Today I'm talking about Menopause and what we can do to help our bodies, and minds, cope with this challenging time!
Partial Transcript:
As a female, we have roughly 400 eggs that we release. And we release an egg,
right up until we're 52 or thereabouts. And, at that stage,
the last egg is released round about 51, 52. And what happens is we are period
stop, and you're not out the other side of menopause until twelve months have
gone by without a period, but period stop. And we think, okay, that's our body
changed. And, things might feel pretty tough for you. And I want to talk so
much about symptoms of what you might be feeling right now, today, because you
might think that you're on your own. you might think nobody else feels these
things. You might think there's nothing else that you can do.
So the ovary, it's the ovary's job to release these eggs. And once that starts to slow down
at the age of 51, 52 and your ovaries go into retirement, what happens is they
stop producing the hormones. For, example, three hormones. I'm going to talk
about progesterone, estrogen and testosterone. Now, we as women produce
testosterone as well. We produce all three. So that slows right down. It
doesn't completely stop, but it will slow right down. In particular,
progesterone. Progesterone can drop by 90%. And what that, looks like now,
progesterone works with estrogen. Now they're like a double act. And so when
progesterone drops so much, the relative ratio, well, it looks like estrogen is
higher, but it's a ratio thing. And I need you to understand that it's not
necessary. Estrogen will drop and it could drop by 50%, so could testosterone,
but certainly not by 90%, like the huge amount of progesterone. And what that
does is that shows up as, symptoms like hot flushes, night sweats, urine
infections, mood problems. In fact, when I was talking to someone earlier on
about menopause, she felt like taking her own life at one stage, her mood was
so flat, so low, her libido was gone, vaginal dryness. She just basically felt
like she wasn't her. And that is so, so common for so many women. But we suffer
it. And in fact, we sometimes we've got these jobs that we need to show up as
our best selves. We'll go into the office and we are expected just to perform
at the same level we did before perimenopause, before all this started to come
about in your life. And it's not fair. Which is why there's now legislation to
support you as women out there in the workplace, because menopause and
perimenopausal symptoms are real. And, they could affect your thought process
in terms of what you retain, your concentration, your vision, your focus, your
clarity, the cognition, all of that becomes affected and you can get what's
termed as brain fog. and that could affect your performance at work, it could
affect your performance everywhere. So really, it's not a good time for so many
women. But there's lots and lots of things we can do to try and help.
