More than 40 million North American postmenopausal women can expect
to live a third of their lives after menopause, up to 35 to 40
years.[1] Centuries of negativity about the "change of life" pervade
our culture still, with today's medical profession viewing menopause
as a point in time focused on estrogen deficiency rather than a
holistic process.[2] Much misinformation exists about menopause,
aided and abetted by the heavy focus on youth culture and the desire
to push aside anything that suggests "aging". Yet, taking what is a
natural occurrence in women's lives and turning it into a disease or
a syndrome in need of treatment leaves many women feeling anxious,
afraid, and ashamed of what is happening to them during menopause.
It shouldn't be this way: menopause is a natural and inevitable part
of the progression of every woman's life, and is to be celebrated and
respected. Looking at menopause with a more positive attitude is
something this article aims to help you to achieve. Happy journeying!
!! Steps !!
Become informed. If you don't know what to expect from menopause,
you'll be more vulnerable to the horror stories, the pressure to
undergo treatments that you might not necessarily want to have, and
the worry that your changes are out of your control. Information is
power; power to make informed choices, to understand what is truly
involved in menopause and to realize that many women have undergone
this passage of life and grown in strength and wisdom as a result.
* Read books about menopause, especially those written by women who
have experienced it, or who work with it. A good book to begin
with is Dr Christiane Northrup's _The Wisdom of Menopause: The
Complete Guide to Physical and Emotional Health During the
Change_,[3]. Reading about other women's experiences will help you
to understand the variety of possibilities during menopause, as
well as reassuring you that you're not experiencing menopause
alone.
* Knowing what to expect will help when you're feeling irritable,
dissatisfied, or impatient. Tracing these moods back to the
reality of menopause will help you to work through them, rather
than viewing yourself as suddenly ill-tempered.
* There are plenty of stories about the dreadful journey women go
through when experiencing menopause, often published in women's
magazines. The reality is that these stories highlight the less
usual experiences; the more sensational and unusual the
experience, the more newsworthy but that doesn't mean it's a
reflection of the average experience. Take heart that it's a
minority of women who suffer discomfort,[4] and that there are
plenty of good ways of minimizing discomforts associated with
menopause.
See the silver lining... Shape a positive attitude toward menopause.
You have two choices – you can face menopause angrily or in denial
(but it's still going to happen), or you can accept it and make the
most of the transition period to set yourself up for the remainder of
your life. In the first instance, you'll allow yourself to get
bundled up in the negativity associated with menopause and
potentially increase the unpleasant experiences through increased
stress and unhappiness. In the latter instance, your proactive
approach to menopause will help you to face the challenge with a
positive mindset that lets you re-evaluate your life's purpose.
* Keep in mind that you're still a woman. In a youth-prone society,
it is very easy to fall into the trap of feeling that
post-reproductive age, your womanhood is somehow reduced. The
reality is that you're no less a woman than prior to menopause!
You're simply a woman who has undergone reproductive changes, not
changes to the essence of what makes you a woman.
* For many women, menopause is a time of redefinition of roles,
interests, and reawakening of purpose. Many women find that this
is a time for reflection about where they have been and where they
are headed. It can mean the end of some relationships, careers,
lifestyles, and the start of completely new ones. It can mean that
you finally do what it is you always wanted to do. Much of the
reflection comes from the fact that menopause is a real mortality
reminder that we're only here for so long, so we'd better make the
most of it.
Be inquiring Take a proactive approach to medical interventions. If
you're experiencing some of the unpleasant effects accompanying
menopause and these are causing you to feel down, depressed, or in
pain, discuss it with your doctor in an informed manner, with a view
to asking hard questions and getting quality answers. Do your
research on what you're experiencing beforehand so that you can raise
possible solutions that you're comfortable with. This is better than
feeling that you're being pitied as a victim or being railroaded into
taking treatments that you don't wish to.
* Avoid the temptation to take treatments at the first hot flash.
See if you can find non-medical interventions to cope with the
unpleasant side-effects of menopause before rushing in to take
pharmaceutical solutions.
* Look for alternative treatments. There are numerous plant-based
remedies available for helping ease the symptoms of menopause.
Research the options in constructive discussions with your doctor
and alternative health therapist. (Avoid taking plant-based
approaches without knowing what you're doing – plant remedies
have their own potential for toxicity or causing other symptoms.)
* Provided they're not health or life-threatening, consider doing
nothing about the changes beyond talking with others, and just
letting them happen. Radical, but it's what most women have done
throughout history. The problem is often in our perception that
menopause _needs_ treatment. On the whole, for the majority of
women, it simply doesn't. More likely it's the emotional symptoms
that accompany it that are in need of treatment: the anxiety, the
sense of purposelessness, the worry about self-esteem, etc.
Reflect on this carefully and seek support through counseling if
needed.
* Dr Christiane Northrup thinks that some of the reactions women
experience during the menopausal transition are the body's message
about what most needs changing in your life, and she says that the
"wisdom of this system is very precise" and leads women to
discover their inner wisdom.[5]
Laugh more! Learn to use anti-stress techniques. If you feel
stressed during menopause, the fluctuating hormones are probably
going to simply add to these feelings. Rather than reaching for a
pill, consider ways to reduce the stress. Can you handle your
workload differently? Can you take up yoga, meditation, a gym class?
Perhaps you might be in need of offloading a lot of negative
self-talk that has built up all these years - getting counseling can
be a good way out for someone in this position.
* Use exercise as a way of maintaining a good mood and good physical
health. Regular, moderate exercise can reduce your sensitivity to
the impacts of menopause and will lift your mood.
* Use food as a way to improve your mood. Avoid food that makes you
feel hot or irritable, such as spicy food and drinks, hot drinks,
excess animal protein, etc. Turn to "menopause superfoods" such as
unprocessed foods, fruit and vegetables, beans and pulses, fish,
sugar-free foods, etc.[6] Basically, eat healthy and nutritiously!
* Look into such treatments as acupuncture, aromatherapy,
acupressure, and homeopathy as possible helping hands through the
transition. Consider a combination of Oriental and Western medical
approaches.
Embrace change. Many of us aren't that good at embracing change at
any time of our life, struggling to deal with any transition period.
That's only natural; change can be painful emotionally because it
challenges us and presents us with the unknown, the new. This is why
keeping informed is important. But it's also important to actively
embrace change: this is the next important and valid stage in your
life. It's also a time when more freedom comes for many women as
families grow up, and a new independence can be one reward of life
at this time.
* Seek a place of acceptance. It will be harder to do some things,
such as keeping off weight. But rather than complaining about
this, accept the change and see it as an opportunity to reassess
unhealthier or less productive aspects of your life prior to
menopause. It's quite possible that changes to exercise,
nutrition, and pampering yourself are well overdue anyway!
* Love the clarity of vision that can arrive with menopause.
Menopause is a crossroads, a time to rebirth yourself, change your
focus, and start exploring your own needs more. It becomes a time
when you stop stifling your own needs in favor of others and start
making changes needed to forge on with a positive future.[7] With
children grown sufficiently, or already having left the nest, time
comes back to you and becomes yours again. Think back to the
disparities you felt in household responsibilities 10 years
before. You don't need to make those sacrifices now because the
time and space become your own again.
* Allow yourself to grieve the past. You are leaving behind parts of
your life that were once integral to who you are. Find a ritual to
farewell that part of your adulthood and to welcome in the next
stage of adulthood.
* Pick up where you left off before the juggling act of your earlier
decades swamped you. Resurrect a rusty career, start a new one, go
on a pilgrimage, or start a business.
* Expect to flare up now and then. This is a time when many women
learn to speak their mind, when old resentments bubble up and need
to be confronted to allow you to transition to the next stage of
life. For some women, this will result in the end of
relationships, even marriages. For other women, it becomes a time
of new relationships or growth within an existing one.
* Find strength in friends. Look to friends who are
experiencing the same as you, or have already gone through
menopause. Share stories, support one another, and have frequent,
good laughs together. Unburdening yourself in the company of
trusted and understanding friends can relieve many concerns and
reassure you that you're in good company.
!! Video !!
!! Tips !!
* Menopause is the cessation of menstruation. It is often termed
"the change", or "the change of life". As well as the end of
periods, hormone levels change and there may be mood swings.
* Know your facts. Most women tend to go through menopause in their
forties, with the last period happening around 49–51 years of
age. Smokers tend to have earlier final periods and lower bone
density as a result of the smoking.[8] These are only averages; a
number of women experience their periods finishing a lot earlier.
The important thing is to not listen to Great Aunt Agatha without
doing your research. Family experiences are not necessarily yours.
Know your symptoms. All women are different – some women
experience few or no symptoms, other women experience many, and
others are in between. Typical symptoms include:
* Hot flashes (approximately 40 percent of women do not have this
experience)
* Night sweats
* Vaginal dryness
* Periods can vary all over the place: lighter, heavier, flooding,
erratic, regular, more frequent, total disappearance.
* The completion of menopause is said to be when you have not had a
period for 12 months.
* You still have estrogen after menopause. It is just not being
produced by your ovaries anymore, in anywhere the quantities prior
to menopause. The hormone androgen (produced by the ovaries and
the adrenal gland) gets converted into estrogen still. As this
conversion occurs in body fat, women with higher body fat ratios
tend to produce more estrogen post menopause.
* The history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) presents a good
example for the need to do your own research and ask deep
questions. At one stage HRT was considered safe as a
one-size-fits-all treatment for menopause. However, studies in the
early 2000s revealed increased risks from HRT for certain
diseases, including breast cancer, heart disease, and gallbladder
disease.[9] While the medical and legal arguments still rage about
HRT, the number of women taking the treatment dropped
dramatically, as did rates of breast cancer. This caused Barbara
Ehrenreich, who suffered breast cancer following HRT, to note that
"bad science may have produced the cancer in the first place".[10]
If you strike the tendency of the medical profession to medicalize
menopause rather than to treat it as a natural process, learn as
much as you can and always ask questions.
!! Warnings !!
* Don't rely on not getting pregnant during menopause. While it is
highly unlikely, it does happen and ignoring the possibility is
not a great form of contraception. Increased likelihood of birth
defects occur in older mothers (and fathers), let alone the fact
that raising a young one at a time of life when you hope to be
freed up after years of childraising can be very distressing for
some women.
* There are plenty of things that might or might not be caused by
menopause. For example, night sweats can be a sign of an illness
such as cancer. If you're not sure and are worried, seek medical
advice. You might need to be very assertive though if your doctor
tries to pinpoint the problems on menopause when your hunch is
that it is something else. Ask for second opinions, specialist
advice, tests, etc.
* Don't confuse menopause with stress or aging. Stress and aging
carry their own bundle of challenges, which include irritability,
forgetfulness, depression, anxiety, disinterest in sex etc. While
studies have tried to pinpoint these feelings on menopause, there
is no absolute causal link (for example, refer to the 1987 study
performed by Sonja and John McKinlay in Massachusetts).[11] The
reality is that it's a complex bundle of all of these issues –
menopause causes you to reflect about aging which in turn adds to
existing stress. And if you were stressed easily prior to
menopause, that won't change; your perspective can, however,
provided you want to work on it.
* Toss the things that don't work for you; just because your equally
menopausal friend likes a certain menopausal remedy doesn't mean
it's right for you. By all means try it if you're convinced but be
ready to ditch it if it doesn't improve things or even makes
things worse for you!
!! Things You'll Need !!
* Reliable reading material on menopause; books written by women
with medical, therapy, and personal experience in the field make
an excellent start
!! Related WikiHows !!
* How to Treat Menopause Naturally Without Estrogen Drugs
* How to Deal with Perimenopause
* How to Treat Menopause Symptoms
* How to Survive Menopause
* How to Recover From Empty Nest Syndrome
!! Sources And Citations !!
!! Article Tools !!
* Read on wikiHow
*
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