How to beat menopause before it starts.
Did you know the average woman gains 25lb going through menopause?!
And if you think you’ve had trouble losing weight in the past, just wait until your body isn’t making the essential hormones that control your metabolism, muscle mass, and energy.
For all of you 35 to 45+ year old women that are still having menstrual cycle, I want to help you get ahead of the curve.
Peri-menopause is your body’s warning that big change is coming! And if your mindful of how you manage your hormones and overall wellness in these key years, you’ll make aging gracefully (and thinner) look easy!
So what really is peri-menopause?
Peri-menopause is the 2 to 10 years before menses stop. During this period, which usually begins around age 40, but can begin around 35 years of age, ovarian function begins declining. Some women begin having anovulatory cycles or cycles where the ovaries do not release an egg. During this time, progesterone levels drop and estradiol, your primary estrogen, starts going on a rollercoaster.
The signals from the pituitary gland in the brain called Follicular Stimulating Hormone (FSH), start increasing trying to wake the ovaries up.
Usually the first imbalance that occurs is estrogen dominance, which is high estrogen in comparison to progesterone. You can have where estrogen is spiking at some point in the month, without adequate progesterone.
This can all make you feel like you're on a rollercoaster. You can become emotionally all over the place, feel irritable, depressed, or anxious at times. Many women begin gaining weight, some have water retention, headaches, and difficulty falling or staying asleep.
As crazy as it may sound, I’ve had multiple post-menopausal women tell me they went through a divorce during this time, and they wish they would have had someone check their hormones… saying “It may have saved my marriage!”
Testosterone is often the next hormone that tends to decline, from my clinical experience.
Some women actually have low testosterone in their late 20’s and early 30’s as stress and lack of exercise tends to play a big role in this hormone.
Symptoms can include fatigue, low libido, difficulty reaching climax, night sweats, lack of motivation, difficulty with focus or concentration, difficulty recovering from exercise or feeling excessively sore, loss of muscle mass and a slowed metabolism.
Once estrogen begins declining, women tend to experience symptoms such as: Day time hot flashes, hair texture changes, brittle hair, dry skin, memory changes, and vaginal dryness.
By this point, hormones have most likely been on the decline for quite some time. And this is usually the point, we are now climbing up a steep mountain to get the weight off, whereas it would have come off a few years before, much easier.
Your sex hormones not only affect how you feel and look, but they also dictate your production and maintenance of bone mass, preventing osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes, and if balanced correctly, actually prevent cancer.
The point where disease begins is the point where hormones end (or decline, really!)
Here’s the 5 keys to going through menopause with gaining 10,15,25 OR losing your ever-loving mind!
Lower inflammation- work on gut health and proper clean nutrition.
Keep it simple- before we start breaking down macronutrient percentages and counting calories. Let’s make sure that we are eating clean nutrition.Improve stress management - We can’t always control what comes our way, but we can control our response! Things like getting adequate sleep, proper nutrition, exercise, yoga, deep breathing, and meditation can go a long ways. Often I’ll recommend adrenal adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha, rhodiola, relora, and panax ginseng to patients needing a little extra stress support.
Get adequate Sleep - While I can’t say enough good things about the importance of adequate sleep quality and quantity- let’s be honest- getting good quality sleep can be difficult, especially as hormones have declined.
While supplements like magnesium, l-theanine, relora, and Melatonin are common and good sleep support, most of the time, poor sleep in the peri-menopasual female is from a decline in progesterone, which is our primary sleep inducing sex hormone.
Bio-identical progesterone, which is actually plant based, can do wonders for helping women through peri-menopause and even after menopause.
Get ahead of the hormone changes- the first signs of feeling hormonal shifts, should be the moment you begin working to restore balance with a seasoned hormone replacement specialist. There’s plenty of supplements out there like evening primrose oil, chasteberry, Vitamin E, Peruraria lobato, ginseng, and rhubarb which all can be beneficial, but the key is that they be used effectively. Without knowing your lab data, it can be challenging to know what you're chasing. And during peri-menopause, hormones tend to naturally shift, every 3 to 6 months and can month to month. I’ve seen women using supplements to increase estrogen, when really the issue is too low of progesterone, not too low of estrogen… so they’ve actually exacerbated the problem by taking the wrong supplements!
At RestoreU Functional Medicine, we take a functional medicine approach to achieving hormone balance.
As a provider, I want to “get the tank full“ so to speak on anything that is deficient or imbalance while I work backwards and plug the holes that could be causing hormones to decline faster or be imbalanced- this is where understanding gut health, nutrition, inflammation, cortisol or adrenal function, thyroid function and more all intertwine to give us a comprehensive approach to your hormone and physical wellness.
So it’s not “here’s a hormone cream- see ya in 6 months”...Instead it’s “We are going to go ahead and start supplements or bio-identical hormones so your menses become more tolerable or so that you have more energy, as an example, but let’s address these other things that may be contributing.”
Approaching hormone therapy this way, it’s just about hormone replacement, but it’s about helping you age gracefully; and make the most or best of this one body and life you’re given!
If you’re not sure if you could have a sex hormone, thyroid, or cortisol imblance- click here and take our free hormone quiz.
Ready to beat menopause before it starts?
Get started and become a patient today!
