Last week’s email regarding breast cancer risk opened a can of worms (proverbially speaking, of course). That begs the question: What’s a pretty girl gonna do when menopause strikes?
Let’s take a deeper dive into menopause…
What Is Menopause?
“Menopause is a state of transition in a woman’s life.”
That’s a bit like saying a limb amputation is slightly uncomfortable. Let’s face it: Menopause is not for sissies. However, it is inevitable if you want to reach a new stage of your life and being. You can postpone it (a little), fight it, or guide it, but you cannot avoid it.
Biologically speaking, menopause is the time in a woman’s life when her sex hormone levels drop rapidly. However, here’s a novel way of defining menopause:
Menopause is God’s way of making grannies.
We’ll unpack this a bit more later. Menopause ensures that wise, experienced women will have the free time to guide their daughters as they enter adulthood and parenting. It can be argued that, without grannies, human society would not have survived. For millennia, grannies passed on the culture and lore from one generation to the next.
So, let’s embrace menopause (gently).
Here’s the thing, though: Menopause was not such a “thing” for your grandmother or great-grandmother.
How come it has become such an issue in the past fifty years?
Maybe it has something to do with the medicalisation of menopause from the 1970s onwards? Although menopause is a perfectly natural phase in a woman’s life, doctors want to treat it as if it were a disease. Hint: Interfering with nature never ends well.
There are three phases to menopause:
* perimenopause
* menopause and
* post-menopause.
During perimenopause, the production of estrogen and progesterone drops and fluctuates. A sudden drop in estrogen levels results in symptoms such as hot flashes, poor sleep, tiredness, mood changes, brain fog and irritability. Did we mention weight gain? Urinary incontinence? These also affect many women during and after menopause.
Remember, it’s not about fighting menopause, but finding a way of living with it and through it. The astronomer Johannes Kepler referred to his work as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” To get a holistic understanding of menopause, you need to take a God’s eye view first.
In essence, menopause enables a woman to stop looking inwardly at her close family’s immediate needs and to instead look outwardly at the needs of others, not necessarily direct family members. Her hands are freed from child-rearing so she can serve a larger community. She becomes the glue that holds society together.
Whatever we do, we need to enable this process of social readjustment to flow as smoothly as possible.
Key Concepts
* During menopause, a woman’s body becomes more insulin resistant.
* Menopause makes a woman prone to rising acidity.
* Hormone balance is more important than actual hormone levels.
* Mobility is vital, but becomes harder over time.
Weight Gain
The key hormonal change in the menopausal woman’s body is actually not located in the ovaries. It comes from the pancreas. During menopause, insulin secretion rises and insulin resistance increases with that. This is a nifty survival strategy, allowing the woman’s body to survive for longer with less food. Thus she can be present to benefit the next two generations.
Conversely, a hormone that drops is the thyroid hormone, leading to an even slower metabolism (= you need to eat even less and can survive famines much better). More insulin and less thyroid hormone can result in weight gain if food is plentiful.
A study among 89,000 women found that a low carb diet reduced the risk of postmenopausal weight gain by ~30%. In contrast, a low fat diet increased the risk by ~40%! So much for the low fat dogma for weight loss. The Mediterranean diet showed no benefit or risk.
As a general comment: Go with the flow. Your postmenopausal body is geared for endurance, not for speed. It is optimised for longevity, not for maternity. You don’t have to fit into that bikini ever again, and that is nothing to be ashamed about. Your “new” body is designed to eat less, so eat less. You need fewer calories, but more proteins (relative to your pre-menopausal portion size).
Another hormone that plays an important role in weight management is thyroid hormone. Low levels of this hormone are common in menopause. Instead of taking synthetic thyroid hormone, however, how about supplementing your body with iodine? Iodine is essential for the making of thyroid hormone, yet most diets are deficient in iodine (link).
Finding a great, affordable iodine supplement is not easy, which is why we formulated our Iodine Spray. One spray daily provided 1,000 mcg of elemental Iodine, or 667% of the Ridiculous Daily Amount.
Cravings
Appetite or food cravings may increase during peri-menopause and menopause. A low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet minimises these hunger pangs. If you do have cravings, don’t give in to sweet things. Rather opt for foods with a sour taste to stop food cravings. Eat a slice of lemon or other citrus. Savoury snacks, like biltong or nuts will also help. Another tip is to buy dark bitter chocolate (90+% cocoa), break it into small pieces (“nibs”), and to suck on one piece at a time, slowly. The bitter taste will fight cravings and prevent binging.
Sarcopenia
On the one hand, you find yourself gaining weight. On the other hand, you are secretly losing weight.
Few people have ever heard this word, let alone know what it means. “Sarcopenia” refers to the loss of muscle mass. This is more difficult to detect than bone loss, but actually more harmful. A postmenopausal woman loses about a teaspoon’s worth of muscle mass every week. That is about a quarter kilogram a year, or ~3 kg a decade (link).
Considering that you likely enter menopause with ~25 kg of muscle mass, this loss is significant (that explains why you struggle so much to get up from a lounge chair once you are in your sixties).
Regular walks (20-30 minutes at a time, 3 or more times a week) are probably the best way of preserving muscle mass. If you live in an area where this is not possible, find other ways to keep your leg muscles strong. This will make all the difference to your quality of life in your 70s and 80s.
Note: The popular weight loss drug Ozempic and its buddies hide a sinister secret. They cause significant muscle weight loss. Yes, you’re going to shed fat, but you’re also losing muscle mass. Gaining back this lost muscle is very difficult. Expect to see a lot of wheelchairs in public in about 5-10 years. We mess with nature at our peril.
Hot Flashes
“I have a hot flash and a gun. Any questions?”
“Personal summers” are one of the most noticeable symptoms of peri-menopause. About 75% of all women have these sudden brief increases in their body temperature. Sometimes, hot flashes are accompanied by increased skin temperature, heart palpitations and intense sweating.
Why do hot flashes occur? We don’t quite know, but here’s a possible mechanism. Excess acidity (= carbon dioxide) heaping up in the body needs a quick exit from the body. The body only has three ways of getting rid of excess acid: Lungs (breathing out carbon dioxide), kidneys (urine) & skin (sweat). In our sedentary 21st century, the lungs are not used optimally for the excretion of excess carbon dioxide. Kidney function decreases with age, and thus this avenue of getting rid of acid is also compromised. This leaves only the skin as a means of getting rid of excess acid in a hurry.
If this hypothesis holds true, then the following interventions will reduce hot flashes:
* Regular moderate exercise (Yes, see here)
* Drinking more water (Yes, see link)
* Breathing exercises (Yes, here’s the link)
* Cutting out carbs / sugar (Yes, it works)
Sugar is one of the most acidogenic (“acid creating”) items in our diet. Each sugar molecule gets burned to 6 molecules of carbon dioxide, which combines with water to create an acid. This is one place where you need to reduce your carbon footprint.
No sweet, no sweat
Regular cold showers may also modify the body’s blood vessels to be more resilient.
Conversely, regular saunas also seem to help (link).
Taking a teaspoon of bicarb or baking powder in a glass of water daily reduces acidity if done regularly. This, in turn, will reduce the frequency of hot flashes.
Low iodine levels are linked to hot flashes (link). Supplementing with iodine can reduce hot flashes by as much as 50%.
Magnesium stabilises the blood vessels and nerves, reducing the risk of hot flashes. The correct dose is about 400 – 800 mg elemental magnesium daily.
Our Lava Dust contains easily absorbable silica, which helps strengthen arterial walls. A pinch a day is all you need to gain the benefits of this unusual “supplement”.
Some other advice for managing hot flashes when they strike:
* Dress in layers so that you can remove clothing when experiencing a hot flash;
* Use cotton sheets and wear cotton clothing to allow your skin to breathe.
* Avoid foods and drinks that may cause hot flashes, such as spicy foods, alcohol or hot drinks
* Drink a glass of cold water when a hot flash starts
* Keep a thermos of ice water next to your bed to sip at night.
* Reduce your stress levels, or take a few deep breaths when you are anxious to prevent a hot flash coming on.
* See if you can figure out what triggers your hot flushes so that you can manage it.
Brain Fog & Lack Of Concentration
Lack of concentration and a decrease in mental sharpness can occur during menopause. This is directly linked to the lower estrogen levels. There are estrogen receptors in many parts of the brain, and estrogen helps different areas of the brain to communicate with each other. With the lower estrogen levels, brain function and mood are affected. So, relax. You’re not going crazy. There is a perfectly normal reason for your “difficulty remembering” some small stuff, sometimes.
Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids are essential for brain function. These often drop lower during menopause, which may also result in brain fog and poor concentration. Eat animal fats (especially from grass-fed beef) and fish to get more omega-3 into your body.
Our Fish Oil capsules provide an easy and affordable way of increasing omega-3 intake.
Fatigue & Poor Sleep
Tiredness and fatigue often accompany menopause. This is due to a drop in testosterone and estrogen, both of which help with energy. The other big reason is the lack of good quality sleep. The fluctuation in hormone levels causes the brain to wake up at all hours of the night. The lower progesterone levels make some women more short-tempered and less able to relax. In addition, estrogen helps control cortisol, the stress hormone. When estrogen declines, that regulation is weakened. The resulting increase in the stress response can result in fatigue and anxiety.
Loss of sleep is often a result of being unable to wind down and relax. With a low-carb diet, the blood sugar levels in the body are balanced, improving sleep, and resetting the body’s natural rhythm. Of course, healthy sleep habits are also important – fixed bedtime, no screens for an hour before bedtime, etc.
* Get moving. Physical activity raises your energy levels and helps you sleep better (but don’t do strenuous workouts within a few hours of bedtime). Physical activity can also boost your feel-good hormones.
* Drink your water: Keep to 2 litres per day.
* Stay low-carb: If there is one significant outcome of being low-carb, it is the incredible increase in energy levels you experience. A low-carb diet reduces the amount of acidic waste your body needs to cope with, leaving you with extra energy to spend on the things you love to do.
* Take that nap: Short power naps may be just the thing to take you through the rest of the day, especially if you are struggling with poor sleep during the night. A power nap is just that – short and empowering. Don’t sleep for longer than 30 minutes. Use an eye mask to block out the light for deeper sleep.
Weak Bones & Osteoporosis
Every peri-menopausal woman is made to fear osteoporosis as though it is the worst thing that could ever befall her. Yes, about a third of postmenopausal women will experience significant bone loss and there is an increased fracture risk.
When it comes to bones, the basic mantra is, “Use it or lose it.” Regular exercise and strong muscles are your best defence against bone weakness.
Furthermore, understand where the weakness comes from: Acid. When acid levels rise, calcium and magnesium are leached from the bones to help counteract this acidity. Cutting out sugar and carbs is the most important thing you can do to reduce acidity. The other tips mentioned above are also of value – apply them and you do not need to fear osteoporosis.
Incontinence
Possibly the most embarrassing of all menopausal symptoms is urinary leaking and incontinence. It isn’t life-threatening, but socially debilitating. Between a third and half of women over age 60 experience it.
Gynaecologists stand by to solve this problem with surgery. That’s a bit like using a hand grenade to kill a mosquito. When you understand the cause, you can stop incontinence from taking over your social life.
In short, urine leaks are a flag pointing to weakened muscles. It’s not just the muscle around the bladder that is weakening, all your muscles are losing strength. To counteract this, you can do the following:
* Eat more animal protein, especially fatty beef mince. This will help strengthen muscles. If you’re vegetarian, take 12g (24 tablets) of spirulina daily.
* Do regular, moderate exercise, like walking. Jogging and aerobics is going to make matters worse.
* Do pelvic floor exercises (link). We have a little booklet that explains how to do pelvic floor exercises (link).
* Follow our tips on lowering acidity (above). The kidneys produce more urine in an attempt to flush out acid from the body.
* Get enough Vitamin D. This vita-hormone helps with the building of strong muscles. Either get into the sun more often or take a supplement. A postmenopausal woman likely needs about 10,000 IU / day for optimal Vitamin D levels. Even intakes of 20,000 IU / day are no longer considered toxic (link).
Hormone Replacement
On the surface, hormone replacement seems like the obvious thing to do. Estrogen and progesterone are low, so let’s top them up a bit, like oil and water on a car’s engine. The reality is not all that simple. We will discuss this topic in greater detail in a future email.
Supplements
Here are some supplement suggestions, assuming that you eating a fair mix of fruit, veg and animal products, with an emphasis on low-carb.
Don’t Do Calcium
Do NOT – repeat NOT – take any calcium supplementation. Rather get your calcium out of dairy. The myth that calcium builds bones is based on a grain of truth. Yes, we need regular, organic calcium in our diet. Inorganic calcium (such as used in supplements) has been shown time and again to cause a wide range of health issues and may significantly reduce lifespan. More than ~500 mg of inorganic, elemental calcium supplementation daily is not a good idea (link).
As if this is not enough, calcium inhibits the absorption of magnesium, the true bone builder. Taking a supplement that has both calcium and magnesium is thus a waste of money (link).
A glass of milk provides ~125 mg of organic calcium, while a ~30g portion of cheddar cheese will provide ~200 mg of organic calcium. You probably do not need more than 300 – 400 mg of organic calcium daily.
Magnesium
When it comes to strong bones, your body needs enough magnesium and boron. About 500+ mg of elemental magnesium and about 3 mg of elemental boron daily.
Our MgO provides 240 mg of elemental magnesium per 400 mg capsule. It is easily absorbed, thanks to the way it has been formulated. One or two capsules daily will supercharge your bone health.
Vitamin D3
We all need extra Vitamin D. However, after menopause, you need it even more to maintain strong bones. Our ancestors were still working in the fields long after menopause, so supplementing Vitamin D wasn’t necessary. Nowadays, things look very different. Taking the RDA of Vitamin D (400 – 600 IU / day) is based on a faulty calculation (link).
Our daily requirement is probably in the order of 6,000 – 20,000 IU. Even the influential Mayo Clinic is happy to recommend 15,000 IU / day over the long term, with no adverse effects expected (link).
Vitamin D requirement varies widely between people. As such, it is better to measure blood levels rather than to look at the amount inside the pill you are taking. Blood levels between 80 and 100 ng/ml are likely optimal in the prevention of breast cancer and osteoporosis.
Our Mega D3 delivers 40,000 IU per capsule. Taking one capsule on two or three days of the week should keep blood levels in the 80 – 100 ng/ml range for most people. Check blood levels every 6 – 12 months to make sure. Once you’ve figured out your personal demand, you do not need to keep measuring it.
Bicarb of Soda
As already mentioned, (peri)menopause makes your body vulnerable to acid production. As such, it is no surprise that lower serum bicarbonate levels are directly related to bone loss, while higher serum bicarbonate levels are linked to stronger bones (link).
The cheapest intervention with the biggest impact you can do to protect bone health and to reduce the severity of menopausal symptoms, is to take a daily teaspoon of bicarb / baking powder. It really is that simple.
Mix it into a glass of water and add some lemon juice to improve the taste.
Cancer Bush (Sutherlandia)
We South Africans are lucky. We have one of the most powerful healing herbs growing right here in our midst (and nowhere else). Cancer Bush (in a dose of 1,000 mg daily, or more) can help with many of the downsides of menopause. It helps to build muscle. The effects of Cancer Bush take about two weeks to become noticeable.
Phytoestrogens
Phytoestrogens are natural compounds found in plants and plant-based foods. When ingested, they may affect the body in the same way as estrogen produced by the body would. Unlike synthetic estrogens, phyto-estrogens reduce breast cancer risk (link).
Here are some sources of phyto-estrogens:
* Soy: Soy used to be one of the best sources for phytoestrogens. However, it is nowadays best to avoid soy in all its forms. Virtually all commercially available soy worldwide is genetically modified. This means the final products from soy contain measurable levels of RoundUp / glyphosate. In small amounts (as in soy sauce), this is not the end of the world, but rather consume other foods high in phytoestrogens.
* Fruits: Many fruits contain phytoestrogens. Strawberries, apples, pomegranates) and cranberries are all great choices.
* Vegetables: yams, lentils, alfalfa sprouts, mung beans and sprouts.
* Liquids: Red wine and olive oil.
* Eubex: Our Eucalyptus Bark Extract is chock-full of polyphenols and phyto-estrogens. One capsule a day will help a lot with managing symptoms.
Remember: Menopause is a natural condition. It may not be pleasant, but it is not a disease. It does not require prescription medication. If acid levels are managed well, the symptoms will generally be mild / bearable.
The Bigger Picture
While the above tips will not result in the complete absence of menopausal symptoms, they may lessen the intensity and duration of these symptoms. Best of all, they will not shorten your life, give you cancer or make you sick and tired.
It may be tempting to focus on the unpleasant effects of menopause, it is more important to keep your eye on the bigger picture. We’ve said a lot about the biology of menopause, but we’re more than meat and bone. We live in relationship. So let us briefly look at some of the social aspects of menopause.
If menopause is indeed God’s way of making grannies, what is the intended role for the postmenopausal woman?
During menopause, your biology is preparing you to be present to and for others. Your pre-menopausal life was likely preoccupied by your immediate family, like parents, husband and/or children. Your post-menopausal scope broadens considerably. You children are more independent and leaving the house. Your body is better geared to serving others in a completely new way. What that way is, depends on each woman’s own life and circumstances. Inside, there will now be a longing to give, to get involved in your community. This is perfectly normal. This is the way it was meant to be.
Older women are repositories of lived wisdom. In many traditional societies, they are the go-to people for all sorts of practical advice. They enjoy sharing their knowledge and in transferring skills to the upcoming generations, not just their immediate family. This woman wants to give more to more people and to mean more to more people. When this desire is blocked, she feels frustrated and trapped. Finding avenues for your innate generosity and charity will make the transition into a postmenopausal woman so much more bearable and fulfilling.
Ain’t life sweet (after all)?
To your (transformed) health!
The Team at Integrow Health
