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Have You Tackled this Vital Piece of the Menopause Puzzle?

Jun 23, 2017

When it comes to easing your menopausal symptoms, you’ve probably tried an awful lot of approaches in an attempt to feel even a little bit better and heal your hormones.

You might have ducked into the toilets at work and used cold wet flannel when those hot flashes hit. You might have tried taking certain supplements or herbs to see if they made any difference. You might have switched your eating habits in an attempt to lose those extra pounds on your tummy.

And whilst these things do often make a difference to how you’re feeling, they don’t always give you the answers you’re looking for.

Because, despite all of the time and expense you’ve invested, you still suffer with your horrible menopausal symptoms.

You still feel like your body is letting you down. You still worry that you’re getting old, losing your sex appeal and that you’re somehow ‘past it’.

But did you know that there’s another powerful approach you probably haven’t tried yet that could potentially completely transform your life?

It’s one that’s often ignored by most health practitioners but will really help your tackle those menopausal symptoms, improve your bone health, keep your immune system healthy and also get you feeling more positive about your life.

It’s taking care of your mental and emotional health.

Today I’d like to explain how your thoughts can have a massive impact on the way you’re feeling physically and mentally, and why NOW is the time to do some life laundering to improve your experience of the menopause.

Your thoughts and emotions affect your physical body

Your thoughts and your emotions have a massive impact upon your experience of the menopause, and also your overall health and happiness. This is down to the strong connection that lies between our bodies and our thoughts- what we call the mind-body connection.

Now, you might be thinking that it’s completely bonkers to suggest that your thoughts can influence your body, and that they are two completely separate entities.

But if you take a moment to actually think about it you have to admit that it does actually make a lot of sense.

After all, most of us have experienced butterflies in our tummy before an important job interview, or an exciting date. Most of us have battled those nerves, the sweaty palms and that discomfort in our guts before we have to speak in public or give a talk. Most of us have noticed that we start coming down with colds and tummy bugs when life starts getting stressful.

So it’s not such a huge jump to believe that our thoughts and emotions can affect our overall health too, is it?

How the stress response affects the female body

In the old days, stress was only triggered by situations where our survival was physically threatened. For example, we might have come face to face with a wild beast on the savannah who wanted to eat us for tea. There was no time for asking questions- we just had to react fast.

Our bodies would start the fight-flight response- adrenaline and cortisol would pump through our bodies, our hearts would race, we’d get sweaty, our logical minds would switch off and blood would divert from your internal organs to your limbs, ready to run.

Even though we don’t need to literally run or fight for our survival these days (phew!), this ancient mechanism remains the same. But these days, our stress response; this fight or flight mechanism can be triggered with psychological triggers.

If we think negative thoughts, worry about a situation, feel sad, or angry, or anxious or stressed, or hopeless, our bodies react.

When this keeps happening,when you keep feeling emotionally and psychologically low or your stressful situation just isn’t getting any better, you find yourself in a chronic state of overwhelm. This keeps your body chronically stressed which can severely worsen your menopausal symptoms and make this time of transition much harder for you than it needs to be.

How this stress affects your health

1) Stress can disrupt your hormone balance and worsen your peri-menopausal symptoms

As you’ve seen, stress triggers a release of stress hormones, including cortisol. This disrupts your overall hormonal balance and can make it much harder for your body to cope with any fluctuations.

This leads to an increase of ‘monthly’ symptoms, like raging PMT, irritation, and binge eating plus many of the tell-tale signs of menopause such as hot flushes, low sex drive, heavy or lighter periods, insomnia, and so on.

2) Stress can weaken your immune system

This extra cortisol in your blood can also cause your immune system to work less efficiently than it should. You’re more likely to get ‘run down’, feel under the weather and suffer from all the coughs, colds, flu and bugs going around.

3) Stress can trigger or worsen gut issues

During times of stress, your gut also suffers. It will become increasingly sensitive to external stressors, which in turn can results in an increase in symptoms of IBS, diarrhoea and other digestive disorders.

4) Stress can impact upon your bone health

Those high cortisol levels also cause your bones to become weaker. This is because cortisol inhibits the bone-building osteoblasts so they can’t repair damage and keep your bones healthy. This means that your bones actually become much weaker over time.

5) Stress can negatively influence your lifestyle

You are also more likely to make poor food choices, smoke, drink, stay up too late etc. All of these things impact upon your overall health and also make those hot flushes, weight gain and insomnia even worse and trigger any digestive issues to flare up.

‘But Pamela, I’m not feeling stressed at all!!’

You might be reading this and thinking; ‘But Pamela, I’m not stressed at all! That’s not what the problem is!’

You might be telling me that you have a pretty perfect life, without money worries, career worries or relationship problems. You might be thinking that I’m completely off the mark here with my observations. That it’s just your peri-menopausal symptoms that are driving you crazy.

But hear me out.

You see, you don’t need to feel under stress at the moment for stress to have an impact on your health. It’s completely possible to feel great on the outside yet have far more lurking beneath the surface. Far more that really needs attention.

I see it all the time in my clinic. When ladies first come to me, they claim that life is great for them.

But when we start to dig deeper, we start to uncover common themes. Many have had a difficult childhood, or lost or miscarried a child. Some were forced to have an abortion or suffered an abusive relationship or have struggled to cope with their depression in the past.

And all of these things take their toll on our health.

Even if we don’t want to admit this to ourselves, let alone to others. We might keep it buried deep inside and feel ashamed that it happened, or even scared of what might happen if we let it see the light of day.

The thing is, whilst we think we can stifle this hidden unhappiness and keep it buried inside, we can’t. Our bodies just won’t let that happen. They demand that we face our demons and then put them to rest so we can move forwards with our lives, and towards healing.

This means it’s incredibly important that we do actually take the time to work through our negative emotions, thoughts and feelings and address any issues we are struggling with.

However tiny they might seem. However long ago they happened.

Because we don’t have to put on a brave face and just try and cope with it all. We don’t have to struggle through this. There is a way forward.

If you don’t do something, you’ll continue to feel bad. And everything else you’re doing to heal your peri-menopausal symptoms is unlikely to get you the results you are looking for.

So I’d like to leave you with a question or two…

How are you really feeling inside?

Are you happy and content? Or are you battling difficult emotions that prevent you from fully enjoying your life? Was your childhood a happy one, or do you still have unresolved issues? Are you really taking care of yourself in the way you deserve?

You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to share it (unless you want to). Simply look inside.

You owe it to yourself.


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