Nancy McElwain is on the podcast today to educate us on menopause and the importance of sex hormone testing.
So often we are left to "figure it out" ourselves, but much like when we learn about the birds and bees, we need to have someone sit down with us to explain this menopause thing so that we don't think we're crazy or that we need to take some sort of pill to mask the symptoms of what we are going through.
Some takeaways:
- Much like when we are young and learning about the birds and the bees, women deserve more information about peri-menopause and menopause as they approach it.
- Symptoms that you may be entering peri-menopause are sleep disturbances, mood swings, sweats, some weigh gain, loss of muscle mass, mental fog, and vaginal dryness.
- Hormones are the sense through which we see the world. Hormones work together in symmetry and balance so when balance is off, things go haywire.
- When we talk about SEX HORMONES we are talking about estrogen, testosterone and progesterone.
- The first thing that happens in menopause is the ovaries start to slow down in their production of sex hormones and the adrenal glands have to take up the slack.
- What can make peri-menopause so difficult is that your adrenals are used to deal with stress and are already taxed so when they are asked to make more sex hormone in addition, they aren’t prepared.
- The ease of your trip through peri-menopause and menopause is a direct correlation to the health of your adrenals as you head into it.
- Your level of cortisol, or stress hormone, is tested to determine the health of your adrenals. If the health of the adrenals helps us through menopause, we need to get our level of stress under control .
- The body feels stress from all sources: dietary, lifestyle, mental, emotional, physical, biochemical. So by the time women hit menopause, there is already lot of stress happening.
- The first thing to do when holistically dealing with stress is to sit down with a piece of paper and write all of the tangible things that cause you stress.
- Nancy puts stress into three categories - ones you can get rid of, ones that you can make better, ones that you are must deal with.
- Heightened Cortisol levels puts us into Fight or Flight mode (ie running from a bear) and slows down the production of our sex hormones as well as slow systems like digestion - because if you are running for your life those become lower priority. Except that we aren’t in flight or flight anymore - we don’t run from bears - we are in what is called sit and stew.
- The sex hormone test that Nancy does is called the Dutch test - it is a dried urine test. She suggests the COMPLETE which tests both Cortisol and the sex hormo
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