Overnight Oats with Ground Flaxseed

1. Put the oats and ground flaxseed in a jar or bowl.
2. Add the yogurt, milk and honey if using. Stir properly, making sure no dry oats remain at the bottom.
3. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or at least six hours.
4. In the morning, top with berries and walnuts. Add a splash more milk if it has set too thick.

It keeps for three days, so making three at once is a reasonable use of four minutes.

The detail that decides whether this works: the flaxseed must be ground. Whole seeds pass through largely undigested, and the lignans never become available. Grind them yourself and keep them in the fridge, because the oils oxidise quickly.

Those lignans are why flaxseed appears in almost every discussion of women's hormones. They are phytoestrogens, weakly binding oestrogen receptors, and flax has some evidence for reducing hot flushes and supporting cycle regularity. The effects are modest rather than dramatic.

Soaking the oats overnight does something useful on its own. It increases resistant starch, which feeds gut bacteria, and slows the glucose response compared with the same oats cooked hot.

The Greek yogurt takes this from a carbohydrate breakfast to a balanced one, bringing around 15g of protein and live cultures. Swap in kefir if you want more bacterial variety.

Walnuts add magnesium and omega-3, and if you are eating this in the evening rather than the morning, cherries carry small amounts of melatonin.

More on the hormone side: eating for your hormones.