The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

Hair Loss, Dry Skin & Brittle Nails—Is It Your Hormones?

• Susie Garden • Episode 298

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If your beauty routine suddenly isn’t cutting it—no matter how many serums, supplements, or salon visits—you’re not imagining it. Hormones could be behind the changes you’re seeing in your hair, skin, and nails.

In this episode, I break down the biochemical changes happening in your 40s and beyond, and how they impact your outer glow. This is beauty meets biology—with real, practical strategies to nourish your body from within.

Tune in to learn:
 ✨ Why oestrogen and thyroid shifts affect hair thickness and skin hydration
 ✨ The top nutrient deficiencies that show up as beauty issues
 ✨ What hormonal hair loss really looks like (and how it differs from other types)
 ✨ Foods and lifestyle habits to bring your hormones—and your glow—back into balance
 ✨ How to listen to your beauty symptoms instead of masking them

🎧 Listen now and don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and share!

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Are you a woman feeling stressed, flat and experiencing the challenges of perimenopause or menopause?

It’s time to reclaim your youthful energy, radiance and self-assurance (and your ideal weight).

I’m here to help with my proven method.

Here's how I can support you -


1. Hit your health and wellbeing goals this year, balance your hormones and lose weight with your own personalised protocol, based on your body's biochemistry. Sounds awesome right!! Book a free 30 minute Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me so we can discuss your health and wellbeing goals and also see how I might be able to support you. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book your call here. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

2. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@the.perimenopause.path

3. Join the waitlist for my innovative NEW 8 week group program, In Your Skin™️, for women in perimenopause and post-menopause who want effective solutions to manage skin changes at this time of life.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm your host, susie Garden, perimenopause naturopath and weight loss nutritionist, and this week's episode is one.

Speaker 1:

I've been getting a lot of questions about this lately from people having peri-weight loss assessments, and that is all about skin and hair and nails and their health and how they're impacted with the hormonal changes of perimenopause. If you're a woman over 40 and you've been noticing more hair in your hairbrush, for example, dry, flaky skin, no matter how much water you drink, and nails that are splitting, peeling, then this episode is especially for you. Today, we're diving into the surprising connection between your beauty concerns and your hormones, and we'll explore why your outer glow is often a reflection of your inner biochemistry and hormone balance, and I'll be sharing some practical, nourishing strategies to help support beautiful, healthy hair, skin that glows and strong nails, naturally. So let's get started. So firstly, I wanted to talk about why your beauty signals, if we want to call them that, or let's say why the health of your hair, nails and skin can be hormone clues. So let's have a look at it. Our bodies are constantly giving us signals, and changes in your hair, skin and nails can be an early whisper that your hormones are shifting. Many of you who are listening would have experienced pregnancy and notice that the surge in hormones that you get in pregnancy means your hair, your skin, your nails can be luscious while you're pregnant and then afterwards, in postpartum period, you can get the hair fall.

Speaker 1:

In particular is what a lot of women experience, and it's kind of a similar thing in perimenopause, because our levels of estrogen, progesterone and actually even thyroid hormones can change and they can change quite dramatically in some women and these shifts can impact our collagen production, our skin hydration, our skin elasticity, our hair follicle health and our nail growth cycles and the strength of our nails. You know, if we look at estrogen, for example, it plays a huge role in skin thickness. Who knew right? It's so funny to me, as I work in this space now, that when I did all of my training, both as a nurse and as a naturopath and nutritionist, really the only time estrogen and progesterone were talked about was in the context of menstrual cycles talked about was in the context of menstrual cycles briefly in menopause, but really it was just all about the fertility aspects and there was not any information about how the estrogen impacts multiple body systems and this includes our skin. So it plays a huge role in skin thickness and moisture retention and as your estrogen declines, your skin can become drier, can become thinner, it can become more prone to fine lines, it can become itchy. It also affects this estrogen. That is, also affects how well your hair grows, how long it stays in its growth phase. And if you add in, as well as the hormonal changes, things like nutrient depletion from chronic stress, for example, poor sleep, restrictive dieting, gut issues that was the other one I was going to mention so many women I speak to doing their peri-weight loss assessments are experiencing whether it's IBS, whether it's chronic constipation for some women it's chronic diarrhea that has just become part of their normal or bloating that, again, people just put up with or they just think, oh, this is normal for me. No, this kind of disruption to the gut health really will impact your nutrient absorption, so it's really important to get that addressed. So when you think about all of these things that happen to us in our, let's say, our forties and fifties the stress, the poor sleep, if you know, if you're experiencing the weight gain that many women do, then you start restrictive dieting and it's no wonder that our outer appearance starts to reflect the internal changes that are happening beneath the surface right. So let's talk a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

I particularly want to talk about the hair loss. If you have seen images of me, you know that I have very long hair. I actually have very, very healthy hair. It's quite long. It goes down to pretty much I'm just feeling it now yeah, my waist, and I've had it like that for quite some time. And if anyone has long hair, you know you do actually lose a fair bit of hair when you wash your hair in the hairbrush, that kind of thing. That's because the hair that's long is older. But if you've been kind of noticing hair on your pillow, that's kind of unusual hair fall. If you find that the fallout in the shower when you're washing hair is quite a lot like a handful. That's probably unusual. Or if you're noticing you're having to clean out your brush more often, then know that you're not alone, because this does happen to a lot of women in perimenopause and postmenopause.

Speaker 1:

And other ways that this hormonal hair loss can show up is that you can get diffuse thinning across the scalp rather than patches. I mean patches can happen, but generally it's going to be more like the thinning across the scalp. You might find that your part is getting wider, you might find that your hair is receding a little at the temples and you may get a loss of volume, especially at the crown of the head. Now, these sort of signs are typically due to a drop in estrogen and progesterone, which help keep hair in the growing phase. At the same time, you have androgens like DHEA and testosterone, which may become relatively more dominant, which can shrink hair follicles and lead to finer and thinner strands of hair.

Speaker 1:

And you may also in particular you may have a diagnosed thyroid condition. If you do, you probably know that there's hair loss associated with hypothyroidism or a low functioning thyroid. But hypothyroidism, which is more common in women over 40 and in many women is undiagnosed. That can also contribute to hair thinning and dryness as well. So if you're experiencing this, it is really important just to make sure you're having a discussion with your healthcare professional. Don't just ignore it, because if you haven't had your thyroid gland thoroughly checked out and if you're experiencing fatigue, if you're experiencing weight gain maybe you feel cold when you shouldn't those sort of signs can be signs that the thyroid is a bit out and that is something we can test for in the blood. So don't ignore those kinds of symptoms. Even though it's hair and a lot of people would see that as being beauty, I guess, or the hair health is about beauty it really can be signs that there's something not quite right in the body. So please don't ignore that.

Speaker 1:

Now, in terms of our nails, nails are another great barometer of your internal health. So the kind of signs we can see in the nail sometimes are splitting in the nail, that they grow really slowly or they get to a certain length and then they just break, peeling, developing ridges. Nails that are kind of exhibiting these sorts of signs. You know it can be a sign that you're low in certain nutrients like biotin is a big one zinc, iron or protein Estrogen also supports circulation and nutrient delivery to extremities like your fingertips. So when those levels dip, the nails can weaken. Or if you are again, if your diet is just not quite right for you, then, yeah, you'll get weaker nails, soft nails, tissue paper Obviously, if you're using products on your nails like acrylic, that will absolutely cause soft nails, whatever your age. So we're not looking for signs that are caused by like a chemical damage. We're looking for signs when perhaps previously you had no issues with your nails and then all of a sudden nails are quite weak.

Speaker 1:

I have relatively long nails and they are my nails. If you've ever seen my videos and things, you might think, oh, she got acrylic nails. No, I don't. These are my nails and they've always been strong. But I also nourish them with some other nutrients, which I'll get to shortly.

Speaker 1:

And dry skin that's the other one that I mentioned before. So dry skin is one of the most common perimenopause symptoms and here's why. So estrogen promotes sebum production. You may have heard of sebum. Sebum is the skin's natural moisturizer. So when you have less estrogen, you have less oil. You have drier skin. It also regulates collagen production and elastin, and these keep your skin firm and plump.

Speaker 1:

So if you feel like, oh, my skincare is just not cutting it anymore, it might be time to look at your hormone health rather than just trying other products. If you're not addressing what's going on in the body, it doesn't really matter what you're putting on the body. Okay, you really, and particularly skin. You really want to be able to address underlying causes of this dryness of skin, and we know that it's really common in women and peri and post-menopause. So we can address that.

Speaker 1:

And that's actually one of the reasons that I called my signature program. It's called the Glow Protocol, and one of the reasons I called it that is because when I started doing it with women clients, they almost all were coming in after a couple of weeks on the program and saying, oh my gosh, my work colleagues are telling me that my skin is glowing. And I'm like, oh, that's the first time I heard it. I thought, oh, yeah, whatever. And then I heard it again and again, and again. And so I know for sure that what you do in terms of managing hormones and managing your nutrition makes a massive difference in the way your skin looks.

Speaker 1:

And I haven't really even touched on hormonal breakouts, but that kind of comes under the same banner as what I've been speaking about, because if it's hormonally driven, then we can really help to support managing that with food. Now, occasionally I may ask for you to take a supplement, for example, because once you hit 50, collagen production really drops and it can be a little difficult to manage that without supplementation. So that is something that I will often say to my female clients over 50, if we're not really getting the response that we want in the skin, then collagen, particularly marine collagen, can be a fantastic supplemental support. But again, relying on supplements is not the ideal. You still need to look after your nutrition. So let's talk about this.

Speaker 1:

So what foods are great for hormone balance and therefore going to support healthy hair, skin and nails from the inside out? So here are some of my top, my go-to nutrients and foods. So protein would be one of the higher level ones that I would be looking at, and as a woman in perimenopause and postmenopause, you're really looking at 1.2 grams per kilo of body weight of protein per day, and I'll just do a quick calculation. So if you weigh, say, 65 kilos, that means you need around 78 grams of protein per day, which is quite a lot If you consider that if you use a protein powder, so that's a pretty high concentration of protein. Generally, a serve of protein, depending on the brand, will give you between 24 and 26 grams of protein. So that's only covering barely a third sorry, barely a yeah, barely a third of that 78 grams. So you need to be having a real focus on protein at this time of life, and that can be plant-based or animal-based proteins. And you know, even things like your hair and nails are actually made of keratin, which is a protein. So you definitely need to be including a wide range of proteins in your diet.

Speaker 1:

My other top of something I often ask women over 50 to supplement contain omega-3s, but you do need to be mindful about including them. Also, you're looking at things like hemp oil, flaxseed oil, flaxseeds ground flaxseeds, that is. They're also really good sources of omega-3 fatty acids. And the beauty of the omega-3s they're anti-inflammatory and they keep the skin supple and smooth and they do help with even things like dry eyes. If you have dry eyes, then omega-3s can be really good at addressing the underlying cause of dry eyes.

Speaker 1:

One of my top nutrients for skin, hair and nail health is zinc. So zinc is found in things like pumpkin seeds or pepitas. Same thing can be found in some of your animal meats lentils some of your animal meats lentils um gosh. So many foods contain zinc, which is great, because we need zinc. We use in about 300 different chemical reactions in our bodies and these are really easy to find like just go into google and, just you know, pop in zinc containing foods or whatever and you will get a whole list of them. But yeah, these are crucial for skin healing and for hair follicle health.

Speaker 1:

Biotin so biotin is a B vitamin and it's found in things like eggs, sweet potatoes, almonds, and it supports strong nails and hair growth. And I'll often say to women, if they're asking me for supplements for nails in particular, I'll definitely. Biotin is a big one up there. Silica is also another big one that I love. If my nails are getting a little bit kind of splitty, then I'll get onto a silica supplement and that will generally just sort it all out. But collagen now that I take collagen more regularly, I find that that's really good at at keeping nails, hair and skin very strong, which is great. Vitamin C vitamin C is important because you need it for collagen synthesis. So even if you're taking a collagen supplement. If your vitamin C is a little deficient, then it's it's not going to help you with so much. So vitamin C is found in things like your berries, citrus fruits, capsicum, tomatoes, things like that Always important to have that in your diet.

Speaker 1:

Iron you know women and iron really it's so important. And it's especially important if you still have a menstrual cycle and you know many women in perimenopause are experiencing heavier periods a menstrual cycle and many women in perimenopause are experiencing heavier periods. So you really need to keep an eye on that. If you find that you are experiencing fatigue and you haven't had your iron checked for a while and your periods are a bit heavier, probably worth getting your iron checked, because low iron equals hair loss. So you really want to keep an eye on that.

Speaker 1:

Hydration also hugely important. Your skin needs water, but it also needs electrolytes like potassium and magnesium to retain that water in the cell. So again, you're going to get potassium and magnesium from foods, but you need the water as well. And again, you've probably heard my calculation for water before, which is 35 mils per kilo of body weight, so you can just do that little calculation for yourself. So there are some of the nutrients that we need to build skin, hair and nails and keep them healthy, but they're not really addressing the hormonal underlying cause, right, are they? And that's what we really need to do is support the underlying cause.

Speaker 1:

So, in terms of managing hormone balance, there's quite a few things so. So cruciferous veg would probably be one of the number one recommendations. They provide nutrients specifically for the liver, to help your liver perform the detoxification processes that it does every day. And so your cruciferous veg again, this is something you can get online, but it's things like your cabbage, your kale, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts Anything that kind of smells a bit sulfury is probably going to be a cruciferous veg. Garlic and onions also fall into that category. Now, if you do have an undirected thyroid in particular, then cruciferous veg does need to be cooked very well, because they contain a little plant chemical called goitrogens and they are not great for your thyroid if you have a thyroid problem. They will not cause a thyroid problem if your thyroid is healthy, but if you do have a hypothyroid in particular, then make sure you're cooking well your cruciferous veg.

Speaker 1:

Other things that are important to support hormone balance is balancing blood sugar. Balancing blood sugar helps prevent cortisol spikes. Cortisol interacts with estrogen and therefore progesterone. So we want to keep our blood sugar nicely balanced on the side it does. If you do that, then it helps manage things like carb cravings, it helps keep your energy up all day and it helps you burn fat more efficiently. So balancing blood sugar is one of my number one focuses when I'm working with women and weight loss and also hormone balancing. So we definitely want to watch the sugar.

Speaker 1:

Also want to manage stress again, because we want to keep the cortisol nice and even so, things like a bit of breath work, walking, spending time in nature, getting adequate sleep which I know sometimes is not necessarily the easiest thing to do but if you can reduce stress as much as you can by avoiding stressors and when you can't do that, by learning to regulate your nervous system. That is critical if you want healthy hair, skin and nails, because it will also impact your gut health. If you have high sorry high levels of stress because of our gut brain connection, that will impact your gut health Also. Another cortisol-busting tip is to avoid over-exercising. That can raise cortisol and worsen your symptoms.

Speaker 1:

You can consider adaptogens like ashwagandha, rhodiola always, as I say, with professional guidance, because herbal medicines are powerful, they're amazing, and you want to get exactly the right combination of herbs for you and what you're experiencing. So it's kind of a wasted opportunity. If you're buying herbal medicines over the counter and not getting advice. You may be taking ones that aren't ideal. Therefore, you're wasting your money, and there may be some other ones that you've never heard of because, frankly, some of the best ones are the ones that you haven't heard of and it's so easy to get some good professional advice so that you are on the right herbal medicines for you and you also have a well-rounded sort of management plan, including some nutritional medicine or nutritional advice rather, uh, to help support you through this, this hormonal kind of time.

Speaker 1:

Um, also sometimes sometimes not all the time, but sometimes it's helpful to actually test the hormones to see what's happening, to see where you're at in your perimenopause transition. Happening to see where you're at in your perimenopause transition. Yeah, it's not necessarily essential, but sometimes it can be helpful. Particularly if you start making some changes and you're not getting anywhere, then it might be really helpful to get some testing done that will actually identify what's going on and, therefore, what hormones specifically need to be supported. And this is where personalized protocols come in, what's going on and therefore what hormones specifically need to be supported. And you know, this is where personalized protocols come in.

Speaker 1:

What works for one woman may not work for another, and it's not about quick fixes. This is a long game. It's about tuning into your body's changing needs, because they will change. Remember, this is a hormonal rollercoaster. You get these surges and these drops, and these surges and these drops. So having support by someone who understands what's going on can be an absolute game changer for your experience of perimenopause. So I hope this has been helpful.

Speaker 1:

I think I've covered everything I wanted to. Yeah, so notice what's going on with your hair, skin and nails. They are speaking to you. Let's stop silencing them with band-aid treatments and really start listening and noticing what's going on in your body. So I mentioned a few times in this episode about the peri-weight loss assessments I do. They're free of charge. They're for people that are interested in perhaps taking the next step, in working with me and want to get to know me a little bit, want to understand what I might be able to do for them.

Speaker 1:

I don't take just anyone into my programs, as if you've been on my website, you'll see I don't take enrollments on the website, because I want to speak to every single individual that wants to work with me to make sure it is the right fit and that you're going to get your needs met and your goals achieved, and that I feel that this program is the right one for you, because you know, I am a professional. I'm not just someone that's going to just sell you a program just so that I can make money. This is about me making sure that I can help you, so please feel free to book in if you would like to. There is a link in the show notes for the peri weight loss assessment, or you can reach out to me on Instagram at the perimenopause path, if you just like to have a little chat over the DMS before you commit to a call, but there is no obligation there. If you'd just like to have a little chat over the DMS, uh, before you commit to a call but there is no obligation there I don't ask you to sign up to the program. On the call. We do the the peri weight loss assessment and then I send you information and then you can make your decision in your own time. Okay, so I just wanted to make that clear. So, uh, I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Speaker 1:

If you would like to give me some feedback, if you'd like to write a five-star review, I would love it. Or follow the podcast so that you receive an episode every single week Until next week. Have a good one and I will see you again. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you liked this episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five-star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonated with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at theperimenopausepar. I would love to connect with you.

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Susie Garden

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