I'm Too Young for This!: The Natural Hormone Solution to Enjoy Perimenopause (26 page)

At this very moment we are all being bombarded by toxins and stresses. Our food is not as nutritious as it used to be, and now it’s more important than ever to recognize the weaknesses of our modern lifestyle and do what we can to fill in the gaps. Our bodies need real food, real exercise, and real respect. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat will determine our health and outlook. As hormones decline these choices are more important than ever.

Your body needs and requires tender loving care and the more you understand the effects of making good choices relative to diet and lifestyle, the more likely you will experience enjoyable aging and smooth hormonal transitions. Paying attention to your strengths and weaknesses—what makes you sick and what makes you well—will empower you to make positive choices. As Dr. Hall says in the foreword, “Choices do matter.”

You are the hope for the future health of your children. That you are making corrections in your chemical makeup in perimenopause is going to give you a quality of life that will not include unnecessary suffering and terrible symptoms of menopause. As you age, your dosages will change and increase according to your symptoms. You will get good at this because no one
knows your body better than you. If you begin now and get yourself well and balanced, you (and hopefully your generation) will have a real shot at healthy, vibrant longevity.

You will maintain your wisdom, and with each passing year as you feel better and better, you will not be a drain on society; you will be an asset, a
productive
member of the tribe.

You can no longer look to your grandparents. Nothing about our planet is the same as the one they were born into fifty or more years ago. Toxins didn’t exist to the extent they do today, and stress was not nearly as prevalent as it is today. Today’s world accelerates aging and blunts hormone production in the process.

The message in this book is not to go to the doctor as a child anymore. Empower yourself with information about how your body works; it will allow you to discuss your health intelligently with your doctor. Together you can decide on a personalized plan for your ongoing health. It’s up to you to choose optimal health. Remember, you hire your doctor!
You
are the contractor. As you continue to age you will hire other doctors specializing in new medicine to manage and maintain all your other parts. Perimenopause is a passage … a passage into the next phase of your life called menopause.

I will tell you again. I have nothing but glowing remarks to be made about my aging experience. I feel I have my “edge,” and I feel relevant and sexy. It’s a great feeling. Replacing my hormones is the most important thing I have ever done for my health and well-being.

I know in perimenopause you feel too young for what is happening to your body, but you have been born into a new world. The doctors I recommend understand this. They are not “stuck” in the old medicine. In fact, I attend doctors’ conferences regularly to learn and upgrade my information. And when I am attending meetings like A
₄
M (American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine) or ACAM (American College for Advancement in
Medicine), I am thoroughly impressed by the enthusiasm these new doctors have for their work. They share information with one another gratefully, and in doing so, we all benefit.

You can make this passage an entry into a better phase of life. With proper replacement, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction, and supplementation you will look and feel great. Your husband or partner will be turned on by your vitality, great health, and sexiness. And you will carry with you an air of confidence reserved only for those of us who have figured out how to do this right.

Go for it. Take charge of your life and be the one to determine your outcome. Enjoy perimenopause!

The book isn’t truly over … so don’t skip these valuable pieces!

The rest of the book includes some very important tools to keep in your back pocket to help you enjoy a smooth ride through this transition.

They include the following:

When a woman is hormonally imbalanced, the body ceases to operate at its peak and suffers a slow and insidious decline. That’s why it’s important to test your hormone levels so that your health adviser can connect the dots and determine if these symptoms are perimenopausal. It’s difficult to describe the enormous relief women feel when they balance their hormones. Most women come up to me and cry because it has so changed their lives.

I asked my friend Bill Faloon at Life Extension to offer suggestions and solutions for how to stop a symptom in its tracks, while your body does its healing.

Sadly, I learned the hard way. My uterus was taken out surgically (a decision I regret) to remove the “evidence” of bleeding. I say evidence because it removed the symptom, but it did not deal with the
reason
why I was bleeding. I had started bleeding to the
point I would hemorrhage. One day my husband walked into the bathroom to find me on the floor passed out in a pool of blood. We thought there was nothing that could be done but to remove my uterus.

My sister was experiencing the same thing, and after a couple of trips to the emergency room, she was also scheduled to have her uterus removed. It was around that time I learned of “rhythmic” cycling and I told my sister she should try taking her hormones in a rhythm before she did something as drastic as having a hysterectomy. Within a couple of months of using this method, her periods normalized, the bleeding stopped, and she was able to save this valuable body part.

Those of us who were at the forefront of taking bioidentical hormones were at the mercy of the few doctors with the courage to prescribe them. Due to the lack of a complete picture at that time, the importance of finding the right dosage for each woman was not understood. They felt that giving the smallest amount was safest, but I and many other women were
underdosed
. We felt better, but we weren’t getting enough to do the job; we were still imbalanced. I require large dosages of all the hormones. So for me, fifteen years ago, low-dose estrogen and two weeks of low-dose progesterone caused me to lose my uterus even though I was cycling. That is why I began bleeding.

I believe that had I been able to take larger doses of progesterone in a cyclic fashion while taking my hormones I would have been able to save my uterus.

Have your blood tested for estrogens (estradiol and estrone), progesterone, DHEA, thyroid, and testosterone. You’ll get your results back in a few days and be able to talk to a health adviser about simple lifestyle changes or seeing a doctor who will prescribe
the optimal dose of bioidentical hormones based on your blood test results.

Although hormonal fluctuation is a common cause of breakthrough bleeding during perimenopause, there are other potential causes such as infections (e.g., in the uterus), hypothyroidism, medications (e.g., anticoagulants), stress, a significant change in body weight (weight gain or loss), internal polyps/fibroids/ovarian masses, and most worrisome, gynecological cancers. Make sure you report any chronic, abnormal bleeding problems to your gynecologist.

You don’t want to do it, but there you are; it’s late and you are craving … what … then you spy chocolate! Any kind, you don’t care; it’s interesting that when you are having cravings, it doesn’t have to be good-quality Belgian chocolate, any chocolate—even baking chocolate—will do just fine. What is that about?

It’s your hormones again. When progesterone levels aren’t sufficient to balance estrogen, your body attempts to “fix” things by producing more progesterone. Magnesium is required to produce progesterone and chocolate is high in magnesium. The body in its wisdom is triggering this craving so you can get this very important mineral.

However, chocolate is also high in theobromine, a substance that artificially and dangerously overstimulates your adrenals. If your adrenals aren’t functioning optimally your body craves this “hit,” but too much chocolate, and in turn theobromine, can cause adrenal fatigue, which can lead to hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. Now you’ve got an insulin problem and as a result
you will start craving sugars and carbohydrates. Now the chain reaction has begun: the excess carbs and sugars trigger the release of excess insulin, which leads to low blood sugar and adrenal crash requiring another hit of sugar or carbs, and your body is now in motion for weight gain.

In addition to having your hormones tested (as all women experiencing perimenopausal symptoms should do), have your blood levels of glucose and insulin checked. To control excess insulin levels that can cause cravings for chocolate and sugar, take the following before most meals:

Take three capsules NeuroMag (magnesium L-threonate) each day.

The health benefits of magnesium are enormous, and magnesium L-threonate specifically targets the brain and nervous system. It may help you cut back on chocolate cravings.

If snacking is a problem, you can try taking one capsule of Optimized Saffron twice a day. Saffron has been shown in clinical studies to target emotional factors involved in food cravings. (For more information on easy weight loss, go to
SexyForever.com
.)

Constipation now affects approximately 27 percent of the population of Western countries. There are 2.5 million visits to the
doctor and 92,000 hospitalizations a year involving constipation. Laxative sales exceed several hundred million dollars a year.

Not surprisingly, constipation is an offshoot of a toxic gut; the more severe the toxicity, the worse the problem. I have letters from readers (women in their thirties) telling me they only have one bowel movement every three weeks! This is a serious body dysfunction. A healthy person has one to three bowel movements a DAY!

Toxins accumulate when you are constipated; in fact, the purpose of a daily bowel movement is to rid the body of toxins. Toxins may interfere with communication between the brain and the thyroid, eventually leading to low thyroid function, which can cause constipation, fatigue, and exhaustion (exhaustipation).

The buildup of toxins in the brain may also contribute to depression. What do we do when we are depressed? We look for anything to take the pain away, and that is usually alcohol and/or opiates.

Opiate-induced constipation downgrades the immune system, creating severe intestinal permeability or what is known as “leaky gut” syndrome. Leaky gut is where the inflammation and toxins “eat” little holes in the lining of your intestine, ostensibly allowing toxins to “leak out” into your bloodstream.

If these toxins are not cleared out of the body, you can remain in a state of inflammation and will most likely resort to pain medications and laxatives to alleviate your suffering. There are many factors contributing to constipation: dehydration, lack of fiber, lack of beneficial bacteria, lack of B vitamins, certain medications, chronic stress, and hormonal imbalance. Another significant contributor to constipation is
insufficient peristalsis
. The term
peristalsis
refers to a series of organized muscle contractions that moves food through the digestive tract. Insufficient peristalsis means there is not enough colonic contractile activity to completely evacuate one’s bowels.

Constipation, as most people know, is sometimes caused by
a lack of fiber in the diet. Fast food, poor quality oils, and excess sugar all take their toll on your ability to have normal bowel movements, but the biggest culprit compromising your ability to have a normal functioning system is hormonal in origin and that culprit is low thyroid. Hormones regulate every system in your body, which may present the answer to what may be a chronic, debilitating, and ultimately very unhealthy problem.

There are a number of synthetic and natural products that produce a “colon cleaning” effect, but they often contain questionable ingredients. For example,
polyethylene glycol
(PEG) is used in both industrial manufacturing and medicine. You can find it on the shelves of most pharmacies without the need for a prescription. The question for those with unrelenting constipation is would you rather ingest an ingredient (PEG) used in detergents and organic solvents, or nutrients you may already be taking in tablet or capsule form for their health benefits? (The medical establishment prefers you take PEG.)

You don’t have to experiment with these types of artificial laxatives. By taking nutritional powder mixes containing vitamin C with magnesium and/or potassium on an empty stomach, you’re likely to see results within an hour or two.

For example, one or more teaspoons of buffered, effervescent
magnesium ascorbate crystals
will evacuate the bowel within thirty to ninety minutes if taken on an empty stomach with several glasses of water. This powdered formula provides 3,000 mg of vitamin C and 170 mg of magnesium in each teaspoon. The dose of these effervescent crystals needs to be individually adjusted so it will not cause diarrhea.

The suggested number of times these nutritional colon cleanses can be used is about three times a week.