Can Inflammation Affect Your Mood? Healthy Ageing & The ‘Ferritin Face’ Trend

0:00Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's Freedom the B. Use as directed. I am genuinely so excited about today's sponsor because it's the way. honestly if you have listened to me anytime over the last few months you know I have become a little bit evangelical about this app and I honestly recommend it to everyone my friends my family people on Instagram everyone and she recommended it to me so it's true I've heard so much about it it's just because it has had such a big impact on me I've meditated on and off for 15 years or so now but using the way is honestly the first time I've become so consistent with this daily practice.

1:04And I've just seen the most unbelievable results as a result of that. The app is just incredible. And what I love is every day you open it and there's a meditation waiting for you. So you don't scroll, that you don't have to choose between hundreds of options. There's no wondering what to do. It just takes you on a path. Well, I think that's why it works so well, because most of us just don't need more big decisions every day to make, Ella. No, exactly that. We've got decision fatigue, haven't we? So this is so nice because you just follow this path of meditation. which is led by Henry, the founder, who's just the most amazing teacher.

1:37And he makes it seem somehow just incredibly simple, but exceptionally profound at the same time, which is a very rare skill. And I've been using it too. Yes, I've now finally begun my meditation journey and I've been doing some of the shorter practices on busy days because I completely understand why you talk about it so much, Ella. It really is a nice intro in for me. Yeah, it is. And I'm so glad. Anyway, it's helped me feel so much calmer, less reactive, more present it all sounds like huge claims but I just say please please please try it if you're struggling with stress or overwhelm you just got to give it a go and the lovely thing is that everyone listening can definitely try it themselves exactly so you can get a 30-day free trial so just try it every day per month it'll change your life all you do is head to thewayapp.com forward slash wellness scoop yeah that's thewayapp.com forward slash wellness scoop

2:35Welcome to The Wellness Scoop, your weekly dose of health and wellness inspiration. As always, hosted by us, I'm Ella Mills. And I'm Rhianna Lambert. And after a decade in this wellness industry, we both know how overwhelming and confusing health information can be. And that's why we're here to cut through the noise with our podcast.

3:02it's so nice to see rey i feel like it summer has gone on and i don't mean to be ungrateful for it because there's been so many amazing bits but the summer holidays for me feel like they have reached an eternity and i really miss routine and i really miss being in person with rey and this is the last day of the school holidays and so i i like really want to be grateful but oh my god I can't wait for routine I can't wait to see re in real life. I know and I've got so much to tell you and catch up we'll have to wait till after we've recorded this episode but life is life is a million miles an hour so Ella would you like to share with everybody what we're going to be discussing today?

3:41I would okay today we're going to be talking about an interesting new study looking at inflammation and how it may affect depression anxiety or mental well-being whether eating more plants could help us age better probably know the answer to that but always good to get some more evidence. Do sugary drinks really double your risk of stomach cancer? There's some big new topics to talk about in that. And this meme that's going around of whether or not a Coke, as in a Coca-Cola, really does take 12 minutes off your life every time you have a can. Then on our trends, what is ferritin phase? We had cortisol phase.

4:14Apparently this is the new TikTok thing. We're going to talk about that. But obviously that relates to low iron, which is a very important topic, particularly for women. And so we're going to look at as well when you should actually get your iron levels checked and yeah the be all and end all and then really yesterday we were in London and we were rushing for the train made it just about and as I was like rushing and one of those things I'd gone like back to school shopping PE shoes you know all that kind of stuff the handles the bag are broken so I was like under my arm it was really hot and sweaty I was like come on children anyways and then I went past this lady and she was like oh my god I'm listening to you right now.

4:50No way. And she got on a scoop in. Yeah. And I was like, that must feel so creepy for her. I was like listening and I'm suddenly like, hey. If you're listening now, you were the lady when Ella had all her bags. I know. I was like some like flabby, stressed, sweaty. Yeah, probably not my best self. Anyways, I thought you'd like that. Demonstrating real life. I love it. I love it when you all come and say hi and that you tune in I think it's wonderful and also we are just real people here just um you know behind the scenes trying to hold it all together like everybody else Ella apart from the fact obviously you're desperate to get back into routine how are you I am medium I would say if you asked my husband this morning he'd be like she's complaining about much I don't know I feel I don't know I'm not like yourself yeah you know the main thing is I feel like I'm really out of yeah routine and like new house, new area, new school starting, new kind of everything, new commute into London.

5:49I don't think I'm the best person with newness. And so it feels right. Like I don't genuinely, and I'm not saying this, like I don't have any regrets. I feel like we've done a hundred percent the right thing, but it's just this, yeah, all the newness and I'm not saying I think that's affecting my nervous system. So I'm not sleeping very well. And that, you know, when you don't sleep well for weeks on end, you do feel a bit nuts, don't you, sometimes? I just think change as a human being is such a difficult thing. And I don't think anybody is actually equipped naturally to be able to handle massive life changes just like it's a breeze.

6:24You know, I think we all massively, any transition, any life transition, even the seasonal transition and shifts can affect people, let alone massive life changes. I hear you. I understand. I think when you're going through something that's very different in your environment it's yeah it's hard to feel like yourself again yes I'm excited for like the girls to actually start their school have a bit more time be able to exercise get outside and again I don't want to be ungrateful for my children I just want to be honest because I feel like I'm a generally very positive person so I don't want people to be like oh my god she's lying but I love my kids but I'm like desperate for a day by myself I can understand that mine are back now already my little one just started school and it's been a really big emotional roller coaster.

7:11Yeah, it is mega. It's the first time in six years, just to put it out there to everyone. I'm sure most of you will know the feeling or, you know, if you don't, it means for six years, I've basically had someone else around every Wednesday and Friday and then suddenly now they're not there. Well, just a few weeks, and then you'll have your next psychic. And then I'll have the next little one. but um no life is really busy for me at the moment i just wanted to say as well a big thank you to everybody who tuned in last week and has pre-ordered ready set cook so the big scary move because i haven't oh i will have done today this comes out monday the 7th so i will have announced it on social media today but i wanted to give wellness scoop listeners the exclusive the week before and I was getting all muddled with my dates.

8:00But thank you to everyone that believes in the cause for children's nutrition and getting kids cooking more. Those of you that haven't tuned in, you don't know, I announced that I'm releasing a book for children, which I've never done before in over 10 years called Ready, Set, Cook. I'll pop the link in the show notes. But that was very emotional. And I feel like announcing that has been career changing, Ella, to be honest. I'm taking loads of different leaps of faith. Ella sat down with me, just so everyone knows. She spoke to me the other week. We often share this on the podcast, how there are certain subjects that can be quite triggering for us to discuss.

8:40Do you know when we discussed the weight loss and the current inspiration in the industry with different names being in the media and how Ella and I have always, would you use that language that we've shot I would say we've shied away from discussing weight loss oh my gosh I have been like I said this to Rhi the other day even when we used to get you know this is in the early days of delicious yellow see people who were you know really new to eating a plant-rich diet and eating you know it's very natural loads of home cooking you know loads of beans and all the rest of it which when I started delicious yellow was incredibly novel and you get this amazing feedback from people being like i bought your books or i'm using your app i've cooked like this for the last couple of months i feel amazing but if they ever included in feeling amazing that they'd lost some weight and it was in a really like positive healthy way um maybe some just slightly excess weight that they didn't feel great about and there was maybe more linked to not as healthy dietary choices we would never i mean you can hear me like being so choosy about my words now we would never ever share that feedback anywhere because we never you know there was this absolute fear of talking about weight loss and people because people had this real feeling I would say kind of in the public um whether that was in the media or certain people within the social media space that healthy eating was an eating disorder and that the two was so conflated for a while that it made it really impossible to ever talk about healthy eating and weight loss in the same sentence because there was this you know and I found that on a personal level incredibly difficult like I was definitely accused you know of yeah prompting eating disorders and by yeah being a huge advocate for eating well and I think we have moved past that now But not everybody has.

10:28And I think that fear of triggering anybody in a negative way lingers with the both of us. A hundred percent. And we were talking about this the other week because I wanted to launch, because my master's degree, ironically, is in obesity risks and prevention. And when I set up the Retrition Clinic and I started clinical practice, I've helped clients of weight loss for years, years. But I never speak about it online because like Ella, I don't want to trigger that it's a conversation, it's difficult, but I fill with the current landscape with GLP-1s and the media. And of course, obesity now, we've got to remember, it's moved up to one in three in primary school age children.

11:09The rates are going up. I feel like it's something we have to talk about. So I've designed this weight loss course as well on nutrition plus. I've invited Giles Yeo to come and do a talk, Professor Giles Yeo, who will discuss molecular endocrinology and all the genes and all those different areas and Federico Amati to do GLP ones. I'll discuss weight loss. And it's been something that I've never done. And Ella was like, this is crazy. She's like, this is going to help so many people. She's like, why, why aren't you, why, why don't you just put it out there? So I'm doing it. I'm putting it out there.

11:43Children's nutrition book, my weight loss course is up. And I feel like it's a moment for big leaps, Ella, September. And that's what I'm doing. So again, there'll be a link to that. I'll pop in the show notes but um I feel that this podcast has really given us because of you listeners thank you so much to everyone that the lovely lady that stopped Ella with her bags of her kids all of you make us feel like we can actually have nuanced discussions that help yeah a hundred percent and also can I just say I know I was really whiny this morning I'm so happy to be here yeah this is like pep in my step pep in my sleepy step because I was also so tired I was like oh we've got podcast recording, but I could literally fall asleep on the desk right now.

12:25But then when I see Ella and we start talking, I'm like, yes, we're back. I'm like, here we are. This is why we do what we do. So let's move on to our health headlines that matter.

12:39As we keep saying, oh my goodness me, there's so many headlines at the moment. This one was a big one made headlines. You know, the one we pulled out, one sugar packed soda a day doubles risk of stomach cancer compared to drinking one a month. Study reveals that was in the independent, but this was really picked up kind of across the board. And that is a scary headline that one sugar packed soda a day would double your risk of stomach cancer. But I think when you break it down, it's slightly less so, and it's a much more relevant actually in some countries versus others. It's less relevant here in the UK, but it's still super interesting and also quite scary.

13:15So we wanted to break it down. Rhi, over to you. It does sound striking. And the data suggests that one sugar sweetened drink a day was associated with a two and a half times higher risk of stomach cancer, but that's compared to drinking less than one a month. So what's so interesting is that this was a large study sample size. So there were 112 ,000 people and they were plucked from two major long running US studies. 278 of those people did sadly develop gastric cancer during the follow-up as well. But I just want to reiterate here that the overall diet is definitely something that's more likely than this one drink.

13:55Just while we go on, just to throw the nuance out there, we don't know what the overall diet was of these people. We can delve into that a bit more now. And it feels, I think, really relevant at the moment because in America, the stats are that two-thirds of adults drink these types of beverages a day. now we refer to them as sugar-sweetened beverages. Now that basically means your Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Fanta, whatever. Is Fanta even around now? Do I, am I that out of touch? Is Fanta a thing? I don't know. I used to like Fanta. I used to like Lilt. I don't know if that's even around anymore. It reminds me of like summer holidays when I was a teenager.

14:33Anyway, so obviously I don't think anyone's going around thinking, oh my gosh, Coca-Cola, it's so healthy. But what was interesting here in and this is really the crux of the difference from country to country is that what the researchers in this study were particularly interested in were these drinks that were sweetened with fructose and specifically then high fructose corn syrup and I'm just going to pause there for to explain to us what high fructose corn syrup is. Basically with all the discussions we've had on UPFs and the degree of processing that different items can undergo it's one of the most heavily processed forms of sugar you can add.

15:12And actually, we don't have it in the UK. So we do not use high fructose corn syrup here, purely because we know it can have a negative impact on our health. Now, I don't know why that's still allowed in the States. And I would have thought by now, perhaps they would have changed that, but clearly not. It's one of the first things that is pulled out when you know people compare an American item to a UK item, and they look at ingredient lists, and they look at different numbers and we talk about artificial sweeteners and ingredients, but it has such a fast impact on your insulin and it's very difficult for your liver to break down.

15:51Your liver will do its job, but when you're drinking a large proportion of this at one go, it is difficult for your body to handle. And yeah, we don't use it here, Ella. Exactly. So if you look at Coca-Cola, for example, in the US, it's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and it's not over here. And what the researchers found, and that's why the high fructose corn syrup is so relevant, is that it was the higher total fructose intake from these drinks that was the association with these higher rates of gastric cancer. So that's your headline right there essentially. And what the researchers are suggesting is that it's the high intakes of high fructose corn syrup that potentially contribute to increased fat production, insulin resistance, and inflammation, which could in turn play a role in this cancer development.

16:39And now we often talk about how you can't just take an animal study and say that will happen in humans. We know that. But interestingly, it's shown in animal studies to indirectly fuel tumor growth through changes and how the liver processes fats, which is really interesting. So it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what's happening in adults, in humans, but there is just this interesting, it's building on existing research and thoughts that people have and ideas as to what these drinks might be doing for us but as I said more relevant for our US listeners because it's very rarely used here interestingly on labels as I understand from my research is that when we have it here it's not called high fructose corn syrup it's called glucose fructose syrup but it's the same thing do you understand that to be true that's what my research was telling me whilst the percentages of glucose and fructose are variable and there is a marginal difference in the two, which just to give you a little bit of biology, fructose is metabolized in our liver.

17:42Glucose can circulate and is broken down differently. And essentially it's the load on the liver at a certain time. And I think what's so important to reiterate here as well is that this study is talking about people that have these items daily. So if this is how you're hydrating by reaching for your can of Coke, that's not hydration that's a healthy form of hydration. And I think that's really, really important to remember. So it doesn't suddenly make all sugary drinks bad, does it, Ella? It's just the fact that I think it's really important that we do draw upon the fact that, you know, these drinks aren't marketed as being healthy, but they've become everyday items for some people.

18:26And it's really important to remember that even though we're not saying it directly causes cancer, it does elevate your risk of poor health if you're having them every single day. It does. And in the UK, as I said, very rarely used. Interestingly though, and I find this so random, one of the products, like a more mass market product that uses the glucose fructose syrup that we're saying is this almost identical, not quite, but almost identical version that we have in the UK is a Cadbury double decker. I still do those. It's so interesting because Cadbury's have had to change their makeup as well, haven't they?

18:59Because of the amount of cocoa available. You said it's called chocolate flavoring, isn't it? It's not chocolate. And also Mr. Kipling. Yeah. In the UK, we have this thing called Battenberg cake. Oh, my gosh. I love it. It was like one of my favorite things. Do you? Oh, my brother used to love it. Freaks me out. Oh, so just to explain to everyone listening, they're like checkered windows of cake. Actually thinking about it must sound quite revolting, but I used to love it. so sweet pink and yellow checkered square looks like a little chess board and around it you have like um like an iced royal cake you have marzipan that goes around the edge and it's in a long loaf that's surrounded with marzipan obviously not great for your health but tastes absolutely as i think delicious that is a battenberg cake and that's what mr kipling and one of those old um brands i think my grandparents used to buy their like fondant fancies oh i loved those when I was little.

19:53That was our favorite trait. See, I prefer a Battenberg, but there you have it. So it's very interesting. It's obviously used in the food industry more widely than we'd realized and it is not a great addition. I think we can agree. No, clearly not. And again, adds to a bigger picture, surprise, surprise, but more research to show sugary drinks have been previously linked with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, as well as a higher risk of several types of cancer. But as Rhi said, none of these things also exist in a vacuum. We know that sugary drinks aren't obviously the only dietary factor associated with stomach cancer.

20:29We've also got, as we know, processed meats, heavily grilled or charred foods, and also our low fiber fruit and veg intakes. So I think the headlines sound way scarier than the science when you look at it. But I do think particularly for American listeners, it's an interesting note to be mindful of high fructose corn syrup, which you probably already you. Yeah, you probably did already know. And lots of you will be very frustrated, I'm sure, because you've probably been asking for this ingredient to be changed for a long time. But how does it link on Coca-Cola? So there's the viral 12 minutes off your life claim that is circulating, 12 minutes calculated exactly.

21:09So how did we come to that number, Ella? Yeah, I don't know if you guys have seen it, but we've seen it kind of doing the rounds a bit on social media, being like, yeah, every time you drink a can of Coca-Cola, you lose 12 minutes of your life, which seems quite extreme. So I was looking at like, why, where did this come from? Because this is obviously not like a clinical study. And basically where it originates from is a study from 2021 at the University of Michigan. And it created something called the Health Nutritional Index. And researchers analyzed more than 5 ,800 different foods and estimated how individual servings could expect healthy life expectancy.

21:44So essentially minutes of life lived in good health. And for a serving of sugar sweetened drinks, their model came up with roughly 12 minutes of healthy life lost. So it's not going to actually play out obviously in such a black and white way. But I think it is interesting that... Just soak out, it's 12 minutes. It's like the 10 ,000 steps a day from the Olympics. And then this study's just suggested 12 minutes. And obviously, if you smoke, if you don't eat well, you know genetic factors all of those will probably have a much bigger impact on your lifespan but yeah perhaps we need headlines like this although it is quite demonizing of a specific food but we can't pretend it's healthy yeah i mean there was more research and i was then looking into it so in the uk there was research looking at 123 000 people obviously big data set that found that drinking one sugar sweetened beverage a day was associated with a 50 higher risk for developing fatty liver disease.

22:42There was a big paper in Nature Medicine in January 2025 that looked at about 184 countries. In that, researchers estimated that sugary drinks were attributable to 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease globally in 2020. So kind of when you put this together with this increase in gastric cancer with this increase in risk for fatty liver disease type 2 diabetes cardiovascular disease etc it's just this interesting thing where like everywhere you go you see coca-cola you see pepsi you see all these drinks they're like everywhere you know even in like children's soft play and they are so normal and it's so normal to drink them it's too normalized yeah and it's weird if you don't drink them like as i said it you know i i definitely think people think my children are weird that someone can get to seven and never having tried any of these drinks and actually then when you start to look at the research you're like you know what i don't think we need these things in our lives what's um interesting is that these headlines are still circulating even though the sugar tax technically was labeled as a success so there was a tax on these beverages um countries that were heavily researched originally um were places like brazil I believe, Mexico of sugar sweetened beverages and obesity rates.

24:06And what a debate that sparked in the scientific community was that you had a few researchers came out saying, oh, sugar's the cause of obesity, which obviously we know it's not. It's in the overall diet, lifestyle and environmental factors. But it sparked this humongous debate between different scientists that were researching this. And that's why and when the sugar tax kind of came around. is at the same sort of time Carlos Montero developed his Nova Scale on ultra processed foods from one to four, because he was looking at rates in his country of obesity and thinking, well, you know, I think it's more than just the corn syrup or just the Coca-Cola.

24:44I think it's everything. But clearly these messages need to be out there in the public domain. So interesting headline. I don't like it when we talk about death. However, I think we've given that some background. Yeah, I do too. And I think although those headlines were kind of slightly out of context to an extent, I think when you look at the bigger picture, actually, I think probably the fear mongering is in a way not the worst thing, because actually, when we look at the impact of these drinks, and they are things that people drink on a regular basis, it's actually really shocking. Yeah, I agree.

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27:06That's freedom to be. Use as directed. It moves us on to a very different headline, headline two today, which discusses our mental health and again inflammation so I feel like when inflammation is used it's very clickbait I think people are fascinated aren't they Ella you know there's all sorts of books and diet plans and all sorts of things and I think everyone's a bit confused but this was in the Guardian this week. That's true and the headline was is it true that mental health is affected by inflammation and that just felt really important but before we get into the ins and outs of our mental health and the impact that inflammation may or may not have.

27:48Just remind us when we're talking about inflammation, what are we actually talking about? So the technical part of inflammation, so you don't really want your body to be in a permanent state of inflammation, but it is a normal immune response. So when your body's under threat or you're coming down with something, inflammation almost helps your white blood cells circulate really quickly around the body and, you know, do what they need to do to repair or fight. And you might have seen at school, those old images and textbooks that you've got AI now, which is, I mean, if I'd had these AI images of the immune system when I was at university, I think I would have, I would have aced it compared to probably the grades I did in the end get, because wow, it breaks it down.

28:32You see these amazing fighter cells getting really quickly to the site of infection because your blood vessels vasodilate so they get wider and bigger and you're inflamed and everything gets to the site it's like if you have a cut on your finger and you get that little raised red sore mound that develops around that cut that's the site of inflammation because it's all your white blood cells coming together very quickly to fight off what we need um but you know we also have lower levels of systemic inflammation which can occur constantly which is what we don't want So if we're carrying extra weight from obesity as we age, this naturally happens.