Perimenopause Rebranded: It's about your health before your hormones

I received a fantastic thank you from a lady who came along to my free webinar then followed up with my book Understanding Your Menopause . She followed these simple steps to feel improvement in the symptoms she was experiencing. Her results have been remarkable from removing all traces of PMS (so that her period caught her by surprise), to having a noticeable positive change in her medical condition. It was a surprise to her nurse that so many positive changes happened in such a short time; and of course it was great for me to hear! My passion is to educate women to have a great menopause transition from the first signs of your perimenopause onwards; for you to understand that you need to look to your health before hormones to resolve your symptoms permanently.

Perimenopause - It's about your health before your hormones!

Firstly let me be clear if you have any medical condition you should not stop taking the medication you are on, and if you are going to start taking supplements and you see a doctor regularly - let them know. Nutritional supplements are generally quite safe; herbal supplements are more complex. Today I'm going to be talking about nutritional supplements because if you give your body the minerals that it wants it will make the hormones that it needs.

If you're reading this now and you have monthly PMS, fibroids, stress, heavy periods, endometriosis sleep issues, anxiety, gut health complaints that you're putting up with as it's just part of life then know your body is unhappy, it is out of balance. The good news is that you can help yourself resolve many of these symptoms.

A majority of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause are called Deficient (or Depleted) symptoms from the view point of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM); caused by a lack of something in your body. Symptoms excluded from this are Excess symptoms - the main one being night sweats (these differ from hot flushes in the night). Night sweats occur specifically around 1 to 3am and then switch off (these are liver related). Hot flushes however tend to start upon waking around the 4/5am onwards and are linked to adrenalin; they are the tip of the deficient symptom iceberg meaning it's taken many accumulative symptoms to creating them.

Perimenopause Symptoms? Your Body is Depleted in Vitamins and Minerals

Depletion is created over a long period of time, years in fact and is linked to chronic ailments too. During your 40s the first major hormone to diminish and disrupt is progesterone, it's a long slow decline, so much so that I normally suggest you compare yourself to 3 years ago. Comparing this change over that length of time really highlights what symptoms have slowly appeared over time.

Stress is a major factor in causing this nutritional depletion and a lot of women have stress in their body. I say body because strong-minded resilient women think they are handling stress well (I was the same) but it's actually being stored in your body. When you're continually on the go your body knows this isn't the right time to highlight stress-associated symptoms and so it embeds them; until they break through as your body wants to tell you you're pushing your limit.

You may not think you're stressed at all; but it is there, and most likely it's being overlooked or combatted with high intensity exercise; which in turn causes more stress.

A major outward symptom of stress is anxiety but also fatigue (even with a good nights sleep) being tired but wired at bedtime or waking and worrying between 4 and 6am. Your mind and body are linked but not in a way that you think. Your body tells your mind how it feels and not the other way around. This is the feedback of the vagus nerve; however if you get stuck in negative thinking patterns this does this keep you in a fight/flight pattern. We're only meant to be in this around 5% of the day but a modern lifestyle can keep us in this way for most of the day not allowing your body to switch back into a healing state. This is where accumulative symptoms start to build the picture of perimenopause.

Perimenopause Symptoms are Stress-based Symptoms

Stress in the body means the hormone cortisol isn't keeping up with the job at hand. When your put your body under stress (mentally or physically) cortisol is released alongside adrenalin, so everytime you exercise to get that kick, you're putting more cortisol into your system. Cortisol required vitamins and minerals to reduce your stress levels; if it can't get enough it leeches them from strategic points in your body - joints, gut, brain.

Both progesterone and cortisol require the same chemical building blocks and if in short supply your body prioritises survival over reproduction. Hence when cortisol is high progesterone lowers. If you're nutritionally rich then your body can produce both happily.

Then there's oestrogen, yet to be mentioned but it's now being affected by the lack of progesterone and the excess of cortisol. You're going to feel this affect as anxiety, endometriosis, worsening gut health and period issues for example. Note though that oestrogen isn't in decline at this point (as you have periods), however when progesterone is low oestrogen can then become dominant and this is what is causing so many perimenopausal symptoms; NOT the lack of oestrogen but an imbalance of hormones.

These hormones can be brought back into balance quickly and simply:

With nutrients.

Eating more vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, wholegrains, legumes - complex carbs and essential fatty acids give you the nutrition and fibre that you need. Cortisol wants these good foods so that it can do its job - to lower the stress and inflammation levels in your body.

If cortisol isn't fed it will take it from whever it can get it in your diet, and this leaves you with brain fog, anxiety, low moods and loss of libido, plus achy joints, insomnia, exhaustion...

It's this cycle that leads to the depletion in your body chemistry that I talked about at the start. If you're awake at 4am with a whirring mind this is one of the major flags that you have stress and that cortisol isn't getting enough nutrients to do it's job.

These are how symptom patterns start to build. My background is Traditional Chinese medicine and we work with symptoms and how they form over time and group. Also with the understanding that depletion is a a chronic health pattern helps me to combat perimenopause symptoms effectively.

Give your body the nutrition that it needs to aid cortisol to destress you. And how do you know you have enough nutrition? Your symptoms will have vanished!

Perimenopause Symptoms Reduce With High Enough Nutrient Levels

Start with adding more nutritious food into your daily life and for some this can be enough if their diet was poor; you wouldn't believe how many women I've met who only eat vegetables on a Sunday! Sometimes though food alone isn't going to turn your symptoms around quickly enough. When you're combatting the initial excess of cortisol you may need to supplement with nutrients.

Nutritional supplements are the vital minerals your body needs. The most known ones are Vitamin B's, C, D, E etc and you may have read by now how vital Magnesium is, but have you overlooked how beneficial trace minerals (like Boron, Biotin, Zinc and Iodine) are; and so the first supplement is a good multivitamin which will contain a full B complex (for energy) too!

Click image to get my free supplements guide

What Your Doctor May Advise You For Perimenopause IS WRONG

Depending on your current medical status there are supplements that may help you but specifically in this blog I can point you in the direction of vitamins and minerals to help you relieve your perimenopause symptoms and you may find other symptoms ease too. Too many times people rush for the end game - medication when your symptoms are actually your body crying out for nutrients. Magnesium is fantastic for helping you regain sleep and ease muscle tension for instance.

Your GP has a limited tool kit to help you with strict guidelines. A standalone blood test won't give you an accurate picture of your perimenopause ; only menopause if your oestrogen is that low. Being offered anti-depressants for anxiety IS WRONG. HRT is specifically for low oestrogen levels when perimenopause is LOW PROGESTERONE causing OESTROGEN DOMINANCE; this is why symptoms can exacerbate if HRT is taken at the wrong time. Altering your diet, the CORRECT exercise and lifestyle choices will help. Beaware of the wrong exercise! If you have symptoms like low moods, anxiety, crying insomnia and loss of libido, exercising more heavily will only increase these symptoms. Resistance and restorative exercising is great but high impact and running add to your stress factor.

GPs don't generally believe in nutritional supplements but it's simple body chemistry - start here. You don't feel like yourself your body is aching and your brain is foggy - so feed it! Vitamins and minerals come before herbals in my opinion. Again I meet many clients who've gone straight to herbals with mixed results. If your body is missing a mineral replenish it first. Herbals are great but at the right time. Even though I'm Chinese Medicine trained I've had far better results with minerals first.

Chinese medicine is about finding balance, in every area of your life. When I first pondered depletion versus excess in any stage of menopause I had to battle some of my own thoughts about whether I could be a legitmate shiatsu pratitioner but also point you in the direction of nutritional supplements.

Ultimately I came to a YES I CAN, because, I took the supplements and I was amazed at how much better I felt. I'd been receiving shiatsu treatments once a month for 15 or so years at that point and thought I would fly through the menopause. What I hadn't realised was that everthing I thought was just life, or just getting older was actually perimenopause and resolveable. I had put up with these symptoms for a year or more and it wasn't until my sleep was so heavily disrupted that I became miserable that I took action; luckily the first night I took minerals my sleep returned. I was a convert and confirmed that no amount of physical activity with your body will help you reduce your symptoms if they are symptoms of depletion.

I was sorely depleted having left a full time stressful career of 25 years, and if you're reading this and realising that you're in the same place as I was; life has delivered you to this point in time and as your hormones change your health is put under a microscope.

Though progesterone begins to naturally decline in your 40s stress exacerbates this decline - nutrition rebuilds your progesterone diminishing your symptoms.

Effectively Reduce Your Perimenopause Symptoms Now

It's simple body chemistry - if minerals are low and stress is high then the cortisol hormone (released alongside adrenalin) requires food to do it job; if it doesn't have enough this manifests as your symptoms.

Once your nutrient levels are higher your body starts to work properly.

Progesterone is supported which in turn keeps your oestrogen level in check. Blood sugars balance with an injection of trace minerals in a multivitamin. Magnesium and vitamin B6 will calm your nervous system and your lost sleep in the middle of the night will return when you're back to healthy levels. Heart palpitations can decrease, your brain becomes clearer anxiety can subside, AND hot flushes will decrease (get ahead of the game and you may never have them!).

Symptoms are your body telling you it's struggling, and it's struggling for nutrition. I'm going to really hammer home this message today :)

Your symptoms are your body crying out for help. If they were pain you'd take action, it's just knowing the right action to take. It's not an anti-depressant, and for many it's not HRT either. In a survey of 4000 women that was carried out for the Davina documentary of women that tried HRT 50% said it helped. That meant thought that 50% said it didn't help them. Why was this? In my clinical practise I've found that women who got worse when taking HRT responded postively to taking nutritional supplements instead. Often you can feel the results of vitamins more quickly than HRT (if they say you won't feel benefit for 3 months). Some women feel the results of vitamins in around 3-4 weeks.

I created my menopause programme: 28 Days to a Happier and Healthier Menopause during lockdown. I took a group of 8 women through 28 days and we saw significant change in 21 days plus. You can watch the videos here.

Women who are busy, high energy, high achievers tend to be less patient (to see results) and have an if it doesn't work immediately then it's not going to attitude. I can't help with that mentality, but what I would suggest is even if you choose HRT think about supplementation too as if you have these symptoms you are depleted in your minerals just like everyone else. HRT is very effective if you've had a quick decline in oestrogen (true menopause); for perimenopause it's vitamins all the way!

I stress again that what you eat is your starting point, nutritional supplements are then additional to this; food is what your body can digest. This is why the supplements I suggest are plant-based, they are condensed nutrient-rich food that your body readily absorbs. For example, I eat a lot of magnesium rich foods - including almonds, I was having dozens of them a day. I relented and bought a supplement, it suggest taking 4 capsules a day, I started with one, with the option to build up. I only needed that 1 additional one to aid my sleep, alongside the almonds I was eating. I couldn't get there with food alone but a small top up of Magnesium at that time did the trick.

Click image to get my free supplements guide

Experience Relief From Your Perimenopause Symptoms With Dedicated Support

Opt for self-guided empowerment or personalized one-on-one support?

Andrea at Cotswold Menopause has created an extensive range of products to help you with specific symptoms and all at affordable pricing. All the natural solutions involved are tried and tested, practical and simple to follow. With advice on health, eating, exercise, a fully holistic approach to helping you resolve your symptoms gently and effectively.

Using the wisdom of chinese medicine to help you regain your zest for life!

You can book a chat, a consultation or browse the self help solutions area:

Get started here and start to feel the benefits in a matter of weeks!

Meet Andrea - Holistic Menopause Specialist

Andrea is a shiatsu and Chinese medicine practitioner who uses the principles and wisdom of Chinese medicine in a completely practical way to help you resolve your symptoms naturally and effectively. If you live locally you can book in for a wonderfully relaxing Shiatsu for Menopause, otherwise Andrea does online indepth consultations where you'll leave with an actionable plan to follow. Andrea is also passionate about doing workplace talks and is passionate about getting this message out to as many women as possible: Give your body what it wants to create the hormones that it needs!

KNOWLEDGE . PAUSE . FLOURISH