretin of twenty two, you're told that's normal.

I haven't met anyone with a ferretin of twenty two who feels terrific.

The research shows that once ferretin goes below fifty, you'll usually have symptoms of iron deficiency.

So I think that often women will get blood test results back and it's in the normal range, but it's very low end normal, so they're told it's fine, and so they don't address it.

The other thing that I think happens is they might find out they're deficient and then they take I call them old fashioned, old school iron supplements, and they make a lot of people constipated or give them tummy pain or cramps, and so I've had lots of women say to me, I'd rather be iron deficient than constipated, so they don't take.

And there's a whole new world of supplements that are way better made from ferretin iron from peas.

There's a lot of good quality stuff.

Out there now, but the old school supplements that are typically prescribed, Yeah, a lot of women that it doesn't agree with them, so then they don't address it, and they just put up with it.

So yeah, it's really tricky.

And this one more thing if I can add to that, just because we to sort of round out the perimenopause conversation.

Do you know one of my concerns is, and I know we chatted about this in a previous podcast, but I wrote a book in twenty eleven called Rushing Woman's Syndrome.

And I know twenty eleven feels like five minutes ago, but it's not.

It's fourteen years ago, which is wild.

When I wrote Rushing Woman Syndrome, I honestly I was wrong about this.

I honestly, I just thought it was a glitch in the matrix.

I just thought everything's just momentarily sped up, and we'll go back to the slower ways shortly.

Because when I realized, you know, we can't sustain ourselves living in this great, big hurry, trying to juggle four million, thousand things.

And of course I was very wrong.

It's only spared up, obviously, And so one of the questions I had is, right now, the women in perimenopause are the women I wrote that book for.

I'm one of them.

So we were the first and this is a kind of you know, this is all just for people to pause and consider.

I'm not saying that this is how it is, but if you remember life before cell phones, there was a lot more space.

So when you left home, you could look at the sky and you might think about your problems, but there was space to think about, oh, how you might solve them.

Or if you're driving your car, you might have had the radio on or a cassette playing, and so you're listening to music.

But when you stopped at red traffic lights, you weren't checking your phone and looking into other people's lives or seeing what other people need from you.

There was space.

So there was all these little.

Moments from you know, if you left home where there was a phone, and then you got to work, there was another phone, but there was space between that.

So we had all these There was more space where we had more time for thinking, contemplation, considering, appreciation for our surroundings, trying to solve our own problems.

And then obviously the minute we started to carry the internet around in our pocket, if we have and a lot of us in perimenopause now were raised to be good girls, so we were raised to consider the needs of others before our own, and there's a lot of beauty in that.

You know, the world's going to fall apart if we stopped caring.

We need a sense of community and kindness and looking after others.

I'm not taking away from that, but there was sort of this in the when the people pleasing women suddenly could be accessed all the time, and there were lots of different you know, it wasn't just a text or a phone call, it was now messaging through social media.

That was really overwhelming to.

A lot of people who were already juggling their lives like aging parents or raising children and a career that they either loved or didn't like, but you know, paid work as well, and then there was all the ways of being contacted.

And so I do worry that we're not looking at the what's gone on with our nervous system being in this revved up place that I talked about in Rushing Woman Syndrome.

I'm worried that we've just kind of gone that's just how life is now.

There's nothing we can do about that, and we're missing a whole I guess road or pathway of supporting women at their core, which means, you know, other people need to step up and help, but ultimately there's this nervous system support that I worry is also getting missed in this conversation around perimenopause.

I agree with my dog is losing her mind right now.

So if everyone can hear that in the background, there is someone in the apartment building and she is not happy about it.

But we'll plow on.

I am so I think about this a lot, how busy we are, because I feel like I'm one of those people definitely, And I talked about this recently, how aware I am just going to go and drag her out of this situation.

She'sing, give me one moment if yes, as I was saying, I became really aware of, even even when I'm not looking at the phone, not looking in my pocket, how busy I was in my head and not present, not present around people.

And you know, there's been a couple of different versions of the stories I've.

Told about that.

And one time I went for a walk in Elwood and I'd had and I was thinking about a conversation while listening to a podcast while walking the dog, And in the middle of all of that, I stopped on the canal, and I was like, what are you doing?

And I stopped and I turned to the and I took the headphones out and I sat on a seat at the canal with the dog.

And three minutes later, this lady comes walking down the path and she just do you mind if if I sit down?

And I'm like, no, sure, and we have this I've got goose bumps.

We have this beautiful conversation.

I don't even know what you're going to say, because this was you know, it was one of those moments that you just went, I just went, Oh, that was all supposed to happen.

She sits down and we start chatting and she was it makes me the even want to cry.

She was in staying at her daughter's house in Ellwood.

She was from I can't remember where she was from, but because their little baby girl was about to pass away, this infant child that was really sick, and so she was sharing that with me and we had this beautiful conversation.

And then I left that and I was like wow.

And then just everybody that I was past, everyone was really receptive to interacting and I'm like, this is I mean, this is what I just am not open to every single day because I'm too busy and I see other people doing it and I don't.

And I can't point the finger because I know often that is me, but I see it and I go, just remember not to be that.

But it was such a beautiful.

I'd had a conversation with a friend of mine and we had dubbed this term, or she dubbed it potato moments when you go and you buy it.

You buy potatoes and you actually interact and you talk to the person selling them to you and have these really special little moments.

And they're so few and far between.

And it's because everything in our environment, environment like you've just described, is training us to just be busy, taken and think, here, have more information, more information, do something with this, do better be faster?

Yeah, yeah, And I when we think about that.

Biochemically, so we make so much adrenaline, which not very long ago in human history said to every cell in our body that our life was in danger.

And because the production of our reproductive hormones, it's so hard to you know, call them sex hormones or reproductive hormones, because they have such a bigger effect than that.

They have a lot of biological effects and so, but stress is one of the biggest disruptors to the healthy, sustained long term production of sex hormones.

Because we live perpetually with stress hormone production, the body eventually thinks, well, I don't want to ovulate this month because we can't risk a conception.

And if you don't ovulate, you don't get the lovely big surge of progesterone, which has the lovely anti anxiety effects, the diuretic effects, the thyroid loves it.

So there's this huge, big ripple effect when we live like that consistently.

So I love what you're describing that you did, and when we think about it's actually how life used to be when you you know what you did by just sitting on that seat with your dog looking at the canal, and then it was almost like life sort of rewarded you.

Or you know that story that you gave that lady an opportunity to share something.

You probably lightened her load.

You, I mean, how do you light and the load of someone experiencing what she's describing.

But you heard her, yeah, genuinely heard her, and that will have helped her so much.

And I really, yeah, I worry that we're missing all of that, and I worry about the effect on our sex hormones, and I worry that, yeah, there's there are all these when we go.

It's just how life is.

It's just so busy and so full on.

And that's true.

But if that's not going to change, the only thing we can change is ourselves and how we show up in that.

And it doesn't mean we, you know, disconnect all the time from the podcast we want to listen to or whatever it is that we want to do.

But it's I guess, prioritizing health.

It's prioritizing some downtime, some stillness, some calm whatever, or connect genuine deep connections with other people, even strangers, like what happened to you?

I just I feel like we can't.

You know that the medicine in that for everyone is massive, so much.

So I just earlier this morning was on a podcast with Harps on the New Project, and that subject we were talking about with doctor Bill Sullivan was this exercise, this pill that it gives that they're researching to give the same effects of exercise, right, And as they're unpacking it all, my mind's just just going crazy.

But I'm just thinking, everything we tend to do in this life is find a solution so that we can keep continuing on the path that requires more solutions.

Oh, we're disconnected, Well, let's get so why are we disconnected?

Because we've got social media which connects us, which essentially disconnects us.

And then we talk on social media about how lonely and disconnected we are, and then we create AI a version, an upgraded version of connection and thinking and interaction.

And it it astounds me that we're that we're doing this and we're smarter than this.

But there's like, there's the two.

There's there's our instinctive, primal parts of our brain and our body reacting to things, and then there's this logical thinking part that can just go down any stupid rabbit hole and be convinced of any stupid thing.

And it's hard at times to watch it all play out and go Like in sometimes in those conversations, I just go, I'm like, I'm just going to put a barrier around my brain.

I don't I don't really want to.

I don't want this rabbit hole.

I don't want to have an opinion.

I don't want to think about it.

There's too much.

There's too much.

Yeah, I want to go sit on the bench at the canal with my dog and no EarPods, just smoak it all up.

Yeah, Like, how do you?

How do you?

Because because also there's there's the doctor Libby that is doing and helping and researching, and then and then helping people operationalize everything you've learned, and then there's Libby, the human being underneath that.

What practices and how do you monitor and rain yourself in?

You're so lovely to ask that.

I am a keen observer of nature.

So I'm obsessed with light.

So I watch light change every day, watch sunrise, watch sunset, even if I close my laptop to do it.

So even if I go back to work after sunset, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

But I acknowledge the beginning.

And the end of the light of the day because none of this exists without that sunshine.

And it helps me stay massively connected to the ridiculous privilege of getting this turn on Earth.

That's what light does to me.

So while ever, I live connected to the privilege of getting to be here, whether it's you know, if I my life might be cruising, or I might be going through some genuinely challenging things.

None of that matters in those moments when I just go on, get this crazy privilege and I get to be here, so it's light.

I do love trees as well, so I love to watch what they're doing, so I do I observe.

I observe that kind of stuff.

Have you read the book The Secret Life of Trees?

Yes?

How good is that book?

The one I read before it was called The over Story, and it was even better.

Really, the over Story.

I'm writing that down.

I'm going to remember.

After reading The Secret Life of Trees, I went for a walk in Edward.

I tend to do that a lot, apparently, But and I was walking along and walked past the park and there was a family that had tied ropes around to between two trees for the kids to play on.

And I was like, what careful?

Like what are you just tying that rope around the tree for?

Like you don't understand what that's doing to the tree.

Why don't you just use the play equipment that's already there, Like the tree's got feelings.

And I was all upset.

I was all upset about the bloody rope around the tree.

And the tree on now will be chit chatting with its friends, going, well, this is really rough, so there's play equipment right there.

Come on exactly.

I mean similarly, when I went to India last year and I came home and I introduced this practice which I stopped when I was doing a course which is now ended.

So I'll start again, but of every once a week driving down to the Dandenong's and hiking by myself with no audio, no podcast, no music, not even going oh, just.

Put a meditation track on it.

No, you'll go and listen to the birds that you've driven an hour.

And every time I had to make that decision, I came up against the same resistance.

Tiff, you live near the beach, this is it's an hour's drive there and back.

It's you've got shit to do, it's not worth just go for a quick walk on the beach.

And I would be like, no, I'll do it.

And then I would get there and and sometimes I would be so overwhelmed with emotion of the sensation of being there by myself, and I would just and so much I don't know, like insight and creativity and appreciation would just flood through me.

I'm like, oh, why do we stray from that?

Because I haven't done that for seven eight months now, Why tell me the answer to that, Doctor Libby, I.

Don't know if I have an answer.

I think the well on a very surface level and we can unpack this.

But the first thing I thought when you asked me that was whatever choices we make, we consciously or unconsciously perceive there's more benefits than drawbacks to making that choice.

So it might not be that you were resisting the going into the beautiful environment, the drive one hour and having that experience.

It might have been that you were prioritizing other things that you consciously or unconsciously persis would give you more benefits than drawbacks.

So when I was when I would when I was still seeing patients one on one, and someone might come in and say, I'll be very honest.

Weight loss was a very common thing people used to come and see me for.

Even though I never weighed a single patient.

I didn't have a set of scales in my office.

I focused on helping people to be healthier and then if there was too much body fat on their physical structure for their health.

One of the consequences of getting healthier was less body fat.

That was how because some people are underweight that they don't have enough body fat for good health.

So you fix, you address their health, and their body fat levels come up.

So I never looked at the body fat itself.

It was always the health and body fat just falls into line with that.

So but anyway, when people would come and see me for that, they would usually, you know, they'd say things like, I'll do anything.

I'm so sick of myself, I'm so frustrated with myself.

Just tell me what to do and I'll do it.

And I very much much believed that they believed that what they were saying was true.

But it won't shift until we see, until we dig in and explore the benefits, the unconscious benefits they perceive they're getting from living the way they've been living, which might have been not necessarily taking care of their food or moving or their sleep or their sunshine or their relationships or whatever it was.

So I always would go looking for those unconscious sort of I guess perceptions, and not for all people, but for some people there were some really big and heavy stuff there.

They might have linked having less body fat to you know, being in some really compromising positions when they were younger, like being getting sexual attention for being attractive, and they didn't want that.

That kind of stuff that would come up pretty regularly.

So it's going looking for or it can be you know, if there's a whole family situation, in extended family situation where nourishing food might not be a priority, and then there's one person in the family who suddenly decides they want to start to prioritize looking after themselves a bit better with more nourishing food choices or starting up an exercise program.

If they got pushed back from the family that they might be ostracized a bit or they weren't sort of going to be as accepted as they once were.

We won't necessarily see that on the surface, but that was another one that might be there.

I kind of don't fit with my family or my friends anymore because that's not their vibe.

They're not doing that kind of thing.

So yeah, that's that's what I would go look for.

So when there's that resistance to doing the one hour drive to go and have such an extraordinary experience in nature, I don't know, I feel like for you, it's more I feel like you love life, you love learning, There's so much you could be part of.

I feel like you're just an excited kind of person, and so it's like, right, well, I could just do this because if I if I just go to the beach near my house, then and thens I could be back home a bit after that, and then I could be getting into blah blah blah.

So I feel like for you it's more of a priority, you know, a priority thing, because it's just so much juice to enjoy in life.

Yeah, yeah, very much.

So I think about that, like, is it we've got that unconscious programming, We've got that unconscious subconscious relationship with things, and then we've got that just that kind of like I said before, primal biological drivers, like whether it just be habit, sameness or programming.

I've done this, I've done this, I've done this, I'll do it more busyness thinking all the time, I'll do that.

This is how we do.

So we look for things, We rush, We become a rushing woman and trying to understand am I One question I used to ask a lot of clients, especially in group online programs.

I would do think I would often do programs like Catalyst, the twenty eight Day Catalyst.

You want to stop, start, or change.

Anything can be anything you want.

Some people want to get fit, some people want to give up boost, some people want to stop making, some people want better relationships.

Whatever.

If you want to change something, come on in.

We'll do a thing.

And one of the questions I would raise for reflection is because you're here because you've wanted to change this for a long time and you haven't.

Right, That's why you're here, That's why everyone's here.

You want to change, You've tried a million times and you still haven't nailed it.

So here we are.

Is the thing that you want to change, something that you want to change, or is there a part of you that is using the ability to say I need to change to prove a point of an unconscious belief about yourself.

So if it's if it's I need to lose weight, is there something that you hold on to that you need that you are shaming yourself for unconsciously.

And if that's the case, I mean, does that apply with that that relationship with weight loss?

And can we change things about ourselves?

Because I often say we can't, but I could be wrong.

It's just a tiff, bloody, just understanding that I've portrayed out there.

But can we change things about ourselves that we despise or we won't accept.

If we can't accept, if I can't accept, I'll let go of shame.

Last year in India and Himalays, it was amazing and in that moment and I processed an acceptance for it and an appreciation, like a gratitude.

I don't know where it came from.

It was kind of weird.

It dropped in just before I threw it in the fire.

I was like, oh, but it made me think about that, and I went, well, of course there's a part of me that, hellcham I did that, but not one part of me would ever do anything to harm me.

That part of me did that to help me.

So I have to accept that I needed that and it was good for me for whatever reason.

But I don't need it anymore.

And now I can let it go.

And then I can let it go.

But if I think when we try and I hate me because I need to lose weight and I'm lazy, and then we and when that's the driver, I don't know if we can ever walk away from it for good.

Not when that's the driver, because it's not actually, that's not actually what it's about.

And I feel like I used to do this exercise with people, tiff, I caught it forward words, So people would walk into my clinic and I felt like that a word written across their forehead and it was a trait.

Tait, I feel like I didn enunciate that word.

Well, it's a trait that they wanted other people to see in them, or it might be there might be some traits that they really want to keep hidden from other people.

So in the Rushing Women Syndrome Days, people, those women who really connected with the topic of my book, they wanted to be seen as kind, thoughtful, selfless, and they were prepared to sacrifice literally anything, including their health, to ensure that other people saw them as kind, thoughtful, selfless.

They are already those things, but they perceive they're not.

So our voids create our values.

So where we perceive we lack, we're going to try to prove it so that others see it in us in the hope that it wakes us up to see that we actually already have it.

Then I think too, so it's partly that, And then I also think that when we make an experience or a trait that we've held black shame, when we make it wrong, we're missing what it's done for us.

We're missing the gifts that that's brought us.

We also have when we're judging ourselves for holding shame, we're not seeing through compassionate eyes the part of us that created that and the way it's kind of protected us until now.

And so I feel that the minute there's judgment, we're blind to insight arising, whereas when we're open to whatever this thing is, that we might be really frustrated by, or repulsed by, or upset by whatever that trait is.

In your example, it was shame.

Until we sort of.

See the gifts that it's brought us, it'll probably hang around because it didn't come from nowhere.

It came from a part of you that was just trying to look after you.

Because I very well you know there is Our body doesn't betray us, our heart and soul is not here to betray us.

It's all working for us.

So it's getting the insight from that.

And I think with the weight loss example we just chatted about, it was sometimes helping people to have so much more compassion for themselves to see where some of their beliefs about themselves had come from.

And a belief.

I think we can change our beliefs about ourselves, because a belief is just a thought that we've thought over and over and over again and that we've never challenged.

So when someone would say, for example, I ate too much ice cream after dinner, therefore I must be hopeless, pathetic and have no willpower, we don't ever pause and think is that true?

We just keep living.

And the second part of it you might have eaten too much ice cream.

That part of the sentence might be true, and you feel a bit sick because you've had too much, But the second part of the sentence isn't true.

The second part of the sentence about how you've told yourself you're hopeless and pathetic and you have no willpower.

That's a story that you've made up.

But if you don't stop and question it and correct your thinking, you'll just next time you have too much ice cream, you'll say that to yourself again, And before you know it, you don't just say that to yourself about ice cream, you say it to yourself about you as a whole.

Total human.

You'll just say, oh, my name's Libyan, I'm hopeless and pathetic and I have no willpower.

It will become a part of your identity, but it's just a thought you've thought over and over again to try to understand your behavior and you just never corrected it, and that becomes a belief.

And yeah, so I love I really love the work.

And I'm not for a second saying that it's easy.

It can be.

Real tricky and real slippery, and it can all be very hard to kind of see what's really there.

But it's, as you obviously experience in India, it's absolutely magnificent.

When yeah, when you have that little moment that's actually such a big moment.

How did the academic biochemist become so intuitive?

And how do you use that intuition?

And when did you start to trust it?

I'm assuming you do.

I feel like you're the sort of person like someone comes in and they they're like, okay, got this food stuff going on?

I want to do this, and so they're there for behavior change, but you're not like what comes first behaviors or thoughts or relationships with self or intuition, Like where's the inroad?

For you whatever, it's not my in road, it's there in road.

So I watched.

I just would watch their face, and I would watch the connection to questions, and I would watch the because some people are very analytical.

So if for someone you'd show them as seat of their blood tests and you'd say, this is great, this is not so good, we're going to start to work on that.

So some people would that was very much eroad into getting them to look after themselves better, whereas for others, nothing will shift until yeah, I guess what you're so whether if i'd sort of seen a word on their forehead, I might think I'll bring that up as a question later, or it might I guess it's more observing patterns I'd sort of I would have had to have been wearing blinkers for twenty five years.

I hadn't observed certain patterns in people.

And the reason I care about it tif is I can't.

It's what I open with.

I can't bear unnecessary suffering.

And most people are so mean to themselves that you wouldn't be friends.

Like the way a lot of people treat themselves, they wouldn't be friends with that person if they were an external person and yet they tolerate it from themselves.

So, yeah, there's some.

I feel like we look after what we care about, And so if I can help someone to just appreciate themselves just a tiny bit more, whether it's the inner working of their cells, which is like a little city inside every cell of our body, or it might be to just appreciate how amazing it is that they get to be on earth, even when they might be grieving, they might be an ag like, there might be some genuinely tough stuff going on.

It's not to deny that, but if I can get people a little bit more connected to just, yeah, the beauty that coexists with the pain of kind of being on earth, they might take better care of themselves.

Because I think we look after what we care about.

I think that's true with our families, with nature, but it's true of ourselves.

So if we can care just a little bit more, appreciate a little bit more about ourselves, it might change our choices more often.

Not do you get a sense of whether or not you can see in those initial meetings with people readiness, if they're ready, and what are the tell tales.

I don't know if you can I don't.

Probably other people be way more skilled at answering that, or that, Probably other people be sort of more observant of of the I guess a set of signs.

It's probably more to really move away from the biochemical analytical human.

It's more of a feeling that I would get chit chatting with someone.

And it's also their openness, so we can be very We might think we want to change, but some people are very attached to what they're doing that they'd rather stay with what they're doing than get a different outcome by making a different choice.

So it's I feel that it's I try to always identify people's values.

Just because I value health.

I don't expect everybody else to health is my number one value.

It's everyone has their own unique set of values and I respect that.

So I'm going to try to communicate more with people inside their values and within that, I guess you can I can sense a readiness to shift or not.

But sometimes my work was to help them.

You know, they want a different outcome with their health.

I'm going to try to connect them connect that to their values, not mine.

Yeah, I love that.

There was another thing that stood out on your website and I want to ask before I say your body and end up forgetting and the I'll be.

Like, oh, you didn't ask about that thing, because this.

Is another thing that I feel to the core of my soul.

Winter hormones and mood, Winter, the winter blues, sad, seasonal effective disorder.

Oh, winter is a rough for Tiffany.

Look, oh Jesse and bloody Melbourne.

Well we tell us about that.

So, yeah, some people really feel it, others don't, but it's so we understand.

Do you know if I can just before we go into a more specific answer, do you know I actually think that we understand the tip of the iceberg about the power of light and sunlight.

I really think that we've been taught to be frightened of the sun, and it never made sense to me once I learned in biochemistry, you learn that on the recept on the surface of every cell is a receptor for vitamin D.

And so if our structure, if every single cell has a receptor for vitamin D, that means it wants it.

So I understand our environments changed.

That's not my era of expertise or knowledge, but I just worry that.

Yeah, people, I feel like the sun is way more powerful for us beyond vitamin D, but just the light, the light of it.

I'm very curious about what in my lifetime, what we come to learn about it.

So yeah, whether there is bright sunlight available or not.

When people are aware that they have that tendency to really experience those really flat moods in winter, they find it genuinely difficult get I encourage them to become a keen observer of light.

So when you first get up in the morning, even if it's dark, or even if it's really overcast, fling open the curtains and stand there for a minute and just recognize that a new day has begun.

And ideally you're getting up you know when there is a little bit of light, even if it is super overcast, but allow your eyes to actually take that light in and then live way more connected to the rhythm of the sunshine.

So dim the light at night.

We know there's actually some research coming through in our showing that warm light.

You know, a lot of people went to kind of those blue led lights or the energy Saver light bulb things.

They meet a very blue light, we go away, Our sleep goes way better when we have warmer light.

More yellow based light at night, so that's another key thing also too, we seesonal effective disorder.

We want to look at serotonin and melatonin.

So serotonin is supposed to be nice and high in the daytime and it gives us a happy, calm, contented feeling, and then melatonin can only be made in darkness and it allows us to fall asleep and stay asleep.

So the idea is that as the light goes out of the sky, the serotonin starts to drop and the melatonin is supposed to rise.

They both can't be elevated at the same time.

So there's all sorts of parts to that chemistry.

The first thing is the nutritional part of it to literally be able to produce serotonin, which is what's going to then feed into your body being able to make melotonin so that you have this really happy, calm content sleepweight cycle regardless of the light levels outside, whether it's winter or summer.

The nutrients you.

Need are iron, magnesium, and zinc.

They're the three big nutrients to be able to make serotonin and melotonin.

So the first thing I would look for if someone came to see me and they said, I'm hugely affected by essentially depression in winter, it's really really tough for me.

The first thing I'm going to do is test those nutrients.

I'm going to see how much is going in in their diet.

I'm going to do blood tests and actually see what's happening.

It's the first thing I would look for.

If that's all fine, Usually it wasn't.

There'll be one or two of those that was out.

I would correct that, try and address the nutrient deficiencies.

And then the next thing I would look for, of course, was their exercise patterns.

So what when we're sedentary.

We know that that too is going to have a worse effect, and sometimes we don't necessarily link that to winter.

I don't want to go outside as much because it's cold, comfortable, do they exercise less.

I'm going to encourage them to, you know, get outside and do that movement because we know that that the endorphins from that's going to be really helpful.

So I would always come at it based on what was different for the person.

But was it biochemical, nutritional, or what was happening for them yet emotionally m.

I remember I can't remember how long ago, but going to was in the middle of that beginning of the perimenopause.

I'm tired, this is this is not great kind of conversation.

I went to my usual doctor and I remember talking about this fatigue.

He's already said, do you really said, doctor Leimmy, everyone's really tired.

No true story.

Yeah, you know, everyone's really tired.

If that's appalling, I know, thanks bro, thank you well.

So my question off that I was listening to you, I'm sure it's so incredibly frustrating because why don't GPS refer on Why don't they refer Why don't they say, Okay, you're tired, you've got this, this this, Here are some options.

You could go and see a doctor Libby who can test all of your nutrient levels and see how that's going.

Or you know, in my case, I had my hate.

I had my hormones test a year ago.

A year before I started the HRT stopped it.

I had to get some scans and things just to check it was okay.

Then I was like, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna see if I can hit a baseline on everything else and see if I need this.

And then a year later I went back on the HRT.

I was prescribed went back to her, and by then we'd started having this test the testosterone conversation, and I said, I think I want to test.

I want you know, I look at testosterone.

She goes, we need to test for it.

I said, well, what did it test last time?

She hadn't tested it, and I was like, I'm a bit dumbfounded that a forty two year old or a forty one year old at the time female could come and sit on your chair and say, cool, you work in menopausal with women with menopause.

And I'm telling him all of my symptoms, and if I google it, it even that says, hey, you might have low testosterone.

And of course my testosterone was tanked when she did test it.

But I have to ask for why do we have to know?

And ask why can't they go Oh, I'll point you in the direction of doctor Libby and she will fix you and have you firing on all cylinders, looking at the sun, topped up on bloody iron and magnesium, and you'll be amazing.

I don't have all the answers tip, not for a split second, but I guess one thing.

There are people who specialize and have specialized knowledge in certain areas and.

Some who don't.

And there might be some gps who are so amazing at emergency medicine or they're really really great yeah when there's something like really life threatening happening, but for so much kind of so many symptoms that are well, are they the consequences of modern living?

Are they the consequences of emotional distress?

Are they the consequences of I'm not saying in your case, but inadequate nutrition or lifestyle factors.

Our gps are not educated in that, so they're not unless they can go on and do postgraduate training.

There's some terrific postgraduate training schools for gps, but that's not all of their cup of teas.

Some of them like they're really good at a diagnosis, and off the back of a diagnosis, there's a medicine, which is their offer of a solution for that.

That's the right road for some people.

For other people, they don't want a peel for their headache.

They want to know why they're getting a headache.

They would rather look at their hydration or their food, or their exercise, or their shoulder tension, or their sex hormones or whatever it is that might be contributing to their headache, so some people want to address the root cause.

So I feel like it's very hard but and it's hard for me to say this, but I do feel like we have to advocate for ourselves now when it comes to getting good care.

And you did that to get the support you needed.

And I worry when I say that that it makes women feel like or not just women, men as well.

It makes you feel like, what do you mean, I've got to do that for myself as well.

It's like another thing.

But I I really do think we have when when not getting the outcomes we're seeking from the health professionals of any type that we're saying, I think we either need to advocate for ourselves or I think at times we need to recognize that there are just like with every profession, there are people who are really good at what they do, and there are people who have probably fallen behind in they're in staying up to date with sort of current offerings andized it's being a patient and recognizing they might not be up to date in what's available.

I need to find someone else to support me for this part of my journey.

It's just yeah, and that's not I feel very sorry for our GPS, they're under immense pressure.

They usually have fifteen minutes to see people.

It's some you know, and people might come in with twenty five things on a list of stuff they want dealt with.

It can be very, very hard.

So I'm not taking away from what they bring to the world for a second, but when it comes to what you're talking about, Yeah, it's a really dear friend of mine had a miscarriage recently and she was just beside herself at the lack of testing or interest in helping her to understand why that might have happened.

And yeah, so she needs to see someone other than who she's been seeing because all they said was it's just normal, and she doesn't feel comfortable with that answer, where other people do feel comfortable with that answer, because it's miscarriage is very, sadly, very very common.

But she wants answers.

So and that's where I get people.

I say to people, you have to trust yourself if you're if someone says something to you, like if your gp'd said to you, no, it didn't test testosterone and your response to that was okay, sweet, well, then that's the right road for you.

Whereas your response to that was hang on, I've researched this.

I tick every box of not having enough testosterone.

It's unacceptable to me that you haven't tested that or you're not interested in testing that for me.

But I accept that that's where you're at.

It's just not where I'm at.

So we're not aligned here.

I'll find someone who's going to support me.

And it's the same for my friend with her miscarriage.

If she had received it.

It's just normal.

Happens to all women.

Some women go, okay, I understand that it's very sad.

Got to understand that that is something that a lot of women experience.

I'll just park my curiosity of finding out more.

My friend can't do that.

She's just absolutely incensed that they would say that to her.

And that's where our own I think it's our soul driving us.

I think it's our intuition, whatever it is that we let's just call it an inner wisdom.

I think there's a voice inside of us that has our back, and it knows how to direct us.

It knows when it's time to go to bed, it knows what we need to eat for lunch, it knows when we need some more tests done.

And it's listening to that and trusting that and acting on that.

I think that's a really important message for people.

Yeah, it's so true.

There spent so much research on the you know, the relationship that you have with your doctors and how that can affect your own healing.

Luck fortunate that this particular doctor.

You know, I see three different doctors.

Now she's she's my perimenopause hormone stuff doctor.

And but what's great about her is when I go in with information, she obliges and she helps me up through that.

She's not going, oh no, I don't do that.

I've had clients or friends reach out and go okay, after listening to that, I went and got you know, I had one client that went and had her hormones tested.

Her testosterone was lower than mine, so they tested it for her.

But then when they got the results back, the doctor said, yeah, well women don't take testosterone and didn't prescribe its, Like, well, what did you take the test for?

Then, like, what did you take the test?

That's a dumb answer.

And then another person who who's doctor, thanked them and said, I'm I'm not qualified in any of this, but I'm really happy to if you're comfortable and we can learn together and I will help you navigate this.

So I just think people need to know that it can take a bit of It's like a psychologist.

It can take a bit of finding the right person that has the right values, the right resources, the right understanding, and the right personality fit for you, and then you're on your.

Way a great tif beautifully same.

We just clone you, put one of you in every profession.

We'd be sweet, we'd be sweet.

Iron test, Iron studies, fine studies.

Have you got any before we wrap it out?

Have you got any?

I mean, is there a particular message or solution or question or reflection you want to offer people like you?

What are people dealing with right now?

Or what's something you can give them as before you leave?

If I would say, if you don't know your iron status, find out what it is the test you want to it's a very inexpensive test, so the GPS are usually very happy to do it.

It's called Iron studies mes four different iron parameters in your blood, and you want to get copies of your results because you want to see if your ferretin is below fifty because you'll be told it's normal if it's twenty two, because that's inside the normal range.

And if you find out you're iron deficient, and I can't encourage you enough to address it because what I'm the thing, the feedback I love the most when people address their iron deficiency is they'll say they feel like they have more resilience, and we need that right now in the world.

So it's like an emotional and physical it's a physical strength, but it's also an emotional resilience and I love I love that the most.

So.

And if you've taken iron supplements in the past and they constipate, you go looking.

Go look for the new generation of supplements that it contains ferret and iron extracted from peas because it's got great research behind it.

It's not constipating, so that'll be what you could look for.

So but if you've got iron deficiency, address it.

And then the last little thing, I guess I'd say because it touched on We touched on this in our earlier chat, but it's too Yeah, just live live a bit more connected to the crazy privilege of getting this turn on Earth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One last question, should people take iron supplements without testing their iron.

So it's a tricky one to answer.

Really, the answer is yes, it's better to have a test and know where you're at.

If you're if a lot of people will ticket you read the list of symptoms and you go tick tick tick tick tick, and you don't eat much red meat, for example, or if you are vegan or vegetarian, you sort of haven't really thought about iron.

You haven't been focused on eating iron rich foods, your periods might be a bit heavy, you'll be iron deficient.

It's yeah, So I say that carefully because there is a condition of iron overload called hemochromatosis, which is a genetic condition where we accumulate on and and a lot of women don't find out they have that until their postmenopausal and menstruation has stopped.

So ideally you have a blood test and know where you're at.

But yeah, yeah, good bloody amazing.

I knew i'd love this chat with you again.

Where can people find you?

Follow you?

And do you have anything coming up that you want to that you want to give them a shout out for?

Oh you're so lovely.

Well, my website is doctor Libby dot com.

That's where all my books and online courses are.

I also make supplements.

They're all from food.

It's called bioblends dot com so people can go and can check out those food based supplement solutions.

Yeah, you're the best.

Thank you so much.

See if thanks for your gorgeous questions and for how much you care.

You're such a gem of a human.

Thank you, easy down, easy work with you, mate.

Go check them out everyone.

So y'all, she said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.

You girls garacue Watcus Canakin