Written by Charlotte Cheetham, Gut Health Coach
Charlotte Cheetham is an expert coach in Gut Health for menopausal women. She is the founder of Lifeinsghts and aims to help all menopausal women one by one to heal their symptoms which are preventing them from living a normal life. She has also written articles for Healthieyoo magazine about gut health, menopause and psychobiotics.
I’m Charlotte Cheetham. I am a Gut Health Coach focusing on helping menopausal women how to change their diet and lifestyle so they can return to a life without the constant worry of gut ache, bloating, stress, weight gain, anxiety and mood swings.
I was motivated to become a Gut health Coach after finding myself in hospital with a serious infection. I was on a drip with several antibiotics to heal the infection I had.
When I was discharged from hospital despite having a background in nursing and nutrition I didn’t really understand how to heal my body effectively.
I enrolled with the Health Sciences Academy to learn how to manage my gut health issues. I ended up with a certificate as an Advanced Gut Health Nutritional Advisor. I learnt about the impact of certain foods on my gut and how to change my diet so that I could become free of pain and inflammation.
Having healed myself I realised that over 20% of the female population suffer from IBS and other gut disorders without knowing how to heal themselves. With so much information out in the public domain it’s easy to trial so many different things but never find and answer.
My passion is to help business women suffering from gut issues to reverse their poor gut health so that they can return to a life whereby they can control their diet, health, lifestyle and relationships with work colleagues, friends and family again.
Feeling fit with the ability to function normally at work can be the difference between losing a job and keeping it.
My current goals for my business are to expand to a team of health practitioners helping women how to overcome their gut and menopausal health issues in a calm, positive way that provides high quality help based on the latest scientific research.
When tailoring nutritional plans for the busy lifestyle of professional women it’s imperative to understand where the weaknesses of each individual woman is so that they can be provided with the relevant information to help them to understand their own needs.
This can include the following: Meal prepping for the week in batches so that they can save time during the week when they are busy at work. This also helps prevent time constraints which can lead to meal-skipping or getting fast food to eat.
Ensuring that women have healthy snacks such as hummus, nuts, chopped veggies, or dried fruit is often helpful to prevent snacking on unhealthy foods such as biscuits, cakes or sweets.
As breakfast is often skipped by busy women it can often be helpful to suggest preparing food overnight such as chia seed pudding, yoghurt parfaits or chopped fruit and yoghurt in a pot. This makes food more portable so women can take them to work if they are rushed in the morning.
Preparing easy to carry meals such as wraps, protein-rich salads, boiled eggs, energy bars and fruit can also encourage women to eat healthier meals at lunchtime.
Staying hydrated is also particularly important to help prevent dehydration and loss of concentration. It’s always handy to keep a bottle of water on hand throughout the day. Having a packet of fruit or herbal teas can also help to keep levels of hydration up.
Quick, nutrient-dense meals help to reduce the chance of eating processed foods which helps to reduce gut symptoms. Once these habits are developed it becomes much easier to stave off hunger and healthier food habits start to become the norm. Incorporating these strategies can also give professional women a healthy, balanced diet that helps to reduce stress and keep their bodies fuelled for optimal performance.
Women often have misconceptions around gut health. These can include:
Trying too many different diets without a plan. Constantly switching between diets which can confuse the gut and cause further gut issues and imbalances rather than addressing their specific gut needs and triggers
Taking probiotics, digestive enzymes or other gut health supplements without really understanding how they work. This can lead to worsening symptoms as they may not be addressing the issues that are present.
Only focusing on food and supplements which may not address the underlying cause of their gut problems and may ignore the role that stress plays in gut health.
Eliminating too many foods can also cause problems as cutting out too many foods can lead to depriving the body of essential nutrients to keep the gut healthy.
The importance of sleep can often be ignored. However, poor sleep can disrupt the balance of gut bacteria which can increase gut inflammation and worsening digestive problems.
Short term fixes may not be the answer to healing the gut so after trialling so many different ways of improving health many women will give up and decide that nothing works because they have tried everything.
When helping clients with their gut health every one is different. Every woman has different needs and requires an individualised plan of action to help them to improve their gut health.
One of my recent clients, Rebecca, came to see me as she was feeling depressed because she was suffering from bloating, irregular bowel patterns and anxiety. She was very worried that she could no longer continue doing the job she once loved. She was a PA to a director and was struggling to concentrate at work. She was finding it difficult to remember what she was doing and was losing confidence in her ability to meet her targets at work. She was also irritable at home and was constantly snapping at her partner and teenage children.
She suffered from irritable bowel syndrome and had constant gut ache. She had tried different diets and supplements and had been to see her GP who told her there was nothing wrong with her.
During the 12 week programme we did a deep dive into Rebecca’s diet. We did a daily diary to assess what she was actually eating and drinking daily.
She discovered that she was drinking too many fizzy drinks and too much coffee during the day and having 2 glasses of wine to wind down every evening. This led to a lack of sleep at night due to dehydration.
We addressed her stress issues and she learnt coping techniques for managing stress which also included doing meditation and deep breathing exercises.
She cut out fizzy drinks, reduced her coffee intake and her alcohol intake.
She had a meal plan to eat healthier food and she learnt how to make healthy swaps.
At the end of 12 weeks Rebecca had learnt how to manage her stress levels, how to eat more healthily and had improved her sleep pattern.
She improved her levels of concentration at work, started to enjoy her family relationships again and was able to improve her performance at work.
She is now free from all her previous symptoms and has a much better understanding of how to manage her health and wellbeing.
If I could change one thing about my industry it would be to encourage a more holistic approach to gut health and to encourage the medical world to understand more about diet and lifestyle instead of prescribing pills which can interfere with the gut and potentially cause more gut inflammation in the long term.
I strongly believe that there is too much pharmaceutical control over how women are treated and there needs to be a move towards more availability of healthy food products with much better labelling such as saying whether the food has been processed or is a natural product and what has actually gone into the food so that women can make a more informed choice about what foods they eat. With so much genetically modified food available now there needs to be more education around food safety.
I am already looking ahead with my career in gut health. Over the next 10 years I would like to help more women to gain control of their own health and understand how to help themselves more effectively through diet and lifestyle. I would like to see every town have a clinic to help women to deal with gut health effectively.
I would also like to set up a programme to educate women worldwide to understand how their gut works and how to improve their diet so they can love a longer and healthier life.
Charlotte Cheetham, Gut Health Coach
Charlotte Cheetham is an expert Gut Coach for menopausal women. After suffering from an acute gut infection she had to learn how to manage her gut health to prevent another massive flare up. She has learnt how to manage her nutritional needs to become healthy and happy during the menopause. Her mission is to help as many women as possible to manager thier diet and ifestyle so they. too, can learn how to become healthy and happy again.
