Search results for stress and hot flashes

Speaking of blondes…Hot flashes and 20 other symptoms of menopause

Posted by Liz on Jan 21, 2009 in humour | 5 comments

Have I got your attention yet?

Since this is a week of change, I thought I’d swap Wednesday’s Bubble out for a guest post by my Twitter friend, The Daily Blonde, known to her friends as Cheryl Phillips. I caught this post on Cheryl’s blog and knew it was a winner. Enjoy!

I got the good news about a year ago. My doctor told me that I was in “perimenopause.” Peri meaning what? I’m only going to be on the big old mood swing occasionally? Far be it for me to say, but I like some consistency in my life. I don’t want to do things half-assed. I want my mood swings to be on a regular basis so they don’t sneak in and scare me…or anyone else for that matter.

Menopause. Figures there’s the word “men” in it. They’ve always caused me to pause. Never mind the pausing, they’ve caused me sweat, anxiety, mood swings and general pain. But then there have been a few who’ve just made me hot. Those are the men worth pausing for.

Back to me. (I like it when it’s back to me. With five children I only get a few “me” moments…mostly when I lock the bathroom door and hide.) OK, I keep digressing. I thought I’d do a search on the symptoms of menopause (since apparently that’s where I’m headed). I think I had one of the major symptoms today in the supermarket. As I paid for my items the sweat poured down my face and pooled in my ever so sexy sports bra. I was trying to look very “together” in my puddle of sweat. It was 20 degrees outside and not much warmer in the market. I felt like I was on fire.

The clerk was about 17 years old. I told her that she’d be just like me in about 30 years and to enjoy her inner air conditioning. Mine just seemed to stop working. She didn’t make eye contact with me after I scared her. Poor thing.

I love to research things. Usually things more pleasant than menopause, but hell, this is REAL life. The first website I came across about menopause had a list of twenty symptoms. Twenty?? Isn’t one symptom enough? As I perused the list, I was so hoping to find nausea, vomiting and occasional diarrhea. Aren’t those typical side effects for just about every medication on the market? It must be the same for menopause. Sure enough, that’s #18 on the list.

Here goes….oh so much to look forward to!

1. Hot flashes, flushes, night sweats and/or cold flashes: OK, I’ve got that!
2. Clammy feeling: Not yet…can’t wait!
3. Irregular heart beat: Only if my phone rings at 3am
   
4. Irritability: This has been going on for one day a month since I was eleven years old.
5. Mood swings, sudden tears: I’m a pretty chipper chick. I do like a good cry though. Mood swings? Me? What are YOU TALKING ABOUT??? I am PERFECTLY FINE!!!! OK??????? Hey, want to snuggle?
6. Trouble sleeping through the night: I am an insomniac. I wouldn’t know the difference.
7. Irregular heavier periods or shorter periods: Of course, I got a combination…shorter, heavier. Hey, that sounds like me aging–shorter and heavier.
8. Loss of libido: This will never happen to me. I keep repeating this and believing in it. Losing my sense of humor and my libido would be dreadful.
9. Hair Growth: Not sure what this is about but there is a three letter word ladies: WAX
10. Crashing fatigue: Got it. Got it. Got it.
11. Anxiety, feeling ill at ease: Yes…I’m extremely anxious about getting all of these symptoms.
12. Feelings of dread, apprehension, doom: This is why people get feelings of doom…because they read these lists and panic. Not me. I write about them and laugh. Sort of.
13. Difficulty concentrating, disorientation, mental confusion: I’ve given birth to five children in 24 years. These symptoms were part of the parenting package.
14. Disturbing memory lapses: I’ve had this for years. I just make lists now and try to keep track of where I put them.
15. Incontinence, especially upon sneezing, laughing: I laugh often and haven’t peed my pants yet.
16. Itchy, crawly skin: I only get this when I see my ex-husband.
17. Aching, sore joints, muscles and tendons: This is the result of having my knee sliced open three times this year, not menopause.
18. Gastrointestinal distress, indigestion, flatulence, gas pain, nausea: I will not allow this to happen. Ever. OK, I’ll pick nausea if I have to pick one. That’s it.
19. Weight gain: This is something to look forward to!
20. Changes in body odor: I assume this doesn’t mean I’ll be smelling like Chanel No.5 ??

Om

Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2008 in hot flash, Meditation/mindfulness therapy | 0 comments

Can meditation ease hot flashes? Dr. James Carmody, an assistant professor in the Division of Preventive and Behaviorial Medicine at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, has conducted research that suggests it can.

This small study enrolled 15 women experiencing at least 7 moderate to severe hot flashes daily to test the hypothesis that stress and hot flashes are linked. For 7 weeks, study participants attended mindfulness-based stress reduction classes that included meditation and kept a daily hot flash log during and 4 weeks after classes ended. Participants were also evaluated for menopause-related quality of life before the start and after the conclusion of mindfulness classes. The results? There was a 40% decline in weekly average hot flash severity and quality of life increased significantly.

Dr. Carmody evidently believes in these findings so much that he is currently recruiting hot flashers for a larger clinical study.

Meanwhile, I ran across this guided meditation for hot flashers on the web.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

Posted by Liz on Sep 5, 2014 in menopause | 0 comments

Back in 2010 I wrote a piece about a woman’s egg supply and its role in predicting when menopause may start. There’s some new information to add to the story so thought I’d rerun the piece with a few highlights.

So eggs and baskets. What, pray tell, do they have to do with menopause? Let’s break it down, step by step (or, year by year, as the case may be). The bottom line is that roughly 69% of the total reserve of eggs that a woman has and how that varies throughout her lifetime can be determined by age alone.

While still in the womb, a female will develop several million eggs. Up until age 14, the eggs will continue to increase in number, accelerate around puberty (i.e. ages 9 through and then the reserve steadily declines until menopause (around age 50 or 51).

Using computer modeling of data taken from about 325 women, researchers determined that by the age of 30, 95% of women will only have 12% of their egg reserves remaining. By age 40, only 3% remain.  What’s more, age remains the primary influencer of the number of eggs up until about age 25. Then as a women grows older, other factors, including smoking, body mass index, stress and previous pregnancies start to play more important roles.

Back to the menopause component. The majority of readers of this blog are of the age where pregnancy is no longer a consideration an the number of eggs in reserve, pretty irrelevant. However, by considering and mapping how the ovarian reserve of eggs is established and then diminished in the first place, researchers hope to be better able to predict when menopause will start individual women. This strategy compliments the anti-Mullerian hormone blood test (check out information on that here) and closely follows the way that scientists used the blood test to predict menopause.

However, geeky science aside, by having a better idea of when menopause will start, you may be able to take appropriate steps in a timely fashion to both stave off vasomotor symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats and maintain body weight and physical health. What’s more, imagine the possibilities in terms of mood swings and depression. The potential rewards are endless.

According to the researchers, they might also be able to predict which women treated for cancer are at highest risk for early menopause as the result of treatment. Since many of these women are young, this might provide opportunities for proactive family planning.

And finally, by measuring ovarian volumes, a key factor in the computer modeling, researchers believe that they may be able to predict young women who are at risk for developing premature loss of their ovarian function, a common side effect of cancer treatment. The benefit here is that it may be a way to help these young women preserve their eggs early for later fertility efforts.

So, all those eggs in one basket? You might not be able to control how many but you may be able to control certain outcomes. Nice!

Does your mattress act as a tonic for rest?

Posted by Liz on Mar 17, 2014 in sleep disturbance | 2 comments

When it comes to sleep, which of the following are most important to you?

• Great sheets
• A perfect pillow
• A dark room
• A light room
• No sound
• Sound
• Temperature
• Mattress

I’ve always gravitated toward a great mattress, a dark room and no sound. However, I’ve noticed of late that perimenopause is making me hot, really hot at really inconvenient times. So I was intrigued when I saw an image on my Facebook stream a few weeks ago posted by a friend who works as a brand engineer for Restonic Mattress Corporation. Granted, I haven’t a clue if a brand engineer is the same as a branding expert what I do know is that sleep is critical and that the claims about the mattress appeared to address some of my recent concerns considering sleep, or lack thereof.

The new Restonic mattress is made of memory foam and my impression is that memory foam is ‘hot,’ too hot for individuals who tend to run hot as a rule. And yet, the TempaGel® is being touted as being especially temperature friendly. The specs point out that the memory foam closest to the surface is ‘gel-infused’ which serves to wick heat away from the body, thereby reducing temperature fluctuations. And, it claims to incorporate a technology (Outlast®, used by NASA as well as other brands, that keeps the the bed temperature-neutral. The bed’s core is pre-compressed, which allows it to improve air circulation, again with the goal of reducing temperature fluctations. Moreover, the edge of the mattress is ventilated, which theoretically increases its sleepable surface (although I don’t know many ‘edge’ sleepers).

The general price point of Restonic mattresses appears comparable to other sleep brands that offer higher end mattresses however, I don’t know the exact price for the TempaGel. And while I have never been particularly interested in memory foam for a sleep surface, I’m intrigued.

As you are probably aware, sleep issues are pervasive as we age and in women, as they go through menopause. And, whether its stress or hot flashes or a medical condition, the result — less than 6 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep — can greatly interfere with daily functioning, mood and physical health.

What are you doing to reverse your sleep woes? How important is your mattress? And what are you sleeping on? More importantly, are you sleep habits fueling or cooling your inner and outer furnaces? Inquiring minds…

New Year? New You!

Posted by Liz on Jan 1, 2014 in women's health | 1 comment

Want to know one of the most important resolutions that you can make? Commit to you!

I write about a lot of topics on Flashfree but the overriding theme is health and the importance of taking care of yourself. And no one can do that better than you can, that is, once you make a commitment to become healthier and identify strategies that work best for you. There are four tips that I’d like to offer to help you get over the initial hump.

• Move. I can’t emphasize the importance of physical activity enough. From bone health to heart health to mental health, it is the one accessible, equal opportunity strategy, regardless of income or geography. Because even if you don’t have entry to the gym, you can walk, run, bike, step, or engage in other activities that don’t require a membership or a monthly fee. In addition to counterbalancing the calories that you ingest daily, simply  simply engaging in vigorous physical activity, i.e. 7 days of a combination of moderate intensity/intense activities that add up to 3000 MET minutes a week) can significantly decrease menopausal symptoms, in particular fatigue, depression, insomnia and hot flashes.  (Activity level is scientifically measured by units known as METs, or metabolic equivalents; vigorous activity is equivalent to 8 METs and moderate activity to 4 METs).
• Be conscious.  My grandmother used to say ‘everything in moderation.’ When it comes to diet, I don’t engage or believe in deprivation but I do try to balance out the occasional junk  and sweets with healthy, daily  doses of vegetables, fresh fruit, lean proteins and fiber. Researchers say that what you eat is extremely important. In a study of over 500 women, the strategy that worked best, leading to an average weight loss of 17 pounds over six months, entailed boosting intake of soluble fiber, fruits, veggies, whole grains and sources of plant stanols/sterols (i.e. almonds, brussel sprouts, wheat germ/bran, peanuts, olive oil and omega-3s). However, they also started moving more and adding regular, moderately intense activity to their daily routines.
• Engage. Want to know the key to health and wellbeing? Your friends. Data from a study published in Psychological Review in 2000 suggests that women’s inherent response to stress is to ‘tend and befriend’ rather than ‘fight or flight;’ in other words, there is a biologically-defined strategy or pattern that involves caring for offspring, joining social groups, and gravitating towards friends under stressful circumstances. This is driven, at least in part, by the release of the hormone oxytocin, which coupled with endogenous opioids and other sex hormones, promotes maternal behavior as an alternative to the male-oriented fight and flee response. Other findings  have also shown that friendships help prevent the development of physical impairment and facilitate a more joyful existence. What’s more, having a strong social network can lower blood pressure and heart rate and improve cholesterol levels. The bottom line? Nature has provided us with a built-in prompt to maintain those ever important bonds. Our inherent tendency to nurture completes the picture.
• Laugh. Several years ago, researchers discovered that humor therapy and anticipation of laughing or being amused (also known as mirthful laughter)  boosts mood hormones and raises human growth hormone (which optimizes immunity levels. Mirthful laughter has been shown to lower stress hormones and improve the functioning of certain cells – natural killer cells – that favour immune function. Daily laughter also helps lower cholesterol, decreases inflammation that contributes to disease and improves overall wellness. A good belly laugh goes an awfully long way. That funny bone? Seek it out.