End Your Menopause Misery: The 10-Day Self-Care Plan (Symptoms, Perimenopause, Hormone Replacement Therapy)
144
End Your Menopause Misery: The 10-Day Self-Care Plan (Symptoms, Perimenopause, Hormone Replacement Therapy)
144Paperback
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Overview
“A fabulously elegant and timely guide to transforming menopause into a woman's ‘second spring.’” ―Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., C.N.S., author of the New York Times bestseller Before the Change
Learn to find relief from the symptoms of menopause and perimenopause within this personal guidebook that addresses the most intimate aspects of a women’s health.
Millions of women struggle with symptoms of menopause. It’s a stage in life that isn’t always easy. End Your Menopause Misery offers a personal menopause plan that addresses questions you have. An information-packed guidebook offering both the latest medical statistics and self-care advice. Choose what works for you and incorporate these routines into your daily life for a better you.
A quick and practical approach to menopause. End Your Menopause Misery is a quick and practical approach that can give you relief from menopause symptoms in just 10 days. Inside, psychologist and nurse, Stephanie Bender, and medical journalist Treacy Colbert offer women simple, straight-forward advice about their health.
With this plan discover how to:
- Reduce and eliminate hot flashes
- Rekindle your sex drive
- Increase your energy with exercise
If you benefited from women’s health guides such as Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, The Hormone Cure, or The Vagina Bible, then you’ll love End Your Menopause Misery.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781573245852 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mango Media |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2013 |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Treacy Colbert is a medical writer who has written for Health, Clinical Advisor, Comprehensive Therapy, Women's Health Access, International Journal of Integrative Medicine, and Nutrition in Complementary Care. Ms. Colbert lives in Long Beach, CA, with her husband and son.
Read an Excerpt
End Your Menopause Misery
The 10-DAY Self-Care Plan
By Stephanie Bender, Treacy Colbert
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 2013 Stephanie Bender and Treacy ColbertAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-585-2
CHAPTER 1
Mark Your Calendar for Ten Days from Now
Take a look at your calendar and circle the date or put a reminder in your smartphone for ten days from now. Between now and then, you're going to find relief from your perimenopause or menopause symptoms and simply change your life for the better. That's right. Over the next ten days, you will discover how to renew your energy, lift your mood, spend more restful nights, improve your libido, savor foods that make you feel good, sharpen your wits, and brighten up your overall appearance. You'll build stamina with the right mix of exercise, and you'll increase your heart and bone strength.
And if all the noise and confusion about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has alarmed you, take a deep breath. We've sorted and sifted our way through the medical literature so you don't have to. After all, what busy woman has time for the medical degree she'd need to fully understand the pros and cons of HRT? This should make it a whole lot easier for you to make choices about taking or not taking medication.
Impossible, you might think. Do all that in ten days? Possible.
The advice in this guide is simple and straightforward, following the latest science on women's health. We've seen so many women try to navigate this change without a lot of help, and they nearly tear their hair out in the process. That's precisely why we wrote this book.
As women "of a certain age," we are the ultimate multitaskers—organizing and engineering our job and family responsibilities; helping our kids, stepkids, and grandkids along their path; caring for aging relatives; offering community service as volunteers; and negotiating and navigating our marriages, relationships, and friendships. But we shouldn't have to enroll in medical school, leaf through a dozen books, or consult multiple websites to piece together how to handle hot flashes, mood swings, memory lapses, dwindling libido, or other midlife symptoms that are interfering with life.
With each day in this book, you'll find new hints to help you look and feel better. The tenth day caps with an exploration of your spiritual health, so that it, too, flourishes and you can move through your days feeling centered and in control.
For Stephanie, writing this guide feels a bit like coming full circle, which is particularly poignant. Thirty years ago, she founded Full Circle Women's Health, a women's health clinic in Boulder, Colorado, with the philosophy of blending the mental and physical aspects of women's health. At the time, her children were elementary school students ages eight and ten, playing with their beloved action figures and tearing around on their bikes. The term premenstrual syndrome (PMS) was only just beginning to be understood. Now her children are grown, with children of their own, and she is a grandmother who has gone through the menopausal transition too. She shares her own experiences here as well as those of the thousands of women she has met through Full Circle Women's Health and in cities all over the United States, where she speaks and gives women's health seminars.
Back in 1982, there was very little information about the ways in which hormones affect women's bodies and psyches, and hormone-related symptoms accompanying the menstrual cycle were dismissed as signs of weakness, self-indulgence, or worse—mental instability. Indeed, we have come a long way since those days. Stephanie has worked with thousands of women who were suffering from PMS, postpartum depression, and later in their lives, symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. On a societal level, there is certainly a greater understanding of women's hormonal health, but she still encounters women on a daily basis who are looking for help and information.
While it's decidedly a good thing that there is a wealth of information on women's hormonal health now, for some women approaching menopause, this information glut has given rise to a new problem—sorting it all out can seem overwhelming. Stephanie's previous books on PMS and perimenopause offered breakthrough information on topics that were rarely acknowledged, let alone discussed. Now Stephanie encounters women who are entering perimenopause or have reached menopause and are experiencing very uncomfortable symptoms, but they're frightened by what they've heard about the harms of HRT. Often, they mistakenly believe that they just have to tough out their symptoms, fearing that HRT is too dangerous and that nothing else works.
We wrote this guide to let women know that their choices are not starkly divided between equally unfavorable options, and to provide manageable, positive steps we can all take to improve this part of our lives. Whether you're in your forties and in perimenopause, meaning that you still have periods although they may be irregular now, or if you're in your forties, fifties, or sixties and have stopped menstruating but still experience menopause symptoms, you'll find help in these pages.
We were recently interested—and amused—to read that anthropologists have discovered that a surprising 25 percent of our Neanderthal sisters lived past the age of forty, contrary to earlier evidence of a far shorter life span. Scientists don't know if these elderly Neanderthal women went through menopause, but reading the article made us speculate about how our experiences compare today, forty thousand years later. Did forty-something Neanderthal women toss off their animal skins in the cave when night sweats came on? Did they feel unexplained sorrow or fatigue without the language to articulate these emotions? We can't know, of course, but we do know today that women experience menopause in distinct ways.
What do you know about your mother's experience of menopause? Perhaps you're reaching menopause at roughly the same age as your mother and with many of the same symptoms. Or your menopausal transition may be completely distinct from hers—with entirely different or more severe symptoms. Maybe you don't know what your mother went through and she isn't here any longer, so you can't ask.
Regardless of which is true for you, this is definitely not your mother's menopause. As a woman reaching menopause today, you have more information about your body, a wider array of choices on what to do, and greater license to be open about your physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Thankfully, we no longer live in a time when women are routinely loaded up with high doses of estrogen to "treat" menopause, a risky practice that has been abandoned. Other women of our mothers' era thought they were toughing it out alone and doing just fine, but many were self-medicating with generous lashings of chardonnay, scotch, or cigarettes. Others resorted to an array of tranquilizers or diet pills that may have kept them thin but jittery or foggy. Some of the symptoms of menopause may be timeless, but your focus on self-care for the next ten days will depart from any dated notions of how women are supposed to think and feel about this time in their lives.
Among sisters, aunts, friends, and cousins who have very similar menopause symptoms, the way they experience them and how much or how little they are bothered by these symptoms can be as varied as their background and appearance. One woman's weight gain may make her feel depressed and out of control, while another woman may accept her more generous waist size and not let it bother her. Night sweats and interrupted sleep can be what sends some women off the rails, while others find that sudden bouts of anxiety, irritability, and/or depression are the menopause symptoms that are hardest to deal with. You may find it useful to inventory your menopause symptoms. What concerns you the most? What do you most want to improve? Write down your thoughts and remember today as the date that you took the first step toward changing the way you look and feel.
There's no right way to go through menopause. But as women, we often get swept up in the millrace of others' needs and neglect our own. Resist that pattern as you pay full attention to your own health and well-being now, and in following this simple, ten-day plan, put yourself first, perhaps for the first time in your life. Tuck this guide into your purse or briefcase, or keep it on your nightstand, and make these health hints your priority for the next week and a half. You've earned this time and consideration.
You can use this guide in one of two ways, but whichever you choose, be sure to follow it for the full ten days. It's easy and effective to follow it chronologically, but if one set of symptoms feels most bothersome to you, feel free to start with the hints for that day. For example, if hot flashes are troubling you more than mood shifts, you may want to begin with the hints for Day 8, "Moisture," and then return to Day 2, "Mood," and then follow the rest of the program in order. Whether you decide to follow the program chronologically for ten days or to create a ten-day sequence that fits your needs, here's what we can tell you for sure: you'll feel better. Check off each tip as you do it, and we guarantee you'll say, "That made me feel good!" every time.
As always, women's stories contribute to our shared knowledge and support. Please post a comment at www.endyourmenopausemisery.com, and tell us your story after you finish this ten-day program. We're eager to hear what worked best for you.
CHAPTER 2
Mood
The pall that settles without warning. The flash of irritation that turns a routine conversation with a coworker or family member into a heated exchange. Gnawing anxiety that lingers even after a momentary source of stress has been resolved. Bouts of tears that come on unexpectedly. Sound familiar?
Women experience these mood changes during menopause individually. For some, the seesawing nature of their moods—feeling okay one minute and angry, blue, or nervous the next—gives life an unsettled, unpredictable feel that can be unnerving. Other women experience less abrupt shifts in mood but describe an ongoing "flat" feeling or a sense of joylessness where nothing ignites a spark of excitement, enthusiasm, or happiness.
Let's look at how and why these mood changes occur. Estrogen strongly influences the production, transmission, and uptake of key brain chemicals that regulate your mood. As estrogen levels decline steeply during the menopausal years, the complex interplay between this hormone and others like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine in the brain can alter your mood unpredictably.
As ovaries retire from their job of producing progesterone, the absence of this calming hormone can manifest as increased anxiety or irritability. Women who report feeling especially well during pregnancy are feeling the effects of high progesterone levels that support the growing baby. When ovulation stops, progesterone levels drop nearly to zero.
Hormones don't govern our feelings or behaviors entirely, but they wield considerable clout, especially during menopause. That's important to remember when a shift in mood takes over without any rhyme or reason—you're not suddenly becoming unable to cope.
So don't worry. Even if lately you've felt like you're losing it, there's plenty you can do to prevent these disconcerting mood shifts or minimize their disruptiveness. First, take this short quiz to identify which aspects of your mood changes have been the most bothersome to you in the last three to six months. This will help you clarify the triggers and decide what you'd like to change.
Which statements reflect your feelings?
1. In menopause, I have recaptured my youth. I feel like I am revisiting toddler years, that is, because even a slight irritation can make me feel like I want to fling myself to the floor, drum my heels, and wail.
2. I alternate between wondering, What's wrong with me? and asking myself, What's wrong with all these people who persist in annoying the hell out of me?
3. If anxiety were an Olympic sport, I would go for the gold medal in fretting about past events, worrying about my current circumstances, and getting myself into a tailspin about things that might happen.
4. Menopause has brought about a distinct failure in other people's ability to drive the way I expect them to. While this is intensely irritating, I have built up my arm and jaw muscles by gripping the steering wheel and clenching my teeth.
5. Activities or hobbies that once brought me joy either don't interest me much now or I lack the energy to do them.
6. I swing between feeling deeply justified in roaring at a family member or snapping at a coworker, and later feeling horrified and remorseful about the anger I displayed.
7. I sometimes feel that my best days are behind me.
8. I sometimes feel that my behind's best days are behind me.
9. If outsized tissues for crying jags were available, say somewhere between the size of a hand towel and a bath towel, I would buy several boxes to keep on hand.
10. Things that once lifted my spirits, like wine, sweets, or shopping, either don't work so well anymore or sometimes make me feel worse.
End Mood Misery
Tongue in cheek aside, if depression, irritability, anxiety, or all three plague you, try giving it a rest, literally. Improving your mood can start with improving your sleep. Erratic or non-refreshing sleep—inability to fall asleep or stay asleep, waking up too early around two or three a.m., or waking up feeling as tired as if you hadn't slept at all—can wreak havoc with anyone's mood. Even the calmest, happiest, and most even-keeled person can't maintain a sense of serenity without sufficient sleep.
Scientists haven't unraveled all the reasons why women have trouble sleeping during menopause. Hot flashes and night sweats are often fingered as the culprit, but they're only one piece of the sleep puzzle. Along with its feel-good role in moods, the brain chemical serotonin also regulates the sleep-wake cycle. An unwelcome tango between insufficient serotonin levels is implicated in menopausal sleep disturbances by night and dim moods by day.
In menopause, more restful sleep may start with changing your perspective and your sleep patterns. If you go to bed anticipating that you'll be wide awake at three a.m., worrying about everything from the world economy to piles of unfinished work on your desk, start telling yourself before you go to bed that you're going to get as much rest as you can.
You've probably read and heard dozens of times that it's important to prepare for sleep, but do you really do it? Today is the day to start your sleep warm-up routine. Begin by making noon your cut-off point for anything with caffeine. Alcohol or exercise right before sleep will only rile you up, so if you have that glass of wine with dinner, finish it at least three hours before you're going to go to bed. A walk after dinner or gentle yoga stretches in the evening can help promote sleep, but it's best to avoid vigorous exercise in the evening. Morning is the best time for that, as you'll read on Day 7.
If it's feasible to rearrange your bedroom and place the bed on the opposite wall for a change, do it. Even a slightly different environment can help to change a disrupted sleep pattern. If your room is noisy, you can reduce sound with a thicker carpet or rug, a soundproof panel on the bottom of your bedroom door, a tapestry hung on the wall to absorb noise, heavier curtains or drapes, and caulking around your windows to limit outside noise. You can also wear earplugs while you sleep, although not everyone likes the idea of not being able to hear while sleeping.
Is the overall ambiance of your room restful? You may want to soften the lighting and choose some new bedding in soothing colors. Silk sheets aren't an indulgence or a luxury—in menopause they may help you sleep better by minimizing dampness from hot flashes or night sweats. Test your mattress and consider whether it's time for a new one. If yours is still in good shape, adding a pillow-top cover can make it even more comfortable.
Think about making your bedroom an electronic-free zone, with no laptop, smartphone, or TV within reach. That helps you avoid scanning that last website or cramming in that last text message before you try to close your eyes. If you read before bed, choose something inspirational or humorous. Keep a selection from your favorite humor writers or inspirational leaders on your nightstand. The latest research shows that sleep not only helps with memory, but that we also continue to learn while we sleep. Make your last "lesson" before bed something that focuses your mind on tranquility or lets you laugh. You'll keep learning how to be calmer or more lighthearted as you sleep.
When insomnia persists, use the time. Awake at three a.m.? Rather than lying in bed worrying about how tired you'll be tomorrow or churning any family or work dilemmas in your mind, get up. Take a blanket or whatever you need to get comfortable into another room. Read, listen to soft music, knit or sew, write or sketch—do anything you enjoy. During daylight, a stolen hour or so to do something like this would be a luxury. Granted, being awake isn't necessarily your first choice, but sometimes it works best not to fight your body when it won't do what you want. When you're feeling sleepy, go back to bed.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from End Your Menopause Misery by Stephanie Bender, Treacy Colbert. Copyright © 2013 Stephanie Bender and Treacy Colbert. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Fred Grover Jr., MD ix
Acknowledgments xi
Day 1 Mark Your Calendar for Ten Days from Now 1
Day 2 Mood 9
Day 3 Memory 27
Day 4 Mirror 37
Day 5 Mojo 51
Day 6 Munchies 65
Day 7 Muscle and Bone 81
Day 8 Moisture 93
Day 9 Medications 103
Day 10 Meditation 123
Afterword 131
Resources 133