Wednesday Bubble: easy does it…with chamomile
Love love love this week’s Bubble because I don’t have to burst it. Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers say that chamomile is effective for mild to moderate anxiety. What’s more, this is the first time that the herb, which has long been known for its relaxation properties, has been subjected to rigorous, scientific study.
Anxiety is an integral part of the menopause experience, with many women experiencing mild nervousness or nervousness with depression, or full-blown anxiety attacks. Much of this anxiety is believed to be due to hormonal changes, and in fact, nearly half if not more of midlife women reportedly experience anxiety symptoms. Tension, depression and stress can all exacerbate persistent irritability, nervousness and mood swings. Moreover, having anxiety during the menopause transition has been linked to an increased risk for bothersome hot flashes.
In this latest study, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of German chamomile extract capsules (229 mg, up to five daily) compared to placebo in 57 women with mild to moderate anxiety. Dosing was individualized and based on each woman’s ability to tolerate the chamomile and its effect. After 8 weeks, researchers observed a significant change in total anxiety rating scores in women taking the chamomile; these women also showed improvements in overall well being scores. The chamomile was well-tolerated.
Again, this is the first time that chamomile has been shown scientifically to improve mild to moderate anxiety symptoms. Obviously, a study with a larger group of women is needed to truly prove the effectiveness of chamomile, especially in women undergoing the menopause transition.
Chamomile – is it safe?
Chamomile, a member of the Asteraceae plant family, has been used in herbal remedies for thousands of years. In Europe, it is commonly used for digestive disorders. However, chamomile may cause allergic reactions that result in abdominal cramps, itching, skin rashes, and even throat swelling (anaphylaxis). Chamomile can also interfere with blood thinning medications such as Warfarin (an anticoagulant). Individuals who are allergic to other plants in the Asteraceae family, including aster, chrysanthemum, mugwort, ragweed, and ragwort should avoid chamomile. Additionally, there have been reports of cross reactions celery, chrysanthemum, feverfew, tansy, and birch pollen.
Like any drug, speak to a licensed practitioner before trying chamomile to insure that you are a proper candidate and that you take the correct dosage for your problems.
Meanwhile, how wonderful to know that for women who can tolerate chamomile, there is a safe, scientifically proven alternative strategy to ease menopausal symptoms and irritability!
Read MoreDon’t put all your eggs in one basket
Actually, you may not have a choice! Did you know that a woman’s egg supply peaks as early as 20 weeks after conception? While still in the womb, a female will develop several million eggs. Up until age 14, the eggs will continue in number and then they steadily decrease 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.
Why is this important? Afte rall, most readers of this blog are of the age where pregnancy is no longer a consideration and our number of eggs in reserve, pretty irrelevant. However, by establishing how the ovarian reserve of eggs is established and then diminished, researchers hope to be better able to predict when menopause will start individual women. 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.
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!
Read MoreWednesday Bubble: Another nail in the coffin for HRT
Still hearing that HRT can’t hurt your heart? Findings from yet another study, this time published in the February 16 edition of Annals of Internal Medicine, confirm the dangers that HRT poses to your heart, especially in the short-term.
In this latest analysis, researchers evaluated data derived from 16,608 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative trial who still had their uterus. The findings?
Compared to women who had never used hormone replacement therapy, those who had used it continuously over 10 years had more than twice the risk of developing heart disease over the first 2 years, and more than 1.5 times the risk over the subsequent 8 years. For women who started hormone therapy after 10 years of entering menopause, there was also a trend towards developing heart disease over the first 2 years. Of note, researchers did observe a possible protective effect after 6 years in the women who started therapy closer to menopause as risk did start to level off at this time.
The upshot is that the first two years of taking HRT can be a dangerous time for women regardless of whether they start hormones closer to menopause.
Another nail? Yes, I’d say so.
But don’t take my word for it. Knowledge is power. Educate yourselves. And if you’d like to learn more about heart disease and menopause, I’ve written about it numerous times on this blog. I also encourage you to visit the American Heart Association website. Finally, I’d love for you to take a stand. Don’t you think it’s time for the FDA to start paying attention? These drugs are dangerous for women. Yet, they remain on the market and are prescribed daily. Whose nail, whose coffin?
Read MoreStirring the pot: a conversation with author/chef Mollie Katzen on food, women and aging
Just about anyone who’s interested in cooking and whose formative years took place in the late 60s and 70s knows these names: Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen. Personally, both of these volumes occupied prominent places on my bookshelves for years. That is, until worn from overuse and stained with food and memories, I reluctantly let them go.
So, what do cooking and midlife and menopause have to do with each other? And what type of insights can chef and author Mollie Katzen lend to the conversation?
I originally approached Mollie in search of nutrition advice for women going through midlife and menopause. Although I realize that she isn’t a dietician or a nutritionist, as someone who’s immersed herself in food for decades, she seemed quite capable to lend a perspective. But as our conversation took hold and we found our rhythm, I realized that the focus had shifted: what I ended up with was a mini-instruction manual, not only for eating healthy but also for forming and maintaining positive relationships with food and with ourselves.
A champion of “keep it healthy,” Mollie entered the scene when cookbooks were largely geared towards the typical American meat and potato diet. When the Moosewood Cookbook first hit the shelves, “there was barely even a cookbook section in the bookstore, let alone, a ‘healthy eating’ or ‘vegetarian’ section,” explains Mollie. Yet, she is not what many of us classify as “vegetarian,” and although she primarily skews the dinner plate towards greens and veggies, she consistently includes small amounts of animal protein. “My diet in my 30s and 40s could have been classified as practically vegan,” she says, “even if I wasn’t orthodox about it.” (At that time, she was also keen on a low-fat diet, which, coupled with the lack of ample amounts of protein, spelled trouble.) “It was almost ‘remorse cuisine;’ I’d eat this way and by mid-afternoon I’d almost be fainting, depleted, irritable. I had no focus. I found that I wasn’t functioning and would wonder what was wrong with me because I thought I was eating the purest diet on the planet. I felt like I was falling apart.”
If you are familiar with the earlier editions of Mollie’s books, they concentrate heavily on whole grains and legumes. However, age has paved a path for a significant alteration in what she eats. Emphasizing that the amount of bulgar and beans she’d have to eat to obtain the amount of protein that she needs for her blood sugar to stay stable could easily translate into an extra 50 pounds, Mollie says that she has changed her diet to include grass-fed animal protein and raw milk cheese, milk and butter.
What about aging and diet? “I think that women get really frustrated,” she says, pointing out that as we age, even if we change nothing about our lifestyles, e.g., if our lifestyle is reasonable, we are of fairly normal weight, exercise moderately and eat pretty well, we still gain weight. “Our bodies become an inefficient machine and our metabolisms slow,” she says, adding that one of the most consistent things she’s observed amongst her friends is the “oh my god, what happened to my body” moment. The ‘I’m minding my business, doing the same things I’ve always done and all of a sudden, I’ve got this spare tire, I’ve got the fat” epiphany. Sound familiar?!
Although challenging, the answer to this common dilemma is fairly intuitive. And while we’d love to fool ourselves into believing that declining hormones are the primary culprits, they aren’t. Rather a decline in physical activity and lack of dietary restraint are the key players. Mollie agrees that while women can’t do a whole lot about the fat redistribution, the “one thing [they] need in order to keep the [weight gain] at bay is to keep muscles toned as possible with resistance exercise and also, eat less.” New flash! This actually works; Mollie reports that she currently weighs the same as she did in her 20’s!
Of course, what works for one woman might not be exactly what works for another. We all need to forge our dietary paths and strategies that work for both our individual metabolism and our bodies.
“Health is trial and error,” Mollie explains. “So much of it shows up in how you feel a few hours later. For example, do you feel sleepy after you’ve eaten? Do you feel sluggish or irritable later in the day? Do you have trouble sleeping at night? For me, these were all symptoms of what was going on when I was eating almost no fat or protein.” Much in line with health and nutrition experts, Molllie’s strategy has been to reduce her daily caloric intake while at the same time increasing the percent of calories in her diet that are fat. “I get a good 30% of my calories from nuts, olive oil, avocado and fatty fish.” And when she snacks, its the good fats that she reaches for: “avocados and nuts, especially walnuts. When I am hungry, I have a handful of almonds. I just think that for people as they get older, they should lose the pretzels and eat almonds or guacamole or something with good fat in it.”
We also need to slow down. Bet you’ve heard that before! Mollie says that the most radical transformation we can make with food isn’t so much changing what we eat but how we eat it. Her advice? “Don’t even pick up the fork for the first minute that the food is served. Breathe deeply, look at it, admire it, thank the cook, be grateful. Then pick up your fork, take a few bites and put your fork down. Swallow your food. Women simply don’t have the metabolic ability to do a good job with all that food.”
Food heals. As women, our love-hate relationship with food is complex. We not only use food as fuel, but also to feed our emotions. Or on the flipside, we deprive ourselves in ways that are counterintuitive and sometimes, downright unhealthy.
“This sounds so obvious,” says Mollie, “but I really want people to turn towards cooking and not away from it. To me, the more hands-on and proactive we are about food and cooking, the more we heal whatever issues or concepts we have around food. I’ve actually seen people healing their relationship with food by diving into it.” Make food one of your favorite hobbies. She suggests that rather instead of shunning away from the grocery store run, step back and make it a trip to pick up something beautiful to be celebrated. “Diving into a more positive, deliberate relationship with food gives you something nice to do,” she adds.
What are the take-away messages?
- Tailor it uniquely: keep it healthy.. for you.
- Move towards healthier choices and use food in a healing, more positive manner.
- Embrace yourself with beautiful food, whether it’s a perfect tomato from the Farmer’s Market or some kick-ass, green-as-grass guacamole.
- Take it slow, and breathe.
Wise words, from a wise woman who knows her way around a kitchen or two.
p.s. Mollie has shared two of her favorite recipes. Check them out, try them out and please, comment and show some love!
About Mollie:
Mollie Katzen, with over 6 million books in print, is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. A 2007 inductee into the prestigious James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, and largely credited with moving healthful vegetarian food from the “fringe” to the center of the American dinner plate, Ms. Katzen has been named by Health Magazine as one of “The Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat.”
In addition she is a charter member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and an inaugural honoree of the Natural Health Hall of Fame. An award-winning illustrator and designer as well as best-selling cookbook author and popular public speaker, Mollie Katzen is best known as the creator of the groundbreaking classics Moosewood Cookbook, and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Her other books include the award-winning children’s cookbook trilogy, Pretend Soup,Honest Pretzels, and Salad People; Vegetable Heaven (winner of the International Cookbook Reveu Best in Category award); Sunlight Café; Eat, Drink, & Weigh Less (with Walter Willett, MD of Harvard), and the best-selling The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without.
Read MoreShe’s hot. She’s cool…
St. John’s Wort can cool down those hot flashes?! Yes, you may want to pay attention as a new study appearing in the February issue of Menopause, may help to cool those hot flashes.
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you may recall that I wrote previously about St. John’s Wort and its potential role for improving quality of life, sleep disturbances and hot flashes. The latest bit of information suggests that daily use of St. John’s Wort extract among menopausal women resulted in significant declines in the number of daily hot flashes by as much as 50% through eight weeks of treatment compared to women taking only placebo. Daily St. John’s Wort also reduced both the length of time that flashes lasted as well as their severity. At the start of the study, women were experiencing moderate to severe hot flashes at least once daily. Importantly, women taking placebo also experienced declines in hot flash frequency, although not to the same extent as those taking St. John’s Wort.
What you should know…
St. John’s Wort, while generally considered safe, should be used cautiously. As I wrote last year, experts recommend against taking St. John’s Wort at the same time as alcohol, narcotics, amphetamines, tyrosine supplements, flu medicines and foods containing tyramine (e.g. yeast, aged cheese, eggplant, soy sauce). St. John’s Wort can also interact with prescription antidepressants, oral contraceptives and certain medications that thin the blood. More information about St. John’s Wort, its side effects and risks can be found here.
As with any herbal preparation, it’s critical to speak to a healthcare practitioner before embarking on therapy.
For more information on this study, as well as some comments by the researchers, check out Reuters Health’s coverage of the same study.
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