How to Manage the Menopause without HRT
Approximately 630 million women are menopausal and research indicates that 6,000 women in the States reach the menopause every day! This does not include the even larger number of women who enter the perimenopause every day, the long and sometimes challenging phase, which leads up to the menopause. For some women the perimenopause begins in their 30s when their hormones start to change. The term menopause comes from the Greek word pausis (cessation) and means "end of monthly cycles' and the root men- (monthly).
Each woman will experience ‘the change’ in her own way and, in her book Women’s Wisdom: Natural Wellness Strategies for the Menopause Years, Alexander highlights an exhaustive list of helpful strategies, including nutrition and herbs, meditations and imagery, flower essences, vibrational healing through quartz crystals, reflexology, and more. Celebrating a reconnection with natural life cycles, thought-provoking suggestions are explored for envisioning this profound change as a rite of passage, and not something to fear.
The advice in Alexander’s book enables individual women to use the treatments and tools that work for them rather than relying on hormone replacement therapy with its associated side effects and problems. Chemical or "natural" estrogen medication, in addition to being linked to cancer, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, also causes a serious disorder in body chemistry, especially in it's mineral balance. It raises the copper level and lowers the zinc level in the blood. Zinc deficiency can lead to depression and phychosis and the elevated copper contributes to the "blues" and moodiness associated with menopause. Thus, estrogen therapy is potential causing the symptoms it is supposed to correct !
During the menopause, women are often surprised to discover that it touches every aspect of their being, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Causing outworn beliefs and unhealed wounds from the past to come to the surface. Whilst the menopause can be challenging it is ultimately very rewarding, as this midlife metamorphosis allows you to reinvent yourself for the next chapter of life.
100 years ago the average age of women entering the menopause was 47 and the average woman's life expectancy was 49 years. Now the average woman enters the menopause in her early 50s but her life expectancy is 80, meaning she has 25 - 30 years post menopause.
“Anxiety, depression, sadness, difficulty concentrating, overreacting to minor upsets, anger, irritability, panic attacks, forgetfulness, and mood swings are all typical of the psychological issues we may face during the menopause years. Some symptoms will be hormone-related, while others are due to the changes in a woman’s life around that time.
Situations and life events that tend to crowd into a woman’s life in her late 40s and 50s include having to deal with caring for and/or the death of elderly parents, birth of grandchildren, children leaving home, divorce, retirement of self or partner, widowhood, and altered self-image due to aging. Other psychological challenges can include beliefs about no longer being useful, distorted body image, fear of death, feeling unemployable, low self-worth, and a sense of loss related to the end of fertility.” — from Natural Wellness Strategies for the Menopause Years.
Alexander’s book empowers the reader with the knowledge, skills, resources and support to embrace menopause with confidence, honour and ease!
Women’s Wisdom: Natural Wellness Strategies for the Menopause Years ISBN: 978-1-84409-566-7 £7.99 March 2012
Carol Shaw Publicity & Marketing Manager Findhorn Press tel: 01309 641576 e-mail: carol @findhornpress.com
Findhorn Press is an independent publishing house in northeast Scotland which offers books, sets of cards, cds and dvds that cover a wide range of 'mind-body-spirit' topics such as nature, spirituality, alternative health (for both people and for animals), self-help, etc. We publish under 3 different imprints: Findhorn Press, Camino Guides (which focuses on guidebooks for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella) and Earthdancer (holistic, mostly crystal, healing, and the nature/angelic kingdoms).
Growth, change, enthusiasm, support, flexible, relevant, engagement, spiritual and solving today’s challenges – this is Findhorn Press – yesterday and tomorrow!
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