Menopause is defined as the cessation of menstruation. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?

The menopause symptom list is much too long to include everything here – but some of the most common symptoms are hot flashes, insomnia, excessive menstrual flow or irregular periods, vaginal dryness, and mood swings– including irrational behavior, and depression. What many women ask me is - What is really happening biologically within their bodies to help them not only over come these symptoms by repairing the cause, but help them to achieve optimum health in the future?

Three Issues to Address
Unfortunately the medical community is not always forthcoming in describing in layman’s terms to people what is actually going on inside the female body to produce all these annoying symptoms. The first issue to be addressed is estrogen. Simply put, the production of estrogen by the ovaries begins to subside irrationally, like a faucet that is slowly being turned off. Estrogen levels are used in the body to produce another hormone. That hormone encourages the ovaries to produce and release an egg. During menopause, the inconsistent levels of estrogen confuse the hormone levels, which in turn confuses the hypothalamus, whose job it is to control the body temperature, breathing rate, digestion, etc.

Second, there are the adrenal glands whose job it is to produce a number of sex hormones, which replace those from inactivated ovaries. These small walnut shaped organs are overworked from poor diet and stress for many people. I am constantly amazed at the number of young women who come into our store whose adrenals are exhausted. No wonder they don’t have any energy – they have nothing to pull from. How do we expect the over-worked adrenals of a woman in her 50’ to take on even more work from the ovaries?

Finally, all hormones are in someway or another influenced by the liver. The liver does so many things in our bodies, build new blood cells, clean toxins out of our current cells, help to digest fats, produce enzymes, produce hormones, etc. The liver is the fastest regenerating organ in the body. Amazingly, it can reproduce enough new cells to completely rebuild itself in 6 weeks. When your body is overly toxic, the liver is spending most of its time trying to keep “your house” (your body and blood) clean. When this is the case, balancing hormones goes way down on the “to do” list. When your body is toxic, the liver often needs assistance, and will dump toxins to other systems to help it - such as the lymph system to flush (hot flashes are often our lymph system flushing toxins – the toxins have to come out somehow).

We have found that women, whose livers are being supported optimally, don’t have menopause symptoms. When we assist women with these menopause issues, we show them products that they would find useful to help with symptoms and allow them to choose what they feel would be the best product for them, but we always encourage them to support their liver as well – and we find that the women that do this – usually after 6 weeks to 3 months or so, no longer need anything for the symptoms. If you are having menopause symptoms, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a liver problem, it just means that your liver is stressed and overworked and could use some support. Why not help it out more?

Many women’s bodies are overly toxic because of stress, negative environments, poor diet, contaminated air, toxic water, perfumes, poisonous cleaners, etc. It is amazing how abused are bodies are on a daily basis and it is just common sense that at some point our bodies are going to get overloaded. They were just not designed to take in and process this amount of contaminates over and over again without some sort of warning (or annoying symptom) to us at some point.

Medical Treatments
Women with menopause symptoms usually turn to the one source they feel can help them, their doctors. But unfortunately most doctors are trained in one thing – pharmaceutical drugs. Drugs are defined as such because they carry harmful, and sometimes dangerous side effects. In fact approximately 140,000 people die each year from taking drugs (JAMA 1997, 277(4): 301.
It is not surprising that women will choose this route, the doctors tell them that the estrogen (usually in a synthetic or a ‘more natural’ form) will help them stay young, sexy, and free of hot flashes and other symptoms. They are not usually aware of future health risks from the drugs, or the side effects from the drugs (stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea, swollen ankles, depression, etc.). Unfortunately they are usually just replacing one symptom with another and not really solving the actual problem, and may actually be creating other problems such as cancer and/or heart disease. Unfortunately, you can’t choose another option if you don’t know one exists and many of these women don’t know that there are other options.

Fortunately, nature provides many of these options to help women easily and healthfully overcome these exasperating symptoms.

Nutritional Products
Many vitamin products have been shown to help overcome menopause symptoms. These include vitamin E (to help normalize estrogen production – do NOT use dl-Alpha tocopheral as this is synthetic and will only make you more toxic), vitamin A (to enhance healthy function of the sex glands, and help with proper mineral utilization), vitamin C (to support the liver in detoxing) and B vitamins (to support the body during stress). In addition to Vitamin E, many women find taking other essential fatty acids (EFAs) can also aid the body. These may include lecithin, emu oil, flax seed oil, evening primrose oil, borage oil and black current oil. Some companies sell several of these oils together in formulations specifically for women for this reason. In fact we have found that people with blood type O, seem to do better on the other EFAs than the vitamin E.

Minerals in a good absorbable form (amino acid chelate) can also be helpful and include calcium and magnessium to maintain bone integrity and act as a calming sedative to the nervous system (which is why it can help you sleep), and zinc which is vital to help the body to repair tissue, and also to help with proper nutrient utilization. Actual amounts may vary from person to person – it is best to check with your health professional to find what would work best for your body.

Digestive enzymes are another important part. It does very little good to take all of these nutrients if the digestive system is so weak that the nutritional elements can’t be assimilated. Often one or two of these tablets, with each meal can improve digestion, help to hold and put back calcium in the bones, carry toxins out of the body and build other important enzymes to feed other parts of the body. Again check with your health professional to find the best enzymes for you, as there can be huge differences between products.

Herbal Supplements
Some herbalists have inaccurately stated that herbs contain hormones. Herbs are just plants and what they really contain are hormone precursors, called steroids. The human body takes these natural steroids from plants and provides them to the glands within the body to produce the hormones that are needed.

Herbs that can be helpful for menopause symptoms are black cohosh, wild yam, and other herbal female corrective combination formulas. There are even herbs to help with sexual drive (damiana, cordeyceps, maca) and vaginal dryness (herbal combinations and gel formulas). Wild yam is considered ”natural progesterone” and is used often in creams for the skin to absorb as much or as little as needed by the body. Be careful to get the plant form and not a synthetic progesterone cream as these often cause side effects as the body cannot synthesize the progesterone like it can the natural wild yam, and this can cause a toxic effect, such as headaches or rashes. The natural wild yam will be absorbed, only as needed by your body. In addition, it can be additionally more helpful to put the cream on different parts of your body each day, instead of the same place – preventing excess saturation in one specific area. Progesterone is the precursor to all other hormones and can be good for both men and women hormonal issues.

For adrenal support, one of the best herbs is licorice root. It helps to balance the blood sugar and support the adrenals when they are stressed. People with diabetes/blood sugar issues should check with their health professional before taking licorice root as it can affect blood sugar levels. Eating properly for your body, eating smaller meals more often, consuming complex carbohydrates (whole grains such as whole spelt, quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice, etc) and cutting out simple sugars (refined sugars and flours) also can help to support the adrenals so they are there to support you instead of cause you problems.

For the liver, there are many popular herbal formulas available, many which contain milk thistle a wonderful herb that helps support the liver while also allowing it to detoxify naturally. It is best to check with your herbalist to find what products would be best for your situation. In addition, make sure your other elimination systems (bowels, respiratory, lymph, and urinary systems) are supported and flushing properly so your liver isn’t stuck doing all the work.

Emotional Involvement
One other large part of healing any imbalance in the body is the emotional aspect of it. I see it more and more every day. For example, I have many customers who I have worked with that have fibroids. One lady recently came in and was happy because she was able, with our guidance to dissolve 2 of her 3 fibroids, and the last one had shrunk to half the size it was originally. She has spent 6 months working on this nutritionally, using herbs/nutritional supplements, and of course doing the emotional work as well. I have 2 other customers that were doing the diet correctly and the nutritional supplements, but were not willing for whatever reasons, which is of course their choice, to work on the emotional aspects of healing, and they did have some results, but it was not nearly as dramatic as those that do this important piece of work.

As Karol Truman puts it in her book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, “Give yourself permission – allow yourself to feel whatever feelings you may feel. These feelings are much easier to change if you accept and own them rather than deny them and pretend they don’t exist. When you feel negative feelings it does NOT make you a bad person! Who in the world can go through life without feeling negativity some of the time? I doubt that it’s possible…even if you were on a desert island by yourself. Developing a consciousness of what you are feeling and thinking, then striving to overcome your destructive negative feelings and thoughts is part of the challenge of life.” It often doesn’t cost anything but time to do this, and it is sad that people find time to fix their car, or watch television, and do not take time to heal these central parts of who they are, especially when they can have such positive health benefits.

Testimonial – “Once I worked out many of my emotional issues, I started to heal. I cannot emphasize enough the mind/body issues-in my experience, once someone has worked out the underlying, buried emotional things, the body starts to heal … Not saying that the herbs, vitamins, diet doesn't help - that is a good support system and a great foundation; however, you must look inside - see why you are "molding"- see what is going on in your life and what has gone on before…” Cindy McKinney

One other important aspect of working on your menopause issues naturally is that you may actually find that you will have other health benefits in the process, and another bonus is that there are no life threatening side effects, and if one remedy doesn’t work for you, there is a whole stream of other supplements/possibilities to try.

Happy aging!