I'm Too Young for This!: The Natural Hormone Solution to Enjoy Perimenopause (9 page)

If any of these major hormones are low or missing, there is no question about whether or not to replace them. You would never deny a diabetic his regular injections of insulin. Insulin keeps the diabetic alive. Let’s begin by understanding the role of each individual MAJOR hormone.

First I’d like to give you a visual:

Imagine an old-fashioned teeter-totter that you may have played on as a kid at the park or playground.

But instead of your best friend sitting there and holding you up in the air, on one end are the
minor hormones:
estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA (pregnenolone and oxytocin are also minors but they are secondary hormones).

On the other end of the teeter-totter are the
major hormones:
thyroid, insulin, adrenaline, and cortisol.

When you start to “dip” in the minor hormones (which are indicated by the symptoms you are beginning to feel), the other end of the teeter-totter rises.

Minors get low—you get symptomatic; majors rise—you get symptomatic. With insulin high (because your minors are low), you can’t lose weight. You can’t lose weight if your thyroid is off, either. If your cortisol and adrenaline are high, because one of the minors is low, you can’t sleep.

Result: you are a mess!

In traditional medicine, because there is still a tremendous lack of understanding regarding hormonal decline and imbalance, you may be given medication to suppress these symptoms: sleeping pills, antidepressants, diuretics, diet medications, if not more. In almost all cases, these are unnecessary and even can be dangerous. With an understanding of each of these major hormones you will be able to read and evaluate your personal body “language” to fight back using the appropriate, nondrug remedies to get to the true root of your hormone-related problems.

Let’s talk insulin. Why do we need to? Because it’s a fat-storing hormone. Got your attention, again, didn’t I? Good. Read on.

Insulin has many functions in the body. It is a major hormone secreted by the islet cells of the pancreas, which helps to move
glucose from the blood into the cells for use as energy. Insulin determines whether nutrients taken in will be burned off as energy or stored as fat. This is why insulin is called the
fat-storing hormone
.

You don’t want high insulin. Insulin resistance is a result of high insulin levels. How do you get high insulin? Since our hormones are all interconnected, the teeter-totter visual is most effective for explaining it. When the minor hormones dip, as they do during perimenopause, your insulin levels go higher. Estrogen is important in optimizing insulin response in the cells.

High insulin tends to impede the release of other hormones involved in the body’s ability to burn stored body fat. A pattern of high levels of glucose and insulin in the bloodstream will cause glucose to be stored as fat. Insulin resistance is also a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

Here’s how insulin resistance develops. Normally, glucose (or blood sugar) goes up after eating; insulin is then produced so we can utilize the glucose to be used by muscle or stored as fat. The insulin level is then supposed to drop quickly to its normal low level. As we get older and have less estrogen and more body fat, our insulin receptors become less functional and the body can’t handle glucose as effectively. When the brain detects continued high glucose levels, it signals the pancreas to release even more insulin to lower the blood sugar level. As a result, blood sugar levels plummet, which makes the body ravenous for all the wrong foods to try to bring the blood sugar level up quickly.

Insulin resistance is also exacerbated by high cortisol levels, and this high cortisol can contribute to significant weight gain as well as compromising your immune function and increasing your risk of heart disease (chronic high cortisol often leads to heart attack or stroke).

I’ve been writing about the insulin phenomenon for years, both in my Somersize books and more recently in my
Sexy Forever
series. I have advised past readers that to lose weight, they must acquaint themselves not only with the dangers of sugar, but also with food that the body converts to sugar, and then avoid those foods. These foods—white flour, white rice, high-starch vegetables, refined white sugar, and any food that contains sugar—promote insulin secretion. When insulin is secreted, blood sugar rises from eating sugary foods; so you need to avoid these harmful foods, otherwise you will be fighting fat regardless of how much you exercise. So many women your age are experiencing the puzzle that stumps everyone: Why, when you are eating less and working out more, are you gaining weight? Now you know, it’s your hormones!

In addition to perimenopause’s hormonal decline, there are other factors that can affect insulin levels. Here is a look at the habits and factors that raise insulin:

If you continue with a high-insulin style of eating or the lifestyle habits that help spike insulin, both your immune and hormone systems will age faster. Prolonged high insulin levels are one of the leading causes of accelerated metabolic aging.

Understanding that high insulin levels are caused in large part by declining hormones will help you to understand why your body is changing and how you can get it back. Take insulin levels seriously; watch your diet, exercise and balance your hormones, and you will be able to delay and most probably eliminate high insulin, adding another reason to enjoy your perimenopausal experience.

It’s important to understand the estrogen connection to high insulin levels. When estrogen levels are low, we crave carbohydrates. This is why women frequently comb the cupboards for chocolate right before their periods when their estrogen levels are at their lowest. A low estrogen state makes it impossible for a woman to avoid carbohydrate craving, since estrogen is one of the hormones necessary for serotonin production (the feel-good brain neurotransmitter). When she gives in and consumes the sugar, chocolates, or carbohydrates, her insulin levels shoot up. Her brain gets the dopamine “hit” it needs, but now she craves more sugar and carbohydrates and the merry-go-round begins. (For more on what to do when a chocolate craving hits go to
The Symptom Solver
.) You are going to get off that merry-go-round and to a place of feeling great without the chocolate hit. (That doesn’t mean I’m saying no to chocolate! But you want your brain happy without outside crutches.)

I’m telling you again … this passage isn’t for sissies!

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland located in the lower part of the neck just below the Adam’s apple. It has many functions and is a major player in your feeling of well-being. It is amazing how many aspects of the body are affected by this one small but very significant gland. Our metabolic rate is driven by the thyroid; that fact is well known. But you might not know that the thyroid can also impact blood pressure, breathing, digestion, and nerve function.

The thyroid affects virtually every system in your body. The human body is composed of approximately sixty to ninety trillion cells. All cells communicate with one another and every cell in the body is affected by the thyroid because it regulates the rate at which energy is consumed by the cells. (Remember the teeter-totter, when the minors go low the majors rise or even turn off?) Well, in perimenopause, low estrogen and/or low progesterone can leave you with either a slowed or an overactive thyroid.

To understand unexplained weight gain, fibrocystic breasts, joint pain, hair loss, loss of sex drive, and so many other complaints, then you need to understand the thyroid—which is why you’ll notice that this section of the chapter is longer than for the other majors. It’s that important. If your thyroid isn’t “right,” then you won’t feel “right.” It’s that simple.

The thyroid, along with the adrenals, is the gland most susceptible to malfunction in our fast-paced, stressed lifestyles. Yet correcting a thyroid condition, perhaps more than any other of the major hormones, is an art. The more you understand how it works, the greater the chance you can achieve lifelong balance with all your hormones. On a cellular level, there can be no optimal nutrition absorption, detoxification of wastes, or stimulation of oxygen consumption without thyroid balance.

If your thyroid is out of whack, it can produce too much or too little of the hormone. Since we’re looking, like Goldilocks, for “just right,” you want neither state. Not too high, not too low, just right.

In
hyperthyroidism
, or Graves’ disease, your thyroid becomes overactive and produces too much thyroid. You can usually tell by looking at a person whose body is in this state, as a symptom of it is slightly bulging eyeballs.

Too much thyroid can damage your cells, particularly those in your heart and other muscles. It can also increase your risk of osteoporosis. With hyperthyroidism, your body’s metabolism is set too high and gaining weight becomes difficult. You become tired at the end of the day but then feel wired, agitated, and unable to sleep. Your hands might tremble and you may find yourself being easily upset. Diarrhea is common in hyperthyroidism, as is nervousness and warm, moist, coarse, and/or red skin, particularly on the shins.

If your hyperthyroidism is severe, your doctor might prescribe antithyroid medications to slow down its production, or he or she may even suggest thyroid ablation. Thyroid ablation is a procedure that requires surgery or the use of radioactive iodine to destroy much, if not all, of your thyroid with radioactive iodine or surgery. My feeling is these treatments can create other problems. Knowing that the thyroid is so vital to health and quality of life, I would think radioactive thyroid ablation should be the very last resort. Without a thyroid gland, it will require an amazing doctor to constantly monitor and adjust thyroid replacement.
With age and stress, hormones need adjusting so it seems like it would be better to first try and lower your thyroid naturally through diet and hormone replacement, with the help of a qualified doctor.

In contrast, someone with a condition of hypothyroidism produces too little thyroid hormone. This, the most common thyroid disorder, typically strikes after age forty, which is perimenopause’s prime time. Low thyroid is generally misunderstood and is often left underdiagnosed and undertreated, which can lead to a host of issues. Untreated thyroid disease has been tied to elevated cholesterol levels, heart disease, infertility, fatigue, muscle weakness, poor mental function, depression, weight gain, and an increased risk of cancer. Without the intervention of a qualified doctor, the older you get, the more likely your thyroid function is going to slow down. Endocrinologists estimate that one in five women and one in ten men over sixty suffer from underactive thyroids.