by: Cathy Taylor

During menopause, many women report that the challenge of weight loss becomes even more difficult. The need to lose weight haunts women most of the time, and now more men are reporting the same struggle. When women hit menopause, weight gathers around the waist and hips; despite our best efforts to diet and exercise.

What we know is that this additional body fat is linked to your hormones. Most women follow a conventional low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet with lots of processed foods. Eventually this diet creates a condition known as insulin resistance; see Dr. Schwarzbein’s book on the book list. When you are insulin resistant, your body converts calories into fat even when you are dieting. Menopause feels like a losing battle, but it doesn’t have to be.

When you are stressed, as the body typically is during menopause, stress hormones block weight loss. Despite adequate food, the body acts as if it’s in a famine and stores all spare calories as fat.
This leads to a metabolic disorder called adrenal fatigue.

Many women combine a high-stress life with a low-fat, high-carb diet which creates a powerful hormonal imbalance which causes us to gain weight. Yo-yo dieting exacerbates the problem.
Also, when a woman is on a high-carb diet she is often barraged with a craving for sweets. The body can’t maintain optimal blood sugar and serotonin levels, so you snack and drink caffeine to feel better. That makes your insulin resistance worse and the vicious cycle of gaining weight is accelerated.

During perimenopause, women lose estrogen which is an added factor to this problem. As estrogen decreases, the body needs extra fat resources. Other factors that play into this problem, are unresolved emotional issues, food sensitivities, digestive issues such as yeast, and even heavy metal toxicity.

So what do we do?

The most important step is to GET HEALTHY!

Follow an eating plan like the one in the Schwarzbein Principle or the Zone Diet

You need protein at every meal, low carbs, very little to no processed food, and lots of fruit and vegetables

Drink plenty of water

Take nutritional supplements

Try Supplements Designed for Menopause

Stop weighing yourself, use your clothes as a gauge (focus on your health not your weight)

Start exercising – walk 4-5 times a week for 30 minute (it boosts metabolism)

Get help for emotional eating – you have to face your fears to get through them

Reduce the stress in your life, make time for fun and relaxation – strive for BALANCE

Learn to love yourself during menopause and accept who you are and at what stage in life you find yourself

Menopause can make weight loss even more challenging for both women and men. But with the right knowledge and some hard work, it can be done.

The information in this article is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice.

Menopause is not an illness or disease; it is a normal phase of development that all women go through when their fertility and menstruation begin to decrease. But even though it is not an illness, it is advised that you seek treatment for your symptoms if they become severe or start in impact your daily life. Menopause can cause sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression and any one of these symptoms can have negative long term impacts. Unfortunately there are the still irritating but less treatable problems such as hot flashes and mood swings. If you are having trouble coping with menopause, especially in the case of anxiety or depression, please visit your doctor.

In the United States the average onset of menopause is between 45- 55. In other countries it may occur earlier. For women undergoing natural menopause, menopause is defined in medical terms as the day after your last period is over. After one year of no periods, you are considered infertile and don’t have to worry about getting pregnant anymore. There are a lot of unknowns in menopause. Currently it’s unknown why some women get more severe symptoms than others and there are some racial differences with some races having fewer and less severe symptoms. Not so surprising is the fact that smokers typically will enter menopause a much earlier than non-smokers. One fact that is surprising is both fraternal and identical twins go into menopause much earlier than most women. About 5% of twins go into menopause before 40 years old.

Prior to menopause occurring there is a transitional phase that is called perimenopause. Again, severity of symptoms and the age at which it will begin varies. In most cases, perimenopause begins in the mid to late 40′s. Perimenopause symptoms are the same as the symptoms experienced during menopause. Basically perimenopause is simply the very start of the menopausal phase.

Some of the more common menopause and perimenopause symptoms are:

• Irregular bleeding and periods

• Vaginal dryness

• Pain during intercourse

• Loss of sex drive

• Incontinence

• Hot Flashes

• Night sweats

• Moodiness

• Inability to get restful sleep

• Anxiety

• Exhaustion

• Irregular heartbeat or heart palpitations

• Weight gain

• Muscle Soreness

• Thinning hair

• Stomach problems

• Osteoporosis

• Loss of skin elasticity

• Memory loss

It’s unfortunate that not of lot of information is available about reliable treatment options for women in menopause. Until recently Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) was the standard treatment for menopause, but all this changed several years ago when studies showed that HRT caused an increase in certain types of cancers. Because of this information, women began going off of hormone therapy in droves.

By Beth Adams

By Charles Silverman N.D.

Many women prefer the process of menopause to be a natural one. The good news is that there are naturopathic means of easing many menopausal discomforts, including hot flashes, dryness and wrinkling of the skin, anxiety, and stress, as well as of improving the overall functioning of the immune system. There are also effective natural strategies for preventing or slowing the progression of some of the longer term consequences of estrogen deficiency, such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. Even if you take hormone replacement therapy, dietary modification, nutritional and dietary supplements, herbs, and other naturopathic approaches can be used to great advantage.

NATURAL THERAPIES FOR THE SYMPTOMS OF MENOPAUSE

Many of the discomforts of the menopausal period can be helped with simple, natural treatments that you can use at home, such as increasing your consumption of foods that contain natural plant estrogens, drinking adequate amounts of water, taking selected nutritional supplements, and using specific herbs. Table 6.1 gives an overview of the nutritional and dietary supplements, herbs, and other measures recommended for some of the most common menopausal symptoms.

You can choose to use one, several, or all of the therapies recom­mended, and you can use these natural treatments either alone or in combination with hormone replacement therapy.

Natural Plant Estrogens

Over 300 different plants contain estrogenic substances. Although these are weak estrogens and are present only in tiny quantities, if foods containing them are consumed regularly, they can exert a mild estrogenic effect in humans.

Alfalfa contains a plant estrogen called coumestrol, which can actually cause infertility in animals that graze on large pastures of alfalfa grasses. Of all the plant estrogens, coumestrol is the most potent, although it is still 200 times weaker than human estrogens. The herb red clover also contains coumestrol and can be taken in the form of an herbal tea, or you can make fresh sprouts from red clover seeds. As some varieties of red clover are poisonous, how­ever, it is best to obtain supplies from a reputable herbalist or health food store.

Soybeans, soybean sprouts, and flaxseed meal (crushed flaxseeds) are excellent sources of natural estrogens as well as of protein and essential fatty acids. They are definitely anti-aging foods for menopausal women. For a list of foods and herbs that are good sources of plant estrogens.