why a vegan diet may harm women’s hormone health and fertility: insights from a hormone expert

Emily Field 00:00:00  Welcome to episode 29 of the Macros Made Easy podcast. Today we have a very special guest joining us, Jenny Mahoney. Jenny is a functional dietitian who specializes in uncovering the root causes of gut, skin, and hormone symptoms. She offers one on one coaching with functional lab testing to help her clients achieve long term success, rather than just covering up symptoms with Band-Aids. Jenny also provides invaluable resources for women transitioning off hormonal birth control, helping them avoid post-birth control symptoms and supporting their bodies return to natural hormone production as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. In today’s episode, we’ll be diving into a topic that is macro adjacent and might be a little controversial in some circles. Why a vegan eating pattern may not be the best choice for hormone health. Jenny will be sharing her expert insights on the potential pitfalls of a vegan diet when it comes to maintaining optimal hormone balance, and why alternatives might be better to support your health goals. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros.

Emily Field 00:01:01  I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you too. Typically, a plant based diet is touted as having amazing health benefits, and while eating a diet that is comprised mostly of plants can absolutely provide a lot of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, leading to improved health markers. I know that you and I might not recommend a complete vegan diet for women who are trying to improve hormone health and fertility. What are some of the main reasons why we might not recommend this?

Jenny Mahoney 00:01:57  Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with it does have more fiber.

Jenny Mahoney 00:02:01  It can be great for gut health, maybe heart health, but as far as hormones are concerned, I worry about lacking certain nutrients. I also worry about blood sugar balance because that is a true foundation for hormone health. And I’m going to paint this picture that I use with my clients all the time. If you picture a three legged stool, you’ve got your thyroid, your adrenals and your ovaries. Those are the three legs. And the floor beneath that stool are your blood sugars. We need to have a steady floor, flat surface for that stool to stand on. Right. Or else it’s going to wobble. And then also we have to have all three legs of that stool. Even so, we need to be supporting thyroid. We need to be supporting adrenals. And the concern that I have is that a lot of the protein sources in a vegan or vegetarian diet also tend to come with heavier carbohydrate content, so it makes blood sugar balance a little bit more difficult.

Emily Field 00:02:56  Yeah, I totally see you on that.

Emily Field 00:02:57  We talk about this a lot with tracking macros. We’re wanting to pair proteins, fats and carbs together, not only because I want you to get your energy needs, your macro needs met by the end of the day. But for that specific reason, by having all three in a meal can have a much better blood sugar balance. I usually say to my clients, it looks like rolling hills instead of a roller coaster all day long. You know what it feels like to be on a roller coaster, and that’s not fun to ride every single day, all day long. So we want to look. We’ll get rolling hills more specifically. So, you know, and the other thing I hear, the blood sugar piece you’re saying, you know, that blood sugar piece is foundational for good thyroid health, good adrenal health and good ovarian health. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Jenny Mahoney 00:03:36  Yes. So it’s so foundational to support balanced hormones. If we don’t have good thyroid health, we don’t have good adrenal health.

Jenny Mahoney 00:03:43  We’re not going to see balance in sex hormones primarily. We’re not going to get good egg quality. We’re not going to see robust progesterone production, which is the hormone that peaks in the second half of the cycle. And that’s your pro gestational hormone. It helps build that healthy uterine lining for a baby to implant.

Emily Field 00:04:00  Do you also see I mean I typically find with my athlete clients who maybe want to lean more into plant based eating, or maybe they come to me with this background. I oftentimes see that they’re not eating enough food. So how does the under eating piece relate to plant based diet, relate to hormone health and supporting hormone health?

Jenny Mahoney 00:04:18  You have to be eating enough in order for hormones to thrive. That is, I would say, even deeper than blood sugar. That is the true number one foundation. And I see that in women all the time, whether they’re following a plant based or they just are unintentionally under consuming, whether it be for weight loss purposes or they’re just busy, or their metabolism has slowed down so much due to stress or history of dieting that they just don’t feel proper hunger cues.

Jenny Mahoney 00:04:45  And then I also wonder too, just from seeing this play out in family members, is the vegan vegetarian diet truly for health reasons, ethical reasons, environmental reasons? Or is it masking an eating disorder? I have seen that firsthand with family members. And so when I have clients that come to me, I actually don’t even take on vegetarian and vegan clients unless they are willing to toy with the idea of incorporating animal products. But we want to dig deeper into what is the true root of why you’re following this diet. If it is truly for beliefs of health, environment, ethical reasons, I’m 100% respectful of that and I don’t push. But we want to make sure that it’s not for other reasons.

Emily Field 00:05:30  Yeah, absolutely. I see that all the time too with like from the perspective of you don’t know how much food you need to support your active lifestyle. We simply put the general public does not understand how much food particularly maybe how many carbs or how much protein is needed to be as active as you want to be.

Emily Field 00:05:46  And so that education piece can be so powerful. But as you know, telling somebody what to do or educating them on something that they should do doesn’t necessarily change behavior. So I’m curious when we’re talking about like honoring a client’s autonomy and autonomy in their food choices, wanting them to eat the foods that they love and enjoy. How do you, from a coaching perspective, how would you nudge them to maybe incorporate more animal products into their diet? I’m sure education is part of that. You’re going to educate them on why, like animal products might be beneficial here. I’m curious what kind of coaching skills you might employ there.

Jenny Mahoney 00:06:20  Absolutely. Education and bringing awareness to why it’s important. And then in my practice, being a functional medicine practitioner, we utilize labs a lot. And so I think when people see on paper in front of them certain nutrient deficiencies and how that may be impacting their health or their symptoms, they might be more inclined to change their diet and begin incorporating more animal products. And we don’t have to go balls to the wall and start eating like chocolate for dinner.

Jenny Mahoney 00:06:43  Like, we could start out with simple things like maybe some bone broth or some dairy or eggs, something just a little bit easier on digestion and something for those that have fear of meats, something just a little bit less quote unquote scary.

Emily Field 00:06:56  How quickly would you expect to see change. I mean I’m sure the lab work, it would take a little while to see change or improvement when you start incorporating animal products back into the diet. But what in particular would be some signs and symptoms that in the short term, like things are working like things are getting better from a hormone perspective.

Jenny Mahoney 00:07:15  Yeah, that’s a great question. It does take a longer time to see nutrient markers move. Sometimes I don’t even see that in the timeline that I work with clients, which is over the course of 4 to 6 months, but symptom improvement, I typically see anywhere from a minimum of four weeks to three months, and it’s usually energy’s increasing bowel movements are better, better sleep, better period symptoms, which those typically take around three months because our eggs have this hundred day cycle.

Jenny Mahoney 00:07:41  So that means the egg that you’re ovulating. This cycle has been maturing over the past 100 days and been being nourished for the past 100 days, so it can take three months to see improvements in those period like symptoms.

Emily Field 00:07:54  So yes, you’re saying, you know, maybe more in the immediate term is going to be more like signs, symptoms that your menstrual cycle is getting more regular. Maybe your PMS is not as extreme. You know, maybe your your cycles are longer or maybe more dependable. That would be a good sign. And I’m sure you know, if you’re working on nutrition as you are as a dietitian, just simply working on blood sugar balance is going to make somebody feel better. And so that’s a sign maybe some confidence boosting there.

Jenny Mahoney 00:08:18  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times I always say the sexism, the simple and functional medicine, I think we can just be drawn to a lot of supplements, like filling a nutrient gaps with supplements and doing these fancy protocols. But while those things can be tools, I think a lot of times we utilize them too soon and we underestimate the power of eating enough, balancing blood sugar, eating an anti-inflammatory diet, mineral replenishment those are the top ones.

Emily Field 00:08:45  So you’re saying maybe those are your four pillars in your practice like that you would probably work on most?

Jenny Mahoney 00:08:49  Yeah, absolutely. Like that’s what we talk about most in the initial consult before we even order lab testing, and then keep them in mind throughout the entire work together.

Emily Field 00:09:00  I agree with that. I mean, there’s so much you can accomplish with just those four things, and you didn’t have to touch a lab. You didn’t have to touch a single supplement. You know, that’s all stuff you can do with whole real food and stuff you have in your kitchen right now. So it’s got to feel very empowering for a client to hear. Especially for somebody who’s like maybe trying to work on their hormone health or even trying to get pregnant, they’re in a deep dive on Reddit and they’re on hundreds of different sites. And maybe they’ve gotten books and supplements and they’re getting targeted ads and things like that. And it feels extremely overwhelming. So when somebody comes along and says, hey, you can do a lot, even just with the structure of your meal at breakfast time, that can feel really empowering.

Jenny Mahoney 00:09:35  Oh, absolutely. There’s so many supplements that I get ads for on Instagram that are just these hormone balancing blends, and I’ve done a couple reviews on them where I feel like these manufacturers or people that create these supplements, they take a little bit of everything and just throw it in a pill. But they don’t have therapeutic doses. It just kind of looks sexy, but it’s not really beneficial.

Emily Field 00:09:55  I wish people would talk about that more, and I’m thrilled that you’re actually taking that to Instagram. But to your point, they might have an active ingredient that does have some research behind it for supporting egg health, for example, or supporting adrenals or, you know, whatever. But it’s not in a therapeutic dose. So people see on the back that it might provide this nutrient that they’ve heard so much about, but it’s in no way maybe the quality or the amount that could be actually effective for what he wanted to be effective for. And that’s why working with a registered dietitian who can discern that and can actually direct you to effective doses and maybe dose it for your body weight or dose it for you know, where you’re at in your cycle, things like that.

Emily Field 00:10:31  That’s super powerful stuff. And probably it’s like another notch for hiring a dietitian over doing it yourself.

Jenny Mahoney 00:10:38  Yeah, we can kind of cherry pick those nutrients that are beneficial for you based on your history, your clinical picture, your lab results. Instead of just taking a little bit of everything thrown into a pill, cherry pick which ones we need in the right doses and get more bang for your buck. Move the needle. Better doing it that way.

Emily Field 00:10:55  I’m curious if you can just paint like a client case study for me, like somebody who maybe came in having maybe a mostly plant based diet, or maybe they were fully vegan, they were struggling. I would like to know what it was that they hired you for. Because we hear this a lot. Like, I want to improve my hormones. Which hormones? Why? Well, how do you know they’re wrong? Like, how do you know they’re off? Like, I would like to know, like, just paint a journey for me of, like, how somebody found you with that maybe background and what you guys were able to accomplish by incorporating maybe more animal based products or, you know, changing their meal structure, things like that.

Jenny Mahoney 00:11:28  Sure. Yeah. Hormone health. Hormone balance is such a buzzword these days. I think so many women come to me saying they want to balance their hormones. And yeah, that can be something we can ultimately work on. But then it’s a lot deeper than that. We end up working on things like the mineral replenishment, the balancing, the blood sugars. But yeah, I had a client come to me because it’s been a couple of years ago. Like I said, I don’t typically search out clients or take on clients that aren’t willing to incorporate animal products, but this is one that I knew personally and was willing to take her on. And she was following a vegetarian diet, so she was willing to incorporate eggs and take a fish oil supplement. And I also think we have to talk about to the spectrum of what a vegan or vegetarian diet can look like. My sister followed a quote unquote vegan diet for a while, but it wasn’t nutritionally well-rounded. It was just a lot of processed food, like she was just avoiding animal products and dairy products.

Jenny Mahoney 00:12:21  So I’m sure there are people that are doing it with much more knowledge and intention with the way that they pair their foods. And then there are others just simply avoiding those foods and ultimately eating a nutritionally void diet. You know what I mean?

Emily Field 00:12:35  Undernourished for sure.

Jenny Mahoney 00:12:36  Undernourished. So this is what that client was doing. She was essentially staying up really late, like 12 to 1 a.m., waking up, not eating breakfast, really not eating much throughout the day at all. And when her boyfriend would go to bed, she would kind of closet eat. And just like the snacking would be out of control, which I always say is not a willpower thing, you know, she got so down on herself like, I have no willpower. I have no control, girlfriend. It’s not willpower. It’s because you’re starving and your blood sugars have not been nourished all day long. And so really the foundational we still didn’t incorporate a lot of people. I shouldn’t say we didn’t incorporate animal products. I think I got her eating more eggs.

Jenny Mahoney 00:13:14  We got her on cod liver oil, some supplements to help fill in some nutrient gaps. But the biggest thing that we did was get her eating enough and getting her balancing her blood sugars and the mineral replenishment. So going back to those pillars, those are the first things we do. And she had come to me for help with chronic diarrhea on and off, and also pain leading up to her periods and like a back cramping and that all resolved with really simple things.

Emily Field 00:13:43  That’s powerful. Do you think. There is one specific thing that changed for her that would make that back pain go away. I’m curious what that link would have been the cause effect there.

Jenny Mahoney 00:13:52  I honestly think it’s the combination of those pillars, those foundations of the not eating enough. The minerals probably played a pretty big role in that. She did comment on how she felt so much better with drinking her mineral mocktails.

Emily Field 00:14:04  Yeah. I wonder if it’s just like the, you know, sheer inflammation of her eating pattern. Like not eating all day and then bingeing at night and then the inflammatory foods that she was having probably like I said undernourished with those nutrients and causing just like really exaggerated PMS symptoms is and that’s kind of what we see with our clients is like, you have a mellow period.

Emily Field 00:14:26  You have a mellow menstrual cycle that is much better than the turbulent symptoms you might expect from somebody who’s not taking care of themselves.

Jenny Mahoney 00:14:33  Once you have those period symptoms, you realize how good you have it whenever you didn’t have symptoms with your period. but I would say going back to that three legged stool, not eating enough and not keeping blood sugars balanced will send your cortisol skyrocketing. So picture that adrenal lega, that stool getting shorter and shorter. And so that was kind of creating an imbalance in her entire hormonal ecosystem.

Emily Field 00:14:56  I love that visual. By the way. I might steal that from you. I’ll definitely give you credit.

Jenny Mahoney 00:15:00  Well I think I stole it from Doctor Jolene Britton. So don’t give me 100% credit for it. I think I added the floor piece of it but yeah. Yeah.

Emily Field 00:15:07  No I think that’s really great because you’re right. I mean, especially right now in a world where you have information at your fingertips and if you are at all interested in this kind of area of health and even some help fixing something on yourself, you’re going to get served ads, and you’re going to get served content that relates to this.

Emily Field 00:15:23  And I am blown away by how many people call themselves a cortisol expert. We’re balancing our cortisol moon face. We’re taking.

Jenny Mahoney 00:15:31  This product.

Emily Field 00:15:32  To support our adrenals. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s just kind of out of control right now. So it feels extremely cruel. And to the average person, they don’t recognize maybe thyroid is a hormone. Cortisol is a hormone. Adrenals produce a hormones like they may not know anything.

Jenny Mahoney 00:15:47  Insulin’s a hormone. Yeah. All of.

Emily Field 00:15:49  It. Yeah. So when people say we have this like little talk in my group coaching program where we talk about discerning against good or bad information that you might see online related to nutrition. And one of the things that we we talk about is hormones. We’re like, should it be balanced? Does it need to be low? Does it need to be high? How would you know? Is this person qualified to be talking about hormones? So yeah, you know it is. It’s just like you said, it’s an education and coaching piece there where you really just simplified it by everyone can recognize a three legged stool and like how that would be really important that all of them have equal legs and a strong, strong floor.

Emily Field 00:16:23  So that’s great. So I see a lot on your social media in particular, where you talk a lot about your gut health or not necessarily your gut health, but you talk about gut health in relation to helping clients. I think it might be surprising for most people to hear that there might be a link between gut health and hormone health. So what is that length, and why do you guys go so hard into the labs related to like stool testing or bacteria testing and things like that?

Jenny Mahoney 00:16:48  Yeah. So the gut really is like the cornerstone of health. And from a fertility perspective, if I have clients that I’ve been trying to conceive for a while and they haven’t been successful, sometimes hidden gut infections can be one of the root causes for that. I recently had a client who had been trying to conceive for six months. She had recently had a miscarriage right before we started working together, and her stool testing revealed a really pretty raging level of H. Pylori, which is an infection in the stomach.

Jenny Mahoney 00:17:17  And we targeted that. We did a couple other things like increasing carbohydrates, supporting minerals. And just in time to wrap up our coaching together, she got her positive pregnancy test. She had her ultrasound recently and baby looks great. So that was a really rewarding one. But there is absolutely a link to fertility. And as far as hormones, we excrete hormones through our gut. It’s considered phase three detox, Phase one and two happen in the liver, and then we excrete excess estrogen through our stool. So there’s actually a marker on the stool test called beta glucan trace. It’s an enzyme that can essentially unpackaged estrogen in the guts. If you think your liver is working really hard to put this used up estrogen in a box with the bow on it, it gets sent down the slide into your gut. This little enzyme, if it’s high, it’s like a pair of scissors. It comes in and snips that lets that estrogen back out, recirculate. And that can lead to estrogen dominant symptoms, primarily like breast tenderness, heavy and painful periods, PMS symptoms.

Emily Field 00:18:21  Wow. Yeah. I mean, that’s a really simple cause and effect right there. And a great example. Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that the average person would necessarily recognize that their gut health would be related to their fertility or related to their hormone health. But it’s certainly something that if you’re in the holistic space, you’re definitely talking about. So, I mean, would you say that people are hesitant to take those labs, or are they kind of in a position when they get to you? They’re like, yeah, sure, I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.

Jenny Mahoney 00:18:46  I think the people that I attract are more holistically minded and more open. There are certainly people that you kind of have to be in the right headspace. You know, I attract a certain type of people that are wanting to get to the root cause, and And I think it beats, you know, jumping straight into IUI or IVF. That’s going to be way more expensive. Yeah. I mean, functional medicine does come with an investment, but much less than those procedures, especially if we can get you pregnant naturally without having to go through that, because that can be not only expensive, but also pretty emotionally expensive as well.

Emily Field 00:19:17  Yeah, emotionally expensive for sure. Yeah. So I mean, you just shared an awesome story where you and your 4 to 6 months of working with this person was able to see a positive pregnancy test. Baby is healthy and, you know, have a healthy pregnancy. Are there any other stories that you have that’s like, especially rewarding because of the changes that you’ve made in that person’s diet or helped them making their diet resulted in something like that they’re really been looking forward to.

Jenny Mahoney 00:19:41  Yeah, there’s another recent pregnancy, one that just makes my heart swell every time I think about it. She has a bit of a history. She, I think, lost her period back in high school because she decided to go on a diet and was under eating and over exercising. And it’s something we call hypothalamic amenorrhea, which essentially you lose your period due to over exercising and under eating. And her mom was into the functional medicine stuff, so she happened to take her to a functional medicine doctor who really did her dirty by putting her on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

Jenny Mahoney 00:20:15  So essentially what that does is shuts down your own hormone production and just gives you hormones. It’s better than birth control. And it’s biochemical like the forms of hormones that we would make. But it’s still not allowing her body to try and make these hormones on her own. So I call it like natural birth control. And she was on that for ten years, and she was 25 when she came to me and her husband were thinking about eventually wanting to start a family, and she had gone to another functional provider to talk about her case, that functional provider. When she told her that she had been running a lot, she said, oh, that’s great. It’s great for cardiovascular health. And when she told me that, I was like, girlfriend, we’re going to stop all exercise. You’re not eating enough. You are not in a place to be doing that type of exercise. And so what we really did was reduced exercise down to like walking 30 minutes per day, if that. And she was eating so little, we really I gave her a step by step plan to increase her calories slowly so that her body didn’t go into a shock and, you know, start packing on pounds super quickly because that’s really in mind if when you start to do that, it took probably six months to get her to a place where she was meeting her nutrition needs and able to start incorporating exercise again.

Jenny Mahoney 00:21:27  I think around the 3 to 4 month mark, she got her period back and then her and her husband weren’t trying, but they weren’t not trying. And I unexpectedly received a chat message from her a couple of months ago with a positive pregnancy test. And now she is, gosh, 20 weeks pregnant, just had her anatomy scan and she’s having a baby girl and they’re just over the moon, she said on our call last week. Baby made by us. But also Jenny. Yeah, me. That just made me, made me laugh. That is really.

Emily Field 00:21:54  Cute. Maybe the baby will be Jenny.

Jenny Mahoney 00:21:57  Is that if it’s a girl? Oh, it is a girl, so maybe it will. That’s Abby’s middle name. Give me that.

Emily Field 00:22:02  It’s pretty shocking, though, to think that what happened when you were a teen, and the advice that you got from a trusted provider when you were a teen is potentially impacting your health into your 20s, 30s maybe even 40. So, yeah, I mean, pretty fascinating.

Emily Field 00:22:17  But to your point, like the bioidentical hormones were masking her own hormone making or like taking over that function. So she didn’t even realize there was a problem with her eating or exercise because she was getting a period right. She was getting a withdrawal bleed, and that’s probably it. Exactly. So I know we’re talking a lot about women who are at like the age where they might be wanting to have babies or interested in their fertility. But do you have anything to add about why a strict vegan diet or a, you know, strict plant based diet might not be the best for someone who’s maybe over 40 or into their 50s and 60s?

Jenny Mahoney 00:22:51  I would say protein. The difficulty to get adequate protein, which is so necessary for maintaining muscle mass, which is so necessary for metabolism. And in the menopause phase, a lot of women complain of weight gain, especially in the belly region. And one of the best things that you can do to kind of counteract that is by eating plenty of protein. And I think that’s really hard to do on a vegan diet.

Emily Field 00:23:15  I would agree, I think, too, you have digestive challenges that come with age. You’re a little bit less efficient about absorbing nutrients from your food and breaking that all down, particularly in the stomach. And we need good stomach acid to break down protein to get those nutrients such as B12. And so this is something that we see. We see fatigue and low energy as we age. And I wonder a lot of times is it they’re not eating enough calories, they’re not eating enough protein? Or is it simply as you age, you know, that digestive capacity really declines. So, you know, I’m seeing that too with my clients. My average age is 45 for people that work with me, and they’re mostly women. So I’m usually on the other end of the hormone conversation where people are struggling with perimenopause symptoms and entering menopause and having a lot of fear around that. So I think using that three legged stool imagery can be really helpful here too, because we do need to care about a thyroid health.

Emily Field 00:24:09  We do need to care about our adrenal health, especially as we transfer those functions away from the ovaries and over to the adrenals as we shut down the ovaries as we head into menopause. So absolutely, you said the protein, you know, digestive capacity. I’m also thinking bone health. There’s got to be I mean, from the perspective of like animal based proteins and animal based foods, there’s going to be more vitamins, minerals to support great bone health, more so than a plant based diet.

Jenny Mahoney 00:24:34  Specifically vitamin K2, which we get vitamin K one through the leafy green vegetables, but we get vitamin K two through dairy animal products. And that is a mineral that helps to make sure that our calcium is going to our bones and not our soft tissue. So from a standpoint of bone density, but also heart health because we don’t want calcium deposits in our arteries.

Emily Field 00:24:58  Yeah. That’s a one that we are not I don’t know that conventional medicine doctors are talking about that a lot, but we certainly see it when we do a hair mineral tissue analysis in our practice.

Emily Field 00:25:07  And so we’re able to see really quickly is that calcium where it’s supposed to be or is it being driven out into the soft tissues. You need to put it back where it belongs. Exactly.

Jenny Mahoney 00:25:16  Bone health is not just about calcium. So much more. So many synergistic minerals, which is not the case for all the nutrients. They all work synergistically.

Emily Field 00:25:24  So I’m curious, Jenny. Are there any particular nutrients or minerals that would be missing from a vegan diet that you’d be worried about from a hormone perspective with your clients?

Jenny Mahoney 00:25:34  I think that the two that get the main press are vitamin B12 and iron, but there are others that aren’t particularly talked about, specifically choline, vitamin A, and zinc. So we’ll start with the ion conversation. I think so many vegan women that’s on their radar. They get tested for iron in their low. Their doctor will recommend taking iron supplements. But there’s more to this iron picture. In order to properly utilize iron and mobilize it throughout the body, we have to have adequate copper and adequate vitamin A.

Jenny Mahoney 00:26:06  Essentially, those two nutrients help to shuttle it around so that it doesn’t get stuck in tissues. When iron gets stuck in tissues that can feed infections and fuel inflammation when inflammation is high. We’re not going to make adequate progesterone, just kind of tying that into the hormone piece. So typically women will get out of the copper on a vegan vegetarian diet. But vitamin A is really, really hard to get. And I know wheels might be spending thinking, okay, well, I eat, you know, red and orange vegetables like carrots. Isn’t that vitamin A? It’s a pro vitamin A, so the carotenoids, they can be converted to vitamin A, but you’re not going to be able to get preformed vitamin A or retinol from a plant based diet. We get those through animal products, and that vitamin A is so important for making sure that we’re keeping the iron in motion. So I think with the iron supplements, that can be detrimental if you’re taking iron, but it’s essentially getting stuck in tissues because you don’t have this iron recycling system supported.

Jenny Mahoney 00:27:06  And you might get a repeat blood lab and it still shows you’re anemic. So you just keep taking iron. But ultimately it’s just getting shuttled to like, storage places like the liver and the spleen when we really need to be supporting that iron recycling.

Emily Field 00:27:19  So you’re saying the the plant based version of this nutrient is a precursor? It’s just not it’s not an active it’s not an active form. So somebody might do a quick Google and they say, well I need vitamin A. And you’re going to get a lot of like plant based sources. But you’re saying it’s not the active usable, you know, vitamin A that we need.

Jenny Mahoney 00:27:37  Exactly. And there are genetic factors and the ability for people to convert Ro vitamin A or the precursor into the active vitamin A. And interestingly enough, the more carotenoids you eat, the more pro vitamin or precursor that you eat. The conversion rate decreases. So eating more not might not necessarily be the answer. It might even make it worse.

Emily Field 00:27:58  Wow. Interesting. So you would say maybe like a doctor might prescribe an iron supplement if you told them that you were vegan or plant based.

Emily Field 00:28:07  And why would that be?

Jenny Mahoney 00:28:09  Typically that is one of the nutrients that is low on a vegan diet. It’s hard to get adequate iron through a plant based diet. So we can have the conversation about heme iron versus non heme iron. Heme iron is what you’re going to find in animal products. Non-human iron is what you’re going to find in plant based products. And the absorb ability, or the bioavailability of those two types of iron is very different. Whereas the heme iron has a much better absorption rate like 25%. And I believe the non iron is like 2.5%. So it’s really difficult to get adequate iron. On a vegan or vegetarian diet.

Emily Field 00:28:45  How would that impact fertility or hormone health if you’re not getting great iron?

Jenny Mahoney 00:28:50  Iron is just involved in so many different enzymatic reactions. It really impacts thyroid health. So going back to that, that leg on that stool, I would say if I had to pick one thing, it would be a big factor for thyroid and also inflammation. Like I said, if that iron’s getting stuck in tissues and can feed inflammation, you’re not going to see robust progesterone production, which is essential for fertility and conception.

Emily Field 00:29:15  I love that all of this, this whole conversation and nutrition in general is just a comprised of Venn diagrams. Everything overlaps with everything else.

Jenny Mahoney 00:29:22  Exactly.

Emily Field 00:29:23  We’re no longer in a world where we silo. This is diabetes care. This is cardiovascular care. This is hormonal care. They’re all literally together, you know, everything foundationally kind of comes back together. So you talked about vitamin A, you talked about iron and the differences between plant based primarily vegan diet versus like one have animal products any other vitamins and minerals that would be of concern if you were vegan or mostly plant based.

Jenny Mahoney 00:29:47  I have two more, so pulling is a big one for prenatal nutrition and we get primarily from eggs. I think 3 or 4 eggs would give you your entire daily dose of choline for being pregnant. Or choline. Recommended dose doubles whenever you’re pregnant, and it plays a huge role in baby’s brain development and prevention of neural tube defects. So choline is a really, really important one. If you have fertility or conception and pregnancy on your radar.

Jenny Mahoney 00:30:13  And then zinc is another really big one. We get zinc through animal products. We can also get it through plants like nuts and seeds. But the problem with these is same goes for iron. These foods contain phytase or phytic acid, which is you can call it an anti nutrient. It really inhibits absorption. And zinc is so important for egg and sperm quality. It can support insulin utilization. So think blood sugars, which is that floor beneath our stool. And it’s also really important for thyroid health and the conversion of inactive thyroid hormone to the active form that our cells can use to drive our metabolism. Yeah.

Emily Field 00:30:46  I mean, all sounds extremely important. I love my zinc contained in oysters. I probably have oysters once a week.

Jenny Mahoney 00:30:52  Yes. And that’s one of the things if you’re concerned about the animal reasons or ethical reasons, I’ve read that oysters don’t have a central nervous system, so that might be something like they can’t feel pain, so that might be something that someone following this diet might be open to doing oysters or a desiccated oyster supplement to help get zinc.

Jenny Mahoney 00:31:10  And it also provides iodine, selenium, some other really important minerals.

Emily Field 00:31:14  That’s so good to know. I mean you said earlier in the episode how you might take baby steps and nudge people to incorporate a few more animal products. I think education here is, you know, key for opening that door, but then obviously using your coaching skills and, you know, leaning into a client’s autonomy, that can help really make that a habit like a regular habit in their week. But I can certainly understand that it might be scary to change. But if you want something bad enough, particularly if you want to feel that much better, I do feel so strongly that a well-rounded diet, including lots of plants and lots of variety and animal products, is the best one for particularly menstruating women and women who want to support their hormone, health and fertility. Yeah I agree. Well thank you so much for being here Jenny. It was really great to talk to you. You really just brought a depth to this conversation that I wouldn’t be able to offer because I don’t primarily work around this stuff.

Emily Field 00:32:03  So we’re really colored in a lot of details for me. So I would love for you to share with the audience here where they can find you if they want to work with you. How would they do that?

Jenny Mahoney 00:32:11  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored that you thought of me to do this. And I hang out on Instagram at Jenny Mahoney and my website is Jenny Mahoney Guardian.

Emily Field 00:32:21  Com perfect. And I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes as well.

Jenny Mahoney 00:32:25  Perfect.

Emily Field 00:32:25  Thanks. Have a great one.

Jenny Mahoney 00:32:27  Thanks. You too.

Emily Field 00:32:28  Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me at Emily Fields so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way. If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at Emily field.com.

Emily Field 00:32:56  Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.