Moments from Menopause

Sleep is the best meditation.  Dalai Lama A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.  Honore de Balzac The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.  W. C. Fields When I was a kid, I could fall asleep in a nano second and sleep for a total day, wake up, eat and then go back to sleep some more. Nowadays I'm lucky to fall asleep, stay that way for more than an hour, an then toss and turn for the next seven hours. Menopause has really messed with my sleep cycle. So, I've done the sleep hygiene routine, and eliminated all caffeine from my diet after 11:30 in the morning and I still have problems. There are a few more tactics that can be tried. One involves visiting your doctor, the other one being a smart consumer. You're at your gyno guru docs office and you tell her the problems you are having with sleep in general these days. Before she ever writes an actual prescription for a sleep aid, she may take s...

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.  ~Irish Proverb Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.  ~JoJo Jensen,  Dirt Farmer Wisdom , 2002 I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day, because that means it's going to be up all night.  ~Steven Wright Last night I got a great nights' sleep. Of course it's because I took Nyquil for my cold, but that's another matter. Today we continue with sleep. Sleep cycle disruption is a common occurrence during the menopause years for a number of reasons, but today we're going to explore how you can modify what you eat to help you sleep a little better through the night. Remember last Thanksgiving when you ate all that turkey and then wanted to nap instead of watching the football game on tv? That's because turkey - and really most poultry- has an amino acid called Tryptophan . This amino acid is actually needed by your brain to produce a neurotransmitter calle...

To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”  ―  William Shakespeare ,  Hamlet No wonder Sleeping Beauty looked so good...she took long naps, never got old, and didn't have to do anything but snore to get her Prince Charming.”  ―  Olive Green Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.”  ―  Dee Remy I was pretty exhausted when I wrote this, so sorry right up front! I've never been what you  might call a "good sleeper." I've always been able to hear paint dry, so any noise in the middle of the night, even a mouse chewing, tends to wake me up. Of course when I had a child this only intensified. I cold hear my daughter roll over in her crib from the next floor down. And she was a very quiet baby. When menopause hit, somehow this sleep deprivation lifestyle got even worse. Here's what my life has become: exhausted from a full day o...

Six months before menopause hit me full force I lost 35 pounds on Nutrisystem. Thank you , it was hard work! I felt good, looked better and my clothes fit great. Then one morning I woke up and my belly looked like a blimp! Bloated and swiggly. I was still eating the same amount of calories and still walking my 2-3 miles per day, but all of a sudden nothing was working and I started gaining weight! Who the heck gains weight on a diet plan! Those of you who know me know that I've struggled my entire life with my weight. I've been on every diet plan out there and nothing ever worked as well as Nutrisystem did. To have all that hard work  negated because my body was entering the next phase of its life was to say the least, horrifying! What to do? I was already eating well and I didn't want to stop eating well, so I figured maybe the next thing to do was increase the exercise. Before doing that, tho, I did a little research to make sure this was the right way to proceed. So h...