19th Oct 2023
Menopause Awareness Month – Panel Event Transcript
Okay, let me just make sure we are in a Glasglow girls club, we are, it looks like we’re in the right group, and we’re ready to go. So hello, everybody. My name is Laura McGinnis. I’m the founder of the Glasglow Girls Club, Facebook group and membership. And I’m delighted to be joined tonight by an array of GGC business members and women who are experts in each of their fields. And we’re going to be chatting with about each other fields shortly.
So this month, if you didn’t potentially already know as menopause Awareness Month, so I wanted to pull together a panel of experts to chat about different areas of a woman’s life in relation to menopause. Now, you will all potentially already know as well that I and my other admin team, we look out for key themes, which are always coming up in the group, and we look to create some valuable content and responds to it, and menopause and perimenopause actually, are something that in a community of 40,000 women are absolutely looking to chat about. So tonight,
I’ve been joined by some real powerhouse players and the menopause space, I’m going to be introducing you to each of them. We’ve got a brilliant run in order. And each of the ladies on this call is going to be chatting about menopause in relation to their area of expertise and what they each do. There will hopefully be opportunity at the end of the life to cover off some questions. So if you have some questions, whilst you’re watching this, please do pop them in the chat box below. And we will try our very best to combine the questions. If not it might be that the questions get answered thereafter.
Okay, so I’m going to just go for it and introduce our first speaker who is Pauline nickel. So I’m just going to read a wee bit of a bio for polling and then I’m going to let her take over. So polling as founder of the Sasha menopause consultancy, along with more called will the session menopause consultancy is a social enterprise company aiming to educate, inform and empower people and businesses about menopause. Sesha is Gaelic for freedom and this is the source ethos behind their company. Partnering with menopause experts group social menopause consultancy offers a wide range of menopause training and education workshops they bring to life the impacts that menopause symptoms can have by sharing their lived experience and extensive knowledge. They break down the barriers of this taboo subject delivering training and support and a light hearted and impactful way. Tonight’s polling is joined us and her focus will be on the stages of menopause, what causes the symptoms and recognising these so without further ado, welcome Pauline. Thank you, Laura. So first thing to say I guess about menopause as that as a natural transition. And every person born with a women will go through this, they may experience it differently, but everyone will go through it. And I guess before we even get to that, it’s probably useful to say that we’re all when we’re born, we are born with all the eggs and our body that we will ever have. And those eggs are released regularly once you get to puberty which on average is these days is about 10 And that’s the point where your brain can kick in thinking body’s optimal no for producing a baby and then the fertile fertilisation hormones start to be released and those that oestrogen progesterone and our little testosterone. Those hormones kind of kickstart they’re your fertile years, which is an are integral to being able to become pregnant and maintain a healthy pregnancy to buy. Those vegetable years run from about 10 to 14 on average. And by the age of 40, your eggs are starting to decrease and therefore you’re those hormones that we talked about oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone start to fluctuate. That stage is called perimenopause. And you’re usually still menstruating at that stage, but that’s when you will start to notice some symptoms kicking in triggered by the reduction and hormones. The next stage is menopause. And that’s defined as a year since your last period. So you’ve actually only menopausal for one day. The next stage following that would be postmenopausal which is defined as one year in one day since such a last period. And again just to say that every woman will go through that are variations on this. One of them being elite menopause. And there are a number of reasons that you can
and become menopausal early, one being primary ovarian insufficiency. And that’s typically if a woman is under 40 years of age, and statistics show that that this can affect one in 100. Women can be menopausal for the time, therefore to whether you youngest in the UK being 15, which is really shocking. Another reason for Ella menopause could be surgical menopause, when a woman’s had surgery for fibroids or perhaps cancer and that’s when the women the ovaries are taken out. So your hormones decrease quite rapidly actually, and you can suddenly be put into full blown menopause. There’s also another reason for this could be chemical menopause, where as a consequence of perhaps chemo or radiotherapy, you can become menopausal as well. One thing to note is once you are postmenopausal you are you remain in that stage for the rest of your life. And 100 years ago, the average age of menopause was actually 57. And women then the life expectancy was only about 59. These days, the average age of menopause is 51. And the average life expectancy is 81. So that’s practically a third of your life you can be you’re out there in postmenopausal with the different symptoms to manage as well. And the 25% of women say that they don’t have any severe symptoms of menopause. But 75% of women do see that the notice said symptoms impacting the life and work state and workplaces well, with 25% of those women seen it severely has impacted the lives. So some of the symptoms. What we’ll look at those and what causes the symptoms. We mentioned, the three mentioned the three and hormones that are required through warfare to yours. But one of the was oestrogen as the bait the big one, and our bodies are. We’ve got hormone receptors and our bodies from the brain to the tip of your pinkie toe. With the brain is the biggest area with receptors, the breasts, the guts as well as the vulva, vagina and the womb or the next large area of receptors. If we think of oestrogen as really delicious, almost lubricating hormone that keeps all areas of our body lubricated and nice and so can be like your all areas you’ve got your brain, your joints, your endocrine system, you know, all of those areas require oestrogen were the biggest areas we said beating the bream. oestrogen is needed to help inflammatory processes. And there are over 40 symptoms recognise symptoms now. Set the early stages of perimenopause. Typically women present with joint and eat pains or back pain or increase migraines are first receiving, first noticing that they have migraines. And if we think that the brain can tell you to think about the brain and that being the biggest receptor, another seven times the psychological symptoms can be the most debilitating the definitely were from me. So that lack of concentration, the lack of focus, the anxiety, per se, per concentration as well, as well as the joint pains and aches and the when I think back those were probably happening for me right about my early 40s. And then you’ve got the low mood, the trouble sleeping as well has an impact on us. Also, another one that’s unusual that people talk about is burning mace like a sensation in their mouths that is burning, or their skin feels that it’s really really Etcher. There’s like a crawling feeling as well. We all know about the hot flushes because a lot of people typically think menopause is hot flushes on your period stopping is so much more than hot flushes and your period stopping. However, they are definitely part of it. They are the you know as actually that ultimately as your period stopping that is your then menopausal But before you get there, those periods can be increasingly heavy, erratic, you can have very late ones, you know a very late period for a couple of days and then I feel blown period a few you know lessen your your 20 day cycle later or you can go long periods of time six, seven weeks sometimes and all period and then you’re back to like your, your seem to be your regular cycle. And again, those can be really hard to deal with. For me. Again if we bring a note that lived experience travelling to my jaw, but I’ll welcome Cumbernauld travelling to Edinburgh and public transport was absolutely impossible. On some of the some of the days of the periods, it was so bad, and in fact, I was actually hospitalised eventually for really heavy periods but as well as the night sweats when women can feel like the add up three, four times and eight haven’t changed bed slide on tables, kill mats, everything just like wake up swimming. And also the hot flashes during the day or hot flushes, as we call them here during the day can be really debilitating and embarrassing for women that are other areas lumped together called vaginal atrophy. And some of those conditions are like a dry vagina dry Evolver at Chinses inflammation. This again, all linked back to oestrogen that that lubricating hormone, that not only keeps your bones muscles lubricated, but also your skin and that area can become increasingly then the skin in those areas becomes increasingly thinner, shorter, that you can draw up it can become so thin that actually splits and causes problems, whether that’s just wing or as I said the action is or painful sex. So the last as your as I said 40 Plus symptoms. Now, menopause and women over 45 is
determined it said that diagnose symptoms late diagnosis over 45. So what I am there’s no tests but doctors will rule out other conditions. Perhaps you have trouble with thyroid anaemia that may lead to some of these symptoms can cut across a number of conditions. So whilst it’s there’s no Ted test specifically for menopause, and women over 45, they will perhaps do blood tests to do other conditions. In women under 45 hours, a doctor may do a series of blood tests called them testing for FSH hormones. follicle stimulating hormone blood tests may be done over a different over a number of weeks to be able to help identify it and women under 45. But if you think that you may be paired menopausal, it is a great idea to keep her symptoms tracker, easily available online, there are apps you can download that will help you do this perhaps and some of those apps will send you a reminder to log your symptoms that day. And if you then you can quickly see if there’s patterns there you’ll quickly see the list of symptoms you’re able to tick them off. And if and when you do need to go to the doctor that can be imperative and help lead the diagnosis as well. So symptoms extensive symptoms trackers will help you identify them and also help you see a pattern of those symptoms and then it will be really useful if and when you decide to go to the go to the GP I think that will cover everything from me.
Thank you so much for that, Pauline. That was a brilliant overview of what perimenopause is what menopause is the abundance of symptoms that come with it as well and some great advice on tracking symptoms as well. And what I’ll do for any ladies watching Alaska ladies on this zoom to pop their contact details in the comments underneath it so that if anybody is looking to connect with them directly, they can do so. Okay, so thank you so much Pauline. We’re now going to delve a wee bit into symptoms and some kind of tools and tactics that can be used to try and alleviate some of the hormonal fluctuations and things that happen in a woman’s body during this stage of their life. So, we will move on to our next expert who is Mr. McElhinney, founder of Team E M w which is eating Move one. That’s right. It wasn’t loving it. Okay, so we bet about Emam rebel queen, ager and fun lover your fearless guide to smashing med leave mediocracy and tapping into your limitless potential as a trailblazing petty manual and behaviour change expert specialists Emma’s mission is to transform women who feel marooned and monotony and to their audacious, dazzling, ultimate badass selves.
Well done. Yes,
that is quite the mouthful, loving it. Emma’s focus for the session, air tonight, ladies is going to be nutrition and lifestyle fundamentals to fake the fatigue beat the bloat, and moderate the moods that come with hormone fluctuations. So straightforward. Aim
is Hi, everyone. And so following on from what Pauline was talking about they are and some of the key symptoms, I don’t love calling them sometimes just purely because it’s not really an illness. It’s not a disease, it’s more of the impacts that happen in a woman’s life. So the key ones I see like, and my industry, I see a lot of people coming to me with body changes. I see a lot of people come to me with fatigue, tiredness, not able to focus on brain fog. And also this kind of feeling of men just kind of feeling stuck. And they felt a whole lot of other things going on in their life, careers, relationships, and it’s kind of less where am I? What do I want to do? Who even am I? And when you don’t recognise your body changes? Well, it can be quite a big challenge in time. So one of the big things that I talk about as this is not a time for just giving up on yourself, this is a time there’s so much opportunity and when we heard polling talk about how long of a woman’s life can be with perimenopause, menopause, post menopause. It’s so sad to see people just got a hole, there’s no point really no, that’s it. That is that’s the beginning or the end. And maybe yes, once upon a time it was but absolutely no longer. So from I like to talk about what we can control, because we ultimately got control over everything that we do. And I’m going to tackle that from what we put in our body, how we move our body and how we rest our body. And then I’m going to hand over to Isabel. And she’s going to talk about a big part of it as well, which are their own stress. So some key components to nutrition. Now, going back to the body composition changes, not everybody notices weight gain, but most people will notice the body changing. So due to the hormone changes, you might see like a more of a growing midsection, sometimes affectionately called the middle. And that can be quite a troublesome thing if you’re used to going through your 30s always felt and then suddenly this appears. And that’s because of the hormone changes. But also what happens from late 30s onwards as our metabolism slows down as well. And that slows down because our muscle mass starts to waste away, which doesn’t sound particularly pleasant. So it’s that means our metabolism slows down, which means it’s easier for us to gain body fat and harder for us to lose. So everything that I teach, I’m coming out from a health point of view and a hormone optimization point of view. But these tools can also be implemented for fat loss as well. So if anybody out there has got that as a goal or you’re looking to manage it, then these tips that I’m going to give you are suitable for that as well. The other thing I’m going to touch on is movement. And that’s hugely important because as well as the muscle mass deterioration, we also have our bone density deteriorating, which kind of makes you go Mother Nature, you are a bit of a co you have done this on purpose. Not fair. So nutrition key points. The first one is hydration. And every single person watching this is going to roll their eyes at me because there are all these health gurus always talking about water. But when I see that a lot of the biggest symptoms or impacts are like brain fog, fatigue, digestive issues, stress, lack of sleep, not able to focus, some of those can actually be due to dehydration, because your your body just doesn’t work as well. Our body likes balance and one of the key components of balance as hydration. So making sure that we’re getting enough water and it sounds really simple. But if you’re not drinking, like minimum, two litres of water a day, there’s a good chance that you may actually be dehydrated and a lot of the brain fog and the bloating may actually go away once you get that sorted. So that’s the key one. The next one and this is a big one, we hear a lot about cutting out carbs. And we hear a lot about you know, no carbs before my mom’s but we want to look at it slightly differently. Most women don’t tend to eat enough protein in their diet. And protein, as it’s called a macronutrient was just basically like a bank nutrient. And most people will get their protein from lean animal protein like chickens imports and beef Um, you get it from eggs, you can get it from plant based sources, but not an entire quantity. But protein as it contains all these building blocks that are going to help repair certain parts of us. So our muscle mass deteriorates. And combined with resistance training, which I’ll talk about in a lot minute, protein is going to help grow and repair that muscle mass and as well for all of our cells in the body. But one of the other things that’s really valuable for as it helps us stay feel for longer, it takes longer to digest than most other foods. So your body’s still doing our thing. It stops the glaze and stops you snacking on things that are going to be spike and crash your blood sugar sort of kind of help keep that focus throughout the day. The next one you want to be looking at is fruit and veg. And it’s we all know we should be in five portions of fruit and veg. But when you actually look at well as a portion of fruit and veg and anywhere between like 80 and 100 grammes, most people don’t. And it’s when we want to think about optimise hormones and optimise health. Well think of it things like gut health as well. And fruit and veg is one of the key components of that. So it’s really going to help get the nutrients that you need, that’s going to help you, you know, regulate a lot of the things that are going on. So really, really powerful. When it comes to our nutrition, we all have control over that. And one of the big things. And I hate to talk about restriction and things that we shouldn’t have, because that’s not really how I operate. But reducing the amount of alcohol is a big one. And I feel it’s such a hypocrite to say that people but alcohol as the course of the perimenopause and menopause women impact so much. And primarily like when you’re when you consume alcohol as a toxin, so your body wants your body quick as possible. That means it’s not going to function as well. And all these other body functions that you’ve gotten all this sale renewal that we’re talking about, the metabolism we’re talking about, is just trying to get granted the way in doing so reduce the weight, and it will help so much in terms of your energy levels, your mood, your sleep, your stress levels, and even your fat loss as well. So it’s a good thing to produce, and also processed foods as well. And when like it’s not about removing everything from your diet, it’s just looking at what you are eating and going to how can I make this a little bit better? How can I make this a little bit more quality. And it might just be a case of adding an extra portion of fruit and veg a day, it might just be a case of saying well, maybe not have that ready meal or when we make something from scratch one day a week. And just looking at small sustainable changes. It’s not about wrapping it all up. And starting again, that’s completely unachievable for most people. But looking at what you’re doing now and making it a little bit better as probably the key takeaway when it comes to nutrition. Or aspartame. Okay. Good, right. So movement is a big one. Now. Our Kana generation, if you’re watching this, you’re probably oily over 40 for our generation that’s going to come through exercise in this lives Mills, high intensity spin bakes a lot of cardio, a lot of a lot of low intensity cardio with running and swimming and a lot of high intensity but purely cardio with classes. Now as we get older, that might not necessarily be the best way to support your body and getting fitter and stronger and trying to regain some of that muscle mass and trying to build some of this bone density. So we want to start looking at resistance training. And that can be quite nerve racking for some people that like oh no, I don’t, I don’t want to go into the weight room, I don’t want to go and lift weights in the gym. And that’s you don’t need to go to a gym to do resistance training remote, I would say 90% of my clients will only do their trainer at home, just what I say a dumbbells and a kettlebell. And it’s, it’s just about moving your body in a functional way. And if you think about, you know, nutrition potentially being the best tool, you have to future proof your health exercise as the best tool, you’ve got to future proof your future independence and mobility. Like if you want to be the 70 year old woman that can put our cans of soup in the cupboard above or you need to start getting resistance training into your life somehow. No, it doesn’t have to be this five days a week, like a lot of people don’t have time to start a new exercise regime. And that’s absolutely fine. Again, looking at how do we meet? How do we start it and it might just be as simple as well. I can do 20 minutes on a Tuesday and I can do 20 minutes on a Friday. And that is just enough to get you going to help you see that you can do it because that’s one of the challenges and I’ve never done this before. But be starting to build that into a lifestyle habit. And it’s treating it not as our oh I need to go and I need to go and do this workout because I ate a pack of crisps. I need to go and do this workout so that I can get in and out of my car in 20 years time. And it’s not sexy. But starting to think with that mindset with movement as not a tool for losing weight. It’s a tool to help you live longer and healthier and happier with. And I like to think of it as like, do you want to be the old lady that if she falls in the ACE, that she can get up by herself? Are you going to be the world leader that has to wait for somebody to come and help. And I think we all want to have that independence as we get older as well.
So that’s not to say that cardio is bad. It’s not because we also want to look after our respiratory health as we get older. It’s just that in order to, you know, get that muscle mass back, get our metabolism work and get the bone density working as Yeah, add in some assumption. And one to always think about as I’ve never lifted weights before, it’s quite skinny. Always, if you’ve got kids, ask yourself, How old were your kids when you stop lifting them to the baths, and guarantee that child is probably at 20 kilos, so you are absolutely fine for lifting weights. Don’t look at those pink two kilo dumbbells and go they’re too heavy, they are not you have lefty children, remember that you’re stronger than you think. And so that’s probably from a nutritional point of view. From at sleep point of view, no. We are horrific at sleep and sleep quality, we are tied to our phones 24/7 We have the attention span of your average adult in the UK has dropped from something like 13 seconds to eight seconds in the space of four years. Right. So since before COVID. That means we look at our phones for seven seconds, eight seconds and your thoughts are bored, no need to move on to the next thing. So if you can imagine what that is doing to your dopamine levels, and all these chemicals in your body are just constantly seeking the next big thing. And if we don’t put our phones down and learn to relax before bed, we are going to have crap sleep. And you might not think you’re having crap sleep. But if you’re not getting into a deep sleep stage and actually allowing your body to repair to digest things that you’ve learned, then it’s going to catch up on you. And that’s kind of one of the things that might be potentially causing brain fog, tiredness in the latter half of the day. So key tips for sleep. Put the phones down by nine o’clock. All of you everybody watching nine o’clock. Absolutely non negotiable. And you want to make sure that you’re not having your phone even in your room for your alarm, the light look at formatted does crazy things your head. I’ve even taken to have covered up the red light in the tales Vardan as well because I’m there like I can see it making sure your rooms as dark as possible as cool as possible as well. And we’re talking about hot flushes, having a cool room, and cotton sheets etc. are really going to help you have a more comfortable sleep as well and help you get a more restful sleep where you can know when we have things like hot flushes as gonna impact your sleep quality. And there’s there’s no one size fits all solution but looking at you know what you’re putting into your body. Are you hydrated enough? Are you eating the right foods? Are you trying to get as much rest as possible? Are you distressing, which we’ll hand over to Annabelle and all that I’m gonna these are all things that we can all look to we’re doing that now know, consistency with sleep was another big one and trying to have sounds really boring does not sound like a model of a toddler having a consistent bedtime and a consistent bedtime routine is really valuable. And fer experience and like if you’ve got like a lot on your mind, career and business, whatever, have an odd notebook beside your bed as such a handy thing to do because when all those main hamsters start chatting away at half past 10 You’ve got somewhere to write the stuff down and you can pick it up in the morning and deal with it then. So I think that was that was everything that I wanted to cover it off.
Amazing. Great so many tips
on time and time Yes.
I’m always thinking she was going to need the back door
three hours with us shut me off at midnight.
No honestly that was brilliant. Lots of tips. I’ve noted them all down. So thank you so much for taking the time to share those with us Emma and as I say please do go and pull up your because I know you’ve got different programmes and different things in this space we do put them in the comments in underneath verses but also people can get a ladies can get closer to you. Okay, so next up we have got a Bill Brown so as a bill after a lifelong interest in health and wellbeing as a bill made a radical change from the corporate world and returned to formal study with the College of Natural Pathak medicine in London and to qualify and qualified as a health and lifestyle coach and as well as know the founder of the health and wellness hub, as well. Health and wellness shoots I read my writing, as well helps when I was struggling with feelings of menopausal overwhelm through education and lifestyle change to embed sustainable habits that put them back in the driver’s seat as abeles focus is going to be stress management. So just confirm for us again as well the name of your business, I totally messed that up there. Sorry, what was that Laura, the name of your company, its health and well being studio rate brilliant and pop the links underneath if people can give you a follow. But as a bell, give us your give us your session and stress management. This is one that I’m particularly looking forward to myself.
was struggling with feelings of menopausal overwhelm through education and lifestyle change to embed sustainable habits that put them back in the driver’s seat as abeles focus is going to be stress management. So just confirm part of it as well the name of your business. I totally messed that up there.
Sorry, what was that Laura,
the name of your company, its health and well being studio rate, bro. Yeah, and pop the links underneath if people can give you a follow. But as Abell give us, give us your give us your session and stress management, this is one that I’m particularly looking forward to myself.
All right, if you weren’t yanking me off, you probably yanking me off because you could go on forever on this topic. Anyway, what I thought I would do to try and make it a little bit well, hopefully concise is thinking about the stress response. And thinking about it may be under three areas. So what is it? What does it do? And why can it become an issue and then sharing a couple of things at the end is what you might be able to do to try and help yourself with that. So I suppose firstly, the stress responses, that it’s really natural, and it is absolutely normal, we all experience it. And I think if we were talking about it, you’ll probably recognise more, if I called it the flight or fight response, because most people would see it, and have heard that more than a bit maybe have stress response. So what actually happens is that the brain actually starts to pick up either a danger signal or a perceived danger signal. And when that actually happens, it releases, I thought it might be helpful to just understand what was going on there. So it releases a hormone called cortisol. And that hormone then goes off to do its job and get our bodies ready for fight or flight away from this perceived or real danger. So to do that, what it tends, what it then does is that it prioritises sentences, body systems, systems that we need to protect us. And it suppresses other body systems that it doesn’t need right at that moment. So what it will do is is that cortisol, adrenaline, we then it pumps sugar in the form of glucose in your bloodstream, that in turn then goes to our muscles, it’s getting everything pumped up, it’s all about energy. It’s all about getting us on the move away from whatever this perceived, or real danger might actually be. It also enhances the sensory organs or peripheral vision improves all of these things. So we can see where we’re actually running, where we’re actually running to the areas that it would suppress, it would suppress it is like our immune system or digestive system. Because what we’re wanting, we’re not really sitting down needing lunch. So digestion is not needed. But it really lets you understand that if digestion gets suppressed with cortisol, you then understand why when stress triggers cortisol, we can end up with a lot of digestive problems as well. So we’ll come back to that in a wee bit. So if any of you have actually had sort of anybody disgust before anything to do with stress management, they will often use this sort of ancestral anecdote, you know, this fight or flight, we’re running away from the predator. And this is, you know, this is what needs to happen. But the problem with today will not today, the problem is, is that our bodies, our body doesn’t know the difference between running away from a predator, or being triggered by the demands of life today. So while you’re sitting tapping at the wheel, and a traffic jam, or you’re running against a work deadline, or you’re running late for a meeting, or whatever it is that you’re doing, or some of the big stresses that visit people, and that could be relationship issues. It could be health issues, it could be money worries, all of those things. The body doesn’t distinguish between a sabre toothed Tiger and one of those, it basically, the brain is picking up agitation, it’s picking up anxieties. And so what it does is it releases the whole cortisol thing that we’ve just mentioned there with all of the on flow effects that that can actually have. The biggest issue and I don’t think anybody would be surprised as most women are running Mason wheels today, and certainly a lot of the clients that I would see, maybe not so much 40s, but maybe in the 50s many of them are also dealing with adult children, elderly parents that are right in the middle of careers. All of that is happening on life is just going at 100 did miles an hour, and it can be very, very difficult to feel that they can really get off that wheel. So add to that some of the symptoms that you know Pauline mentioned earlier, just add menopause on top of normal, everyday stress. And you can really see what the average if there is such a thing, what the average woman is actually dealing with. So when you look at that you then think, okay, so all of that happens. But what why does it matter? Well, it matters because of that downstream potential effect on health issues. And that is really what the talk is about. And what we really want to avoid. It’s, again, is images said, we can think so close to home, we can think about our 30s and 40s. But the reality one day, we’re all going to be 50 60 70s. And we want to be fabulous, 50s 60s and 70s. So we want to make sure that this health is absolutely not caught up in Downstream of what happens when we are in stress mode. So when we do look at ourselves, as women hormones are really like thermostats, the regulate our body functions. And stress is probably one of the biggest hormone disruptors that we actually have. So if we look at that, it manifests on all sorts of areas, everything from it could be thyroid issues, it could be weight, gain, disrupted sleep, all of the things that have been mentioned before, digestive issues, low mood, no stress may not cause those things, it may be caused by other stuff, but it certainly can exacerbate and make it really harder. So the more that we can do to, I suppose support ourselves in the broadest possible sense. So much, so much the better. So for me, those stress reduction practices are really important. But they can be hard and not hard, because of difficult hard, because when we’re already emotionally off balance, then just taking on anything can feel like another demand on time that we already feel that we don’t have. And but the reality is, is that you can’t pour from an empty cup, get it all saying, but it’s so true. And sometimes you really just need to look, and you need to draw a line in the sand and make that commitment towards some self care. Now, a big flag can happen when I hear people saying things like, look, it’s not just me, this is life, we’re all the same. We’re all running like this. You just need to be careful of that. Because you’re almost then accepting that it’s okay to be stressed. Or you’re rationalising that it’s okay to be stressed. But the reality is, is that no, it’s not. Okay, it feels like this. And as I say, it’s not a great feeling to be in to begin with, and the potential downstream health issues can really, it’s just not what we want to go. So I think one of the biggest issues is, is that those boundaries between working life and even our personal life have become so blurred these days. And that was just exacerbated more and more during the pandemic. I mean, women were feeding families half past six and back on computers from half past seven till 11 o’clock at night trying to home school and do everything in between. The other thing as well as is that when you do look at things we are constantly available these days, so whether it is on the phone, on Facebook, on texts, on whatever, we are just overstimulated on some so many ways, which Emma touched on just a second ago.
But in amongst these hugely demanding 24 hour periods, we really need to put some time in for ourselves. And that’s, you know, that’s where I’m going to start wrapping up there. So when we look at it, we’ve got to find ways of downregulate not nervous system and trying to help ourselves, just get into a bit of a place of calm. Because when we are in a place of calm, you’ve got a better chance of maybe applying a wee bit more rational thought to how you’re feeling rather than being in this whirlwind of emotional overwhelm. So what I’m going to say to you doesn’t mean to say that you have to do this every single day and bring all of it because I think what was really relevant as well was Emma’s comment about things need to be embedded, and they need to be embedded and be made sustainable. Otherwise, that becomes the new year’s resolution. You’re gonna kill it all today, by February, it’s all gone. This is stuff that you really want to start bringing into your life in order to protect your life sort of going and going ahead. So three things I’m going to suggest to you that would be great for you to do really Simple, but you will probably see I don’t have time who’s got the time. The so simple, but they’re still considered fantastic stress busters. The first thing is walking, any form of exercise, but I’m looking at everything that I’m suggesting tonight is no cost. So no gym memberships, no nothing, oh, no cost. So the big one of the biggest ones, let’s just think about walking. And even if you start that 15 minutes a day, that 15 minutes is fantastic. And I mean, walking, not talking, you’re not on the phone, you’re not answering anyone, this is time for you. It’s just a bit, allowing yourself to be. And if you go from 15 minutes to half an hour or even longer, that’s even better. green space and a park better again, but ultimately get up that 15 minutes for you. So walking is number one. The second thing I would want you to highlight here is breathing exercises. And we might say but we all breathe, we do but we don’t breathe. Well, these days, we breathe so shallow. And we know that if we’re in a stress situation, you see people gulping, we breathe shallow in general terms. And yet, if we learn to breathe a bit more deeply, we can do a lot of different things, to calm the nervous system and do some great things for digestion and a lot of other stuff that goes on there as well. Now, we don’t have time tonight to go through those practices. So what I’m going to suggest you do is, is that you have a look online, and you might sort of Google, you know, breathing for stress, or breathing for sleep or breathing for whatever, and you will find lots of things on there. Another one to look at is the double breath. And that was first out there in the 1930s. And psychologists still use it today. And it’s something that you really feel it can sort of switch off that massive stress response signal quite quickly. So have a look for the double breath, as well. Great for calming the nervous system. And then the third one I want to talk I want to just suggest to you is connection. Because I think we’re losing connection. I think we are everything is we are we talk about talking to people and what we mean is we’ve texted them, and we’re losing that connection. Now I know that I’ve found myself in situations where I’ve maybe caught up with a friend, and we’ll have a coffee. And by the end of it we think God we need to do this more. Why don’t we do this more? Because we’re caught up with life and we’re all running at Mason wheels yet we’ve solved the problems of the world we’ve you know we’ve had a laugh with reminisced you name it, we’ve done it, and we don’t have enough connection. So get on a phone and make time for a cup of coffee with just somebody you want to have a chat with and actually just make it about you. So as I say three things, no cost to any of them walking, breathing, connection, but all of them are such part of just, I suppose feeling valued and feeling at one with yourself and with other people. And lastly, I’m going to leave you with two little hacks. First one, lavender oil got to be lavender oil, 100% oil, none of this lavender essence probably highly unlikely to be honest supermarket shelf. So lavender oil to three drops and upon Meaghan warm it up two or three deep breaths, and you actually will find yourself coming. That’s why it’s in all these products for pillow sprays, etc. Lavender is very, very good. And the second hack is an Epsom salts bath. No, don’t go for the fancy stuff. Don’t look at it, go for the three pound packet, big giant bag of Epsom salts and Chuck half of it in a warm bath. Now epson salts is full of magnesium, you’ll absorb magnesium. And magnesium is really renowned for restful sleep. And when you’re stressed and hormonal, restful sleep is a real priority. So yeah, get those Epsom salts into a bath. And that’s the night to have an early night. That’s not your bingeing on Netflix night. That’s your early night night. And I probably will wind up by just inviting you ladies to think about is there anything there that you could maybe introduce in the next 30 days? Because you know what, 30 days passes anyway. But yeah, the get to the end of those 30 days with no change. Or you get to the end of those 30 days, and maybe there’s just just a wee light at the end of the tunnel somewhere that you feel that you’ve prioritised you. And I think that is what’s really important because as women, we are so often at the end of the queue when it comes to just looking after ourselves and we deserved should be looked after. So, yeah, that’s for me. And I look forward to reading all these things that you’ve done in the group. And I hope you have some success there. Thanks for having us
as the bell, thank you so much. That was amazing. Again, I have been scribbling so many notes from you as well. And I don’t know about anybody else. But when you were talking about the breathing, who were so we’re also guilty of shallow breathing. I was like, notice I’m literally just breathing right here. It’s not even good. I was like, yes, you can breathe more deeply. You don’t have to just be all up here all the time. So thank you so much. That was absolutely brilliant. Okay, so next up, we have Dr. Claire McCauley, clear as an oncology doctor who treats people with breast cancer. She’s also a certified somatic sex educator who is passionate about supporting people to create the kinds of sex life that is right for them. Claire has a particularly interest in working with people who are in the perimenopausal or menopausal phase of life, whether naturally occurring or as a consequence of medical treatment. Claire’s focus for the session tonight will be vaginal pain and dryness in relation to sex and the menopause. So please step forward, Dr. Claire McCauley.
Hi, Laura. It’s lovely to be here. I’m here, hopefully to instil some pleasure into the evening. Because what I’m really mindful of is that often when we talk about the perimenopause, or menopause, it’s all about which shit and it’s this and they get hot flashes. And it’s that and all the rest of it. But actually, there is also a huge opportunity in this point in our lives to take stock to decide what’s important to us to take action, like we’ve heard from, from Emma and from Isabel, about how we might want to make our lives better for ourselves and actually to move ourselves up the pecking order of things that we pay attention to in our lives and actually move ourselves from sometimes beneath what the dog needs, at least to start moving our needs up. And my passion is about supporting people to have the sex lives that they want. Because pleasure is such an important and healing part of what it means to be a human. And often what we find is when people get to this midlife phase is that they’ve lost some connection with their sexual sales. The hormonal changes that we’ve heard about have an effect on the body that we’re going to talk well, I’m going to talk specifically about what happens in your pants. And also a big part of what I do is that we’re dealing with people’s sense of libido, or sex drive. But we’re going to focus today on pain because it doesn’t matter. I could fix your, your sex drive all you like, but actually, if it’s painful, you’re not going to do it anyway. Because who wants to have sex That’s painful. So but the point of all of this is really to be really, really clear that you could be having the best sex of your life right now, if that’s what you chose. Now, if you’ve been having shitty sex, that you don’t really want to be having the menopause gives you the perfect excuse to get out of that. I’m not suggesting that anybody should be having sex that they’re not enjoying. But the point is that there is a point this at this point in our lives, it gives us a choice to reprioritize what these things mean in our lives and what we want for our lives. And also to get back in touch with what our who our sexual self is. Because actually, at this point in our life, if we can be really in touch with our sexuality, it is our lifeforce energy, it is the thing that gets shit done in the world. And if you are getting to that point in your life, where you think, actually of the things I want to do here in the world, I’ve got, I’ve got a mission to achieve. I’ve got things I want to get done. I realise No, that actually life is short and precious than actually being in touch with your sexuality is a really important part of that. So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to show you I’m going to introduce you to this ability. This is Verity, my velvet vulva, I don’t go anywhere without my vulva. Well bring it you’ve married before Laura, it hasn’t been bringing her in is to highlight a little bit more some of the things that pulling spoke about in terms of what is actually happening. So we know that about 50 to 70% of people who are pre menopausal and menopausal will have some difficulty with their sex life. Okay, so let’s just think that in. If you think about a group of your friends see 10 of you together, at least five of you, of a certain age, are having problems in your sex life, but no one is talking about it. If that was erectile dysfunction, we would all be talking about it if we were talking about male sexuality, but there is this real difficulty I think sometimes about talking about sexuality, which is why I’ve become known as Dr. Dr. Fanning. That’s how I am known in the world because I talk about this kind of stuff all the time, because I think it’s really, really important that we understand what’s happening in our bodies. So if we look at Verity, and we think about what Pauline told us about dropping levels of oestrogen. The most exquisitely sensitive tissues in our body to oestrogen are the things in our pants. So we’ll start here. Imagine here, these are our outer labia. So these are the parts of our vulva that are usually covered in here or not, if you choose to remove it, but then we have our inner labia here or our inner lips. We have the little hood This is called the clitoral hood. This is the hood of skin that covers up the clitoris or the glands of the clitoris or the head of the purchase which is underneath. And then we have the vaginal vault itself here with the G spot in the front and between the As to your clitoris in your vagina represented by this little rose is our urethra. That’s where we pee out of you do actually have three holes in case we’ve made it to this age and we think up out of a vagina, you don’t. You have a separate hole here that’s called the urethra. Now, all of these structures and the things above it, so that’s your pelvic floor, and your bladder above that all of these tissues are exquisitely sensitive to oestrogen, they require a student to work well. And if at the perimenopause when your oestrogen levels are all over the place, and then through the menopause and beyond, when your oestrogen levels drop, these tissues start to die off. And I mean that they start to disappear. So one thing I would love people to go away with no is I don’t think anybody told you that your family may disappear. So first and foremost, let’s be really, really clear that these tissues will become thinner, the skin will be thinner, you might lose sensation in your clitoris, you might lose fullness, and the lips of your labia, all of those things, if you’re setting no going, actually, I kind of thought that but I thought it couldn’t possibly be true, it is absolutely true. And it happens to about 40 to 50% of people going through the menopause. So if nothing else, what I want you to know is that these things that are happening in your pants are real, your orgasms may be less available to you, they may not be as strong, you may not lubricate in the same way. And you may have less sensation and may take you longer to get to orgasm. If you get there at all. All of those things are absolutely happening to you, you’re not imagining them, there’s not something deeply wrong with you. It’s not something psychological, it’s actually physically happening in your body. So I’m gonna put variaty down because what that’s all great clear, but what we’re going to do about it is really what we need to concentrate on. And as Pauline described, there are many symptoms of the menopause. And many of the symptoms of the menopause will get better with time. So hot flushes may get better brain fog might get better fatigue and tiredness might get get better as we get through the menopause. But if you have this problem, which is called the genital urinary syndrome of menopause, or another term that’s often used is called vaginal atrophy. If you have that problem, it is not going to get better with payment of anything, it’s likely to get worse. So I want people to know this stuff early on, so that if they have some of this experience and they’re starting to lose sensation, or losing orgasm, or they’ve got pain, when you’re having intercourse, for example, or dryness, you’re not lubricating in the same way, then there are lots of things that you can do to help and it will not get better with time. So don’t wait. Okay. So there’s three main things that I want people to know about vaginal dryness, one that it’s real, and the three things that we can do to help. So the first thing is to split the categories of what we can do into hormonal methods that we can use to manage it, and non hormonal methods. So we’ll start with the non hormonal methods. First. We are of the age where you moisturise your face, you moisturise your fanny, it is no not negotiable. Okay? So we very often don’t have a relationship with this part of our body because we may never have had a relationship with this part of our body and a lot of the work that I do is about helping people to create a relationship with a revolver with their sexuality, so that we can take care of it because what we’re not in connection with, we’re unlikely to take care of so moisturising your vulva is no non negotiable. I’m sorry to sell you. And there are a number of different ways that you can do that you can use specialised for general moisturising products, and you can bind them over the counter there are actually some that you can get on prescription if you have this problem. But you can also simply use any edible oil coconut oil is my favourite but you can use sweet almond oil you can use other kinds of oils and that does do things. The one is that it moisturises and protects the skin and your and the rest of your genitals but it also helps you to create a relationship with your genitals to be mindful to take care of so that you can notice if there are any changes. So moisturiser specific vaginal moisturisers that you can buy or get on prescription or any edible oil. The second non hormonal aspect is about using loop now we’ve got a lot of societal conditioning around the fact that we should always be wet and you wish be able to make enough of our own lube, etcetera, etcetera. And somehow I feel quite shy you’re quite ashamed about lubrication it when you get to audit, it is non negotiable. It is one of those things that you need to find a way to incorporate into your self pleasure practice into any interactions that you might have with a partner with your partner or partners. So, thinking about ways in which you can use loops that feel good to you, because you should not be having painful sex. If you are having painful sex, that is a problem. And you need to get help with that problem. Because if it’s at this age, and it’s due to this problem, it’s unlikely to get better on its own. So finding ways to get good with look. Finding ways to incorporate it into your into your self pleasure. Practice your partner’s your practice with your partner your relationship with your partner that feels good. And think about using a loop that’s specifically designed for Manipal So Fanny’s. So there are certain things that we need to think about which is looking for a pH balanced. So you want to look for a pH balanced loop, the pH of our vagina changes as we age. And it goes from a more acidic environment to a less acidic environment. And we want to use loops that help promote that acidity. Because it changes when the pH balance that’s the acidity in our vagina changes as we age also changes the types of bugs that grow there. And that means that the bugs that can cause things like urinary tract infections can start to grow more readily in our vagina. And then it’s only a quick hop, skip and a jump to give us a UTI, for example, that’s why people tend to get more UTIs as they get older, because of all this problem, and because our urinary symptom is its system is more
susceptible to becoming infected. But also because the bugs that grow down it are changing as we age. The main treatment in terms of so those things will help with the symptoms, but they won’t solve the underlying problem, which is that your fanny is dying off because of a lack of oestrogen. We can use vaginal oestrogen is locally in the vagina. And that means that we can use small tablets that have oestrogen in them and or creams that we use in the vagina locally to help restore that vaginal oestrogen and help these tissues to recover to a certain degree and to stay healthy and it can be an absolute game changer for people. I have seen women who can’t sit down who can’t ride a bike can wipe themselves and vaginally student is extremely effective at treating this problem. Now, you can use the general oestrogen whether you choose or don’t choose to use other hormone replacement therapy HRT. You can use it along with HRT, and you could just use it on its own. If your main problem is in relation to the vaginal symptoms, and you don’t have lots of night sweats and hot flushes, then you can use vaginal oestrogen on its own it is supremely effective. And I would suggest that if you are if you are at home, you’re watching this and you think that’s me, please do not wait. Your GP will know all about it. It’s something that you can try. It takes about 12 weeks to have its best effect. But it can be an absolute game changer for people. And there are very, very few people who can’t have that treatment. And if you use it and it works for you, then you need to know that that’s likely to be a lifelong treatment well, as long as you want to have a functioning family for anyway. So understanding that the process by which that happens if you start thinking it works. If you stop again, the problem will come back because it’s to do with this lack of oestrogen. So that’s what I want to say to people dry findings are a real thing. Nobody will have told you about it. And maybe something you didn’t even know was coming for you. It is coming for one and two of us at this age. And it is hugely treatable. And please don’t wait. If you have it. There are lots of things that we can do to help.
Wow. I feel like my heart scoring. I think you really got me at your fanny, right disappear. I was like, wow, like drop, but actually, what was so positive about that was all the things that can be done, where you know that situation, or women that are feeling these symptoms that you’ve spoke about? So
and we don’t talk about it a lot of that support? Well, how would you know if you came on tonight? You didn’t know that? How else would you have known because no one is talking about it, which is why I became called Dr. Dr. Fanning, because that’s all I talked about. Because I want people to know you can make decisions. Once you know you can stop wanting once you know, you can take control of things once you know so it’s really really important that people understand that it is a real thing. Yeah,
totally. And knowledge is power. And I think you’ll forever been when in the GGC knows Dr. Dre Fanny, and also again never even mentioned the name of your business at the start. The pleasure possibility clear.
So the pleasure possibility is where we have these conversations. Anybody who wants to join us watching this or you’ve got friends, you’re welcome to come over. It’s a free Facebook group we talk about specifically about six and menopause and perimenopause and we’ll put the links below.
But oh yeah. Fabulous. Okay, great. We’re on an absolute roll now. So up next ladies, we have clear Hunter, clear hunter of clear Hunter consultant and apothecary clear prescribed herbal medicines for women struggling with hormonal imbalance during menopause. Clear helps women feel more in control by reducing symptoms like hot flashes or regular bleeding and sleep disturbances. herbal medicines can be used to help restore the nervous system reduce anxiety and nourish the adrenals helping to improve energy levels. Clear session tonight will focus on how herbal medicine support hormonal balance by working on the pituitary, liver nervous system and adrenals. She would also like to touch on botanicals that can be used to reduce symptoms associated with the menopause.
Thanks, Laura, appreciate that. Because it’s so interesting listen to everybody, I’ve been really enjoying that actually. So, I realised that a lot of people now are buying a lot of different herbal supplements over the counter. Women will be very aware of stage for hot flushes, but there’s much more to herbal medicine than just that. So there’s several different ways that we would approach the menopause from a hair bliss point of view. So it’s gonna five main ways we look at supporting somebody going through the menopause. So the first one is looking at hormonal tonics. So herbs or botanicals that can actually directly impact on our hormones. So number one is actually a plant called vytex, Agnes casters or cheese tubidy. And that works in the pituitary glands in the brain to actually regulate our hormones from the top down. And it can be really useful for women when they’re still menstruating is not so useful for people when they’ve stopped menstruating. So it’s when I wouldn’t really recommend it. But if your periods are irregular, if they’re very heavy, if they’re painful, if there’s any kind of imbalance in timing, so the I think one of the leaders were seeing earlier about how periods can be quite infrequent, then it can be very irregular, not coming for months at a time. Cheese tubidy can be really, really useful for that. There’s some other hormonal tonics as well, such as red clover and hops, which have fighter issues in them, which again, can help support the oestrogen level in the bodies. So phytoestrogens are weakly estrogenic. They fit into the same receptors that normal ECG oestrogen fits into and weekly stimulate the sale, which can actually be quite protective against exogenous oestrogen and protective against things like breast cancer, but they also help to give some support when oestrogen levels are low. So people can partake in these types of herbs around about perimenopause and menopause tend to kind of supplement their own natural oestrogen production, I wouldn’t generally recommend those types of herbs if somebody’s taking HRT, because really, it’s kind of pointless at that stage that the HRT is going to be much more dominant. So I wouldn’t necessarily be using those herbs at that point. So another way we look at herbal medicine, supporting the body would be how we can use herbs to work on the liver. So the liver does over 500 functions, I think in the body, and during menopause, there’s even more required overleveraged during this time to beat down hormones and balance the hormones, their livers involved in energy function. It helps keep blood glucose levels stable and helps us synthesise hormones as well. So when we’re looking at this organ, being on depression, around a bit of menopause, we’re wanting to take liver tonics. So I think most people are me have heard about milk thistle now, milk thistle is what we call our liver trophy or restorative, so actually helps to restore library sales. And it’s detoxifying as well. So it helps the liver improve its function, but also help build up the liver to work as effectively as it possibly can do it again. So it’s a great one to ask women, if they’re alcohol tolerance is kind of going downhill. If you get off flush when you’re having a glass of wine. Or if you’re just getting crushed in hangovers, or headaches after drinking alcohol milk, this is a really, really useful herb. There’s other liver tonics as well dandelion roots. So if you suffer from constipation, dandelion roots a bit of a better tonic, and helps to increase bail production stuff in the stills and increase their bell motion. So that can be quite useful. People are more in a sluggish side. And then there’s lots of other better types of hair as well, that we can have that can be really quite beneficial and better foods in general, again, eating those can help support liver function. So they will be looking at how we can actually minimise and reduce stress levels in the body. And this kind of splits off into two areas. So we’ve got nervous system herbs, and we’ve got adrenal tonics. So the nervous system helps our nervous system Topher restoratives, again, it helped in nourish and restore the nervous system. And I always think of it like a nervous system view like a rope. So when we’ve been under long term stress and strain, this rope is under pressure, and it comes quite frayed, and it can end up being quite fragile. So nervous system restores, has rebuilt that strength in our system. And we’re not able to necessarily take away the stresses and strains that are in our lives, but we’re able to handle it a lot better. So we’ve become more stronger, more resilient. I think. I think Isabel was talking about how, during around a bit of menopausal pain in the puzzle team, we really are very, very stretched. We have somethings all the parents that are caring for we’ve got children and are at the pinnacle of our career and letter or just being pulled and stretched in all different directions. So these types of herbs can come in be really useful in terms of building resilience and strength and help us actually withstand these pressures and strains. So a lot of people will heard of some of these herbs. So St. John’s Wort ‘s are a real well known one now. And it’s a great herb. It’s often known as an antidepressant, but it does much, much more. So as I see it, it builds resilience, it actually improves energy levels. It’s an analytic care, so it reduces anxiety. It also has some other functions as well. So it’s an antiviral. So if you’re prone to cold sores, and other types of bugs with from viruses, it can be quite useful in building your system back up again. But there’s other ones too, because JOIN US war is a bit of a problematic help for people and it’s something that everybody should be aware of, because it has quite a lot of contraindications and interactions with medications. So if you’re on an SSRI antidepressants, you shouldn’t take it because it can actually cause too much serotonin in your system and cause serotonin syndrome. So you don’t want to take it if you’re already on enhanced presence. You don’t want to take it with any medication or you have to have a specific level in your blood system. So if you’re on lithium, if you’re on warfarin, or the concept of Pell, do not take St. John’s Wort because St. John’s Wort actually increases the face to liver enzymes and clears these medications out of your body too quickly. And so you won’t have the effect of levels in your system to for them to be therapeutic. So please be aware if you’re wanting to take our nervous system restorative and you’re on certain medications, check with your GP, check with the herbalist make sure they’re safe. It’s a it’s a very good thing. However, there’s other nervous system resources you can take which are very safe. So skullcap, which is very similar to St. John’s wort, but without the interactions. And then there’s good old sports. So this is where we come into herbal medicine actually crosses over into foods state plants. So even eating porridge every morning, it’s full of B vitamins, which is great for the nervous system. It’s great for bouncing blood sugars, it’s very Belding restorative, but actually helps to support your energy levels as well. So that’s a nervous system. The adrenal glands are very important. These are two glands that sit both the kidneys, and the produce your journal and your cortisol, your stress hormones. Now remember, under pressure and strain, the adrenals are having to work quite hard. And if we’re under streams that are consistent and long term, the adrenals can become a bit depleted because they’re constantly producing adrenaline and cortisol. So if you’re thinking that you might be in this category, looking at having adrenal tonics in your daily diet, or your lifestyle, Tikkun omega can be really beneficial for helping to restore the genomes. So these are the heritage herbs, I would class eyes apoptogenic tonics and again has become hugely popular, kind of almost to this, this stage. They’re changing they which I find that to holiness, because when I started herbal medicine, when I got involved in the industry when I was got us going back a bit 2025 years now, people just thought what we’re doing now everybody’s taking mushrooms and you know, CBD and ginseng and you know, all these other things. I just think like, yeah, okay, I’m not quite a weirdo anymore. So gin and tonics are a classic Hz likes and beauty and Gen saying there’s rhodiola, which is again, changing quite heavily just now. And liquorice is another one. So with these types of herbs, they are developing additional energy levels. So if you think about her a cup of coffee or a can of Coke, if you drink that stuff, and your gives you that energy gives you that boost, but there’s always that crash afterwards. You know, it’s not going to give you that kind of long term energy that you need. The herbs like a gentle tonics, they work quite slowly, but they do really helped build up your foundational energy levels are great for kind of fatigue, chronic fatigue, long lasting tiredness and around a bit of menopausal years, this can be a real issue. So it’s something you take a load off at long term, you’re really looking at what kind of four to six weeks minimum, and more like three months, that it can be really beneficial in terms of just supporting your body against the negative impacts of stress.
So the other things I want to think about or talk about today is really how we focus on reducing symptoms of the menopause. So as a classic things like night sweats and hot flushes, so sage, regular sage that you can buy in supermarkets, that is a key hair pure, it’s very killing on the system, it helps actually reduces anxiety as well. There’s another one called Black cohosh, which some people might have heard about. It’s got a little bit of a reputation sometimes on the internet because there was some adulterated herbs going around which actually caused the liver damage so you do have to be careful but where you’re buying your herbal products from China getting from a reputable source Hi, again blackwash can equate useful bitcoins worth a lot of herbs, they actually do not just one thing, but several different things like cohosh is great for night sweats for hot flushes. Fantastic for joint aches and pains. But it also has their own zeolitic property. So it helps to calm the body down or just anxiety. Other symptoms that people might come across, which should be mentioned tonight, as well brain fog, per memory concentration, there’s a range of herbs for us. Now, when somebody’s having issues, hot flushes, you don’t want to go for something like rosemary, which is a classic herb for memory and concentration, because it’s quite heating and the system is a cyclic Teutonic and we do not want any more heat in the system at all. So we’re going to go for herbs, which have got more of a killing nature. So we’ve got things like water cooler, and Bacopa, which would be for supporting memory and concentration. I also want to kind of just touch on the mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms. They’re so fantastic. And again, a lot of them are actually very good for a brain capacity lines mean specifically has actually been shown to help people have had a neural speak tonight, damage, brain damage and prevent against things like Parkinson’s and dementia. So if you have these things near family history, again, maybe taking these type of herbs earlier on, you can allow those long term can equate preventative in terms of your keeping these familial conditions that be so other issues, we look at our low moods, obviously mentioned anxiety, again, the nervous system restoratives can be quite useful for that St. John’s wort, but there’s a range of other things skullcap that I mentioned. And Rhodiola actually is an adrenal tonic, great for lifting mood. But there’s there’s lots of other herbs as well. And it’s worthwhile. This is why you can buy lots of things over the counter that you can end up sitting there with lecture like 10 different bottles, and you’re taking all these different supplements you’re rattling is so useful to actually speak to her boss because they can then see where you’ve got this symptom, you’ve got that something, you’ve got these other symptoms, I’m going to prescribe these maybe five or six different herbs and put it in a bottle for you and create a formulation of formulation specific for your needs. Which when you’re kind of overwhelmed when you’re dealing with lots of different issues can be really helpful. So other problems that women can sometimes have are your excessively heavy periods. And one of the ladies who was first talking mentioned about how difficult it can be when you’re experiencing menopause or flooding. You can’t leave your house because literally you can’t actually control the flow of blood. And obviously this can be dangerous at some points, you can actually lose too much blood it’s medical emergency. So you do need to be aware of it. How much blood are you you’re losing, but there is a stringent tonics, that herbalist can prescribe where you can get over the counter as well, such as shepherd’s purse by the bathrooms, which can be taken throughout the course of the month or in higher doses around about your period of time which can be really useful and reducing heavy bleeding, there’s obviously a doctor can give you a doctor from that as well. But if you want to try a more natural approach, there certainly herbal medicines for that. So just a wee note on if you’re going to take care of medicines, just always check if you’re on any medications already that there’s no interactions or contraindications or some herbs which you need to be careful with that. And then just a wee aside as well when usually see herbalist sometimes get prescribed some supplements I don’t know if anybody else is talking about that tonight, but just want to mention for bone health being on a supplements such as cut calcium, magnesium and boron can be really good for helping to maintain calcium levels in the body and deposition into the bones. As long as it’s combined with weight bearing exercise even things as well seeing walking regularly your exercise combined with diet and supplements you really have to look at all all things they are then looking at your vitamin D as well in Scotland, we tend to cover it up a lot you know we tend to wear a lot of SPF and our makeup so making sure we actually have vitamin D either in our diet or supplements and then we got oils too so making sure we’re lubricating our bodies through our diet oily fish nuts, seeds, avocados, or chicken and Omega oil supplement to help lubricate our systems from the inside. Because all these things that mentioned in the really useful at balancing hormones and these new oils again, a really good at supporting that hormonal balance. It’s just about looking all these different areas that we can kind of tie in together and bring and it’s kind of full package when we’re looking at herbal medicine diet and supplements.
Absolutely brilliant Claire thank you so much for this and am I right in thinking you work from a GP practice and park circus? Great me, bro. Yeah, and you offer video consultations as well don’t you? Great because from lesson to all that it definitely sounds as though it would be good To come to herbalist like yourself, and actually get something completely tailored to what a woman’s going through with our, with our journey.
Yeah, I think it works better that way. Because a lot of people can try things over the counter and they might try one or two things or maybe not for long enough, there’s some things that go off, it doesn’t work. But usually you’ll get a kind of protocol from a herbalist and they’ll tell you kind of how long to stick stick with it as well. Because this was a very whistlestop tour tonight. There’s a lot of stuff in there. And you know, there’s a lot of stuff on the internet as well people can read about but yeah, it’s there’s definitely worth melting horriblest
but are we okay, well thank you so much for for that. Okay, so last but certainly not least, we have got the fabulous gene Phoenix or through our candidate journey and chats tonight we’ve been focusing kind of more largely on the physical aspects of menopause. But now we’re going to come on to the more kind of mind aspects mindset aspects of menopause So, Jean FANTIC, a founder of enter wealth coach as an award winning midlife empowerment coach, certified mindset coach hypnotherapist and founder of the Inner Wealth coaching. She helps women 40 Plus thrive through perimenopause and the challenges of med leaf. Gene understand what’s it like to have a difficult time and perimenopause, she felt that she was going mad. Unable to take HRT, she explored alternative methods to cope with her brain fog, anxiety and low self esteem, no postmenopausal she enjoys life to the full using her own experiences and learning to help hundreds of women globally step forward. Jean.
He thanks very much, Laura, thank you very much for having me here. I have thoroughly enjoyed this evening. And I’m just hoping my internet connection stays okay, because it lost stability throughout a little bit. But wow, this has been fantastic. And, you know, so many takeaways, I’ve made loads and loads of notes and the thing that really resonated with me as a postmenopausal woman and I went through my pain and my menopause 15 years ago, so, but a lot of years post menopause. And I’m just sitting here absolutely thrilled that how much knowledge is out there for younger women today? It is it is just mind blowing. And, you know, I came across an interest in fact, a couple years ago when I was doing some menopause awareness work for organisations and that was you know, this term, perimenopause was coined. I don’t know who knows this. But it was coined. I certainly didn’t know it back in the 1930s. By two gynaecologists, you know, who knew? I don’t think my mother you. And she was born in 1934. And I certainly didn’t know when I was going to do my perimenopause. It just wasn’t a thing. And it’s only in these recent years that we’re getting all this amazing information out there to help us deal with cope with and have the knowledge and the tools to be able to transition. So, but I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about mindset. And I’m here to talk about hypnosis, because I’m a hypnotherapist, and I want to very, very briefly talk about how we can use her mindset to help us transition through perimenopause journey and beyond. And very, very briefly, I’m just going to describe just a couple of things we need to know about the mind and the brain. Some of you may know them already. But you know, our brain is a really complex organisms, it’s probably the most complex organ in our bodies. So when we look at mindset work, it helps really just to break the mind down into two key components. So I’m just gonna talk about the conscious part of your mind, which is the logical thinking part. The one that makes decisions, the one that will help us set goals and basically do life, get our Excel spreadsheets together, etc. And then the rest of our brain which is our unconscious brain broken down into very many different components, but let’s just call it conscious brain unconscious brain. And that unconscious part of our mind runs 90% of what happens for us so 90% of our behaviour 90% of a reality is controlled by our unconscious mind. And our unconscious mind is the seat of emotions, it’s the seat, have all of the experiences, every single thing that’s happened to you up until today, is stored there in the unconscious mind. And the hypnotist can get in there and find out. You know, people can say, remember all their phone numbers, you know if they’re on stage? Well, the type of hypnosis we do, of course, isn’t that type of hypnosis, but knowing that so much of our reality is controlled by our unconscious mind, which runs all over beliefs are the overthinking all of your values of stored there. And having a wonderful way to be in charge of your unconscious mind is where mindset work comes in. So essentially put mindset work does is it transforms the way that you do life. So it’s more than some people will think of mindset work. And they’ll immediately think, Oh, well, you know, it’s positive affirmations, isn’t it? And it’s, you know, positive thinking and law of attraction and manifestations. And you know, all of those tools are very, very common within mindset work. And they’re all excellent tools. But the truth is, that nothing happens to change your mindset. Unless one, you make a decision that there’s something you want to change. So you have to make a decision to want to change anyway. And I think that’s absolutely crucial. There’s nothing will happen until you make that decision. And secondly, the great tool to use and mindset is using the power of intention, using the power of awareness, and actually being really, really conscious, what it is that we’re planning to do each day. Because the truth is, that we’re ruled by the past. Everything that has happened to us up until now, has been running how we do life. So unless we make a decision to change, and then intentionally choose some of the habits, behaviours, tools that have been shared here tonight, then nothing’s actually going to happen. So I love visible that you said, you know, the 30 day rule, you know, make a plan, actually decide what you want to do. Because those are the first things that have to happen, the decision, and the choice to live intentionally, because that will help create us what we what we have in our minds today. Because the other great news about mindset is it isn’t fixed, it’s malleable. And we can change our mindset. And the way that we do that is by learning to change. Some of the key drivers have a mindset. So our beliefs, or thoughts, or beliefs will drive our thinking and our thinking or drive your emotions and how you’re feeling. And that will create your reality, what shows up with you your behaviour, how you are in life. So mindset will change your perspective on life, it will change how you show up. So as far as the menopause experience scores, let’s bring it into menopause now. So there’s really good research out there that shows that how we experience the mindset is very, very much based on type of beliefs that we have around mindset, and the thinking that we have our own mindset. And I think it’s quite incredible to know that then this western culture that we live in which mindset in a very, very different way from some of the other cultures, specifically, some of the Eastern cultures. You know, for example, you will know probably that in China, they call the menopause, their second thing, you may not know that in Japan, they didn’t have a word for hot flush. There was no such word for hot flush, because Japanese women weren’t experiencing hot flushes. So some journalist did some research on the west, and came up with this fabulous word, or two words together, how to flush Euro, how to find shooter is Japanese for hotflush because the women in Japan just weren’t experiencing it. So where are we how are we imagine and our beliefs on anything in life, but on our menopause will have an effect on it. And in societies where older, wasn’t better, or society were older, brings so many negative connotations. And we’ve talked about some of those already this evening, then what we need to do with mindset work is to flip them because our mindset creates a reality. So what we’re believing, we need to look at, what what am I believing, you know, what am I believing about? But being older? You know, my believing the old stories about being over the hill, this is it, you know, I’m ageing on past it, you know those old stories that run very, very deeply within us, things that we might have picked up from, you know, grannies Auntie’s or other women around us, you know, challenge those beliefs. You know, have a good think about them first deck for them, challenge them and change them and reframe them because we can change those beliefs that we have. Think about what you’re saying to yourself about perimenopause, what you’re saying to yourself about your symptoms, or God You know, this is awful, it’s dreadful, I’ll never, you know all that negative stuff, which naturally comes up in our head, when we’ve got pain, when we’ve got discomfort when we’re not getting to sleep at night, you know, the stress, particularly that they were under, can drag us into that negativity. But you know, we do live, as has been explained a third of our life postmenopausal. Hopefully, I’m going for a bit longer than that. And so it’s really, really important that we manage to find a way to reframe those beliefs, thoughts, all the all the old past conditioning, that actually run us in terms of what is happening for us in our life. So we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the knowledge from this evening. So I would strongly say my tips are to be you know, make that decision, that you’re actually going to do something with the information that we’ve been given. Make a decision that you want to be really intentional, but how you go about your day.
And think about challenging yourself, whenever any of those negative I call the mind monkeys come in, when any of those mind monkeys come up, just see if you can catch yourself, you know, it takes you can’t do it straightaway, it takes time takes a wee bit effort. But just see if you can get maybe just a wee bit better at catching yourself falling into that negativity, a little just practice, because practice is what helps us build muscle. And we build muscle in our brain because we are, we’re making new neural connections here. So just as we’re building muscle in the gym with Mr. Think about how we’re building new neural pathways in our brain, by choosing to create better beliefs for yourself, and choosing to talk about ourselves and talk to ourselves in a much more positive, helpful way. You know, heading menopause, this transition, it’s a natural process. And the good news is, it is not forever. And the good news, we can do it. And we can take control, we can take control back. And I love the quote by Keith newer, she wrote a book called everything you need to know about menopause. I mean, there’s so many menopause books out there and just know that, but she said, you know, the menopause should be about a metamorphosis. It shouldn’t be boat misery. So, you know, let’s reframe. Let’s reach it, let’s change, you know, challenge our thinking, and think about metamorphosis, or transition into the women who are bringing periods, free of horns, you know, free of all of that stuff. And now able to step into this random new period of our lives where we have a choice to be whoever we want to be. And we can actually create that through our beliefs and our thinking. So that’s just a wee bit about mindset. And that chapter that we’re moving into, you know, that invitation really to you all, to get off autopilot, and start to live intentionally. But let me talk now about hypnosis just a little bit to wrap up. But hypnosis and how that can help a lot of people when they come to me say, Well, I don’t want to be hypnotic hypnotised, because I don’t want to give, give away my control. Or what we don’t know is that we are in trance, without even knowing it. Most of the time. Whenever you watch a film on TV, or you know, read a book, even we’re going into a completely different state of mind. And we are in a trance more than we realise it. And so to be able to get into hypnotic state is really, really simple. And it takes just a very, very slight transition to get into hypnotic state. Now, if you want to work with hypnotherapist, then there will be tools they’ll use to take you into what we call an induction which will take you into deep hypnotic state. And all we’re doing is getting a message to that part of your unconscious mind that your logical part wants to say, No, we’re not going there. Because you’ve got part of your brain that will say no, no, no, we don’t want to do any change and because we actually quite like it how it is because we’ve done that for donkey’s years. And a hypnotherapist will just help you get past that critical factor and help give really strong positive messages to your unconscious mind that it’s time to change. And here’s the thing, hypnosis has been scientifically proven to be able to reduce the symptoms of hot flashes. We call them the vasomotor symptoms, hot flashes and night sweats by up to 74% and clinical trials, which is massive. And the way that we do that is by going In really, really clear messages, your unconscious mind to be able to interrupt those patterns, the patterns of, you know, falling from the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system to be able to get that switch to happen really, really rapidly. And the other great thing that happens under hypnosis is your unconscious mind will be learning these messages. So they’ll be able then to help you access that state for yourself. So that’s all I really wanted to talk about this evening. Apart from to give you a couple of tips, one on sleep, hypnosis is brilliant for sleep. So if you want any hypnosis, meditations, or tapes or hypnosis, then just reach out on to the internet. There’s masses of those around, I’ve got one on my website. And, you know, I can give that free to anybody that attends here tonight, I’ll, I’ll give that for you sleep hypnosis. If you know, Laura, you want to make a note of that. And the other thing is that you can learn to do a technique called self hypnosis. So you can learn to take yourself into the similar state of deep trance on a self hypnosis journey. And I’ve got a PDF that I can give out on self isn’t self hypnosis that might help you as well. But just to round up, there’s just been such amazing information, knowledge, tips, hats here this evening, I would just like to thank all of the other panel members, and especially to you, Laura, for getting this whole thing together this evening. It’s been great. So thank you.
