Today's topic
Today on A.Vogel Talks Menopause, I look at some of the worst menopause symptoms that I get asked the most questions about. I'm going to look at what they are, what causes them, what you can do to ease them and just to make life a bit more comfortable.
Gen M – a voice for menopause that’s too loud to ignore!
Before I get started, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about something which I'm very excited about.
It's Menopause Awareness Month here in the UK (and also World Menopause Day today!) so there's no better time to let you know that A. Vogel and myself have joined an initiative called GenM. As part of this initiative, we have pledged to become a voice for the menopause that's too loud to ignore.
What is GenM?
You might have seen GenM's open letter to brands and companies across the UK in the Guardian newspaper recently, asking companies to break the silence around menopause and to provide valuable support, effective products, services, and workplace policies.
As one of the founding 48 brands, we have pledged to support all women going through menopause and to ignite and stimulate discussion to help them to feel visible, vocal and valued.
So, I'm proud to lend my voice to this fantastic initiative. Head over to GenM website if you want to find out more about the pledge and all the other fantastic brands and companies that are also supporting it.
Worst menopause symptoms
So back to today's topic - the worst menopause symptoms. I was reading GenM's Invisibility Report and I was surprised to see from the results of their survey that 51% of women surveyed could name only 3 of the 48 known menopause symptoms, so there is a lot more education needed around the symptoms of menopause.
So, here we are in a supposedly enlightened age, but this report shows that the majority of women still don't know what to expect as they approach and go through menopause and a lot more education around the symptoms of menopause is needed.
So, let's tackle some of the worst one's today.
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1. Mood changes
According to the GenM report, less than 15% of women were aware that anxiety and mood changes were part of menopause. So, you can imagine how many women going through menopause are finding emotional changes very hard to cope with and they don't connect it to menopause.
I get many women contacting me and asking, "Am I going mad? What's going wrong? I just don't understand."
For many women, mood changes can be their worst symptom and they can be very debilitating and affect your day-to-day life. Mood changed also can affect your relationships and your work life.
The main symptoms here would be things like anxiety. So, I'm not talking about a little worry. This is deep-seated anxiety that very often, you can't find a reason for. It can be rage and anger. It can be irritability. It can be mood swings where you experience rapid changes in mood from high to low or vice versa. It could be low mood and crying, fear and even loss of confidence.
Not only can all of these emotions impact your day-to-day life, they can also impact you physically because these emotional swings can be extremely draining. And, obviously, emotionally, it can cause a huge amount of disruption too.
What can help?
The sorts of things you're looking at to help would be magnesium. This is important because magnesium is a mood stabiliser. It's going to help with all sorts of different areas of mood and emotions.
Water is so important. Dehydration is going to make anxiety worse. You're going to get palpitations. You're going to get much more accentuated anxiety and other issues if you're dehydrated, so make sure you are drinking plenty of water, over and above your other drinks.
You can look at calming herbs. So, these would be things like passionflower, Avena sativa, Valerian, and Jan de Vries Flower Essences such as Emergency Essence, Emotional Essence or Mood Essence. The flower essences are great because if your mood changes come about really quickly and you're out and about, you know, there's nothing, normally, you can do about it.
The flower essences are little bottles. You can keep them in your pocket or your bag and the minute you feel something on, you can put a few drops straight onto the tongue.
The one thing I will say here, if your mood issues are really serious, if you think that you are getting depression, if you find that you really can't cope and you don't even want to get out of bed, this is the point where you go and speak with your doctor or look for some sort of professional advice.
2. Hot flushes and night sweats
These are the main symptoms that most women are aware of. However, only 75% of women will get hot flushes and night sweats, so there's a good group of women who won't get this particular symptom at all.
For those who do experience them, they can be two of the worst and debilitating symptoms. If you're getting hot flushes and sweats regularly, they can absolutely drain you of energy. They can also be extremely embarrassing if you're at work or in a social setting, and suddenly, you're sitting there with your face going bright red or sweating excessively, which can make you feel very, very uncomfortable.
They can also greatly affect your confidence. A lot of women tell me if they get a lot of hot flushes or sweats, they just don't want to go out and socialise or be with people because it's just too much to cope with.
Night sweats can also disrupt your sleep and that's another huge issue which I will look at later in this blog.
What can help?
So, for these two troublesome symptoms, the herb Sage can help. There's a lot of research on how Sage can help relieve hot flushes and night sweats. (1) And it usually works quite quickly.
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Remember too that even if you get hot and you're not sweating, you're still possibly going to get dehydrated. Dehydration is going to affect your nervous system and it's going to trigger more hot flushes and night sweats. So, drinking water is a really good simple treatment for this, so don't forget it.
3. Joint pain
This is one, in the beginning, that really surprised me because I wasn't aware that joint aches and pains were a common menopause symptom, but a lot of women experience this at some point.
It can affect your mobility. If you're used to being active and suddenly, you're ending up with a lot of joint pain, it's going to affect your free time such as some of the hobbies you do. It's going to affect the way you exercise. And, if you can't exercise, that's possibly going to affect your weight.
So, there's a whole raft of other health issues that can appear if you've got joint aches and pains. Even things like sleeping can be affected. If you're in pain, you can't sleep and that's going to affect you the next day as well.
What can help?
It is thought that low oestrogen affects the elasticity and hydration of your joints, which impacts the mobility of the joints. And if your joints are dehydrated, that can lead to inflammation, and that, in turn, will lead to pain.
So, guess what? For joint pain, water can be a simple and helpful treatment too. I've had women come back to me within a week or so, and all they've done is started to drink a lot of plain water and their symptoms have eased quite considerably. So, this is a really easy, free treatment to do.
Another thing you can look at is the herb Devil's Claw which is known as a natural anti-inflammatory. Calcium and magnesium supplements can also be helpful.
It is important to exercise. Now, I know, you're thinking, "Well, if I'm in pain, I can't exercise." But it's really important to stabilise your joints. And this goes for everybody, not just if you are getting joint aches and pain. So, the more strength that you can give to the muscles on either side of your main joints especially, then the less the joints are likely to deteriorate.
If you can't get out and about because of pain, you can look at very gentle exercises such as swimming, yoga, Pilates, tai chi. And if you're really struggling, you can get exercises that you can do sitting in your chair, there are lots of sitting exercise routines on YouTube. That you can try. So,
Even doing 15 or 20 minutes of exercises sitting down every day, perhaps when you're watching the TV in the evening, can make a big difference in helping to stabilise the joints.
4. Cognitive issues
Whose mind hasn't gone blank from time to time? But during menopause, cognitive issues can become so much worse and frequent.
For me, this was one of my worst symptoms. I could be in the middle of talking about something and it felt as if someone had just pulled the plug on my brain. There was nothing in it. It was like a blank TV screen.
It's a horrible one because it's embarrassing. It can give you anxiety because you can't actually get back to what you were talking about. What I discovered was that it helps to make a joke about it. I used to say, "Oh, you know what, I'm having a black hole moment. I'll be with you in a minute." And because I wasn't getting anxious and stressed, that made me much calmer and my thoughts came back a lot quicker that way.
So, if you get into the habit of just trying not to panic too much when these things happen, you will find that your thoughts will come back much quicker.
I know a lot of women, they contact me and they actually think that they're getting Alzheimer's or dementia because they're forgetting so many things. Very often, the woman is the mental calendar and diary of the family. She knows everything that's going on. And I've had women tell me that the whole family's kind of gone to pieces because she keeps forgetting things.
It can also be problems with focus and concentration. A lot of women have problems at work when they just can't concentrate and focus. It can be that kind of just a foggy brain and sometimes you can feel spaced out as if you're not really quite here, which can be quite frightening. Again, this sort of thing can cause fatigue and cause problems with your sleep.
What can help?
Drinking plenty of water can also help with these symptoms. Remember your brain needs a lot of water to function, and just being dehydrated can cause foggy brain and forgetfulness.
You can look at the herb Ginkgo biloba which is known to help with concentration and to improve memory too.
5. Difficulty sleeping
Sleep problems are very common during menopause, and I have touched on a few ways sleep is affected during menopause already, but there are hormonal reasons too.
It is thought that as your oestrogen falls, it affects the level at which you go to sleep. So, it takes you longer to fall asleep, which means that thoughts are going around and around in your head for a lot longer, which can then set off your nervous system making it practically impossible to get to sleep.
It is also known that low oestrogen gives you a much shallower sleep so external things can wake you up which may not have happened before. Hot flushes or sweats are more likely to wake you up. Even your partner moving in bed can be enough to wake you up.
So, if you're getting woken up regularly during the night, if you're not getting off to sleep properly, then your body isn't getting enough time to relax, recuperate, and restore its energy. And then the next morning, you're going to be tired, you're going to be irritable, you're going to have problems focusing. So, all these things can be very much interconnected with each other.
What can help?
It's really important to have a good routine before you go to bed. Don't have coffee or caffeine drinks in the evening if you can. So many women have told me that just cutting out their night-time cup of tea, or coffee gives them a much better night's sleep.
Don't go for high salt and sugar snacks in the evening because they will rev your nervous system up and make it much more difficult to relax. However, it is important to have a snack before you go to bed to keep your blood sugar stable, but you're looking at healthy fats, maybe a little energy ball, or some Greek yoghurt with some berries, or nuts and seeds, or maybe an oatcake and nut butter.
Also, have a small shot glass of warm water just before you go to bed. Dehydration will make you get up and go to the toilet more because your urine will be very concentrated, and dehydration can affect your nervous system triggering night sweats.
The reason I recommend a warm glass of water is if you take cold water before you go to bed, it can shock your digestive system and that will stop you from getting to sleep. Just a small glass is enough to keep you hydrated without putting too much pressure on your bladder.
You can also look at herbs such as valerian and hops, which you can find in our Dormeasan sleep remedy. You can also look at some of the flower essences as well such as Relaxing Essence or Night Essence
So, I hope you found this one helpful. If any of you out there have any tips that have worked well for you for any of these situations, then please share them. And please do here over to the GenM website to find out more about this fabulous menopause initiative.
Key points to take away from this blog:
- Some of the worst and most debilitating symptoms of menopause include emotional symptoms including anxiety, anger and mood swings, hot flushes and night sweats, joint pain, cognitive issues such as brain fog and memory loss, and difficulty sleeping.
- There are lots of simple lifestyle changes, supplements and remedies that can help ease these troublesome symptoms.
- Drinking plenty of water every day can help all of these symptoms, so make sure you remember to drink between 1.5 and 2 litres per day, over and above things like coffee and tea.
Until next week, take care.
