Menopause - A Midlife Crisis Or A Growing Health Opportunity?

America is obsessed with staying young. Not just in the sense of aging well, but also in erasing older people, especially women, from the media and marginalizing their experience. Medical professionals who speak about menopause use words like loss, decline, and lack of, making women who are in the premenopause or menopause stage of their lives feel insignificant. For women who derived a large part of their self identity from motherhood, the end of fertility years, which in many cases coincide with the emptying of the nest, can increase these feelings of becoming irrelevant. Menopause is a physical, psychological, and social transition. Like in any transition, women during menopause are more vulnerable because existing belief systems and assumptions are put to the test. However, menopause doesn't need to be a crisis; it could be a springboard to focusing on you, something many women didn't have time or resources (yes, money) to invest in during their child-rearing years. What you do now is crucial for the next stage in your life. While menopause is not a sign of aging, some women go through it in their 30s, it can make a huge difference in what your body needs to thrive. Also, and this is important, what you do now will affect your well being in the next decades leading into your sage years. Reproductive hormones 101 The endocrine system manages and regulates all the hormones in your body, including reproductive hormones. I like to think of the endocrine system like an orchestra: each hormone is an instrument. When all the instruments are tuned, they create beautiful harmony; however, when one or more instruments are out of tune, your ears are screaming in pain. In premenopause, progesterone and estrogen begin to play a different tune. It takes the other hormones in your body to learn the new tune, which leads to all the symptoms that you might experience. But here is the good part: transition is temporary, and this too shall pass. However, that doesn't mean that you need to settle for life with symptoms. To better understand what's going on, let's take a look at what your hormones are doing. Perimenopause is a mirror image of monarch. In monarchs, progesterone, which acts like GABA in the brain, calming and promoting deeper sleep, is the hormone that starts cycling first. The rise in progesterone means no periods yet, but yes to the roller coaster of mood swings that go up and down as progesterone fluctuates dramatically while it tries to find a new balance. In premenopause, on the other hand, progesterone declines first, which explains why you still get your periods, but you start to experience mood swings and disrupted sleep. Estrogen is added to teens' hormonal soup months after progesterone, and starts to decline in your body months to years after progesterone decline. This might be why, in many cases, women experience changes in mood and sleep patterns years before they experience other premenopausal symptoms but don't connect the dots. Beyond reproduction — The roles of estrogen and progesterone in the body The effects of estrogen and progesterone in the body extend far beyond the reproductive system. They have an anti-inflammatory effect on the immune system. Estrogen cools your body, and progesterone warms it, which explains hot flashes when these hormones try to find a new balance. They protect the cardiovascular system, reducing blood pressure and improving the integrity of blood vessels. In the brain, they promote focus and memory while supporting GABA and serotonin production, which balance mood and promote sleep. They increase our sensitivity to insulin, which protects women from insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. And they support bone resilience and strength and promote synovial fluid production, which keeps your joints flexible and pain free. While most of your life, you got all these benefits free of charge just because you were a woman, now, as you enter menopause, the decline of these hormones invites you to be proactive so you can maintain and even grow your well being. How to act on the opportunity that menopause offers Menopause offers you an opportunity to be an active player in your own game. It will teach you how to listen and understand the language your body speaks, and act on it. There are a couple of foundational factors to a healthy lifestyle: Diet - Reduce simple carbs and sugars and eliminate processed foods. Eat real food that doesn't come out of a box. Sleep - Eight hours of a good night's sleep are crucial for cognitive and metabolic health as well as for mood. Movement - Research suggests that it's not just about quantity, but variety is important too. Engage in walking, weight bearing exercise, and functional movement (gardening and shoveling). Community - People talk about the Mediterranean diet like a heal-all, but miss the most important part of the Mediterranean lifestyle: community for creating meaning and mental and physical health. Menopause is a freeing experience for women who are ready to leave behind the "cult of youth" and grow into their skin.