Hormones

Your Hormones and Menopause

Estrogen Levels What's Really Happening?

At perimenopause our reproductive hormones as well as others, like thyroid hormones, start to fluctuate and decline. After the last period they gradually stabilize. Many in the medical field believe that these falling levels of estrogen cause the symptoms we normally associate with menopause. This is an incomplete picture though and very deceiving.

A complete picture would consider a myriad of factors that include lifestyle and culture. After we hit forty, subtle differences in our bodies begin to manifest. Our metabolism and digestion slows down, our muscles lose some tone and it doesn’t feel as easy to keep toned, our skin may not be quite as firm as it used to be and weight may become an issue. All these can be effects of time, lifestyle choices and the big one…stress, with no hormonal influence at all. Hormonal flux gets thrown in just for good measure!

Menopause-Naturally

Our bodies naturally adjust and change to each stage in our lives. It is the power of our womanhood. For bearing children, our wombs are made ready for growing a healthy baby. For nourishing a child, our bodies produce a perfectly balanced formula and for ourselves, we get an extra dose of energizing hormones to keep us going through the long nights. The innate wisdom of our bodies is natural and illuminating.

The menopausal transition is another hormonal shift that cycle’s throughout our life time. It provides a healthy advantage by stopping the monthly loss of iron, blood and protein when our bodies assimilate nutrients less efficiently. It is not the cause of disease or degeneration but is what Nature planned. But what is this programming that is changing who I am? What is it doing to me and do I have any control over this biological process and the symptoms that accompany it?

In July, 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative announced their startling findings from a randomized, controlled trial of hormone therapy in women. The results were so dramatic that the trial ended prematurely due to the excess side effects found in the group taking hormones.

The findings showed that women taking both estrogen and progesterone, a therapy called hormone replacement therapy or HRT, had an increased incidence of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots and breast cancer when compared to the placebo group. This stunned the medical community and caused many women and their health care professionals to reassess their view of menopause. It created a shift in thinking from menopause as a disease to menopause as a naturally occurring process.