Looking after yourself after the menopause

Read the full video transcript below

Today's topic

Hello, and welcome to my weekly video blog. And today on A.Vogel Talks Menopause, I'm going to be talking about life after the menopause. And I get so many women saying to me, "What do I need to do after the menopause? Is there any special way I should be looking after myself? Are there any areas of my health that I really need to focus on?" And the answer is, "Yes."

How menopause affects the body

Now, unfortunately, the menopause does take its toll on us, even if we've had quite an easy ride. We've had maybe five years or more of hormonal disruption, physical stresses and strains, and emotional turmoil as well. And all this can have quite a detrimental effect on our health, so once you're through the menopause, it's really important to start looking after yourself well.

And sometimes it can be a little bit of hard work, but it's worth it because there's absolutely no reason why you can't go on to have a great life after the menopause and to be able to enjoy life in general for as long as you want to.

Looking after heart health

So let's have a little look at some of the areas of health that you might need to focus on once you're through the menopause. Now, falling oestrogen can have an impact on certain areas and one of those is heart health.

So looking after our lovely heart is very important. We need to look at exercise. This is vital. Our heart needs exercise in order to keep itself healthy, so you need to try, if you're fit enough and if you're able enough, to get your heart rate up on a regular basis, maybe at least once or twice a day if you can.

Here, when I'm at work, I have stairs to go up and down, and I will run up and down them as fast as I can, as quickly as I can, just to get my heart beating for a little while until everything calms down again. So looking at some form of exercise that you enjoy and can get your heart rate up is going to be really beneficial for you.

You need to look at things like magnesium as well. Magnesium, a mineral, and those of you that have been with me for a while know how important magnesium and it's also vital for heart health as well. So this is nice, you can take a little supplement on a daily basis to help with your heart. 

Watch your blood pressure

The other thing associated with the heart is blood pressure. And again, low oestrogen can have quite a big impact on blood pressure. For some women, you can end up with low blood pressure. You end up getting the dizziness and feeling a little bit faint.

For other women, it's going to be high blood pressure, and this is the silent one. They call it the silent killer because very often you don't know that you have got high blood pressure until something seriously wrong happens. 

So this is something, again, maybe once every six months. Don't be obsessive about it. You know, I have women who're measuring their blood pressure three times a day. Maybe every six months or so just ask your pharmacist if they can take your blood pressure just to make sure that everything is okay.

Supporting joint health

We've got our joints. Now, as we age our joints can crumble a little bit. They can start to get sore. We can start to get arthritis or a little bit of gout, as well. So keeping our joints healthy after the menopause is vital for our ongoing health because we want to be active. We still want to be doing things when we're in our 80s and beyond, and you can't do that if your joints are not healthy. 

So the really important things here for joint health, make sure you're getting enough calcium and magnesium in your diet. Maybe take a calcium and magnesium supplement.

Look at getting a really good varied diet with lots of green stuff in them because that's great for your calcium and magnesium. Look at a fish oil supplement as well or if you like fish, oily fish, maybe three or four times a week. 

Other thing that's really important for joint health is exercise because if the muscles, each side of your joints are strong and healthy, they will help to support your joints and stop them rubbing together causing things like arthritis. And the last thing for joints, really, really important, again, is your water. 

As we end up with lower oestrogen after the menopause that can affect our body's ability to keep hydrated, and one of the main areas to show dehydration is the joints. So if your joints are creaky, if they're very sort of grindy and make a little bit of a noise when you get up first thing in the morning, then definitely get some more water into you on a daily basis.

Eating a healthy diet

Now, diet, just a good general diet, lots of variety. The more foods, the more different foods that you eat on a daily basis, the bigger the range of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that you're going to get. So just look at having a good healthy diet and a little bit of treats now and again is absolutely fine.

Maintaining a healthy weight

We have got to look also at weight because that can be a big issue as you go through the menopause. 

Unfortunately, as we get older, our calorific needs, if you like, the energy that our body needs tends to decrease. So if you're eating the same as you did before and through the menopause, and you're doing it after the menopause, then there is the possibility that's why you put on weight, very slowly, but it can still creep up over the years. 

So look at your diet, look at the kind of amount of calories that you need on a regular basis, and try and stick to that as much as you can. But as I'm always saying to people, you know, "I love food," and you've always got to have some nice treats in there sometime just to make yourself feel that little bit happy. 

There's also loads of information now about diets and so much coming to the fore is the low-carb diet and what I'm finding, especially for lots of menopausal and postmenopausal women is that low-calorie diets with good protein and loads of veg seem to be one of the best ones for keeping weight at bay. So it's worth maybe doing a little bit of research on low-carb diets when you've got a spare five minutes.

Looking after your bones

We need to look at our bones as well because after the menopause we are much more at risk from osteoporosis, which is weakening of the bones. So again, you look at your calcium and magnesium, look at your diet to make sure you're getting everything you need for your bones. 

And again, you can look at something like a calcium and magnesium supplement. Now, one of the best ways to keep your bones healthy is to do weight-bearing exercises. So again, exercise is really important here after the menopause, and the more you do the more likely you are to have healthy bones.

Other thing that you need to watch here is your balance because a huge number of women who end up having hip fractures, it's happened because they have lost their balance. So on a daily basis, have a little practice. 

I know the people in my office they think I'm a bit strange at the best of times, but very often, if I'm waiting at the printer or the photocopier, I'll just start standing on one leg and then stand on the other leg and then wave the other leg a little bit about for five minutes or so. But it's really important to keep your balance up and healthy because that will...or it certainly could prevent you from having fractures later on just because you've tripped up and lost your balance. 

Healthy hair, skin and nails

Now, we like to look good, don't we? We still want to look good. We still want to look nice when we're past the menopause, so we need to look at our hair, skin, and nails.

Main thing to help with that, plenty of good protein. Make sure you get that in your diet. You can look at healthy fats. Again, those work well with the skin and if your skin's a little bit dry, you can look at supplements such as Omega-7 and use natural skin care products on your skin. 

A lot of the ordinary ones you can get, they're full of chemicals and they really won't help your skin in the long term. And the other thing is water, you know, I often say, "What's the difference between a prune and a lovely juicy plum? Simply water." And we want to have lovely beautiful skin, and not have it all kind of wrinkly and dry, so loads of water on a daily basis.

Keeping your brain active

Now, the other thing that can sometimes go as we get a little bit older is our memory and it's one of these things, use it or lose it, and once we're through the menopause, there is this idea of, "Well, we'll just take it easy now. We won't do as much as we did. Life is over."

It's not over. There is loads of things that you can do and one of them is to learn new things. Keep learning. Keep striving. You can do a lot of reading. You can learn to do something that you've maybe never done before but you really want to try it. 

One of the best things they say is once you get a little bit older is to start learning a new language. Now, I love my job very much because every single day I'm learning something new. I'm reading research. I'm reading information about diet, about health, about vitamins, about supplements, all sorts of different things.

So every day, there's a huge amount of new information going into my head and I'm trying to keep it in there, usually most of the time. So learning is going to keep us young. It's going to keep us feeling good as well.

Don't forget about your mental health

Now, going on with memory, we need to look at how we see ourselves. We need to look at our mental health, and this is really important, too, because when we get through the menopause, our nervous system, for the majority of women, it will have taken a battering. And that means we're going to be much more prone to low mood, to anxiety about worry and stress, and we can get caught up in these emotions very, very quickly and they can bring us down. 

And as we get older, it's harder for us to lift our mood. Sometimes we find that it's really impossible, and you can end up staying in a very low mood for a long time. So our mental health as we become postmenopausal is something that we really need to look at. We need to work at it, too. 

So if you feel that you're getting anxiety, if you're getting a lot of stress, if you find you're worrying about things a lot more, then look at supplements such as your magnesium, your vitamin B complex, your nice calming herbs like Valerian, or Avena sativa, or Passiflora. And if you feel that your mood is really slipping, then as long as you're not on any other medication, you can look at herbs such as Hypericum.

And we need to keep our mood up, and try and do that on a daily basis, you know, look at the good things in life. Look at positive things and maybe stop watching the news so much because I know that can sometimes bring me down a bit. Learn new things again.

And one of the things that I do, which I find really helps to keep my mood up is when I'm having my first early morning drink, I've got a little diary, just a small booklet, and every single day, or nearly every single day, as long as I remember and I'm not too busy, then I just put down what I'm grateful for. I'll just say, "Thank you for my lovely comfy slippers." 

And it doesn't have to be major stuff. It can be tiny little things or, "Thank you for that early morning cup of tea," or "Thank you for a lovely, frosty, shiny morning." And these things can lift you up. They can set you up for the day so that you're going to be in a much more cheery mood. And, you know, try and keep that up. I find it something that really helps me a great deal.

So as you can see, this is just, you know, the tip of the iceberg, if you like, in things that you can do to look after your health. But in general, you know, if you break everything down, then it's about sensible regular exercise, it's about a good diet, plenty of water, and looking after yourself well.

So, you know, have a look at that. See if you're incorporating these things into your diet and then let me know how you get on. 

What's coming up

Now, that was quite a one. Just before I go, there's one thing that I'd like to ask you. If you're listening to this in real time, then two weeks ago, I posted a video blog about how the menopause can make you feel like a hermit. We had such a huge, such an overwhelming response from people. I mean, I know, emotional issues are very high on the list for a lot of women, but we were really very surprised about how situations and emotional situations like this are really taking their toll on women. 

So in the new year, I'm going to do a little bit of focusing on the emotional side of the menopause and all the different situations that can arise. But what I would like you to do is let me know if you're suffering from any of these symptoms. Let me know if you're feeling in a certain way and you're wondering whether it's the menopause or whether there's something else going on. 

So I'd really appreciate lots of information so that we can really go into this in quite some detail. There's an email address that will be at the bottom of the transcript, so it'd be great if you could post your comments direct to my email address rather than in the comments below this. But, you know, let me know anything at all that you may be feeling. It would be great information for us.

So until then, I will look forward to seeing you next week on another A.Vogel Talks Menopause.

Email me - eileen@bioforce.co.uk