Women's Health

Keeping up with all of the responsibilities of life today is stressful. Initially you welcome the task of adulthood. You secretly marvel at your own ability to handle an ever increasing number of duties and take pride in your capacity for multitasking. The time required to juggle parenthood, a career, personal relationships, family obligations, and housework add up, however. Initially you make small sacrifices. Those 4 visits to the gym each week drop to 2. You begin eating whatever snacks or lunch you can grab instead of planning healthy meals. Hobbies begin to gather dust, although you keep thinking that you'll get back to them next year. Weekends become a time for chores and errands, and now there are some weeks that you don't even make it to the gym at all. And then you begin to notice a subtle change. You are always tired. In fact, you wake up tired, often because you don't sleep well, but sometimes even after a full nights sleep. You seem to be getting sick more frequently; if anyone around you has a cold, you're sure to eventually get it. Recuperating from those occasional bouts of exercise takes longer than it ever did before, and you notice other changes in your body too. Stubborn fat bulges appear on your waist and hips that won't go away even

MENOPAUSE AND PERIMENOPAUSE All women experience changes in hormone levels and balance as they grow older. This is known as menopause, or "The Change." However, this change does not occur rapidly. It is a gradual change that occurs over years. During the early part of menopause, when a woman is still having menstrual periods, it is typical to experience unexplained weight gain, rapidly fluctuating moods, bloating, and hot flashes. These are due to changing levels of hormones. This time period, when a woman begins to feel the effects of unbalanced hormones but is still having menstrual periods, is known as perimenopause. Often women will experience months to years of irregular menses along with these symptoms, and then will finally cease to have periods at all as they enter menopause.

Much of the estrogen in a woman's body is created by her ovaries as they get ready to release an egg, called ovulation. After ovulation, which occurs around the midpoint of a woman's menstrual cycle, the ovaries create progesterone. If the egg is not fertilized, the ovaries stop making estrogen and progesterone, the woman creates a new lining for the uterus by menstruating, and the cycle starts all over again. As a woman enters perimenopause, the ovaries begin to malfunction. She still has levels of estrogen that rise and fall throughout her cycle, but these levels often aren't enough to trigger ovulation. Without ovulation, a woman makes very little progesterone. Symptoms during this time fluctuate wildly, because during some cycles a normal amount of estrogen and progesterone are released, and during other cycles smaller amounts of estrogen and no progesterone are released. Eventually, her ovaries stop creating estrogen, and she enters menopause.

Additionally, and woman using a birth control method that suppresses ovulation, such as "the pill" or an implant, will not produce sufficient progesterone to prevent "estrogen dominance". PMS, mood swings, tender breasts, irregular periods etc. can be signs of "estrogen dominance" in younger women as well. This is more prevalent as our environment is flooded with ever increasing amounts of chemicals that can mimic estrogen in the human body.

It is fairly common knowledge that levels of estrogen decrease as a woman enters menopause. What is not common knowledge is that this "estrogen deficiency" is not the only cause of symptoms. The imbalance between estrogen and progesterone that develops as a woman enters perimenopause is actually a significant cause of symptoms. As seen in the previous chart, once a woman enters perimenopause and begins to experience her first symptoms of the impending change, she has not yet had a major reduction in her estrogen level. However, her progesterone level has dropped significantly. Estrogen is considered a "growing" or "proliferative" hormone. Estrogen levels that are either high or not balanced properly by progesterone lead to increased risks of breast and uterine cancer in women. Men also develop prostate enlargement, called "hypertrophy", if their estrogen levels are not properly balanced by progesterone. Progesterone is known as an "anti-estrogen" hormone. Healthy levels of progesterone are known to protect against breast and prostate cancer, as well as protecting against osteoporosis. The medical community has chosen to call this imbalance between estrogen and progesterone "estrogen dominance", although it could just as well have been called "progesterone deficiency." Estrogen dominance can occur in either men or women. Estrogen dominance only means that estrogen is not balanced properly by progesterone. It does not mean that estrogen levels are "high." In fact, estrogen dominance problems continue even as estrogen levels decrease in menopausal women. As seen in the chart under "What Is a Hormone?", even though the estrogen level has decreased in menopause, it is still not properly balanced by progesterone. Thus, a menopausal woman often has both estrogen deficiency and estrogen dominance. Typical "estrogen dominance" symptoms for women include:

• Trouble sleeping for a full night
• Irritability, mood swings, or sudden tears
• Difficulty concentrating or memory lapses
• Hot flashes or night sweats
• Irregular periods
• Weight gain or sudden bouts of bloating
• Osteoporosis
• Fibrocystic breasts
• Migraines
• Certain types of seizures

continue >>