Almonds for hot flashes

Vitamin E has long been established for helping many menopausal problems especially hot flushes, night sweats, palpitations and vaginal dryness.
One natural way to get Vitamin E from your diet is by getting it from almonds.

Almonds are an excellent nutrient-dense food to incorporate into a healthful diet.
Even though almonds are fairly calorific - 180 calories per ounce, substituting almonds for other less nutrient-dense foods is simple.

For example, replacing three foods with three tablespoons of almonds can boost the vitamin E content of your diet significantly, enabling the average American who only gets about half of the RDA to meet their full daily recommendation (15-mg alpha-tocopherol).

Sleep Quality In Postmenopausal Women Affected by Higher Body Temperature and Hormones

ScienceDaily - In an examination of potential relationships between objective sleep measures, nocturnal sex hormone levels, and the nocturnal course of body temperature of older postmenopausal women, a new study finds that altered levels of both sex hormones and gonadotropins may contribute to sleep disturbance in older postmenopausal women and confirm the results of previous studies indicating that higher body temperature is associated with poorer sleep quality.

Further, higher body temperature prior to and during sleep was significantly correlated with poorer sleep efficiency and higher luteinizing hormone levels.

Furthermore, several studies have shown that hot flashes and other vasomotor symptoms that influence sleep continue years beyond menopause in up to 40 percent of postmenopausal women.
Thus, the sleep difficulties that emerge at menopause often do not abate and may become compounded by age-associated disruption of circadian and homeostatic processes that regulate sleep."

You CAN get pregnant during menopause

You can get pregnant during the menopause, reports the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a non-profit organization that focuses on reproductive health research.

Women nearing or just beginning the menopause mistakenly think they are no longer fertile because their menstrual cycles are no longer regular or have just stopped, and stop using any contraceptives.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute notes that as many as half of all pregnancies that occur in women over the age of 40 are unintended and unintentional.

Even though the menopause does mark the end of a woman's childbearing years, you can get pregnant even if your periods are irregular and you have not gone through "menopause" until you have experienced 12 consecutive months without a period.

So be warned and take those precautions!

Extreme Caution in using HRT

A study conducted by Olga Glinskii and her associate leads her to advise extreme caution in HRT use.

The vascular system depends on estrogen for maintenance. When the body decreases its estrogen production, as in after the menopause, the body is unable to regulate blood vessels like it did before.
This might explain why women lose the protection they get from certain conditions such as heart disease and stroke after menopause," said Olga Glinskii, research assistant professor of medical pharmacology and physiology in MU’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

She says, “because the body eventually will naturally adapt to the loss of estrogen, we advise extreme caution when using estrogen-based therapy in postmenopausal women.”

"Eventually, the body starts to recognize that it needs blood vessels and starts to adapt through natural responses.
If we start adding estrogen to a system that is learning to adapt without it, we upset this transition process.
What happens to the vascular system during menopause is complex on many different levels, and we do not know enough to determine the best way to use hormone therapy."

After a period of deterioration, the body learns to adapt to the estrogen loss and eventually maintains the system in a different way.

Eat Prunes to prevent Osteoporosis..

Eat Prunes to prevent Osteoporosis..

A study was undertaken where 58 post menopausal women ate about 12 prunes daily for 3 months. At the end of the study it was found that they had higher blood levels of growth enzymes and growth factors that indicated bone formation, than those who had not eaten the prunes.
This may be due to the fact that prunes are packed with bone-building phenolic compounds, boron and potassium. These play important roles in bone health.

In fact prunes are an important source of boron, a trace mineral which is thought to play an important role in the prevention of osteoporosis.

The daily requirement for boron is 2 to 3 mg.The amount of prunes you would need to get this is just over half a cup, but there are other sources (cabbage, dandelion, parsley etc) as well of course.

Avoid eating prunes if you have existing and untreated kidney or gallbladder problems beacuse of their oxalate content.

Tread Carefully with HRT

Not so long ago, the belief that giving post menopausal women estrogen would help prevent heart disease was well publicised.

Now, however, the findings are that giving supplemental estrogen actually increases the risk of heart disease (along with the risk of stroke, breast cancer, blood clots in the legs, and dementia).

So in fact no woman should still be taking hormones to lower her risk of heart attack or stroke.

Even though hormones do have benefits in some people, generally, however, the risks outweigh the benefits.

The Women’s Health Initiative found that the increased risk of heart attack and blood clots began as early as the first year of hormone use. That means most women who use hormones to control symptoms do face some heart risk (as well as an increased risk of breast cancer).

If you do need to take estrogen for severe menopause related problems, then try and use the pills for no more than three years unless your severe symptoms are persistent and your endocrinologist advises you to do so.

Tread Carefully with HRT...

Menopause Related Sleep Problems

Two New Studies Analyze Menopause-Related Sleep Problems: "Two studies in the July 1 issue of the journal Sleep analyze menopausal sleep problems, finding that complaints may differ according to the stage of menopausal transition and the ethnicity of the woman, and identifying risk factors that may predict sleep problems at any stage of menopause.

A multi-ethnic study of more than 3,000 women shows that the odds of having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep increase through the menopausal transition. In contrast, the odds of having early-morning awakenings decrease from late perimenopause to postmenopause."

The study also found ethnic differences in the self-reported sleep problems. Caucasian women had higher rates of difficulty staying asleep, while Hispanics had lower rates of both difficulty staying asleep and early-morning awakenings. No ethnic differences were observed for trouble falling asleep.

Risk factors for poor sleep quality were hot flashes, depressive symptoms and lower levels of the hormone inhibin B, which declines quickly in the early menopausal transition. Sleep quality was not predicted, however, by menopausal status.

Findings were inconclusive regarding the potential benefits of hormonal therapy.

Vaginal dryness caused by menopause

Vaginal dryness during the menopause is usually caused by falling oestrogen levels. A lack of vitamin E can contribute to this.

Some medications, such as antihistamines, can also dry out your mucous membranes, including those in the vaginal wall.

Try taking 200-400i.u of vitamin E daily and using a good water based lubricant when needed.

HRT and Blood Clots

New Research on HRT indicates that there is an increased risk of getting a blood clot in postmenopausal women

Women who are overweight or have a genetic pre-disposition to blood clots should avoid HRT pills, but skin patches seem to be safer, says a systematic review and meta-analysis by French Scientists.
This was perhaps due to the different way oestrogen is absorbed into the blood stream, they suggested.
But as the authors themselves say, this needs to be confirmed with more research

However, the authors warned that the results should be treated with caution as the data is from observational studies and need to be confirmed with more research.

No trials have yet investigated the effects of oestrogen patches on the risk of blood clots.

When is a Hot Flash not a Hot Flash?

When is a hot flash or flush not a hot flash?

Falling oestrogen levels can precipitate hot flashes, night sweats etc, but another less thought of factor, is high histamine levels.

Histamine can become a problem if you are stressed, are smoking, eating foods that don't agree with you or drinking too much alcohol. It can also be a problem if your diet is predominantly made up of highly processed or junk foods.
Although in my case, I have found that it to be genetic, as I tend to suffer from allergies, which my mum does too.

If your skin is sensitive and you react violently to bites or stings, or get prickly heat, you are likely to have high levels of histamine.
So you never know, if you do have high histamine levels, your hot flashes may have nothing to do with your hormones!

Taking nettle either as tea or a tincture can help as can a low dose of vitamin C taken upto 6 times daily. These are natural antihistamines.

Also, it goes without saying, take care of your diet, drink plenty of water, and minimise your caffeine intake.