Moments from Menopause

I was a teenager in the 1980's so the majority of my personal and pop culture references fall out of this decade. Patti Labelle was the queen of pop in the 80's and her song " I've Got A New Attitude" has become my menopause anthem. I'll put the lyrics up at the end. It's almost a new year. 2014. I've been doing this blog since my menopause hit full steam in January 2013, so it's almost a full year of hot flashes, mood swings, weight gain, and blogging. I've learned a great deal of medical facts, some tried and true methods of dealing with symptoms, and a great deal about myself as a person and as a woman. I've shared, hopefully educated, and probably amused you all at one point with my anecdotes about this time in my life. But I have learned one very important thing that I'd like to share now, since the beginning of a new year is upon us in a few hours: No matter what life throws our way, no matter how horrible, stressful, or angst ...

I read an article that I've enclosed the link to at the bottom of this talk, about dry eyes and menopause. Now, for my real job, I see patients every day whom I educate about eyes and contact lens use.  I have hundreds of women in the menopause time line as patients and I am always telling them to increase their daily water intake, never to rub their eyes, especially when contact lenses are in place, and if need be, use lubricating drops throughout the day and periodically to sooth dryness, especially if long hours are spent looking at a computer screen. Hair dressers, women who do woodworking, or who have jobs that require them to travel and drive long distances also get my lectures about caring for potential dryness. But the statistics gleamed from the following article were, well, eye opening. According to  the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public health "most of the people suffering from dry, itchy eyes" are menopausal women. The article...

...well, I've applied that thought to the weight gain during menopause, especially the gain in belly fat. Normal weight is basically a math equation: Number of calories ingested + number of calories burned = your weight. Because math is such a perfect science, it makes sense that in order to maintain your weight, the more you take in,  the more you will need to burn off. If you ingest more than you burn, you will gain weight. The converse is also true: if you take in less and increase your exercise, you will lose weight. Belly fat, though, is in a class all by it's lonesome. Muscle mass normally decreases as a person ages, be they male or female.  Losing muscle proportionately decreases the rate your body burns calories, so you could be eating the same amount of food you always have, when suddenly the scale shoots up five pounds...or in my case 15. Belly fat tends to accumulate most, if not all, of this weight surge. Researchers postulate this occurs because of the...

I'm very good at keeping those times when my hormones rage and turn my emotions into a roller coaster hidden from others. If I feel a mood shift coming on, or find myself suddenly overcome with the need to cry, I usually find a quiet spot and wait it out. If I'm at work when one hits, I go into my office, shut the door, and let the tidal wave peak and ebb. Many times, for some strange diurnal reason, the shift occurs when I wake up in the morning. I'm make tea with tears cascading down my cheeks, and listening to the morning news reports will send me into shakes and quakes of sorrow - even if there is a happy story being related! My point is that most of the times the shifts occur,  no one else is witness to them. Yesterday that streak ended. While visiting with relatives for the holidays, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of melancholy that did not fit in with the festive occasion. I was unable to isolate myself until it passed and had to endure it while others arou...

Hmmmm. Let me think about that for a moment while this flash abates. I never thought I would need to choose between the two. But now that I've been going through this flash phase ( say that three time fast!) for almost a year, I would give anything to revert back to my cool state. While trolling the internet research on menopause the other day, I found an article about a new "cooling device" that's being used for hot flashes and in treating migraine headaches. I'll put the link to the article at the end, but what the article describes is an electronic ice cube that doesn't melt. Huh? It's called AMBI and is marketed as "the first ever portable, personal cooling device that works likes an ice cube to instantly deliver mess-free cool, soothing relief." Apparently it can used for everything from flashes, to migraines, insect bites and bruises. The touch of a button activates the device to deliver coolness to any area it is placed on. It'...

That old song makes the point of telling you to come indoors during a cold, harsh winter night where it's all warm and cozy by the fire and in the arms of a lover. Cut to reality : it's seven degrees outside today, there's a nor'easter on the way,  and I left the house this morning in a spring jacket, sans gloves, hat and scarf because I WAS TOTALLY COMFORTABLE IN THE FRIGID COLD!! Last year, PPM ( Pre-Peggy-Menopause), I slept on flannel sheets, with fleece socks on my feet, and fleece lined pj's, under an electric blanket cranked to 10 most nights between november and april. I never left the house without fur-lined gloves, a hat that covered my head and ears, and a scarf that could wrap around my neck at least three times. Not to mention a big, bulky, lined wool coat. I would set the seat warmers in my Subaru up to "high" and turn on the dashboard heat full blast for the three minute drive to work. During the winter months I always wore a long sleev...

Do you really want to know the answer to this question? Okay, here's the truth: YES! You do look fat in that. But it's not you're fault. Weight gain and bloating were probably things you had to deal with when you had a NORMAL period. Now that you're menstrual cycle is going the way of the dinosaur, you probably thought all those lousy premenstrual fat days were behind you. Sorry, not so. In fact, I gained ten pounds in less then a month and I didn't change my food intake. Every ounce of the weight gain was in my midsection with a little leftover creeping up my back. Yikes! I talked to two doctors who told me this is really more normal than you would hope, but you can combat it. If you were a good and faithful exerciser before menopause, and you continue to be during and after, you can keep the weight gain on the lower side of the scale. Ditto if you ate well and didn't overindulge in junk food, fatty foods or too much alcohol. Basically, if you took really goo...

I typed in the word Moody to my computer thesaurus and the following is an abbreviated listing of words pertaining to it that were listed: morose, sulky, sullen, glum,  grumpy, short-tempered, petulant, cross, brooding, grouchy, prickly, touchy, testy. Say them quickly and they sound like they could be the names of characters in a menopause version of Snow White ( Grumpy, Moody, Grouchy, Prickly....you get the idea.) So, we've discussed the mood swings and how to deal with them from the outside. But did you know that your body has chemicals swirling around inside of it that can help make you happy and get through this moody period? I wish I had known this during puberty! I'm talking about ENDORPHINS. You've probably heard them mentioned somewhere in your lifetime, but do you know what they really are?  Endorphins are what are classified as neurotransmitters. These are chemicals that pass signals from one neuron to another in your body and o...

While I was staring at my computer screen yesterday at work, typing in a prescription, my eyes suddenly started to well up and within seconds I had tears waterfalling down my cheeks. "What happened?" you ask. "Absolutely nothing," I respond. "It's just a weepy mood swing." I can't stop them. They sneak up on me at the most inopportune moments and any attempts on my part to squelch them are impossible. I am not sad. I have not had an emotional encounter. I am just as I was seconds before. But my damn hormones don't know that. I'll be honest: puberty sucked. I wasn't able to go a day without raging, crying, or thinking the world would be better off without me. I can truly say that it was without doubt the worst time of my life. When my pubescent hormones finally regulated though, life was better. Cut to childbirth. I had one day of postpartum depression, but it was a doozy. I talked myself down from the ledge ( metaphorically!) ...

What if I told you one day, around 50-ish, you would start to feel like your mental world was falling apart, you would have no control over events consuming your body, and your body would – literally – have a mind of its own? Think you might feel a little depressed? A little down? Weepy? Well, duh! Mood Swings are not uncommon during menopause. Hormones fluctuating, sleep evasion, weight gain in odd places, a general feeling of yuckiness, all contribute to a woman being a little more irritable than during a normal day. But when is a mood swing NOT a mood swing?   When do you start to worry about the labile alterations in your affect being more than a little hormone flux? More than just the need for some extra Zzzzz’s? When do you start to worry that it’s really depression? Everyone who watches television or reads a magazine knows that depression is a hot button topic right now. There are a dozen new medications to treat all kinds of depression, and for all age groups...

One of the worst stops I’ve come across so far on this menopause journey, is   Mood Swing Street. One minute I’m baking a pecan pie, as happy as a pig in slop, the next I am crying like I just lost my entire family in a sharknado! (Don’t get the reference? Check out the SyFy network!) Happy go lucky and without a care or bad thought in my mind at 10:00a.m., and by 10:05 I am thinking about sticking pins in my neighbor because her barking dogs are driving me to distraction. Sound familiar? The Mood Swings we experience in menopause are as devastating and soul killing as the ones we went through in puberty, pre-menstrually, and post-baby. Only this time, they come fast, furious, and nothing we do can help them or stop them. Chocolate, which usually works on any bad mood, does no good; taking a breath and a walk will get you nowhere but down the block. Distracting yourself through baking, reading, watching tv, will do nothing but pass time and make your hips bigger. You’ll st...

Off the flannel sheet wars today for a few sobering statistics. I found this link recently when I was doing research concerning Menopause, and there were a few surprising entries. You can click on it for yourself to see it in it's entirety - I've copied it to the bottom of this talk - but here's what stood out to me: 1. There are about 37.5 million women reaching or currently in menopause. Whoa!  That's some target market!  For all you business people out there, this is a market you should be catering to. Especially since almost every woman on the planet will go through menopause. Put those thinking caps on. 2. The average life expectancy for US women today is 84 years which means that many women spend about 50% of their adult lives post-menopause.   Whoa-squared!   We live longer then men do, and now we have to live that length of time alone with our post-menopausal symptoms. Who thought this stuff up? 3. About 75% of menopausal women will have hot flashes ...

So, it looks like Round 1 of the Flannel Wars goes to....the Flannel sheets. I spent the majority of he night ON TOP of the covers, sweating like  I was walking in the desert at high noon. Really, I can't believe how much water the human body can make and then lose without needing replacement. At one point I was thinking I should go to the ER to get IV replenishment! The fan only did so much ( the air conditioner would have been so much more effective!). But the Hubman slept like a baby, all warm and cozy and cocooned in his flannels. One of us will be in a good mood today. You know, the guest bedroom sheets have a cotton/poly mix.....

So back to the discussion of the sleeping problems. Here's the cliff notes: I'm always HOT at night; Hubman's always COLD at night. He wants flannel sheets on the bed when the temperature starts to dip. I want Armour Wear sheets to wick the sweat away from my flashing body. So I told him, if he wants the flannel sheets on the bed, I want the air conditioning on all night. What's the bottom line? COMPROMISE. I put the flannel sheets on the bed this morning with the promise from Hubman that I could have the fan on at night. Every night. ALL night. And pointing only at me. We'll see how long this lasts. One of is is either going to be sweating like crazy or freezing like mad. Oh, sweet menopause; how horrible you are on a marriage.