Latest / Empower Your Menopause / Episode 5: Hot Flushes & Cold Realities – The Menopause Symptom Rollercoaster

Transcript

Episode 5: Hot Flushes & Cold Realities – The Menopause Symptom Rollercoaster · Empower Your Menopause

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine waking up one day feeling like it's strange within your own body, night, sweat, stretch your cheeks, brain forecloud your thoughts, and even your favourite foods feel like they're starting to betray you.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is it stress?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is it part of aging?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Are you in the menopause transition?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is something else going on?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: So join myself and my colleague Julie today as we unravel the mysteries of perimenopause and menopause and empower you to reclaim your own well-being.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we're going to go straight in today and talk about symptoms and symptom management so we can get a better grip on things.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because Julie, I don't know about you, but the number one thing that I get asked often by people who aren't even our clients is how the heck do I know if I'm in perimenopause or menopause or not?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked about the actual menopause day on our first episode where we said menopause is 365 days after your last period, providing you're ovulating normally and you have working sex organs.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a pretty straightforward sort of like lying in the sand that I'm pre-menopausal before that, postmenopausal after it, but I suppose the big question is how do we know when things are starting to go wrong?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: How do we know when this nebulous idea of the perimenopause starts?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: We know it starts around ten years before the actual menopause transition itself.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I suppose that's what we're going to dive into today.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wondered if we could just get some initial thoughts on you on the topic before we move on to diving in deep into it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this has been a really interesting journey for for me personally, and of course, for for my clients as well.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because there isn't a test that we can take to confirm paramenopause.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a collection of symptoms and experiences that we have, and unfortunately, our medical um teams don't know a whole lot about it at this stage.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's more information coming out, but the research is pretty limited, and a lot of the symptoms can be fairly nebulous, so they might be attributed to part of aging, they might be attributed to some other health condition.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and sometimes I think it's easy to get marginalized and set aside.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know I certainly was by my doctor, thinking I was just whining and complaining for nothing in particular.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not at all true because those symptoms are real, and sometimes we don't even understand what they are and what's happening.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we know the common ones, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um these these things are I guess what you would say the standard menopause symptoms if there is such a thing, because we all experience this transition differently.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the symptoms can be very vague and strange and really seemingly unrelated to menopause.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that they are very related to menopause because estrogen performs so many different roles within our bodies.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it communicates with our nervous system and affects how our brain functions and how our circulation functions, and even the production of certain feel-good hormones like um serotonin and uh dopamine.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it also has a lot of protective effects in in other parts of our bodies and and there are estrogen receptors everywhere from our inside of our gut to inside of our lung tissue.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there are a lot of different symptoms that that people don't relate to menopause that are very related to menopause, and I know that can be frustrating when you don't understand what's going on with your body.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we can talk about those more specifically, but that's kind of the overview because it's like, ah, where do I start?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose one of the challenges is of course that you can't just do a test that tells you that you're there.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because, as we know, estrogen, when a woman hits perimenopause, it doesn't just steadily gradually go down in a nice line that you can map on a graph that would give you sort of like a nice steady slide out of being able to reproduce.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more um up and down than that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a huge boost of estrogen and huge falls in estrogen.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is what causes many of the of the symptoms.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, we do quite high-level blood testing that we can do with our clients to actually dive into these kind of things, but it doesn't really tell as much about estrogen and progesterone levels other than a snapshot on that particular particular day.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that is why when people say they can balance your hormones, it's a it's a really ambiguous statement.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking earlier, just before we start, just reminding myself here in the UK we have an organisation called NICE, which is the National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical and Clinical Excellence, and they have various standards that GPs use to diagnose various things.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that they recommend looking at is um a hormone called follicle stimulating hormone, because that can give you an indication of what they call your ovarian reserve, you know, how many eggs have you got left?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Can you continue to reproduce some things?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: But even that can only give you a kind of sort of like indication, and only later on towards the actual menopause itself.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, you know, one of the main symptoms that we tend to forget when we talk about all these other things that rage, hot flushes, and night sweats and brain fog and things like that, is quite simply the first symptom you're most likely to notice is a change in your menstrual cycle.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it can shorten, it can lengthen, it can get heavier, it can get lighter.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is tends to be the first thing that I'd be looking at when it came to an actual physical symptom that you know a woman can record that in a diary somewhere, and um after 30-40 years of having periods will be quite familiar with the usual cycle and then may be able to map something from that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, throw in something then like a marina coil or oral contraception or whatever it may be, and again, it's a whole different picture because often then women aren't menstruating, or if they are, they're menstruating very, very lightly, and so it's really really challenging.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was talking to a lady I know the other day, she's 48 years old, she's likely been in perimenopause for a while, like it, likely heading towards the day of menopause, but has no idea because she's on the pill, so she's taking a an oral contraceptive at 47, and so what do you do then?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you likely have to stop taking it for a while.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Use some kind of other method of birth control and see if your periods return return naturally.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, that again is affected by the fact that quite often when we stop taking or a woman stops taking oral contraception, it can take three, five, six months before her cycle sets settles back down into what it would be would be normally.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, but that's where I'd be starting out looking.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if um Yeah, like sorry, go ahead.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I was gonna say I I can relate to that because I was on um oral contraceptives for well over twenty years into my late forties as well.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when and I had been in peramenopause not knowing it, and when we stopped it, it was interesting because everything for me just fell off a cliff and and I suddenly had all of these massive symptoms.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the strange thing was I had never had regular cycles, not even on the birth control pills.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I stopped and got the closer I got to my menopause day, the more regular my cycles became.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it it we just don't know what's going to happen.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it it does definitely have a big make a big impact on our on our health.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, when we start thinking about we we make jokes about, oh, I've you know, got some timers, we call it, because I I get more forgetful or I um I just can't seem to think of words that are familiar to me sometimes or I can't make sense of things that I that I know I already know and understand.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That that brain fog I think is a a big one that comes on pretty suddenly.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be scary for some people because early onset dementia is becoming more and more common.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many different lifestyle factors and health factors involved in these symptoms, which is another sort of confounding factor, if you will, that that makes it difficult to to know um is this in fact perimenopause related.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it but but even more than that, I think one of the things that we don't understand or realize is that some of these symptoms start out maybe fairly mild and then they start to compound on each other.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, you know, maybe even over the course of a year or two, we just think, uh something just isn't right.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: We go to our doctor, and our doctor's like, no, you're perfectly fine, your blood work is perfectly normal.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course they're not doing functional blood work, they're doing standard blood tests that don't really measure anything that's very meaningful.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um certainly not as it relates to to menopause.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and so these things can compound, and then one day you just feel like and certainly this was my experience and the experience of many clients that I've worked with, is that suddenly you just think, Am I losing my mind?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when did these things start to happen to me?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is are they interrelated?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't you know, you just don't put them together.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a puzzle piece um that fits in nicely and neatly.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as you said, there's no gentle gradual line.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's this it's probably if you plotted it out for most women, if there was a way to do that, it would probably be the world's most dangerous roller coaster ride.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess what we could do then is start taking the main symptoms one by one and just go through those and reiterate what they are.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Most people will be familiar with them, but I think it's worth just talking about the things that can exacerbate them, may help them.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then and then we can go on to some of those ones that are less known.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's worth just saying as well before we move into the symptoms, that we talk about this a lot with the members of Club Fabulous Beyond 40, our membership group.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: That quite often there are other factors at play that can mimic some of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So things like irregular blood sugar balance, which occurs anyway as soon as estrogen starts to fall.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the symptoms of that, you know, angst, anxiety, all those kinds of symptoms come with come with blood sugars shooting up and down as well.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the stress as well, which just exacerbates everything and makes it all worse.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But why don't we start then, given that you're in a heat wave over in Italy, we're in a mini heat wave here in the UK, so I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty warm.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't we start with those vasomotor symptoms?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hot flushes and night sweats then.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So talk to us a little bit about those.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember when I had my first hot flush, I was um I was in a ski lodge.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: We had just arrived in Italy, and I was in a ski lodge, middle of the Alps.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like we had to take a snow cat to get up there.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were at such high elevation, so everybody was bundled in lots of um layers and jumpers and scarves and things, and we were sat around this huge table and um having a beautiful meal, and suddenly I just had this sense of foreboding wash over me.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like something was really wrong.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't put my f my finger on it, like I I just stopped and put my utensils down because something just really wasn't right.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then I my heart started to pound, like I was having I've I don't know that I've ever had an anxiety attack, that's what I would imagine one feels like.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I started getting short of breath, and then it seriously, it felt like it was from the tips of my toes that the temperature just started to rise up my body, and by the time it got to my chest, uh I don't know I was I was somewhere else out of my body at that point.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I got I jumped up from the table and I walked to the front door of the restaurant very quickly, and I was peeling off layers of clothing as I went.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I got outside standing in a camisole top in the middle of the snow, just a camisole top in my jeans, and I looked down and I had all these clothes in my hand and thought, What happened?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some some of the women came out and uh and said uh one lady put her arm around my shoulders and said, Honey, I know exactly what's going on.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What's happening to me?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had to have it explained to me because I had no idea.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: After that, they got a little bit easier to navigate.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I could always tell when one was coming on because I had that internal, like everything just started to go faster.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then the heat just came up and out into my skin.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great the nice thing about if there is a nice thing about hot flushes is that you don't get cold in the wintertime.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you you can regulate those things through certain lifestyle changes, um, making sure you stay properly hydrated, um, avoiding heavily processed foods, minimizing alcohol and caffeine intake, and you'll know when they're coming on, so it's always a good idea to dress in layers.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly when you're a professional woman, say you're in the middle of doing an important business presentation or something, these symptoms can be um what I want to say, not disturbing, but they they can just be embarrassing and um unsettling for for women.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So understanding that this may happen to you, not all women go through this, and sometimes the hot flushes for other women aren't quite as intense as mine were, certainly.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I hope.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly if you're one of the lucky ones.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but knowing that that there are certain things that you can do um when those when those come on, especially after you've been through that first one, and you're like, oh, this is what they were talking about.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, isn't it?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because there is a difference in terminology slightly between the US where they're called hot flashes, and in the rest of the English-speaking world where they're called hot flushes.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And my understanding is that in America they're starting to categorize them as hot flushes as well, because the flash idea um paints this picture of something that's over with in seconds, and really it's a lot longer than that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It can be two, four, five minutes, can't it, for when one of these attacks takes place.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and one of the things this this kind of goes along with the hot flushes, but it and it also goes into the category of less common symptoms, but something else I also experienced was cold flushes.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So on the on the heels of the hot flush, it was like my body overcompensated and suddenly I felt freezing afterwards, and I was quickly putting all my clothes back on.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So so dressing in layers helps a lot, staying staying hydrated helps a lot.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was not looking after my diet properly at the time, which I'm sure would have made a huge difference.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had just arrived in Italy, so of course, wine, coffee, I mean some of the staple foods, pasta, some of the staple foods of Italy were were not my friends at that point.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but becoming aware that this may happen, and if you experience it, understanding what it is.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I I think for a lot of women it takes us by surprise, and especially if when you're in peramenopause, you think I'm too young to be having these things.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Menopauses for older women, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I so I've obviously never had a menopausal hot flush, but I have suffered from an anxiety attack before, which led to increased body temperature as well.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a business meeting, and it's probably one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me because you're visibly chatting away to somebody and suddenly your body temperature's up, you look like a beetroot, you're sweating, and I can imagine that that potential embarrassment, the distress that comes from that, can be quite a challenge for for women if it's happening on a regular basis.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It only happened to me once, but I found it quite a challenge from it from an anxiety from an embarrassment point of view.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd be interested to see what you think about that.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think this is where becoming your own advocate and and finding some flexibility, like petitioning for some flexibility in the workforce.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: We we are getting ourselves we are shortchanging ourselves by not insisting on policies that support this phase of life.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have we have policies around pregnancy and and child rearing and even lactation rooms in some of the more forward-thinking um companies that I that I'm familiar with.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: But but we don't have that kind of support.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So so being someplace where maybe you can regulate the room temperature, um, having some kind of a fan um available to your workspace, um having having the ability to wear layered clothing or more casual clothing, certainly that's that's comfortable to accommodate these fluctuations in in your body temperature.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um because we can't it's not like when we get our menstrual cycle, we don't know when it's coming.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course, as as I said before, the the the lifestyle and dietary changes I think can go a long way to minimizing the the impact of of those flushes, certainly.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got a couple of old one-on-one clients, they were using um a device called the Menopod, which is a small neck fan that goes around the neck.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think they cost around eighty or ninety dollars or something like that in the US, and then you need to obviously have it transported to Europe, so maybe a hundred pounds the equivalent of.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but they swore by them because it was something that was quite discreet, they could discrete, they could keep in their bag, and then if they were at work and uh felt something coming on, they could just pop it around their neck for a little while.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I know there's a brand of clothing, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a piece of my brain fog at work.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there there is a brand of clothing that makes menopause-friendly clothes.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sure there are more of them now than than there were years ago.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they they have uh good wicking materials in the fabrics that they use, so it helps pull that heat away from your body when you experience that.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you can you can wear something that's maybe more professionally professional looking without worrying about you know getting totally drenched.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I think we've talked hot flushes quite a bit then, um, and we're gonna overrun massively at this rate.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's um talk a little bit about if we can I know there are three or four different symptoms here, but I'm gonna kind of lump them into one for the purpose of this conversation and call it like cognitive impairment and mood disorders.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: So anxiety, mood swings, irritability, sleep disturbances, all those kind of things.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: If we could just speak to those low mood, you know, potential depression.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and I I think this is where self-care comes into play as a as a critical piece of of managing these symptoms, because again, I know a lot of clients who've been through it, have been through it myself.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when when you start to realize that these things are happening, um, there are some really great tools that you can use.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Journaling is a good one, and that helps in my mind that helps across the board with all of those things because you can put your worries on the paper and let let the paper take them from you when you're laying down at night and you don't need to let your brain spin around.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it helps with relaxation and sleep.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: It helps to practice, you can you can do a gratitude practice with your journaling.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: It helps to remind you that that there are some really good positive things in your life.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you have these mood swings, carve out some time for yourself to go for a short walk or take some quiet time somewhere if private if that's available to you.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Things like yoga and Pilates and and exercise in general are terrific mood boosters and also great ways to manage a number of different menopause symptoms.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for brain fog, for me, the best tool um that I I've recommended for my clients and used myself is is a uh planner to write down to keep track of appointments.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm old school, I like paper and paper and pen, but uh that that part of your phone, the agenda planner, time blocking, I think make makes for a really um handy and useful tool to help you remember things.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I and something else that seems um maybe not related to menopause, but very much is when it comes to to brain fog and and such cognitive impairment.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Keeping a tidy space and making sure that things have a specific place where you always put them.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're not constantly looking for your glasses or your keys or your phone or your handbag.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's simple steps that you can take, but it makes your life a lot easier because you don't have to worry about those little micro stressors adding up over the course of the day.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think getting to grips with time blocking and diarising and making sure that you're diarising time for yourself, whatever your choice of self-care routine may be, and even if it's on the five, ten minutes a day, I find that can have a massive, massive effect on clients because quite often the thinking is why is this happening to me?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, am I getting old?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Am I worried about getting old?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's it's a real challenge, and I think just trying to find that time and a really good starting point.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we do it again in the membership, don't we?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is we offer people that uh make time for me time time blocking buns, which gives you a way of categorizing the things that you've got in your life and allowing yourself to to diarise time, but also to make sure that you're not overloading yourself.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: You but people pleasing women seems to be a matter of course because women are caring and you know the PTA comes along, and it's yeah, can you help out the school fair or Saturdays?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's soccer practice.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can we share the lifts to soccer practice?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you just have to say no and do it graciously, and just preserve the time for yourself if if that's what you need.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And without guilt.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, financial planners were all will always tell you to pay yourself first, set something aside for yourself.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Every coach I've ever worked with, personally, professionally, has always said schedule your self-care time before anything else.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, any standing appointments that can't be moved in your diary, those go in, of course, but the the very first thing you put in is your time.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that needs to that needs to be at least as important as any of those other appointments that you that you keep.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't do it, who's going to?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's uh move on then to diving in a little bit deeper and a couple of those subjects that tend to cause some embarrassment when women are talking uh about them.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking about urogenital symptoms, things like urine, frequency, urgency, more uh UTIs, urine tract infections, and increasing those uh vaginal irritation, discomfort, burning, itching, dryness, all potential um symptoms or side effects of the menopause transition and all challenging, particularly if we'll probably go on to this one a little bit further down, but particularly if you're you're still in a loving relationship and you still want to have sex with your partner, it can make it all quite uncomfortable, can't it, when all these other things are taking place?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure, because all of those things, as you said, James, they they feel embarrassing, they're difficult to s to talk about because we're taught, you know, we just don't talk about anything down there.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um we're not I think sometimes we're not really sure who to talk to about those things.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but they are real, and I think being able to have an open conversation with your um OBGYN is a good place to start.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most general practitioners aren't going to be well rounded enough to have good knowledge in that particular area.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are actually um there are actually coaches.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I there's one lady I am following um who's a vagina coach and she has a certain um exercise method to help strengthen the pelvic floor.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are pelvic floor specialists that can help because uh you know, even urinary leakage at this point can can be an embarrassing and real thing that happens with women, especially if you've had multiple children.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't exercise our muscles down there as as uh as often as we probably could or should.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there and there are you know, as far as painful um sex goes, there are different lubricants that you can buy, there are different tools that you can buy to help with those things without feeling like you have to go run to the special specialty shop.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this these are real medical issues for women, and so they I think they need to be talked about a lot more openly because they are normal.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I that's probably the biggest thing to understand is that this is perfectly normal and it's okay to talk about it and to ask about it.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, but I'd recommend a water-based loop of vaginal moisturizer if if there were issues there.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Things like petroleum jelly and things like that aren't a good idea at this stage of life at all.
• 27:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, and they can ultimately be more drying, actually.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's worth um here just mentioning that you know if these issues have left have led to potential intimacy challenges with the with a partner, it's always best to try and have that discussion with the partner.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I know this is a challenging thing to do, but if you don't have the discussion, quite often what can happen is the partner can misinterpret that as a lack of interest, um, which then can cause all kinds of other problems as well.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I definitely think talking it through with a partner, and you know, once you've been with somebody for quite a long time, penetrative sex isn't necessarily the be-all and end all of a relationship.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: So encouraging kissing, cuddling, you know, touching, etc., can be a lot more um can revive that intimacy without it having to actually be something that is painful or difficult.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was that's exactly what I was thinking because it you know, intimacy means different things, and there are a lot of different ways to express it and explore it.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's okay, you know, whatever that might look like for you.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and that conversation is crucial for sure.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I think I think we've been through most of the main ones there.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about all the others then.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Things like joint and muscle pains, headaches, fatigue, um you know disturb sleep beyond just the hot hot hot flushes or the night sweats.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there there are quite a few, and and I'll I'll mention a couple of other ones.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um things that like changes to your body odor.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this doesn't mean that suddenly you you smell bad.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: It could just be changes to the way to the way you smell, changes to the way that creams and perfumes you put on your skin smell because of the chemical changes that are going on inside of inside of your body.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um when you get to those places where fatigue feels like and fatigue is different than tiredness.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, if if you if you're tired, you can usually get your energy back after a couple of nights of good sleep.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you're fatigued, no amount of sleep helps you regain your energy.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so fatigue kind of goes right down to your bones.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a time when self-care is going to be your number one priority.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be looking at your commitments and seeing where you can minimize things and set some boundaries for yourself and say no.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is this is a real this is a real issue.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you find yourself just trudging through your day, over time that's going to affect your quality of life, it's going to affect your relationships, it's going to affect your your job because it's going to combine itself with some of those other symptoms and really really be difficult to manage.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you start to feel that that you know severe bone-tired fatigue setting in, it's it's time to sort of re-regroup and uh take stock of what's going on.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I one of the things I love about this phase of life is that it is the ideal time to reinvent yourself.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So all of those things that you've been committed to for so many years, there's no rule that says you have to keep doing them.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's no rule that says you have to do these things for everybody else because you're not as important.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's just a bunch of BS.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: We you are you are the most important person in your life.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start treating yourself that way, and not from a narcissistic or egotistical point of view, but from a real self-love point of view, self-empowerment point of view, you will find that you have so much more in the tank for other people.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it is I consider it our number one responsibility to look after ourselves um during this phase of life, so that we can enjoy it for many, many years to come.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at your health care from a holistic point of view, we know that you know once a woman finds an appropriate HRT, if that is the way she wants to go, that that can help a lot with a lot of the symptoms.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: But also, there are a number of lifestyle symptoms that can help.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, meditation has been ch proven to help with hot flushes and anxiety, and you know we know that strength training can um help strengthen bones, which can be a challenge later on in life.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an actual symptom of menopause osteoporosis, but it is a potential issue that occurs down the line.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there are lots and lots of things from a lifestyle perspective that that women can do, which we talk about, and I'm sure we'll talk a lot about over the coming weeks as well.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of tools that we um will share with everybody in uh in the in the show notes.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, there is a clinically validated tool that is called a menopause rating scale symptom tracker.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so this has been devised by uh some scientists who've done loads of clinical studies over it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Julie and I have taken that and we've devised an actual Google Sheet where you can go on, you can rate.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just see, I've put it in front of me one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven groups of symptoms.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you group and you score them from zero, it doesn't apply at all to four, which is I'm experiencing it extremely severe at the moment.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've used some clever technology with Google to give you a totaliser, so at the bottom of it you can see what your score is.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'd probably recommend if you're if your symptom load is quite high, to do this maybe once a month and see, try and monitor and see what the effects are.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are trying to do some lifestyle interventions or you do go on HRT, it's your score changing.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the lower score you've got, the lower the symptom load will be.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll pop that in the show notes.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: We've also got uh a webinar coming up, which is the four four secrets to help you uh combat some of your menopause symptoms.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's four really easy changes that you can make to help reduce some of the symptom load.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing that so today is the 31st of July.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's a session tomorrow at uh 2 pm UK.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then we've got one early evening on Friday, the 2nd of August, and a third one later on in the evening on Saturday.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're giving up our Saturday night to help out with that.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if you would like to join that, it's 4secrets.fabulousbeyond40.com.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you can sign up, sign up to any of the three of those.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hopefully, you will hear this before we've actually done the sessions.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if not, no fear we'll probably do do the sessions again maybe in a month or two's time.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll come back to you on that if you do miss out this time.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but do try and sign up, um, and hopefully that will give you somewhere to go to starting out helping with your your menopause symptoms.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: But Julia, I'm not sure if you've got anything else you want to add before we sign off.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would also say that we're available, so leave us some comments below.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: We'd be curious to know what some of your symptoms have been, if there are any that feel like they they're being dismissed as not menopause related and you're wondering, um, or if you want to share with other people, because other women it helps to know that they're not alone in the things that they're experiencing.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: So sharing that with the community can really be helpful as well.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I would also say that if you're not able to attend one of the uh webinar sessions, still reach out to us because we can offer you a call to help you get squared away with some planning for your own symptoms, and we would love to love to help you with that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Fabulous.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's it for episode five.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: We will see you next time.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's been James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.