Celebrity Health – Lorraine Keane
Balance your hormones for a better life
Lorraine Keane is a well-known IFTA-nominated broadcaster and journalist. She has worked with UTV Ireland, hosted the annual Ultimate Girls Day Out events in Dublin and Cork and acts as judge at the annual Ladies Day competitions at the Dublin Horseshow and the Galway Races. More recently she has been working on Fashion Relief for Oxfam Ireland. She lives in Dublin with her husband Peter Devlin and teenage daughters Romy and Emilia.
Photo: Barry McCall.
How was your lockdown?
With no commute or need to travel I have taken exercise classes in the mornings and been very good Monday to Thursday. Doing a class is really good for your mental health and you feel virtuous afterwards. It encourages you to make good lifestyle choices.
We’ve also been trying to get outside as much as we can too. Our two very demanding dogs are great for making us walk. We’ve been having dinner as a family every night and catching up on books, boxsets and podcasts.
Do you take any natural supplements?
I take Cleanmarine MenoMin every day – it is essentially a supplement for women over 40 in perimenopause and menopause with omega 3 krill oil, vitamins B1, B2, B6, B12 and D3, as well as rosemary extract, soy isoflavones, folate and biotin. It helps to balance your hormones which can really help women. After I had been taking it for a month I really noticed a difference – I felt more in balance with less mood swings, I am less irritable, experience less interrupted sleep and tiredness and have better energy levels. I can really say it works and I feel like my best self.
I now have my sisters in their 40s taking MenoMin and they are really benefitting from it. Supplements can be a minefield and knowing which to take is tricky – but it’s an investment in your health. A woman’s hormones go through five stages during her life, and if they are not balanced you can suffer from lots of problems.
Dr Mary Ryan, one of the top endocrinologists in Ireland, was due to go on a ‘Let’s Talk Hormones’ tour with me, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled during the Covid outbreak. When we do these tours we get so much feedback from women and see that we are pulled in lots of different directions and need to mind ourselves better.
My daughters are now 13 and 16 and I really want to make sure that they don’t go thorough the hormone problems that I did, so I am helping to educate them and other women about hormone health.
How has your working life changed?
During the lockdown we have all had to be inventive. I am the founder of Fashion Relief, a fundraising initiative for Oxfam Ireland which aims to promote sustainable fashion, reduce clothes in landfill and raise money for Oxfam. My plan would be to travel to places and see how the money is spent, but that’s not practical at the moment. We also planned a live fashion show event, but cannot do that either. Since the lockdown charities have found it hard to raise funds, so I have spent the past eight weeks getting Fashion Relief online. My daughters are modelling, sanitising and steaming and I present the show from home. Every Friday at 7pm we go live on www.fashionrelief.ie with an interactive fashion show and shopping channel featuring contributions from stylists and celebrities.
During the lockdown I also developed a new brand called Magic Hairbrush and set up www.finished.ie with a partner – it’s an online community for renovating and refurbishing your home. We are set to launch the first-ever virtual home show shortly.
A booklet The Essential Guide to Female Hormones (from puberty to post-menopause) is available in health stores and can be downloaded from www.cleanmarine.ie
Do you have any tips for rude health readers?
- When bodies are stressed they produce cortisol which drains your energy and affects your sleep. So be good to yourself and don’t beat yourself up.
- Try to feed yourself positive thoughts – remember you are in control of your thoughts.
- Try to motivate yourself to do something you like, and get outside when you can.
- It’s amazing how getting outside can bring out those natural endorphins and make you feel better.
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