Menopause is not an illness, it is a stage of life
As more and more interconnecting factors are unravelled once our second spring begins (menopause), the more we begin to understand how intricate our body works. We have already established that menopause is not an illness, but a stage of life and we need to understand that that stage begins many years prior to the actual cessation of menstruation. With the support of the right exercise and the right nutrition there should absolutely nothing that stands in the way of walking through peri- and menopause in a breeze. The natural progression into menopause should be a process in which we are redefining our roles and channelling our energy into other areas of our life. Hormonal balance is still critical and how we feel depends often on how well we took care of our body years before this event.
Insulin, our daily, most important hormone
One of the most important “daily” hormones is insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. It works in a symbiotic relationship with the adrenal glands, which produces three main hormones: Aldosterone, involved in regulation of the body’s salt and water household thus regulating blood pressure; cortisol, which helps to control the body’s use of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. It is involved in increasing blood sugar levels as a response to the release of epinephrine (adrenaline) when faced with a perceived threat.
What happens when your perceive a threat (real or not)
When your mind perceives an imaginary tiger, which could be disguised as your boss or a stressful family-situation for instance, extra glucose is channelled to the muscles by tapping into the protein stores via the liver. However, with chronic stress there is a perpetual heightened release of cortisol mobilising glucose that subsequently needs to be controlled by the pancreas’ release of insulin.
Why is having too much sugar in your blood so bad?
Excess insulin damage the receptors on the cells that pick up the insulin and the sugar. Insulin has a similar effect on the receptors for other hormones resulting in oestrogen- and progesterone resistance. You may still be producing the female hormones as you go into menopause, but it’s fluctuating and it’s lower and because there is resistance on the cells they don’t function as they are meant to. The cells don’t pick up the hormones in the blood and getting them into the cells where they are supposed to go. When the blood sugar is up and down, you produce plenty of insulin, but the receptors are inefficient and damaged. So, you produce increasingly higher amounts of insulin to try regulating your blood sugar (Kawahito, Kitahata and Oshita 2009).
Glucose is sent to your fat stores instead of vital organs:
Our hormones are intricately linked to each other. Insulin and oestrogen; progesterone and insulin, testosterone, and insulin, they all interact with one another. When Insulin levels rise, oestrogen levels drop. When women become more insulin-resistant, cortisol-levels rise. This leads to more fat-storage in the mid-section, creating a vicious circle of the body trying to crank up the insulin to keep blood glucose at a normal range, leading to damage to the eyes, kidneys, nerves, and inflammation. Glucose is not sent to your heart, or muscles or to the tissues that require it but is sent to your fat stores because we gotta get it out of our blood. The body will protect you at all costs.
Hot flashes, nights sweats and brain fog
Experiencing symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and brain fog and an increasing tendency to put on weight around the midline points to blood sugar dysregulation. According to a study done in 2018, only 12.2% of American adults are metabolically healthy (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2018). One in 10 individuals (around 10%) is affected by diabetes and another 30% have prediabetes in the United States and other countries are likely not far off (CDC 2020).
Insulin dysregulation occurs way before menopause
The medical community only becomes concerned when they see a diagnosis of pre-diabetes or diabetes. Unfortunately, it’s long before menopause that insulin is getting dysregulated. It’s a cumulative process of years of eating a diet that favours carbohydrates, chronic stress-levels, and physical inactivity. This situation has been exacerbated with one year of lockdown due to Covid, where many women not only had to carry the load of looking after their families, additionally increasing their stress-levels with a fear-mongering news-platform but also ended up having no time for themselves or space to exercise.
Testing that could prompt you into action
Doctors are usually looking for an overt diagnosis of diabetes before they prescribe any other testing than fasting blood glucose. However, if you have a family history of diabetes and you find your blood sugar levels slightly elevated you could argue that you would like to keep yourself in a safe space and have your fasting insulin levels tested. Be aware that fasting glucose is the last thing to change in most people. Another test, that is seldom prescribed is haemoglobin A1c. It measures your average blood sugar level over the last two to three months. The higher the A1c, the higher the risk that your prediabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes.
Adrenal glands may not be able to pick up the slack
When our body stops producing ample amounts of oestrogen and progesterone via the reproductive cycle, the adrenal glands are supposed to pick up the slack. However, more often than not, by the time we arrive there, our adrenals are literally shot because of years of chronic stress-exposure. Although “adrenal fatigue” is not a medically accepted diagnosis, there are more and more functional medicine practitioners who recognize how chronic stress exposure may lead to an overtaxed adrenal system. Years of chronic cortisol release results in the incapacity of the adrenals to create sufficient cortisol to maintain our energy-levels (Joseph and Golden 2016) leading to common symptoms such as:
- Fatigue
- Poor stress response and mood regulation
- Brain fog
- Crashes in the middle of the day or after meals
- Salt- and sweet cravings
- Weakened immune response
You and your body got the power to change
First of all, give yourself around 30 days to experience changes.
Step 1: Avoid foods that create a surge in blood sugar and insulin
- Such as: simple processed sugars refined processed flour (white bread, pasta, rice), fruits high in fructose such as pineapple, overripe banana, and mango
- If your sugar levels are already borderline high, avoid grains all together. They contain a lot more carbohydrates and starch then nutrients.
Step 2: Stop eating at least three hours before going to bed
- High insulin levels potentially block HGH (human growth hormones), which are important in metabolism, cell repair and other vital functions (Lanzi, et al. 1999).
- Insulin-levels decrease within 2-3 hours after eating in a healthy person.
- Note that an empty stomach secretes ghrelin, a hormone whose target tissue is the brain. Ghrelin gets produced by your stomach to tell when you are hungry, it triggers growth hormone and tells your body to go burn some fat. When you get hungry have some warm water instead to allow this process to continue.
Step 3: Fast intermittently
- Intermittent fasting has shown to double or triple HGH levels just after 2-3 days of fasting (Kerndt, et al. 1982).
- Intermittent fasting not only helps to reduce body fat, which inadvertently also increases HGH, but it also keeps insulin levels low for most of the day.
- Examples of intermittent fasting:
- Eat last meal at 7pm, eat first meal at 10am = 15 hours of fasting, 9 hours of eating window
- Space your meals at least 4-5 hours apart. No snacking in between.
- A beginners guide to intermittent fasting
Step 4: Prioritise protein
Protein is necessary for growth, maintenance of tissues; play a vital role in enzyme, neurotransmitter and hormone production, fluid balance, transportation, and storage of nutrients.
- Protein makes you feel more satiated.
- Your nervous system is calmer if you are not hungry.
- When you optimise protein, you optimise body-composition.
- The ratio is 0.8 per kg of body weight, i.e., if you weigh 60kg you should eat around 48g of protein per day
- So, you can spread your protein to 30-40 g per meal throughout the day (100g of chicken breast e.g. contains around 30 g of protein.
- Be aware than for every 100g of protein you ingest, 60 g gets converted into glucose, however this process takes a lot more effort by the body hence it is less likely to store fat from overeating protein.
The goal is to protect muscle mass and to change muscle-composition. Protein muscle-synthesis is happening if we keep exercising with resistance exercise.
Step 5: Calm your nervous system
If you continue to be exposed to chronic stress-triggers all the above may just work like a band aid. It is instrumental to find a way to relax, doing something you love, paint, write, go for walks, do Yoga, Tai Chi, or get a regular massage.
Self-exploration and understanding yourself via journaling, meditation, or contemplation could become part of your journey toward more fulfilment. Perhaps even get a coach who helps you to move into a direction where you can love and treasure not just your life but yourself just the way you are and then shine your light out into your community if that’s what you wish to do. This is the time to discover and be true to yourself. It’s precious and we want to live it with health, vitality, and joy.
The next blogpost will be all about sleep or the lack of it and how to get it back.
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Written by Monika Ramasamy, 5.4.2021
