Here’s Why You Should Care About Inflammation and The Menopause

Did you know that there’s a silent killer lurking inside you right now? It creeps up on your when you’re not looking, gathers strength during the menopausal years and you probably don’t even realise that it’s there, nor are you likely to until it’s almost too late.

This killer is chronic inflammation.

Although it might not sound like such a scary thing, inflammation actually poses a huge health risk to us all, especially during the years of the menopause and can result in cancers, heart disease, depression and much more.

Luckily, chronic inflammation is entirely preventable and entirely treatable provided that you should your body the love it deserves and take steps to heal.

Today I’d like to walk you through everything you need to know about inflammation and the menopause before explaining how you can reduce or even prevent inflammation damaging your health.

What is inflammation?

Imagine you’ve just slipped and fallen over on a patch of gravel and you’ve grazed your knee. You’ll notice that the injured area will go slightly puffy and red. This is your immune system kicking into action and causing that inflammation to happen so that you can heal efficiently.

As you can see, inflammation is your body’s way of protecting you from invading nasties like germs, bacteria, virus and other things that could do you real harm, so it’s pretty fantastic.

It’s not just injury and illness that can trigger this inflammation- the food your eat, the allergens you’re exposed to, whether you drink or not, whether you exercise and even the medication you take can trigger inflammation in your body and protect you from harm.

So what is the problem with inflammation?

You’re probably asking yourself how inflammation can ever be bad if it protects you in this way so let me explain. The problem here isn’t the inflammation itself, it’s the cause of that inflammation.

If a part of your body is inflamed, your health obviously isn’t as good as it should be.

And not just this, if your body’s immune response is constantly being triggered, if you keep injuring yourself on that gravel or eating that particular food, or taking that meditation, your body never gets chance to rest or recover from the inflammation. It constantly feels bad.

THIS is when inflammation becomes a problem.

Why you should care about inflammation

If you’re experiencing the peri-menopause or menopause, the amount of inflammation in your body is something you really want to pay attention to.

Oestrogen has a strong anti-inflammatory effect, so when your oestrogen levels fall, you are much more vulnerable to inflammation.

But that’s not all- the hormonal imbalances we often experience during the menopausal years can cause inflammation itself. This in turn can make your menopausal symptoms worse as well as causing or worsening a whole host of other health problems like premature ageing, diabetes, dementia, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, and even cancer.

The most worrying of this is the fact that low grade inflammation can lead to cardiovascular disease in women- one of the biggest killers of women.

More women suffer from cardiovascular disease than breast cancer, and sadly it’s more difficult to detect in women than men.

And if that wasn’t enough, chronic inflammation can also make you feel absolutely rubbish- low on energy, depressed, bloated, suffering with digestive issues, migraines, headaches, and many more other problems.

Don’t HRT and statins help?

Yes and no...It’s true that statins do help to reduce your risk of suffering cardiovascular disease by helping to lower your cholesterol levels and HRT does temporarily help with the hormonal imbalance.

But there’s a huge problem with this- taking drugs doesn’t make the issue of chronic inflammation go away, only treats some of the symptoms. Yes, you might be protecting your heart to some degree, but you’ve still got the real problem lurking underneath, wreaking havoc on the rest of your body. Stop the drugs and the health problem returns.

You also need to consider that the side effects from taking drugs like these are often worse than the inflammation itself.

How to reduce inflammation in your body

So what are we to do? How do we reduce the inflammation in our bodies and reduce our risk of developing heart disease, cancer and dementia and ageing faster than we should? The secret is in prevention, rather than cure.

Step 1: Identify your problem

Are you suffering from any chronic health problems that could be connected with chronic inflammation?

Are you transitioning through the peri-menopause or menopause? Do you have symptoms of a hormonal imbalance? (Have a quick look at this page on Wikipedia for a list of more inflammatory disorders)

Step 2: Identify the causes of your inflammation

What could be causing inflammation in your body?

Are you under stress? Do you smoke or drink alcohol? What is your diet like- does it contain high amounts of processed foods, sugar, or gluten? Do you have any food allergies or sensitivities? Do you eat organic? Are you taking any medication? Do you exercise?

Step 3: Change your lifestyle

Now remove as many inflammation triggers as possible to help reset your immune system and reduce that inflammation. This is what I recommend you should do:

Get moving- Make sure you’re getting enough exercise! And not just any exercise either- it needs to be the kind that gets you feeling really out of breath and hot and sweaty! HITT training is perfect for this- do sessions of no more than 20 minutes at a time. Add in some exercises with weights (for no more than 30 minutes) to get in great shape!

Do something about your stress- Practice yoga, meditation or visualisation exercises to help beat your stress and reduce that inflammation.

Get more sleep- Make sure you’re getting your 8 hours per night, minimum! Quit your bad habits- It’s also a good idea to cut back on your alcoholic drinks and quit smoking too.

Get good nutrition- Firstly, quit sugar and processed foods and opt for organic as much as you can. You should also eat more purple foods which are high in anti-inflammatory goodness and fill up on other wholefoods like veggies, healthy proteins, healthy fats and nuts and seeds.

There’s no need to allow inflammation to ruin your health, even if you’re peri-menopausal or menopausal. Follow the steps I’ve just outlined and you won’t just reduce the inflammation in your body, you’ll also rebalance your hormones, have more energy, start to shift that body fat and feel so much better.

So what are you waiting for? Start the fight against inflammation today!