Category — Physical Menopause Symptoms

A couple days ago, I posted a too-funny Jack In The Box commercial about menopause. A male friend (thanks, Jed!) sent me the following Lay’s potato chip vignette from their site dedicated to the feminine viewpoint called Only In A Woman’s World. Enjoy!

Menopause goddess Theresa Venus turned me on to this hilarious Jack In The Box commercial. When consciousness about The Big M invades prime time, commercials, AND fast food? America is paying attention! Yep, we are finally going to be talking about it. And laughing, weeping, and bitching. Take a look.

One of our Menopause Goddess readers (thanks, Dale) shared a useful article on bone health she found posted on womentowomen.com authored by Dr. Susan E. Brown. (link at bottom.) Of course, Women to Women pitches their own supplements and products, but their information is clear, detailed, and right on.

Advertising on blogsites and info disseminating websites tends to make me a little nervous. (That is no reflection on women to women or any other website, just a personal character trait. Some might call it a flaw.) But hey, good information is good information regardless of the source. And the more we educate ourselves, the more we are likely to make good choices for our health for the second half of our lives.

The Goddess’s Skinny on Bone Health
Menopausal women lose bone density – some more than others. It’s a good idea to get a bone scan to find out how your bones are doing. Even before you get a bone scan, there are some proactive things you can do to maintain strong, healthy bones.

Exercise
Walking, Pilates, Yoga, Tai Chi. All of these can help and should be done at least three times a week. Personally, I’ll put walking as the overall best exercise I know and it doesn’t require instructors or training, just a good pair of shoes.

Weight Training
Before you groan as I always did, we aren’t talking about strain and muscle bound body building here. Using light weights can build your bones as well or better than all that heavy lifting. Use 2 pound free weights and do a number of repetitions. If you want more of a workout, go slower. That’s right, the slower you go, it seems the better the weight training. And when you first start, think less is more. You likely will find the light weights easy and be tempted to do more. But the burn has a time lag and will be felt the next day or two rather than right away.

Supplements
Calcium alone is not sufficient for bone health. Vitamin D3 is also important. Since we all started using ginormous number SPF sunscreen, guess what has happened to most Americans as an unintended consequence? We are deficient in Vitamin D, an essential nutrient for making and keeping our bones. Yep, sunshine converts cholesterol in skin to Vitamin D. (Proves once and for all, moderation in all things is a good way to live.) Light skinned people may create enough Vitamin D with 30 minutes of sun exposure a day. Those with more melanin need longer. Or we need supplementation. How much supplementation? Depends. Have your Vitamin D level tested and work with your trusted health care practitioner/partner to determine what is best for you.

Diet
More fruits and vegetables, less meat in diet has been shown to aid bone health. Even more important might be weight loss. For some reason, weight loss is associated with a decrease in bone density. Yet some (read most) of us feel a need to diet thanks to the weight gain that accompanies the Big M. A good idea is to lose weight slowly and exercise as an integral part of any weight loss program you undertake.

Hormones
There is so much contradictory information about estrogen building bones, estrogen being unimportant in bone health, progesterone being the real bone health hormone, progesterone being unimportant and unnecessary. If they are indeed beneficial, there may be very real risks to HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). Studies are being done, but the jury is still out.

It seems to make intuitive sense that bioidentical hormones might be less risky and more usable by the body. (Actually, it seems like a freaking no-brainer to me, which is why I use a very low dose Estradiol patch and use natural progesterone cream.) That’s natural progesterone cream, not wild yam cream. Wild yam cream is not in a usable form for our bodies. Check out emerita.com for Pro-Gest cream or prodnature.com for Natural Woman cream.

This is where you can work with your trusted healthcare advisor to find the best solution for yourself. If you are considering hormone replacement, have your hormones tested first to determine your baseline. Saliva testing worked much better for me than blood testing – perhaps both will give a fuller picture.

Stress Reduction
Last, and certainly NOT least, stress level has been shown to adversely affect bone health. While it may seem that the Big M is nothing but stress sometimes (gee, could that be the main mechanism for osteoporosis?), take care of yourself. Curl up with a good book, take a bubble bath, sit quietly under a tree. Don’t wait until everything is done (because hello, it never is done. Ever.) Don’t put it off and don’t put anything ahead of your "me" time. One of our Venuses calls it "exercising my me muscle". And if anyone asks you what you are doing? Tell them you are boning up on health and wellness. Don’t wait until you get your bone scan to start exercise and relaxation. Do it now. Goddesses’ orders.

http://www.womentowomen.com/bonehealth/bones-menopause.aspx

Among other things, I’m the Menopause Health Maven for a wonderful health website called Wellsphere. If you haven’t checked it out before, do so now – just click on my Wellsphere badge on the right hand side of this page. It’s sort of a cross between Web MD and Facebook – with experts and real people sharing advice, experiences, and health networks. As a Maven, I get a number of questions in the Menopause Community. Recently, I was asked about menopausal weight gain. Because this is such a universal and recurring problem, I’ll post my answer for all the menopause goddesses out there who are concerned about those extra curves and voluptuousness.

Weight gain post-menopause affects most women to varying degrees. I can tell you that our community of menopause goddesses has struggled with this symptom again and again. We lose, gain, and lose again.

Our metabolic rate has slowed to a crawl. You would think that this slowdown would be more than offset by calories burned through our hot flashes. Literally. And those goddesses who suffer 30 hot flashes per day should be wasting away, regardless of caloric intake. But in seeming defiance of all natural law, the scale tells us we are getting heavier. We look at our favorite fatty, sweet, carbo-loaded treats and we gain weight. We eat "healthy" food and we gain weight. We don’t change our eating habits at all and we gain weight. Some of us starve ourselves and we gain weight. We diet fiercely, trying to shed extra poundage. South Beach, Medifast, Ornish, Atkins. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystems., Weight Watchers. Among the Venuses, we have collectively tried ALL of these at one time or another with varying (read not permanent) success. And each year, it gets harder to fit into our skinny clothes.

The only diet that really works over time is simple: less calories in – more calories out. Eat less and exercise more. But weighing food and counting calories just causes us to obsess about food, to think about it all the time. Which makes us feel deprived and hungry. Theresa Venus and I finally hit upon the Girlfriend Guilt Diet. We eat normally except for one important difference. We eat half. We make or order food as usual, but only eat half of what’s on our plate.

We also drink our 8 glasses of water (64 oz) each day and we walk a minimum of 2 miles. And here’s the kicker: we have to report to each other at the end of each day via phone or email whether it was yes on food (only ate half), yes on exercise, and yes on water. For some reason, we just can’t stand to call one another and say that we failed. Sure, once in a while, one gets skipped, but its rare. I can bail on myself, but not on my girlfriend. We support each other in slowly losing weight. Losing it fast means it won’t stay off in many cases. We have found ourselves losing weight effortlessly, (or at least painlessly) and since we don’t obsess about food all the time, we don’t binge. The best tip we have is to find a girlfriend to work together on your health regimen (sounds so much better than diet!)

The other thing I want to mention is to find what your new optimal weight might be. I kept trying to reach my 30 year old weight – 125 lbs. And it just isn’t right for me anymore. 135 seems just right in terms of feeling strong and healthy. For more on this, check out my Jan. 22 blog entry A Nude Awakening For A Menopausal Goddess.

As for multivitamins? I’ve taken Centrum over 50 as well as One-A-Day Women’s. Noticed little difference, but I also take a calcium with Vit D supplement and extra Vitamin E.

One last consideration: be sure and have your thyroid checked (blood TSH level, not just T3, T4). So many women develop hypothyroidism with menopause and that can greatly contribute to weight gain. (I’ll be writing a detailed blog on this soon.)

Most of all we know how you feel – it’s like you aren’t YOU anymore. And in a sense, you aren’t. But I promise that it will get better.

A few years ago, Theresa Venus and I spent a girls day cross-country skiing on what Tahoe locals affectionately call "Sierra Cement". This cement is a stage well past fluffy light powder, when sunny days cause the snow to melt and freezing nights turn the meltwater to a crust of ice. Skiing on it is challenging. Stopping is almost impossible, especially on a decline.

After we had "yard saled" at the bottom of yet another hill. Theresa looked up from her butt plant and said "You know, we have to be careful. When we were younger, we just bounced; now we could break."

Ah yes, Menopause, the Big M, gives birth to a lot of little m’s like mortality, midlife, maladies, more changes. One of those changes is that we are more susceptible to injury. So it is that I find myself with a mild tear in my rotator cuff – a common enough sports ailment that makes it painful to move my shoulder or even to let my arm hang from it normally.

The snow was to blame for my breakage, as predicted by Theresa. Except I wasn’t skiing; I just went down the steps when a light dusting of snow made them slick as snot. I caught myself falling backwards with my arms and the rest is history. Except I didn’t really pay attention to the injury until it got so bad I couldn’t sleep at night. (Denial – it ain’t just a river in Egypt!)

So I am getting massage to loosen tightened muscles around the joint and I received an immobilizer from my MD. When she gave it to me, she admonished me to be sure and keep moving my shoulder so it doesn’t "freeze".

"You’re kidding, right?" I looked at her. "I’ll wear this thing at night so I don’t over rotate it, but I’m a WOMAN! I still have laundry to do, cleaning, meals to prepare, blogging and writing commitments. Believe me when I say – that will never be the problem; that I won’t move my shoulder!" Then I followed with, "Just think of what you would do in my place." A menopausal goddess herself, she laughed, "You’re right, what was I thinking? Let me rephrase that to don’t overdo."

And I’ll surely try not to. The biggest challenge, besides the immutable fact that we heal more slowly as we age, is that we feel YOUNG inside. I still feel like I could paddle a canoe through whitewater or windsurf 20 knot winds or hike through quicksand in the hot stinkin’ desert to camp at the base of a Navajo ruin. Maybe I can still do these things, but certainly not with the aplomb of my 30′s. And some things I may not need or wish to try again.

My husband was talking with one of his compadres about things his friend could no longer do and how sad that was. Dewitt rejoined with, "Yes but I look at the gnarly ski hill with the black diamond and realize with gratitude that I don’t ever have to ski those moguls again." Yep, there’s a snow white pony in there somewhere. I think I’ll name it "Acceptance."

Nudity. I don’t like to contemplate it anymore. Oh, I’m not philosophically opposed to it in any way, shape, or form – except the way, shape and form that I personally inhabit these days. Menopause and time have morphed me into someone I don’t recognize. Especially naked.

After my morning shower, I look in the mirror and I literally scramble to put on my clothes. I try to view myself from limited vantage points when confronted by my reflection. I’ve become an expert at the millisecond glance. Things have shifted, slipped, and padded in ways that I never envisioned. I’m equal parts fascinated and horrified.

Some days, I think to myself "oh what the heck, this is what a fifty-something woman looks like. I look ‘good for my age’. " (At one time, I thought the phrase "looks good for her age" was insulting, now it seems like a legitimate compliment.) Luckily, if my husband notices that I’m not the svelte young thing I once was, well, bad eyesight and good sense keep him from remarking on it.

Recently, I was lamenting (sounds slightly more highbrow than whining) to my massage/healing practitioner about how I want to lose weight. "No!" he commanded loudly. "No! You’re healthy. Why are women always worrying so much about their weight? Stop it! If you tell me that you want to get stronger and more fit, great. And if you tone and tighten as a byproduct of that, well okay. But NO setting out to lose weight."

"But," I whined on. "My clothes are tight."

"Then go around naked more," he admonished. "Clean house in the nude – write in the nude – pay bills in the nude."

So I’m trying his advice. Luckily, we live in an extremely rural area, so there are no neighbors or passersby to offend. Our long driveway gives me plenty of warning, should I need to make myself presentable for company.

My husband seems to like this new development. The cats don’t seem to care. (Although the lap sitting is a bit of the problem when they contentedly start to knead my thighs with their claws. Pillows help.)

And I have to say that I’m feeling much better about my fifty year old shape. It’s voluptuous, it’s mature, and it’s healthy. Most important, it’s mine.

(For more menopause and midlife wisdom from our Venus community, click below to order The Big M – and don’t forget our girlfriend’s special – buy one at full price and get the second at half price! the Big M

Recently on one of the health websites where I am privileged to be an "expert" on Menopause, www. wellsphere. com,
a member raised a question about bleeding for over a month solid. Of peri- menopausal age, she was under- standably worried. Most of us think of menopause as a time of skipping or diminishing periods until they cease altogether. Because this question comes up frequently and because it was the case in my perimenopausal transition, I’m reprinting my answer to her for all concerned goddesses.

"Actually, it CAN be normal. Heavy and/or prolonged bleeding during perimenopause can be a normal variant. I had my period every other week (and heavy flows) for a little over a year. Because prolonged bleeding (called dysfunctional uterine bleeding) can be a symptom of more serious conditions, it is important to be checked out by a physician. A pelvic ultrasound and/or endometrial biopsy can rule out pathology. Even if no serious condition is found, you must be monitored for anemia. Regular red blood cell and hemoglobin counts are recommended. I simply increased my intake of red meat and took iron supplements and was never anemic.

Even in the absence of disease, if bleeding persists, your MD may recommend a "simple" D & C (dilation and curettage) or even hysterectomy. I’d get a second opinion or even a third. Remember that NO surgical procedure is simple – each has risks, including that of general anesthesia. A good rule of thumb is to always try the least interventional remedy first.

It took me three tries to find an enlightened gynecologist who felt that heavy bleeding was a normal variant. After ultrasounds and an endometrial biopsy (performed in her office) returned as "normal with menopausal thickening of uterine lining), together we monitored me for anemia and eventually I began skipping periods as I continued on my menopause journey.

Hope this helps – let me know if you have further questions. For more info – check out our blogsite at www.menopausegoddessblog.org. Good luck. Lynette Sheppard RN."

On a further note: I cannot tell you how many of my nurse-friends had D & C’s or hysterectomies after three weeks of bleeding. When they went to their OB-GYN’s, understandably a little freaked out, those were usually the only recommendations. While a surgical procedure may end up being the right choice for you, it is not necessarily the only or best one. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You MUST be in charge of your own health care education and decisions. Still have questions? Click on the "Contact Us" button at the top right of the page or visit me at www.wellsphere.com in the Menopause Community.

"The Big M", the long awaited chronicle of the real-life adventures, musings, wit, and wisdom of the Venus group of Menopause Goddesses is available now. Check out our girlfriend’s special: buy one at regular price and get the second for HALF PRICE. Click here to buy or for free download of Chapter One The Big M t

During menopause, EVERYTHING dries out – and I do mean everything. Seemingly overnight, our skin goes from supple to saran wrap. Our hair goes from bouncy to brittle. Our poor eyes fall prey to a condition known as dry eye syndrome. Now we need to lubricate our eyes, even if we don’t wear contact lenses.

We flake, crack, and itch. We exfoliate spontaneously, like granite outcroppings. We feel physically uncomfortable in this leathery new version of skin even while we are learning to be emotionally at home in it.

And so we spend the equivalent of the national debt (okay not OUR national debt, but say the debt of a small monarchy somewhere) on moisturizers, creams, emollients, and oils just to stay EVEN. We drink enough water to intoxicate ourselves. We ingest AND apply those little gold Vitamin E capsules religiously.

And should we menopausal goddesses travel or reside somewhere less than humid, like say Arizona or the High Sierra? We fall further and further behind on the moisture meter, fighting a losing battle with dryness. I can personally attest to the fact that the Lake Tahoe area can suck the moisture out of a monsoon. And me.

What can help us in our desire to took and feel less iguana-like? Well, the aforementioned Vitamin E as a daily supplement, lots of water, good non-toxic creams and moisturizers such as those from Emerita.com (check out their day and nite creams) have definitely helped the Venuses. Take a spa day once a week (even an hour or two at home) and slather yourself with good goo on hands and feet, apply a moisture mask to your face, another to your hair, and put your feet up with a glass of wine (yeah, yeah, we know – alcohol is dehydrating – we’ll just drink more water later. Our mental health needs its own form of lubrication.)

In addition, try to eat a balanced diet – watch out for the non-fat or low-fat diets – they are likely to dry your skin even more, for obvious reasons. Soy protein if you are not allergic or sensitive to soy can also be a moisture boon for menopausal women.. And chocolate – eat dark chocolate. I have no scientific basis for recommending this other than it is high in antioxidants AND fat AND it makes you feel great.

"The Big M", the long awaited chronicle of the real-life adventures, musings, wit, and wisdom of the Venus group of Menopause Goddesses, is available at . The Big M Take advantage of our Girlfriend’s special – buy one copy and get a second for half price! Great for Christmas gifts!

"I will play for gumbo," sings Jimmy Buffett. Theresa-Venus and I can relate to this sentiment. We will beg, plead, and just generally make fools of ourselves over gumbo. And grits, fried green tomatoes, fresh grouper, etouffee, jambalaya, biscuits with red-eye gravy, beignets……..I could go on and on.

Which is why it was a unique challenge to the Girlfriend Guilt diet and exercise program when we went to visit the Gulf Coast and New Orleans last week. I’m happy to say we did extremely well.

We ate EVERYTHING Southern, Creole, and Cajun that our little hearts desired. And we only ate – say it with me – HALF! Yep, heavenly fried green tomatoes and blackened fresh grouper at Tug’s Wharf in Gulfport, Mississippi. (Thank you to the owner and staff, and thank you iPhone for finding us this great place so we didn’t have to eat freeway fast food!)

We sampled Royal Red shrimp in Gulf Shores, Alabama and Pecan-crusted Snapper in Orange Beach, AL artfully prepared by my baby brother. We gratified ourselves with my Mom’s home cooking – she worked out the portion control so that it was truly guilt-free. Gumbo, pecan pie, Paul Prudhomme’s magical lima beans (yep, lima beans as good as the pie – hard to explain unless you’ve eaten them.) When we finally were over the top with spice and roux, we treated ourselves to a Cheeseburger in Paradise at the Margaritaville Cafe. (That’s Theresa hiding behind the menu in the photo.)

We faithfully drank our water and we walked miles of the scenic coastline and the French Quarter. And when we got home, we weighed ourselves and voila – no gain! Except culinary memories that we won’t soon forget.

So the moral of this little story is: we can eat anything we want on the Girlfriend Guilt diet. Just make sure you’re actually vacationing WITH your girlfriend – that way you can keep each other honest. On second thought, it’s really the mutual support that makes this work. Just like Menopause. We may just have to change the name of our Food-Fun-Fitness program to "The Big Easy".

One last message from the menopausal goddesses we talked with in New Orleans: "We are not underwater – we are open and ready for business and can’t wait to see you all here in N’awlins!"

(For more great menopause and midlife tips, info, and commiseration from the Venuses, buy our book "The Big M". Right now, we have a girlfriend’s special going on – buy one at regular price, get the second one for half price to give to a girlfriend! Just click on the book cover on the right of the page or click on the link below.)

Menopause and weight gain – they go together like ham and eggs, like biscuits and gravy, like pecan and pie, like…well you get the drift. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, the Venuses collectively have tried almost every diet publicized, seen on TV, created and passed on through word of mouth. They all worked – for a little while. And then our midlife bodies, in their infinite wisdom, figure out how to conserve calories in ingenious new ways.

I think I mentioned that most of us menopausal goddesses have at least two wardrobes, separated not into winter and summer, but into thin and fat. And we’d alternate between them as needed. Just lately though, Theresa-Venus and I noticed a disturbing new trend – our "fat" clothing was tightening. Alarmed at this development, we had a confab (over pie or some such dessert, of course) and settled on a new diet/workout plan.

We would follow that most useful weight loss advice of less calories in – more calories out. We would report to each other via email at the end of each day on three parameters that created and supported our net caloric decrease: food intake, daily exercise, and water intake.

We settled on a minimum of exercise – a two mile walk each day. If we did more than that, great. But two miles was the absolute least we had to log. Sixty four ounces of water was the minimum we could consume – coffee, tea, or sodas didn’t count, although we could add a little juice or lemonade for flavor. Lastly food. No food item was verboten, although we were primed to avoid desserts and sweets. Our goal was to eat HALF. Whatever we would normally eat – we would eat exactly half. If we went out to a restaurant, no problem. Eat half and take the rest home. This sounded like a pretty good plan. How did it work? Like gangbusters!

As it turns out, we didn’t realize the "Girlfriend Guilt" factor would be so strong. As the end of each day neared, we would find ourselves gulping water to make up any deficit. And exercise? We couldn’t bear emailing one another that we didn’t make our minimum, so we’d drag our weary, middle-aged carcasses out for our walk. The food turned out to be the easiest part of the plan. Not having to stress about carbs vs fat vs food-combining made mealtime easy. At no time did we feel deprived, since no foods were actually off our list.

Are we thin yet? Well, no. Still in our fat clothes, but they are fitting more loosely. The weight is coming off SLOWLY, just the way it so insidiously appeared. We are more toned and fit – and that’s a very good thing.

So join us, goddesses! Try the Girlfriend Guilt Diet and Exercise Program! It’s free! All you need is a willing friend with whom make the mutual commitment – the guilt part just comes naturally.

And for more great menopause and midlife tips, info, and commiseration from the Venuses, buy our book "The Big M". Right now, we have a girlfriend’s special going on – buy one at regular price, get the second one for half price to give to a girlfriend! Just click on the book cover on the right of the page or click on the link below: