Posts Tagged "menopause"

Let’s talk about sex

Posted by Liz on Jun 5, 2008 in sexual health | 0 comments

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=qzfo4txaQJA]

I’ve heard that menopause is often linked to problems in sexual functioning.

Now mind you, this is one issue that many of my gal pals, present company included, have yet to experience but I believe that it’s an important topic nevertheless. Indeed, other women have expressed issues around desire, capacity for orgasm, and frequency of intercourse. The question is, are these problems related to menopause and hormones or to aging? Well, apparently both.

For example, some studies have found that the sharpest decline in sexual interest for women occurs around the mean age of menopause, while others have found that menopausal status (i.e., the point of the transition) negatively affects sexual function independent of age.

Interestingly, one of the largest studies – the Melbourne Women’s Midlife Health Project – which followed 438 women through menopause for more than 10 years, found significant declines in female sexual functioning, responsiveness, frequency of sexual activity and libido. When the researchers compared women who went through the transition during the study to those who remained pretty much in the same phase, they found that only sexual responsiveness declined. What this implies is that our ability to respond to sexual activity is paired with aging, while all the rest of the issues, are affected by menopause.

Interestingly, among the variety of factors that may contribute (e.g. quality of intimate relationship, degree of stress, general well-being) androgen levels (i.e., testosterone) may play a role.

In a fairly recent review of 14 controlled trials in women undergoing natural or surgical menopause, researchers found a benefit from “adding back” testosterone, in terms of sexual desire, frequency, pleasure, and satisfaction. Testosterone was administered via patch, a gel, and inhaled, among others. While some of the benefits may be attributed to the so-called “placebo effect,” the results are interesting and lend promise for future studies.

Needles anyone?

Posted by Liz on May 28, 2008 in hot flash, sleep disturbance | 0 comments

According to a study in Holistic Nursing Practice, acupuncture directed at menopausal-specific sites can substantially alleviate hot flashes and sleep disturbances. Too good to be true? I think that this is a topic that deserves a lot more attention. Stay tuned!

Wait!

Posted by Liz on May 24, 2008 in weight gain | 4 comments

Midlife expansion is no myth. J ust ask any woman in her mid-to-late forties and early fifties and she’ll probably tell you that she is having a wee bit of trouble maintaining her usual weight. Ask her where she’s put on a few inches and she’ll inevitably tell you her waist/abdomen. Even my thinnest friends complain!

So what gives? For many women, weight tends to shift during the perimenopausal years. Some folks say that you might gain as much as a pound a year. Yikes! So what can you do?

Well, there’s certainly not a magic pill because if there were, well, I’d be marketing it right on this site and and planning that trip down to the Galapagos or over to Mali. But don’t fret either.

Researchers suggest that contrary to popular belief, declining hormones are not the primary culprit. Rather, a decline in physical activity, coupled with changes in fat distribution, play a huge role. In 6-year study of premenopausal women who became menopausal, study participants lost an average of 6 lbs of fat free mass and experienced increases in fat by 5.5 pounds! Other data suggest that as women go through menopause, resting heart rate declines significantly both due to the natural aging process and declining hormone levels.

Overall, the best “prescription” for weight gain appears to be a change in attitude coupled with an increase in activity. A general rule of thumb is to lower your caloric intake and percentage of fats in your diet and make sure you’re getting in at least 30 minutes aerobic activity plus some resistance/weight-bearing exercise daily. Incorporating weight-bearing exercise especially during the perimenopausal years might help to counteract our natural loss of muscle and bone mass that occurs during the three to five years following menopause.

This bad joke that Mother Nature plays on our bodies can be dealt with pretty easily if we set our minds to it. Like a lot of things, I guess, it’s all about changing one’s mindset!

I forgot…!

Posted by Liz on May 20, 2008 in stress, women's health | 1 comment

[Artwork courtesy of Ann. Make sure to visit her blog! And thanks Ann!]

I ran across an interesting study that suggests that failing memory during menopause is an illusion. Because estrogen is critical to the brain function and signaling, medical experts have long suspected that the decline in estrogen that occurs naturally during menopause is responsible for memory loss.

To examine the association between estrogen and memory more closely, researchers looked at 800 women in various stages of perimenopause, menopause and post menopause over six years, using test score measures as a sign of brain function decline. Funny thing is, the scores didn’t decline!

Consequently, the researchers concluded that lapses in memory that many of us experience during menopause are less the result of hormones and more the result of life stressors. However, they also stated that it is possible that the tests they used in the study did not measure brain function that depends on hormones.

Regardless, this study is interesting as it gives more credence to the need to reduce common stressors during the perimenopause and menopause years. Whether this means incorporating regular exercise, meditating daily, or engaging in deep breathing, well, it might mean the difference between walking into a room with a purpose AND remembering what that purpose is, and walking into a room with purpose, standing there for five minutes wondering why you’re there, and then walking out. Or going to the store without your list and buying everything but what you need (been there, done that!).

Me? I suffer greatly from the latter! But hey, estrogen decline or not,I can always find something else to do in any room or some other “critical” item at the store!

A woman’s hell

Posted by Liz on May 19, 2008 in women's health | 0 comments

Seems like menopause was viewed as a “woman’s hell” back in the 18th and 19th centuries. A time when the uterus was thrust into “tumultous state of utmost irritation and disorder.” Contributing to this were bad habits such as premature arousal of sexual desire, reading bad novels, and overly spicy and rich foods. Apparently, it was even exacerbated by lounging around all day and breathing the bad air in salons.

This throws my evening plans right out the window!

A woman’s hell? Medical perceptions of menopause in preindustrial Europe

Historical summary of views of menopause. First paper on this written in 1774, word “menopause” coined in 1812, and first popular women’s guidebooks on the subject in the early 1800s “sold out in a few months”. Early view was that with age the uterus became too weak to expel the vile humors of the menstrual fluid, which backed up to turn to fat, breast and uterine tumors, and many other diseases, creating a “woman’s hell”. Later view was that the menopause was more of a natural process (although a women should be at that point asexual), but that the problem was the perimenopause, when the uterus, felt connected to the nervous system, went through a “tumultuous state of utmost irritation and disorder” which was then transferred to the rest of the body. “She became more sensitive, agitated, and easily afflicted by disagreeable incidents; pleasure was indifferent to her; she became sad and easily grew upset against her children, her husband, those around her, sometimes yielding to violent outbursts.” It was also remarked that simple country women suffered few or no complaints compared to upper-class urban women, who “constantly exposed body and mind to all kinds of disturbances and irritations. The demands of social life, the premature arousal of sexual desire, masturbation and loose sexual mores, the reading of bad novels, the unnatural state of excitation caused by concerts and theater, dances and gambling, and overly rich and spicy food, the abuse of coffee, tea, tobacco, wine and spirits–all this created an unrelenting state of over-stimulation. It was made even worse by a life of idleness spent reclining on cushions and chaise lounges instead of attending to domestic duties, by an unwillingness to breast-feed, and by the bad air in overcrowded salons.”

1999 Bull Hist Med 73;3:404-28

Stolberg, M.