Herlistic Nutrition

Herlistic Nutrition Clinical Nutritionist
Integrative Oncology
Nutritional Cancer Care
Women’s Health

28/07/2026

Why does cholesterol often rise after menopause? It’s not just because of age... it’s because oestrogen changes the way your liver works.

Many women are surprised when their cholesterol increases despite eating well and exercising. The missing piece is often estrogen.

Oestrogen plays an important role in how your liver regulates cholesterol.

🩺 Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes:

✨ Oestrogen increases LDL receptors on liver cells, allowing your liver to remove more LDL cholesterol from your bloodstream.

✨ It also suppresses PCSK9, a protein that breaks down LDL receptors. With fewer PCSK9 proteins, more LDL receptors remain available to clear cholesterol from the blood.

✨ Oestrogen helps regulate apolipoproteins (Apo proteins)—the proteins that transport cholesterol through your body. It supports a healthier balance of these cholesterol-carrying particles, including ApoA the main protein in HDL (“good cholesterol”), which helps return excess cholesterol to the liver for recycling or removal.

✨ Research also suggests oestrogen helps suppress the liver’s production of ApoA a genetically determined cholesterol particle linked with increased cardiovascular risk. As oestrogen declines after menopause, Lp(a) levels may increase in some women.

As oestrogen levels fall during menopause:
➡️ LDL receptors decrease.
➡️ PCSK9 activity may increase.
➡️ LDL cholesterol stays in the bloodstream longer.
➡️ HDL function may become less efficient.
➡️ Lp(a) may rise in some women.
➡️ Cardiovascular risk gradually increases.

This is why menopause is more than a reproductive transition—it’s a metabolic transition.

Rather than focusing on cholesterol alone, it’s important to look at the bigger picture:

❤️ Liver health
🩸 Insulin resistance
🦠 Gut health
💪 Muscle mass
🔥 Inflammation
🌿 Lifestyle

Understanding why your cholesterol changes empowers you to support your health with targeted nutrition, movement, and evidence-based strategies.

💬 Did you know oestrogen has such a powerful influence on cholesterol metabolism? Let me know in the comments.



Your liver is one of the busiest organs in your body—it is working around the clock processing, nutrients, toxins, medic...
26/07/2026

Your liver is one of the busiest organs in your body—it is working around the clock processing, nutrients, toxins, medications, hormones and regulating cholesterol.

When people hear the word cholesterol, they often think it’s something they simply eat. But did you know your liver actually produces 70–80% of your body’s cholesterol because it’s essential for life?

Cholesterol is needed to:
✨ Build every cell membrane
✨ Produce hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and cortisol
✨ Make vitamin D
✨ Produce bile acids that help digest fats and absorb fat-soluble vitamins.

But your liver doesn’t just make cholesterol—it also regulates it.

It packages cholesterol into lipoproteins (LDL and HDL), removes excess cholesterol from your bloodstream, and converts cholesterol into bile so it can be eliminated through your digestive system.

When the liver is under pressure from insulin resistance, fatty liver, chronic inflammation, excess alcohol, or a nutrient-poor diet, this finely tuned system may become less efficient.

That’s why cholesterol isn’t just a “heart issue”—it’s often a reflection of your overall metabolic health.

Supporting your liver means supporting your whole body.

🥗 Nourish it with fibre-rich whole foods.
🫒 Include healthy fats.
🦠 Care for your gut microbiome.
🏃 Stay physically active.
😴 Prioritise restorative sleep.
🍷 Be mindful of alcohol intake.

Rather than fearing cholesterol, it’s worth understanding the remarkable organ responsible for keeping it in balance.

💬 Were you surprised to learn that your liver makes most of your cholesterol? Let me know in the comments!

“In my next post I’ll explain why cholesterol often rises in menopause-and why oestrogen has much more to do with it than most people realise.”



23/07/2026

Colore**al cancer is no longer considered a disease that only affects older adults. Doctors are seeing more cases in people under 50, making early awareness more important than ever. While many symptoms can have harmless causes, ignoring persistent changes can delay diagnosis and treatment when early action matters most.

Warning signs include blood in the stool, ongoing re**al bleeding, unexplained weight loss, frequent abdominal pain, persistent bloating, changes in bowel habits lasting several weeks, narrow stools, fatigue, or feeling that your bowel never fully empties. These symptoms do not automatically mean cancer, but they should never be dismissed or explained away without medical evaluation. A healthcare professional can determine whether further testing is needed.

Experts also encourage younger adults to know their family history because having close relatives with colore**al cancer or certain inherited conditions can increase risk. Maintaining a healthy weight, staying physically active, limiting processed meats, avoiding smoking, and reducing excessive alcohol intake may help lower the risk.

**alCancer

23/07/2026

Some of the bacteria living in your gut can manufacture vitamin D on their own. Not from sunlight, not from your diet, made directly inside you by microbes.

A recent trial found that magnesium feeds the specific bacteria that do this, though whether it helps you depends on a gene most people have never been tested for.

Two gut bacteria, Carnobacterium maltaromaticum and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, can produce vitamin D directly in the gut. In mice, that locally made vitamin D suppresses the development of colore**al cancer. Magnesium is already known to raise circulating vitamin D, and magnesium handling in the body is controlled in part by a gene called TRPM7. So the question was direct: does giving people magnesium increase these two bacteria, and does the answer depend on their TRPM7 genotype.

The trial I referenced was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, precision-based randomized trial. 240 people were randomized to magnesium or placebo, with 226 having usable microbiome data from re**al swabs. That precision design, randomizing while accounting for genotype, is what makes the result trustworthy rather than a fishing expedition.

In people with the functional version of the TRPM7 gene, magnesium worked as predicted. C. maltaromaticum rose about 23 percent on magnesium while falling about 6 percent on placebo. F. prausnitzii rose about 2 percent while falling about 2 percent on placebo. The effect on C. maltaromaticum was strong enough to survive correction for multiple comparisons, which is a real bar that many microbiome findings do not clear.

The effect was genotype-dependent. In people carrying a TRPM7 missense variant, magnesium did not help, and actually decreased C. maltaromaticum compared to placebo. Same supplement, opposite direction, depending on a gene most people have never heard of and have never been tested for. This is a preview of where nutrition is heading: the honest answer to "does magnesium help" for X (though magensium serves baseline functions in all people) is increasingly "it depends on your genotype."

The link from these bacteria to vitamin D synthesis to colore**al cancer protection was established in mice, not in these humans. This trial measured bacterial abundance in people. It did not measure gut vitamin D production, and it did not measure cancer. What it shows is that magnesium can move a human microbiome in the direction of a mechanism that, in animals, is protective. Whether that translates into lower cancer risk in people is a reasonable hypothesis and an open question, not a settled result.

The strong, human-tested finding here is that magnesium can meaningfully reshape the gut microbiome, and that the response is gene-dependent. The cancer angle is a promising downstream hypothesis riding on solid mouse mechanism, worth watching but not worth claiming. This is a case where the mechanism is genuinely exciting and the responsible move is to be precise about which links are proven in people and which are not.

Magnesium moved a human gut microbiome toward a cancer-protective mechanism, but only in people with the right version of a magnesium-handling gene.

Sun et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2025, DOI 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.011

18/07/2026

☀️ Vitamin D & Melanoma: A More Complex Story!

Vitamin D is produced in the skin following sun exposure, but it also acts as a hormone involved in immune regulation, inflammation, and cellular signalling pathways relevant to cancer biology.

While excessive UV exposure and sunburns are strongly linked to melanoma risk, melanoma is a complex disease influenced by more than sun exposure alone.

Some studies have found that lower vitamin D levels in people diagnosed with melanoma are associated with thicker melanomas and poorer outcomes. This does not mean vitamin D prevents or treats melanoma, but it highlights vitamin D status as one piece of a much bigger picture.

Melanoma is influenced by multiple factors, including:

🛡️ Immune function
🔥 Chronic inflammation
⚙️ Metabolic health
🧬 Hormonal and cellular signalling pathways
🌱 Environmental influences

Our modern lifestyle has also changed dramatically, with more time indoors, less natural daylight exposure, increased artificial light, environmental exposures, and rising metabolic dysfunction — all factors that may influence immune health and cellular balance.

The goal is not to seek excessive sun exposure. The goal is balance:

☀️ Avoid sunburn
🧴 Practise sensible sun protection
🩸 Optimise vitamin D status
🥗 Support metabolic and immune health

Melanoma is not a single-factor disease — understanding the whole picture matters.

This information is for education only and does not replace medical advice



☀️

10/07/2026

Everyday we are exposed to thousands of chemicals through food, water, air, personal care products and home environment.

Our bodies have remarkable detoxification systems, however reducing unnecessary exposure of potential harmful chemicals and toxic foods can reduce cancer risk.

No single exposure causes cancer on its own but long-term cumulative exposure may contribute to disease.





07/07/2026

EGCG (epigallocatechin) found in green tea has attracted significant interest in integrative oncology because influences multiple biological pathways involved in cancer development and progression.

One of the reasons we value EGCG is that cancer is rarely driven by a single pathway. Instead of targeting just one mechanism, compounds like EGCG target multiple.

Research suggests EGCG may help:

➡️Promote apoptosis (programmed cell death)
➡️Inhibit angiogenesis
➡️Reduce inflammation through inhibition of NF-kB
➡️Decrease activation of P13K/Akt and MAPK pathways
➡️Reduce metastatic potential by inhibiting MMPs

Emerging evidence suggests it enhances effectiveness of conventional treatment, whilst helping to protect healthy tissues from oxidative damage.

Note: High doses of concentrated extracts have been associated with rare cases of liver toxicity. Supplementation should always be individualised and supervised.

The goal in integrative cancer care is not to replace conventional medicine, but to compliment it!

Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice.





10/06/2026

Glamp camp kitchen weekend away.
Swim sistas loved my savoury oats.
It warmed and nourished our bellies after our swim. 🍲

Thank you .australia for the video



❤️



10/06/2026

Weekend in the glamp camp kitchen.
My Swim sisters love my warming savoury oats after a swim.


🏊‍♀️




16/04/2026

You don't have a DAO problem.

You have a methylation problem wearing a histamine costume.

DAO gets all the attention. Low-histamine diet, DAO supplements before every meal — most practitioners stop there. But DAO handles maybe 15–30% of your histamine. In your gut only.

HNMT is doing 50–80% of the work. It clears histamine from your brain, your tissues, your cells. And it doesn't run on copper or B6.

It runs on SAMe.

Which means if your methylation cycle is sluggish — MTHFR, chronic stress, bad sleep, depleted B vitamins — HNMT has no fuel. Histamine stacks up in your tissues while your DAO test comes back completely normal.

That's why you can eat a perfect low-histamine diet and still wake up with a splitting headache.

The enzyme that matters most isn't the one being sold to you.

Comment DRAIN and I'll send you the link.

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