It has been a minute, eh?

I figured I should at least update this thing. The good news is that a lot of the symptoms are starting to die down. It could be my odd concoction of vitamins, minerals, and pharmaceuticals, or it could be the cooler temperatures, or it could just be resilience and my luck that my body adjusts to things rapidly, but there it is.

Saw my regular doctor last week. She warned me not to do any ab work for another month. Oh no! Not the briar patch! But she did tell me to go ahead and start lifting weights with my arms. She said I’m doing everything right in terms of what vitamins I’m taking (calcium + D, biotin, E, magnesium), and she gave me a discount card from the company that makes my blood pressure medication, so I’ll be paying $20 instead of $50 each month for it.

She also said that my ex oby/gyn “could have been nicer about it” with reference to the whole mammogram thing. She said that she understood how I could be burned out on being poked and prodded — “it’s been a lot this year” — and said if I got one next year, I should get a sonogram with it. Then I would only have to do sonograms thereafter. “Especially because you’re young, young women have denser breasts, and they’re probably going to have a hard time imaging you with a mammogram anyway.”

She ain’t kidding. Between my sisters’ and friends’ false positives, my fibrocystic breast disease, and what I know to be plain ol’ dense boobs, I am willing to bet the rent that when and if I do go for one mammogram, there will be all kinds of urgent phone calls in the aftermath. That’s why my mother didn’t get one. She didn’t want to deal with it, and her breasts were so dense that when she had a stroke and went to the hospital in her early 60s and they gave her a breast exam as part of a complete work-up, the nurse asked her if she had implants.

Anyway, my doctor wrote the directions out and handed them to me like so many other doctors have before, but she said, “I’m not dating it. If you want to do it next year, that’s fine. We like to screen for these things because we can. That’s all.”

Amen, alleluia, she gets it!

I still say mammograms before age 50 are a crock, as is the whole 1-in-8 thing. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did a big study when I’m 70 comparing women who didn’t get mammograms before age 50 with those who did and found that those who did had a higher rate and risk of breast cancer.

Oh, and happy National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Think before you pink.

More Natural Remedies for Menopause

Here are some more natural menopause remedies that I found in a related article.
 

This decade is said to be the time when the so-called baby boomers have reached the end of their prime. Half of these baby boomers are women and are most likely experiencing menopause.

Here are some common, as well as natural menopause treatments that a woman can take to facilitate relief and comfort during this crucial period in her life.

1…It is best to eat the right kind of food at this point and complement the healthy diet with vitamins so that you still get your daily allowance. Vitamin E (500IU) and Calcium (1,000 to 1,500 mg) daily has been proven to help with the symptoms.

5…In terms of hot flashes, exercise is said to be the ultimate remedy. Exercise keeps the body active and promotes the health of the heart

feminestra, natural menopause relief, menopause relief

Sleeping - Together or Alone?

This writer’s article seems to be making the rounds of blogs…and it must’ve been Neil Stanley I saw on the news the other day.

When I look at my in-laws, both pushing 70 and having slept together for nearly 50 years, I wonder how much healthier they could be?  Could this sleeping together business affect their life expectancies?  They’re both quite fit and very active, but they do tease each other about the fact that they both snore…so they might live longer and even healthier lives if they slept apart…

D and I both snore as well…so here I am, home alone on a Saturday night, the third night D is on a four-night series of night shifts, and, tired as I am, I probably won’t go to bed until close to midnight.  I don’t mind being alone, but I don’t sleep well when he’s not here.  I don’t sleep well when he is here either!  I think we would probably both sleep best if we were both in the house, but in separate rooms!  I THINK our problem is due to snoring only.  By that, I mean that if either of us gets up during the night for the bathroom, the other rarely awakens.  Neither of us wave our arms around in our sleep or have restless legs…on those nights when we’re not aware of each other snoring, we both sleep well.  But, we’ve decided that we probably both snore EVERY night… some nights, we both fall too soundly asleep quickly to be aware.

My biggest problem with sleeping, though, is menopause-related – either a hot flash or needing the toilet during the night – I’m lucky to get more than two hours of sleep at a stretch.  This rarely disturbs D, but there are, indeed, those nights where I wake up in the middle of the night and have a great deal of trouble falling back to sleep. There have only been a few times where I’ve awoken in this manner and the reason I can’t back to sleep is his snoring!

Eventually, the answer for us may be a bigger bed and ear plugs!  In the meantime, we’ll struggle along because the positives seems to outweigh the negatives.  There is a major positive for us when it comes to sharing a bed.  We generally go to bed at the same time, although I might get there first with a book.  He might read for a bit too, but then it’s lights out…once the lights go out and we’re lying comfortably, the conversation starts.  Seems like we have our best conversations while lying in the dark, until we just get too drowsy to keep talking…and then the snoring begins!

An Effective Menopause Treatment Through Homone Replecement Therapy

Hormone replacement is very appreciable for women looking for relief from menopause symptoms, but women are starting to be aware of possible contraindications and widely published studies suggest hormone replacement therapy isn’t the best route to take. Others prefer a more holistic approach to their health, and menopause is no different for them. For women looking to improve some of their painful menopausal symptoms there are abundance of herbal remedies available on the market.

Women seem to prefer alternative medicines because the use of hormone replacement therapies might be harmful. Natural menopause treatment is known to be effective with its teas, elixirs and topical applications. Natural menopause treatments decrease the symptoms and this is why so many women try them before starting conventional hormone therapy.

The old women saying that the treatment can be poorer than the disease can be applied here. The side effects of traditional menopause treatment are not really pleasant and you should pay attention to the correct dosage. Apart from that, symptoms are not fully controlled even when having traditional treatment. After all natural menopause treatment is much safer than the traditional hormone replacement therapy. Herbal remedies are commonly used in natural menopause treatment. They might be black cohosh, dong quai, maca root and red clover.

Black cohosh is the thing that decreases menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and vaginal dryness. It also helps to reduce the bad temper and it stabilizes mood swings. If you are taking black cohosh, it is also good to know that it reveals depression and anxiety. It also fights against night sweats and heart palpitations. Dong quai is herb that also treats menopause symptoms naturally. What this herb does best is to dilate blood vessels. When dong quai is combined with black cohosh is it most effective.

There are some women who shouldn’t use natural menopause treatments because they are not right for them and might have negative effects on them. Before starting any kind of natural menopause treatment you should very carefully read the labels. To conclude with, natural treatments have helped many women live easily in their menopause. If they can work for the others, they might be effective for you, as well.

Read more articles from here: Hormone Health Blog

Life After Menopause: Osteoporosis

Contents Causes Menopause Symptoms Risk Factors Prevention

Osteoporosis is a disease which weakens bones making them more prone to breakage. Many times, osteoporosis is not found until a fracture has already happened, which, unfortunately, increases the risk of having another fracture due to the disease. It is hard to catch osteoporosis early because it does not have any visible or painful symptoms. However, there are steps that you can take to prevent the onset of osteoporosis, or slow the progression if you already have the disease.

Causes

The exact cause of osteoporosis is not yet known, however, we do know how it develops. Bones consist of two parts, a hard outer shell, and a sponge-like inner core. Your bones, like most of your body, are made up of living tissue which grows and dies just like any other tissue in your body. Normally, the body can build more bone than it loses. But when a bone is weakened by osteoporosis, the inner core becomes less dense and loses mass. In other words, the “holes” in the “sponge” part of your bones become larger. This loss in bone mass is a normal part of the aging process starting around the age of 30, but when it reaches a certain point then osteoporosis has set in.

Menopause

Osteoporosis has been linked to menopause as well. The lack of estrogen and absence of menstrual periods can cause and/or accelerate the progression of osteoporosis. Women who have or are experiencing early menopause are at an even greater risk for the disease.

Symptoms

Symptoms of osteoporosis may not be initially seen until the disease has progressed quite a bit. It is often called the “silent disease” because many people do not know they have osteoporosis until they suddenly break a bone. The symptoms that do show, besides a broken bone, may be stooped posture, loss of height, and back pain caused by collapsed vertebrae. To determine if you have osteoporosis you should receive a bone mineral density (BMD) test. These are painless, accurate test using low-power x-rays to determine bone strength. These tests can provide information about your bone health and determine if you have osteoporosis before problems begin.

Risk Factors

There are several risk factors that are linked to osteoporosis. These include age, gender, ethnicity, bone structure, and family history. Maximum bone density is reached around the age of 30 after which, bone mass begins to decline naturally with age. The greatest risk for the disease occurs around the age of 50. Women are also at a higher risk for the disease, as much as four times as likely as men. This may be due to women’s naturally lighter, thinner bones, longer life spans, and loss of estrogen due to menopause. Ethnicity also plays a big part in the onset of osteoporosis. Studies have shown that Caucasian and Asian women have the greatest risk for the disease. Studies also showed that Caucasian women are more likely to have hip fractures then Asian and African-American women. Your natural body structure may also put you at a greater risk. People who have smaller frames are at a greater risk for the disease because they have less bone to lose than people that have bigger frames. Probably the biggest factor for whether or not you may get osteoporosis is your family history. If your parents or grandparents had or showed signs of osteoporosis, you may be at a greater risk of the disease.

Prevention

There are ways to protect against the onset or progression of osteoporosis. Most of these are simple lifestyle and dietary changes that can have a greatly change your risk for the disease. Exercise is a good way to help make your bones stronger and prevent bone loss. Try to establish a regular exercise program that has you doing weight-bearing exercises at least four times a week. These can be as simple as jogging, playing tennis, and dancing. Your diet plays a big role is the health of your bones. Try to increase your intake of calcium (1,500mg a day) which can be found in milk, salmon, and dark green vegetables, and vitamin D (400-800 IU a day) which can be found in eggs, fortified milk, and fatty fish like salmon. Also limiting your alcohol consumption and not smoking can reduce your risk.

Osteoporosis can be a debilitating disease, even deadly. However, there are steps that can be taken to prevent or slow the progression of the disease. Those preventative steps will help you live a longer, healthier life.

-Feminestra