As personal service businesses continue to remain closed during Covid-19 pandemic, we have this rare opportunity to get creative and curious about ourselves rather than relying on our usual passive and possibly reactive approach to caring for our mental health.
We’re at the mercy of the internet and online platforms these days and the generosity of many individuals who share their talents online so that that we’re able to connect with each other and find support during this time.
So we talked about the Pelvic floor diamond before, but I wanted to show you on the model so you can sort of wrap your head around it and see it in a little bit more of a realistic position. So this is your pelvic floor and this is from the top down. These are where the muscles are, and then this is from the bottom.
In this position, the diamond that I’m referring to is the top being the pubic bone here. And then the sides being your sit bones, and then the bottom being the tailbone. So those muscles basically, again, act like a hammock sitting underneath and are attached to all those different structures. And so when you’re trying to do a proper pelvic floor contraction or a Kegel.
When it comes to getting creative in the kitchen, whether it’s baking, cooking, or simply just making teas, I am always about KISS – keep it super simple. Wherever I can, I recommend teas that are not too tricky to get. The botanicals I recommend here are mostly readily available in your regular groceries store. If you are in the Calgary area, you can also order dried herbs from
The Apothecary in Inglewood. Enjoy!
Licorice root
Licorice root is capable of blocking the COVID-19 virus from accessing its entry point to the body, known as ACE-2. Licorice root also increases a type of immune cells called T cells, which are important in forming defence mechanism against novel viruses.
Staying home amid COVID-19 pandemic is making us more sedentary than ever. These days, we may be sitting in our home offices or working from the dinner table or sitting in front of TV for hours on end. While we do our part staying at home to protect our community and frontline health workers, it’s equally important to keep ourselves healthy in order to reduce the need to visit clinics and/or hospitals.
There are many side effects from prolonged sitting, they include:
1. Back pain
• Prolonged sitting can lead to tight muscles in the neck, shoulders, and all areas of the back, leading to muscle spasms and pain. You might remember feeling stiff and sore from a long car ride. Stretching is the best way to prevent back pain.
Coffee consumption and health effects have been a popular area of research since the year 2000. However, most of these studies lack gender and age specificity, so there is still much remain unknown when it comes to health effects on menopausal women.
Currently, studies have demonstrated that:
Pro
1. Coffee drinking is associated with a lower risk of depression among women, as well a lower risk of stroke (2011 study).
2. In women, moderate consumption has been linked to a small decrease in risk of heart attack.
Con
3. Coffee consumption doesn’t seem to reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease for women as much as it is for men.
All right, Lee, can you go through with us about the bladder training?
Okay, so basically with the bladder there’s some sensors on the inside of it and they respond to stretch and any kind of chemical irritation. They can respond to concentrated urine.
So briefly talk about maybe some bladder irritants.
[00:00:26] So coffee, tea, soda, carbonated drinks, artificial sweeteners, tomatoes, citrus and alcohol, all the best things. They can irritate your bladder. And what’ll happen is that sends a signal to your brain that it needs to empty. And so usually you’ll notice that you have to urinate more frequently when you have those things.
Hello, I’m Dr. Kait Chang, Naturopathic doctor, and I am the founder of Calgary Menopausal Wellness. Today we have Lee McCauley with us from Momentum Health with us. Lee, I know that you are a pelvic physiotherapist.
Tell us what you do and what is pelvic physio?
So, basically, in order to describe what a pelvic physio is, I have to describe what the pelvis is and what area that I treat.
[00:00:30] So the pelvic floor is, basically a group of muscles that’s like a hammock that’s attached to different parts of your pelvis. So, it’s attached to your tailbone, your sit bones and your pubic bone at the front. And there’s a lot of conditions that can arise from dysfunction in these muscles. So, the typical things that you’re going to see are the muscles getting a little bit too tight or those muscles getting a little bit weak.
Tune-up your overworked ovaries
Imagine, your job is to coordinate and put up a big corporate event every month, 12 months in a row. No breaks, no holidays, no sick days, no vacation days. Even worse, you have no assistance, no team to rely on, and you have been doing it for at least 30-long years. Talk about burnout!
This is what your ovaries do their entire lives. Every single month, your ovaries orchestrate a big event no matter what new challenges and variable situations they face on a daily basis, and that big event is ovulation. It’s inevitable that by perimenopause, the ovaries are tiring out.
They are still active, but more prone to hiccups and mistakes. Their egg-release schedule may be less predictable, and their production of estrogen and progesterone may be less precise and unsynchronized. The overworked ovaries are the reasons for irregular cycles, spotting, cyst formations, heavy bleeding, migraines, hotflashes, etc.
The lifetime of ovaries can be extended
Given our busy and high-strung lifestyle, if not tended to, the overworked ovaries could senesce quickly and retire early, resulting in early menopause. Unsupported overworked ovaries equate to silent aging. For a premenopausal and perimenopausal woman, the health of her ovaries is the determinant of her health and vitality.
If we are able to support to the ovaries and nourish its environment (the body), we would be able to slow down aging, not just on the internal level, but also the superficial level because we know that a perfectly choreographed waltz between estrogen and progesterone, which are largely made by the ovaries, is the reason for skin-elasticity, mental sharpness, stress-resilience, easily manageable weight, and lower chance of hormone-sensitive pathologies and cancers.
Initial signs of overworked ovaries in premenopausal and perimenopausal women
Changes in menstrual bleeding
If you notice that the amount of your menstrual bleeding alternates between light and heavy from one month to the next, chances are that your ovaries are not producing progesterone consistently.
Progesterone is required to mitigate the growth of the endometrium (the tissue that later sheds when you get your period), making sure that it doesn’t overgrow. When there’s not enough progesterone in a cycle or that the progesterone was produced too late, your endometrium ends up growing thicker than it should be, giving you a picture of estrogen dominance.
Then, when you get your period at the end of that cycle, it would be heavier because there’s more endometrium tissue to be shed. The cause of progesterone deficiency is attributable to overworked ovaries.
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If everyday hustle keeps you tense and makes your sleep restless, the holiday season is the perfect time to get back some sleep. For perimenopausal and menopausal women, good quality sleep is particularly important when it comes to optimizing hormones which helps to lose weight, have more energy, and feel more at ease and in control.
We already know that sleep is important for our overall health and everyday function, but for women transitioning into menopause, sleep is ever more important.
In reproductive years, sex hormones are mostly made by the ovaries. As women get older, the ovaries retire and they no longer make estrogen and progesterone. Instead, the adrenal glands take over and help to sustain these hormones so that estrogen-dependent organs and tissues such as the bone, heart, blood vessels, and brain can continue to function. In other words, the adrenals have more task to fulfill as women enter menopause.
Sleep deprivation exacerbates menopausal symptoms
When sleep deprivation or poor quality sleep persist, the adrenals are not getting the rest they need. The adrenals get signals that the brain wants them to work harder, to produce more stress hormone, cortisol. Normally, the adrenals produce all hormones in right proportions and keep our hormones balanced, but when the brain asks for disproportionately more cortisol, something else has the give. Progesterone gets incrementally underproduced, while estrogen(estrone) and androgens get erroneous overproduced, and this hormone imbalance adds further burden to pre-existing menopause-related hormone fluctuations.
In fact, lots of menopausal symptoms are caused by excessive cortisol. Therefore, not getting sleep is the culprit of many of those symptoms. You might be able to relate a few and if you work on getting more (7-8hrs) and better sleep this holiday, you’ll be surprised how easy your menopausal symptoms can be managed.
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Hotflashes are a sign that you are going through major hormonal transition. If the intensity and frequency become more than tolerable, it signifies that there is underlying imbalance. If left untreated, the hotflashes may gradually lessen, but the underlying hormone imbalance would continue to wear down the body, percolating irreversible diseases that eventually surface in old age such as diabetes, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, osteoporosis, and dementia. Ask your doctor to help you rebalance hormones if you are getting more than 3 episodes a day.
If you are getting less than 3 hotflashes a day, try these recipes and you will not feel too hot at holiday gatherings.
Flaxseed bars
Extracted from Cleangreensimple (https://cleangreensimple.com/recipe/flax-crackers/)
Flaxseeds are not only fibrous and get your bowels going, they are super rich in lignans, which are a form of phytoestrogens that help with balancing estrogen levels in the body.
Ingredients:
2 cups ground flaxseeds (aka flaxmeal)
2 tbsp flaxseeds whole
1 cup almond milk (start with 3/4 cup and add more as needed to make into a workable dough)
2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
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Calgary Menopause Wellness