Moments from Menopause

I was a guest on a radio program last week to promote my newest romance novel. During the interview, I mentioned the word menopause and I actually watched the host cringe. Cringe! For a second I grew a little anxious - was menopause, like George Carlin's famous 7 words - banned from radio? Had I committed a huge broadcasting faux pas in blurting out the word? No, I hadn't. I realized after a moment, menopause is not a topic most men feel comfortable discussing. My own husband, who is a physician, doesn't like to talk about it with me. This got me to thinking why? Any man married or with a woman between 50 and 60 years of age is going to experience the condition firsthand at one point. I had one of my first hot flashes at a huge graduation party with family and friends and when my sweating became painfully apparent, I watched the men seated around me run for the hills. In a nanosecond I cleared the table of all Y-gened humans, to be left with sympathetic - and napkin fa...

Bleck! That's the only way I can describe my mid-section now that I am BFF's (NOT!) with Menopause. I used to have a waist. Really . It dented in and everything! My pants buttoned without straining in agony and looking they were going to rend at the seams; my skirts clasped in the back without closing off the circulation to my abdominal area; and when I wore a fitted shirt - it did! Not anymore. No, now I've got an actual roll - and I don't mean bread, although it is doughy - around the area I used to fondly refer to as my waist. When I was a kid I  heard references to "middle aged spread" and didn't understand the term. Now, I have a first hand view of what it means. The experts will tell you it occurs because of the hormone changes. Your body tends to store fat more when your female hormones go wonky. Conventional wisdom might tell you to stop eating fattening foods and the spare tire won't happen. I'm here to tell you NO! NOPE! Won't d...

I've never been what you'd call a  sound sleeper.   If I averaged 5-6 hours a night in years past, it was a good amount. But since this beautiful event called  MENOPAUSE  entered my life two years ago, I will venture to say if I get 2 hours straight a night, that's cause for celebration. Ridiculous. Who can survive on such little sleep? We need sleep. It's rejuvenating to our brains, our bodies, our psyches. Without sleep our mental focus is nil. Our brain cells can't function and our synapses mis-fire. To try and understand this a little better I – of course – did some research. Here’s some of what I found related to insomnia and menopause: To classify as true insomnia, you must experience 1 or more of these symptoms: -Difficulty falling asleep (duh!) -Waking up frequently and not being able to fall back to sleep -Waking up in the middle of the night and being “awake” -Non-refreshing sleep (awake but tired throughout the day.) You ne...

I would be the insider... the hot flash, my own. I'm just lucky that way, thanks. If you've been fortunate enough to never have experienced a hot flash ( I hate you!), then this will be informative. If you have, well, welcome. You know what I'm going to say. Here's the medical book definition of a hot flash :  sudden feelings of warmth, which are usually most intense over the face, neck and chest. Your skin may redden, as if you're blushing. Hot flashes can also cause profuse sweating and may leave you chilled. Yeah, yeah. That's what it's supposed to feel like. Want the reality? Take your hand, put it in a 550 degree oven, leave it there for an hour or so and see what happens.  Really...this is how it feels, only on your entire body not just your hand. Some of my favorite descriptions of hot flashes that I've read are: someone put a frying pan on my face. And it was still filled with hot crisco your body deciding to spontaneously combust whil...

It is absolutely amazing how quickly a body can get out of shape - especially one that wasn't  in the best of shape to begin with. I think I shared that when I was on Nutrisystem last year and menopause hit me hard - almost a knockout! - I actually started gaining weight on the diet.  Now, no sane person ever wants to gain weight on a calorie reduction diet. At this point in my menopause struggle I was ready to jump off a ledge. I'd been exercising like mad, eating the nutrifood and nothing else and here I was creeping up the scale. So what did I do? I'll tell ya: I did what any self respecting moody and flashing woman would have done if faced with the same situation : I gave up. On everything. The diet. Exercising. Basically, life. How did that work out for you, you ask? Not well. A year later and all the weight I lost came back on and my muscles can't be detected under the fat anymore because I stopped moving them. I'm sure with my psych background of knowled...

I read an article recently that stated " Postmenopausal women are at greater risk for heart disease, so redirect your diet toward low-fat foods and lower your salt intake — this reduces the risk of heart attack and atherosclerosis." Great ! The one part of my health that has always and - I mean ALWAYS -  been good, has been my cardiac status. Resting pulse of 68 and blood pressure that is routinely 90/60. Never a worry, never a care about heart attack, etc. Except now. Another factor that plays heavily into heart disease in women is weight. I resurrected this blog because I wanted accountability to get rid of the 35 excess pounds my poor heart and knees are carrying around. If post-menopause is now a time where cardiac issues pop up, then this weight needs to be taken out of the equation for good. For the next few months I am going to stick to a regime of diet and exercise that I'll be documenting and sharing here. Because I know menopausal and post-menopausal weigh...

Hey all you menopause peeps...it's been a while since I last posted. Lots LOTS has happened in my life since we last met. More about that later, but one thing that hasn't changed is I'M STILL IN MENOPAUSE!!! Okay, it's a little better I have to admit, since I broke down and went on some estrogen drugs last year. It came to the point where I needed to be talked off a ledge between the continuous hot flashes, the upending mood shifts from crying to mania, the non-ending weight gain, and the lack of sleep. After a week in which I was on the Nutrisystem diet and managed to GAIN 6 pounds, I knew something had to give. So. I buckled down, saw my GP and started on low dose estrogen to try and combat some of the symptoms. The flashes stopped, the moods evened out, I still don't sleep ( and probably never will) but the weight kept coming, so much so that now I am officially 35 pounds over the weight limit my heart needs to be healthy at. This is the reason I've resu...