keeping fit helps many premenopause women
Premenopause is officially the time before menopause for women, with perimenopause being the time when changes are occurring signalling that the menstruation cycle is changing and will soon stop. Officially this perimenopause stage includes that first year after menstruation has stopped, but both pre menopause and perimenopause generally get lumped together and called menopause, or by the wrong spelling of menapause, by most women.
As the time before menopause, premenopause for some women can bring with it a range of symptoms that are difficult to handle, while others just sail through with no problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there is no way to know how you are going to react to pre-menopause, as every woman is different. Lifestyles plays a part, but so does genetics, overall health, stress levels, and also culture, so even if you know when your mother went through pre menopause, this does not mean that you will have the same symptoms at the same age.
One of the symptoms of premenopause is the onset of irregular periods that may last longer than normal, or be shorter, that may have a heavier flow, or a lighter flow. In other words, the start of irregular periods could be a pre menopause symptom. However, it may not be, and you may need to see your doctor to find out for sure what is going on, as the symptoms of thyroid malfunction are similar.
Of course, irregularity is not the only symptom of premenopause, there is also the possibility of headaches, body aches and pains, tiredness, mood swings, irritability, a decreased sex drive, tiredness, weight gain, especially around the hips and stomach, breast tenderness, water retention, and insomnia. Now the good news is that not every women has all these symptoms, and they can all occur at different levels, with some women experiencing very few problems, while others have a very challenging and difficult time.
Now although pre menopause is not an illness or disease, it can make some women feel rather rough to put it mildly, especially if night sweats cause havoc with your sleeping patterns and you end up more irritable and moody than ever.
However, there are some natural remedies for premenopausal symptoms, and they do not need a prescription like you do to take hormone replacement therapy, HRT. (Note that HRT does have side effects which you need to discuss with your doctor.) You may want to check with your doctor though about anything mentioned on this site, just to make sure, and to make certain that there will be no conflict with any other prescription drugs you take.
The first thing you should consider is a lifestyle change, but this does take some work and dedication to achieve. However, stress reduction can help, and to do this, yoga is recommended. Also, since pre-menopause involves the reduction of hormones, a diet that is rich in estrogen may help. This means eating soy, cherries, apples, potatoes, yams, rice, wheat and alfalfa which are all rich in estrogen, but are found as a natural source.
This may not help some women, and they may prefer to look at an alternative approach to help those premenopause symptoms. Acupuncture and herbal remedies have been shown to be successful for some women, and are thought to be safer than other treatments. Acupuncture does involve very fine sterile needles being inserted into the body at certain points, to complete the energy pathways. Obviously you need to find a practitioner that is recommended by others. This option is not possible for all women, as it does need both time and money.
There are herbs however that are much less expensive and have given some good results that may be worth a try for pre menopausal women. The aim of the herbs is to try to balance the hormones, and this is done with phytoestrogen or non-estrogenic herbs. Phytoestrogen herbs such as Black Cohosh, and Dong Quai are plants that have an estrogen component, but they are low levels of estrogen. They do have the side effect that the body itself will start producing even less estrogen, and cause a further reduction of hormone levels, though.
However, the non-estrogen herbs help the hormonal glands produce their own natural hormones, and this ends up balancing progesterone, testosterone and estrogen. Said differently, the non-estrogenic herbs are able to stimulate women’s own production of hormones, and because of this they are considered to be a safe option.
As mentioned before, you should talk to your doctor about your premenopause symptoms, and make sure that the plan to alleviate your symptoms makes sense for your overall health.
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