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And Before The Menopause ...

lucinda.meade@virgin.net (Lucinda Meade) — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 21:34:07 GMT

Perimenopause – so much more than ju st the menopause

What does it mean?

This is the period of roughly 10 years leading up to your menopause (so normally in your 40s), when you start to experience symptoms that indicate changes in the production of oestrogen by the ovaries. Eventually, when this stops entirely you have reached the menopause but until then there will be rises and falls, like an engine starting and stalling. The symptoms will be all or any of those we associate with menopause; change in libido (hate sex, love sex, mad for sex) bone loss, fatigue, mood swings, hot flushes, rises in cholesterol, palpitations, poor sleep and loss of lubrication in the vagina/atrophy and disturbing failures in memory and recall.

Why does it matter?

These are clear signs of a hormone imbalance, leading eventually to deficiency. In the early 1900s the average age of menopause was the same as it is now (roughly 51) , the same as life expectancy. Today you may have another 50 years ahead of you without an essential hormone that benefits every vital function of your body – brain, heart, digestion, circulation and sex.

What can you do?

Notice when those changes come. Notice what isn’t normal for you and seek help from doctors who are experts in this area and have a genuine interest in it. Unless you have a history of mental health issues or are going through a definite crisis where you do need antidepressant support, do not accept this kind of treatment as a first line option for oestrogen deficiency.

Whether you choose hormone replacement treatment or not, know that you don’t have to wait until the menopause has happened to start taking it. You only need to have the symptoms and if you are over 45, then body HRT can be prescribed without a blood test. (See Patient Info ).

Whatever you decide to do, there are plenty of other ways to start taking care of yourself in preparation, helping your body be in the best shape possible - perhaps in the best shape it's ever been – this is an opportunity to start living well.

• Get your nutrition right – start eating more natural, unprocessed foods and try to cut out the crap. This helps to keep your blood sugar even and your stress to a minimum. Spikes in blood sugar increase insulin, which increases cortisol. You’ll feel and look healthier, which will increase your confidence and resilience.

• Drink less alcohol – as well as increasing the likelihood of hot flushes, excess alcohol intake over time increases the chance of bones becoming weaker, leading to loss in height, increased likelihood of fractures, receding gums and back pain.

• Fight muscle and bone loss with weight training at least two times per week. If you are not experienced reach out for help and advice to get you started.

• Take up meditation , it improves your ability to focus and solve problems.

• Learning to breathe is not as ridiculous as it sounds – breathing is an automatic function but one that you have the ability to adjust in multiple ways, either to increase your energy, immune function and focus or deal with anxiety. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, if you can.

You can breathe fast and deep to increase heart rate, boosting adrenaline and immune function (do not try this without the go ahead from a health professional), or try the perfectly safe practice of gentle breathing where you make the exhale longer than the inhale, slowing your heart rate and calming your nerves. Start with a few minutes a day and you already have a simple, effective breathing practice.

• Practice self-hypnosis – this can help you with planning and decision making – making it easier to create all these new habits.

• Vitamins - Vitamin D – if you are low in vitamin D, this affects bone health by negatively impacting the body’s ability to absorb calcium. Always get your bloods checked, so you know exactly what you need - never supplement blind.

• Supplements? Only with caution and medical advice

Black Cohosh - some evidence but can be toxic to the liver.

St John’s Wort – some success with mild depression and low mood associated with menopause but can have dangerous interactions with other drugs.

Menopause: Some Top Tips

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 19:34:25 GMT

Hot flushes, poor sleep, weight gain, brain fog, unhappy bladders and dry vaginas. Why wouldn’t you be happy?

What could possibly go wrong with your life if all or any of these things are happening, all without you having changed a single thing in your life. Any one of these would be a problem and if it were the symptom of a disease, would be taken very seriously.

But with menopause, because it’s inevitable, because it’s ‘natural’ and because we all experience it differently, many of us (including hard pressed doctors with 10 minutes to spare) think it’s something that we just have to get on with and battle through with some antidepressants.

But if you’re fed up and want some help, then here it is.

Firstly, these are some of the possible symptoms of low oestrogen – really everything you ever cared about:

Dry skin
Bladder irritation
Changes in the gut leading to bloating/poor digestion and nutrition
Bone loss – osteopenia/osteoporosis
Pelvic floor dysfunction leading to urinary incontinence
Vaginal itching
Painful sex
Loss of libido (not necessarily because of the low oestrogen but because
your vagina is itchy/sore and you haven’t slept for 6 months which has given
you lots of time to realise you never liked it anyway)
Vaginal atrophy (thinning of vaginal walls)
Increase in vaginal infections because of loss of protective fluid
Lost hair from pubic area, found on face
Muscle wasting
Increased weight around the waste
Hot flushes
Poor sleep
Poor short term memory
Inability to problem solve
Increased anxiety
Low mood
Shame
A lot of time spent making or receiving jokes about perspiration
Hating yourself and/or everybody else close to you.

What is causing these unpleasant symptoms?

Oestrogen receptors exist throughout the body and it is a vital hormone for the healthy function of our brains, bones, soft tissue, blood vessels, heart, sexual organs and bladder. So when levels drop every area is affected.

What makes your symptoms worse?

Chronic stress
Coffee
Alcohol
Sugar
Smoking
Yes, them.

What are the top tips for both feeling better and more like you again?

Brain Fog

This will pass. It is temporary while your body adjusts to the new regime. There’s nothing wrong with you, your brain will be back. Be patient with yourself and accept this temporary disruption to normal service. The more you accept and manage stress, whether internal or external (see strategies below), the better everything will be.

Hot flushes

The drop in oestrogen affects an area of the brain called the hypothalamus which regulates your body temperature. With less oestrogen it can become more sensitive and less able to judge whether you need cooling down or not. This means that you are often woken at night, and both work and pleasure can all be affected – it’s disruptive. Firstly take time to notice what your triggers are – sometimes you may find you’re drenched for no reason but often there will be clear disrupters whether it’s stress, environment or food and drink.

Fatigue

High blood sugar will mean that at some point during the night insulin will kick in with a vengeance, blood sugar will drop and cortisol will rise (then you wake up at 3am and start worrying about something you can’t fix). So try and maintain a healthy diet and avoid processed and high sugar foods. And if you do wake up at night fretting, don't try and solve the problem - leave it until the morning.

Painful Sex

If the walls of the vagina have lost elasticity, become thinner and you are no longer producing lubrication then sex may well be about as much fun as scraping your knee on gravel and then doing it again. However, if you want to continue having sex then there are lots of great vaginal moisturisers that last for days, vibrators, medical devices and pelvic floor exercises to help keep your muscles fit and flexible and your soft tissue healthy. There are also safe and easy to use, local oestrogen pessaries that can safely maintain your vagina.

Incontinence

The bladder is made from the same tissue as the vagina and is oestrogen dependent. This can cause irritation, sensitivity and weakness. If your GP isn’t able to help then think about asking for a referral to a doctor who specialises in the menopause or a Pelvic Health Physiotherapist – their entire professional life is spent working out how to treat incontinence and improve sex.

Unwelcome weight gain around the middle

It’s annoying. Before menopause there are three types of oestrogen but after the menopause only oestrone, which is synthesised in the adrenals and fat cells, is dominant.

If we don’t exercise enough and continue to eat as we did before, the combination of sedentary lifestyle, muscle wasting (a natural part of ageing) and need for oestrogen will lead to an increase in fat storage. Add to that the many and various stresses of mid life producing more cortisol (which encourages us to lay down protective fat) and possibly thyroid disruption which can hit around this age, affecting metabolism - and you have the perfect storm.

What to do? Eat well to keep your blood sugar balanced, and increase exercise to include at least two days of weight training instead of cardio. Above all, start meditating or find other ways to relax and calm your system.

Bone Health

Some people are genetically more likely to suffer from osteoporosis (bone thinning) because of poor absorption of calcium and Vitamin D leading to bone loss. Ensure you have a diet rich in calcium, Vitamin D and Magnesium, Vitamin C (for the collagen in our bones and skin), boron, Vitamin K2 and lots of protein. And jump or lift weights – bones need to feel force - make sure you ask your GP for a DEXA scan to check for bone density, especially if there is a history of osteoporosis in your family..

Anxiety

The amygdalae (two walnut sized parts of the brain responsible for sensing threat) can become more sensitive, increasing levels of stress hormones. Maintaining a very even blood sugar level (with balanced nutrition and little sugar intake), neither too high nor too low, helps to keep cortisol levels in check. High blood sugar makes us lay down fat and low blood sugar increases cortisol, leaving us tired and fed up.

To replace those hormones or not?

As mentioned earlier on, many women feel that they ought to power through and accept whatever their symptoms are, because menopause is normal and their mothers/grandmothers just got on with it. They just have a feeling that they should. Or they don’t like taking medication. Or they’ve heard that HRT can cause breast cancer. It’s always a personal choice but one worth researching. Also talk to an expert.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) protects your brain, bones, heart, arteries, digestion, skin, vagina and bladder. Breast cancer is incredibly common and current research on modern HRT has shown that oestrogen is actually likely to be protective against breast cancer. Excess weight and alcohol put you at far greater risk whether you take HRT or not.

So the message here is to take the menopause seriously - it’s permanent. Find out everything you need to know about what’s happening to you and always check that the doctors or other medical professionals you talk to are experts in this field. Your experience will be somewhat the same but also completely different to anyone else. This is your mid life, your new start, your experience. You are not only dealing with an internal physical experience but a mental and emotional one. As well as all the changes that are almost certainly happening to those around you, related to children, work, friends and partners. Take your menopause seriously and you will avoid the long term damage that comes frrom ignoring symptoms.

If you need help or advice, please contact one of the expert team at Litagain .

More detailed information on HRT:

The BMS

Newson Health

Lists of GPs specialising in menopause
CBT for menopause induced anxiety

How 'Presenteeism' Costs Companies Millions

rakraftman@gmail.com (Rachel Kraftman) — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 15:07:07 GMT

Poor mental health at work costs businesses in the UK around £45 billion a year.

Poor mental health at work costs businesses in the UK around £45 billion a year, in spite of the figures suggesting that for every £1 a company invests in the wellbeing of their employees, they will see a £5 return. That is a better return than any current investment you could make.

These figures come from a Deloitte report, published in January 2020. Before COVID.

Everyone has been hit by COVID but young people, who cost employers roughly 8.3% of their salaries because of poor mental health, have been worst hit by the pandemic and its predicted effects on their futures in the workplace.

And for everyone, one of the main contributors to the cost is ‘presenteeism’ – those people who show up for work when they should be getting help. Doing your job badly, when you are depressed costs companies three times more than sick leave – which young people tend not to take, preferring to use their holidays, which then adds to their issues.

It’s a complicated era in terms of mental health problems. We are more and more aware of these issues and almost everyone discusses self-esteem, poor self-image and well-being. We talk about our feelings in a way that has probably never happened before and certainly doesn’t happen in developing countries.

And yet the figures suggest that we are more miserable than ever. There’s a lot of science to explain why and while some of it is because with easy access to food and water, we have more time available to think about our state of mind, we have also all become more sensitive to our needs. And of course with technology, we are able to constantly measure our own happiness against the perceived happiness of people we don’t even know.

What the research shows is that happiness does not come directly from self-esteem. It comes from having will-power, good habits, boundaries, motivation, goals and resilience. This allows us to be kind to others and to ourselves. In fact, to enjoy the journey to our goals and deal with the obstacles to those achievements. These strengths are the things that make us engaged, focused, live longer in a healthier state of mind and body. Happiness is a bi-product of a resilient outlook and a life well-lived.

A company with a resilient, flexible workforce, whose lives at home are also fulfilled, is going to achieve more.