Menopause and HRT

From all the literature I have been reading lately women face a serious threat from death by heart attack or complications of heart disease after menopause. According to most of this information the only recourse is some type of hormone therapy or other medication to combat the loss of hormones due to menopause.

Hmmm, well give me a few minutes to think about this.

If menopause changes the hormones your body is producing and the hormone changes increase your risk of heart attack or heart disease then your best option is to make sure you have a healthy heart and/or body before this happens.

Let’s look at this from a cause and effect type scenario. If you experience menopause and you have an unhealthy cardiovascular system then your chances of dying from a heart attack or related experience will definitely be higher. If your cardio system is relatively or exceptionally good then your chances of dying from these incidents goes way down.

So how can you make sure your heart health is at a high level?

Excercise, nutrition and elimination of damaging environmental factors.

Excercise: Make sure you have a good plan for healthy excercise that you can follow all the time no matter where you are. This includes a lot of walking, jogging and body-weight exercises like squats, pushups, and other core excercises. Full body core-type excercises that get your heart rate up and dial in your total body awareness are probably the most beneficial. (Raising your total body awareness is one of the things that increases your health in ways that can only be described as phenomenal!)

Nutrition: Your body is only as good as the fuel you give it. If you feed your body (the engine that drives you every day) trash, then you will get trashy performance. Get the idea? Find out what your body needs to perform at optimum performance, like high octane petroleum…I will explain this later.

Eliminate environmental damage: There are many things in the environment that affect you: water, air, food, water, environmental psychology, water, food, supplements…did I mention water, pure filtered water? When you learn how to filter the harmful affectors out of your life you give yourself a leg up on the rest of the population and a chance at longer life.

I will be elaborating on these factors in future posts as I compile them for the info on the site so stay tuned….it could be the best thing you do for your future today!

http://www.menopause-effects.com

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. The information here should not be used as a substitute for medical advice, or to diagnose, treat or cure any illness. Always consult your personal physician before changing your medication, diet or physical regimen. See the disclaimer for more information.
Copyright © 2006 www.menopause-effects.com All rights reserved

I just took a break from the keyboard and we were catching one of those late night shows to relax the noggin. There was a well known “housewife” on the show and the vaginal excercise topic came up. Imagine that.

I made a remark to Lorraine that the number one exercise recommended by doctors is probably NOT the best one to end that pesky urinary incontinence problem so many menopausal women seem to experience.

She looked at me with that “I have heard this sooo…. many times before” and I just had to come tell you about it. It is not the kegel exercise that everyone is always talking about. It is an exercise that hits all the muscles of the abdomen and that is why it works SO well.

(I did a little editing here and removed the references to the name of the exercise and the author I learned this from, through his products, not directly I should add, since I may not be explaining it correctly and I am not sure how cool it is to publish this without contacting him. I will follow up on that this week.)

1. Stand with your feet a little wider than shoulder width and your knees slightly bent.
2. Take a deep breath slowly (try a 4 or 5 second count for this) and hold.
3. After holding for one second, act like you are blowing the air out but close your mouth,nose,throat and keep it in. Pretend you are blowing up a balloon that will not expand. Do this for about 4 seconds. It will feel like you are locking up your throat and you will feel your abdomen tighten.
4. After 4 seconds, exhale slowly (for a count of 4 seconds or so, like the inhale).
5. Repeat 10 to 20 times when you wake up and before you go to sleep. You can do this throughout the day to increase your energy since it requires no extra space and nobody has to even know you are doing it.

How does this help my “little” problem?

When you tighten up and compress the air in your lungs, ALL the muscles surrounding your abdomen (stomach) are contracting. Your throat, your stomach muscles, your back muscles (yes, you will feel this the first few times you do this), AND your PELVIC muscles. Since you are exercising all these muscles as a GROUP your body will do a number of things which includes strengthening all of these muscles at the same time.

I will go into this later but one of the things your body always does is react to any stress as a total body stress. If you get an infected toenail, one of the reactions is a low fever that affects your entire body. If you exercise one muscle your body rebuilds that one muscle and in the process releases the hormones and chemicals necessary to rebuild every muscle in your entire body. If you exercise several muscles at once, specifically the core muscle group (more on that later), there is much more of the hormones and chemicals available to repair and build the muscles that need to be fixed.

So how does this help? When you do this excercise, you release a whole lot of these chemicals and those wimpy kegel exercises would have only released a tiny bit, if any.

Suddenly your body is getting a flood of rebuilding chemicals and hormones and the one area your body sees as lacking is that pesky pelvic muscle. Where do these super rebuilders go? Exactly! Right to the pelvic muscles.

Everyone I have told about this exercise has seen super results in the first 2 to 3 weeks.

Doesn’t cost you anything and how happy will you be when you don’t have to worry about laughing at that joke or sneezing in public any more?

Cheers!
Stephen

PS - This is my opinion and according to the legal guys around here I have to add this. Disclaimer - These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. The information here should not be used as a substitute for medical advice, or to diagnose, treat or cure any illness. Always consult your personal physician before changing your medication, diet or physical regimen. See the disclaimer for more information.
Copyright © 2006 www.menopause-effects.com All rights reserved

Well, I haven’t been around since Sunday due to work and other stuff so I figured it is time to get back in here and keep this blog rolling. Even though I haven’t been making any updates I have been knee deep in research, videos and journals to get my bearings. (BTW, I forgot to turn on self registration for the blog and the discussion board until today so you can register and let me know what you think.)

So, does Menopause affect you or me or anyone else that you know? Unless you live on the moon it is very likely the answer to that is YES! You may not be going through menopause. Your significant other may not be either but odds are that you interact with someone on a daily basis who is going through “The Change” whether you know it or not.

Your favorite teacher in that after-hours class at the community center or the waitress at your favorite restaurant or pub (or bar or coffee house or wherever you like to go) or your travel agent or…well, you get the idea - any woman you know that is over 20 could “possibly” be a candidate for this. If she is over 45 there is a very good chance she is suffering from the symptoms of perimenopause (the time before full blown menopause) which is the culprit for the majority of the symptoms everyone hears about: hot flashes, night sweats, fuzzy thinking, mood swings, etc..

Since you are probably around someone who is going through this, wouldn’t you like to know a little more about it? So would a lot of other people.

Here is your chance to help us get this info out. If you have questions about menopause, or something to share from your experience with menopause or hormone replacement therapy, get involved in this site. Post a comment to this blog or sign up for our discussion board. It doesn’t cost a thing and what you share could help many many people.

To get on the discussion board go to http://www.menopause-effects.com and select Discussion Board from the menu. You can register on the blog and post your comments by selecting -Register- under Admin on the top right.

Have a great day, evening, night or morning and I’ll look for you tomorrow!
Stephen