A Menopausal Goddess Tries to Maintain

“Oomph,” grunts my husband lifting my suitcase, as we prepared to leave for a recent trip. “Why is your bag so heavy?” “Maintenance,” I reply.

In the post-menopausal period of my life, I find that I require a great many products, supplements, and emollients just to maintain a level of adequacy. I’m not trying to look glamorous or sexy; I’m simply trying not to frighten small children. Or myself when I happen to encounter a mirror.

For those of you who’ve followed the “hair thinning” saga, you won’t be surprised that I need to pack my special Nioxin shampoo and conditioner, my wide tooth comb and gentle brush, my two products to maximize curl, gel to help style the improved curls, a purifying rinse to get all the built up crap out of my hair from these tenacious cremes and sprays, and a special every-few-days industrial strength conditioner. That’s several pounds devoted to hair alone.

I need SPF 20 makeup foundation and powder, blusher, eyebrow and lip pencils, and lipstick. An additional special sunscreen is also needed for “outdoor” pursuits. For years, I didn’t wear makeup; now my skin is so sensitive to UV that I wear it for protection. A nice side benefit is that it smoothes out my skin tone and livens me up a bit.

Dryness is always a factor, these days. Even in Hawaii where there is a fair amount of moisture in the air, if I should skip a day of lubricants, my skin vaguely resembles an alligator handbag. (Faux alligator, of course.)

So, I need special non-drying soap and body wash, face cleanser, body lotion, and hand creme. I must take facial moisturizer, eye cream, and my favorite anti-wrinkle cream. For dry eyes, I pack artificial tears and eyelid wash. How many pounds of stuff are we up to now?

Ah supplements. Can’t forget my women’s multiple vitamin, my lo-dose aspirin to prevent heart attack, my Vitamin E, thyroid supplement, acetyl-l carnitine for memory and brain function (this stuff really works when I remember to take it), my calcium/Vitamin D chew, and my SGS defense herbs. And I require a jar of natural progesterone cream as well as my topical glucosamine cream to keep my joints nicely lubricated.

Finally, I’m ready to pack a few items of clothing and a couple of books.

Still, while my luggage may weigh more when I travel these days, I realize that this time of life has allowed me to jettison a great deal of other baggage. I’ve quit carrying along resentment, perfectionism, martyrdom, victim states, feeling inadequate, unfocused longing, feeling responsible for the state of the world, and jealousy. In a sense, I’m now traveling a lot more lightly than I ever have. And I have Menopause to thank for it.

Choose The Right Menopause Remedy Part II

Menopause is not a disease (although it darn sure feels like one to those of us suffering through it.) It’s a normal, albeit intense, transition. It is important for us to keep reminding ourselves of this when searching for relief. Confronted with myriad treatment options, we need to be able to CHOOSE the most effective remedies with the least potential for harm. Here are a few “rules” we Venuses recommend to help guide your choices.

Rules and Guidelines
#1 Try One Remedy at A Time
While this may seem like common sense, I cannot tell you how many knowledgeable, intelligent, and perceptive women avail themselves of several herbs, creams, and treatments at the same time to relieve their discomfort. While we menopausal women understand the desperation of a search for relief, this throw-everything-but-the kitchen-sink-at-it method obscures what really will work. Or won’t.

Try one remedy and give it enough time to work - most menopause preparations are labeled with how long you can expect to wait for symptom relief. If after the appropriate time period nothing happens, you may switch to another remedy or add one that is meant to work with the first. (for example, start with progesterone cream and later add plant estrogens - more about those later.)

#2 What Works for One Venus May Not Work For Another
Although we are strong proponents of learning about relief and modalities from other women who have experienced the wild changes of this time of life, we understand the uniqueness of each woman’s transition. (Transition used in this case is a euphemism for “barely endurable roller coaster ride”.) So as you try remedies and attempt solutions recommended to you by your own Venuses or your health care practitioners, continue to refer back to rule # 1.

#3 What Worked Yesterday May Not Work Tomorrow
Just when you’ve found the perfect balance of creams, supplements, or HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) to quiet the hormonal ebbs and flows causing such disruption and discomfort, they stop working. Without warning, you are plunged back to ground zero, searching for an elusive combination of remedies that will ease your suffering. Alas, this will likely happen more than once. Get used to it. We are hoping that if you are prepared for it, it will be easier to take. Maybe not.

Take heart, though. Eventually each Venus found a remedy or combination that worked for us and our symptoms diminished. We found a new balance and health. There was even a little bonus in that we don’t have those pre-menopausal monthly ups and downs anymore. And we don't miss them one little bit. Stay tuned. We’ll have more guidelines for our sister goddesses in the next blog entry.
(Material partially adapted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age: The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddesses" )

Midlife Dilettantes Unite

Theresa-Venus and I are passionate about golf. We love to play, and we especially love to play together. She observed just the other day how much better our respective golf games have become now we’ve reached our fifties vs how much we struggled and fought to improve when in our forties. (Yeah, we’ve been playing that long and we still have substantial handicaps!) Yet, we seem to be striving less and enjoying more. Is it possible that we are finally relaxing into our pursuits, finding the simple joy and pleasure with less of the internal pressure to “be good at it.”? And in some bizarre twist of fate, we’ve actually gotten better? It sure seems like it. While we don’t have a literal scorecard for our artistic endeavors, but we think we’ve gotten better at those too.

One of the ways we Venuses are growing ourselves in the “heat” of midlife comes down to finding and expressing a passion. As we explore creating a Vision for the second half of our lives, we begin to ask ourselves what we want to do, be, or manifest. What we are passionate about, what excites and moves us? And we discover that passion doesn’t necessarily have to be about doing. We can be passionate about peace or contentment as easily as we can thrill to a project or endeavor.

At a recent annual gathering, one of the goddesses was wrestling with her own search for a passion. “How do you know what you’ll be good at?” she queried. “I’m trying yoga and biking (where I also connect with my husband). I enjoy physical pursuits, but there’s no real passion there. It’s hard to start - every one of my friends is already good at something. So many here [the Venuses] are good at photography.”

Karen-Venus jumped in with sage advice. “You need to make a distinction between doing something and having to be good at it versus doing something just for the delight and enjoyment. I tried dancing. I’m the worst tap dancer in the theater group. I’m never going to be good. But I love it and I do it for the passion and joy, not for the achievement. And the more I accept being the worst dancer in the class, the more I relax and the better I dance.”

She went on. “It doesn’t have to be just one thing - it can be many things. Let yourself try things on: are you a beader? A knitter? As we grow older we can open up rather than focus on one or two channels. Try something. Start with a one day workshop. See what takes, what fires you up. Again, maybe it’s not one thing; maybe it’s many. Dilettante is not a dirty word for a midlife woman!”
With that in mind, let’s make a midlife pact with one another. We’ll boldly, passionately do whatever we like. And if we don’t yet know what that is, we’ll jump into something, anything, everything that catches our interest with our whole being. And we sure as heck won’t worry about being good at it! Let’s be divas of dilettantism, practitioners of passion, and mavens of marvelous things!
(Visit our mothership blog and join the community of Venuses at www.menopausegoddessblog.org

Menopause, Mortality, and Microloans

When my husband turned 50, I gave him a cartoon depicting the Grim Reaper visiting a man on his 50th birthday. “Have a good time,” says Death to the balloon-festooned, party hatted “I just stopped by to remind you that you’re mortal.”

That cartoon seemed a lot funnier before menopause. One of the many shocks that the Change delivers is an acute sense of a goddess’s own mortality. Realizing viscerally that our time here is finite, we begin to consider how we wish to spend the second half of our life. Time alone to just “be”, trying new things, travel, and putting ourselves first become priorities. The Venuses have supported one another in all these pursuits and more as we’ve mapped out our futures.

Yet, we felt that something was still missing. What were we leaving behind? What contribution did we wish to make? With this in mind, we devoted our fourth annual meeting to “Legacy”. It seemed to us to be a weighty and important topic. Webster’s thesaurus listed synonyms like inheritance or bequest. We defined it more simply. Legacy to us meant “that which we were passing on to others whether through advising, counseling, or setting an example.”

Some of us had grand visions like creating healthy school lunch programs or writing/lecturing women to inspire their innate creativity. Others wished only to live simply and to practice kindness allowing their life’s example to be their legacy. And of course, we all wanted to pass on our great stores of knowledge and life experience to our kids. (You can bet that our offspring could HARDLY WAIT for that!)
Honestly, though, sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to give back. A great beginning might be microloans through kiva.org. Most of us goddesses aspired to “Think Globally, Act Locally”. Today, with the magic of the internet, “locally” can expand to the size of the entire earth. My husband happened across kiva.org, a website that facilitates making microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries across the globe. (You may have heard about it from Oprah or Bill Clinton). One can loan as little as $25 (and the rest of the loan amount comes from lenders like you). Photos and stories accompany each request for funds. No big surprise, many of these entrepreneurs are women. Kiva doesn’t take any money for their services, but offers lenders the chance to donate to keep it all going. Money goes through Paypal direct to the kiva partner in the country of the prospective borrower. Paypal provides this service free of charge.

You can loan to a tailor in Uganda or a butcher in Togo (yes, I definitely had to look this one up, it’s in Africa). I love Peru, so we have several loans there. (See above photo from kiva website). One of my favorite borrowers is a midlife woman in Tajikistan who has set up an internet cafe because no one has home computers or internet service available in her town. She is following her dreams AND giving back!

And when the borrowers pay their loans back (99% payback rate which is phenomenal), you can lend it all over again to new entrepreneurs. An added delight is seeing the profiles (and pix if they post them) of those who lend with you to a specific person/venture. Building community and giving back: kiva.org is a website with heart. Click link below to find out more.
www.kiva.org

To comment or join our community of menopausal goddesses visit our mothership blog at www.menopausegoddessblog.org

Menopause Is Schizophrenic

Menopause is a schizzy thing. The whole transition has the quality of split personality. It’s difficult and delightful. It’s wonderful and just plain weird. It’s frightening and freeing. This may be why so many goddesses tell me that its been hard for them to read the myriad Menopause self-help books out there. (That and we have lost our mental acuity.) These books are not schizophrenic - they are either irritatingly positive and upbeat or a mind-numbing litany of physiology, symptoms, and treatments. Our search for wisdom ends up exhausting us.

The ‘happy’ books tell us that this is the best time of our lives. Bulldroppings! We are suffering more losses than the stock market. And while we may ultimately transition into the best time of our lives, we have to deal with all the trauma before we can begin to move on.

The “one right answer” books tout their own versions of miracles, bioidenticals, the testosterone patch, soy and herbs. We end up having to read a library full of books and experimenting ad nauseum to find a workable combination of menopause aids.

The everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-menopause books just end up overwhelming us even if the information we might need is in there. And worse yet, they frequently contradict one another. And why is that? Because the simple truth is we have lots of info and knowledge, but little wisdom distilled from them. And the web is no different.

That’s why our Goddess Blog (and our upcoming book) is none of these and all of these, why it’s “schizzy”. Our blog entries mimic real life - doom and gloom stories alternate for position with newfound joys and positive changes. Too many discussions about the great new person we are becoming and we risk the overly perky writings which really grate on our last good nerve. Too much focus on the horrific changes, mental, physical, and emotional and we practically lose our will to live.

Our conversation is tear-filled and joyful, full of the despair and hope that we goddesses have shared together. It’s cranky and hopeful all at the same time. Pretty much like menopause really is!
Join us for more of the conversation at our main blogsite: www.menopausegoddessblog.org

Bioidentical Hormone Access Threatened - Act Now

Many women use bioidentical hormones from compounding pharmacies for relief of menopausal symptoms. In fact, so many women are turning to bioidenticals that a significant chunk of the menopausal health care dollar has been diverted from the drug companies.

And now we got trouble - right here in River City. The FDA has told seven compounding pharmacies they may not “make misleading claims” that bioidentical hormones are better than the synthetic ones. The impetus behind this decision? A petition from Wyeth pharmaceuticals - yes the people that brought you Prempro and Premarin, hurtin’ cowboys financially since the WHI study was halted due to dangerous side effects.

Now, technically the FDA may be correct that no double blind research validates that bioidenticals are safer (Gee wonder why that is - maybe no real money to be made, so the research was not funded.) On the main page of the FDA website describing their recent action, they also say this: “All patients who use compounded hormone therapy drugs should discuss menopausal hormone therapy options with their health care provider to determine if compounded drugs are the best option for their specific medical needs.”

Sounds like an appropriate measured response, doesn’t it? Then I dug a little further into the FDA website, and found another little part to their action:

“In addition, FDA warned a number of pharmacies that they may not compound drugs containing the estrogen substance estriol without a valid investigational new drug application. Firms that do not properly address violations identified in Warning Letters risk further enforcement, including injunctions that prevent additional violations and seizure of violative drugs.”

I can tell you from my experience as a nurse that getting an investigational drug permit is a BIG deal. You don’t just go to the wizard and ask for one. Think killing the wicked witch was a difficult task? Try obtaining and implementing an investigational drug protocol from the FDA! I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the FDA is bowing to pressure to limit access to bioidentical hormones and this is only the first step.

Here’s the kicker. It’s not like we can individually call up a compounding pharmacy and order our own hormone therapy willy nilly. A physician MUST prescribe it. And they have been prescribing estriol for decades. Safely. Responsibly. The FDA admits that its action was not a concern for safety. There have been no recorded instances of any adverse effects with the use of Estriol, probably because it is a natural hormone in our body.

There has been a tremendous response from physicians and women like us, filing comments with the FDA and writing our congresspeople. But we need to be vigilant and proactive here. We can’t let the government restrict our (and our physicians) access to bioidentical hormone therapy. For more information, on contacting your elected representatives, download the pdf document at our main blogsite www.menopausegoddessblog.org and/or click on the link below for HOME (Hands Off My Estrogens) Coalition,
www.homecoalition.org

Thin Is In or Honey, Who Took My Hair

Menopause feels like being forced to attend a horror movie, with unimaginable and terrifying twists and turns. Still, I felt that I did a reasonably good job of keeping my eyes open and not screaming until the climactic “disappearing hair” scene. I was stoic through the storylines of hot flashes, insomnia, memory loss, and more. After all, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

However, when my hair skipped past merely thinning to outright disappearing, I flipped out. Panicked, I ran to my hairdresser for help. She calmly informed me that it was not “unusual”, “probably hormonal”, and that “it’ll grow back.” Ditto from my dermatologist. Only slightly reassured, I surfed the net for causes and treatments for female hair loss. Alopecia. Such a lovely name for such a horrifying experience. I have images of two beautiful (for their age), primly dressed, elderly women with perfect skin and white, thinning (of course) hair sitting comfortably at the kitchen table. One asks the other in her best British accent, “Alopecia, dear. Would you pour me a cup of tea?”

For many midlife women, estrogen therapy and thyroid replacement if thyroid hormone is low will be enough to halt hair loss and promote regrowth. I take bioidentical estrogen and thyroid hormones which have helped with most of my menopause symptoms. Alas not with hair thinning.

It seems I have a common type of hormonal hair loss called AGA which stands for Androgenic Alopecia. (More likely AGA is the sound a goddess makes each time she reveals a little more pretty pink scalp.) The good news? There’s a drug called aldosterone that has been helpful for women suffering from hormonal hair loss- dosage range 100-200 mg. per day. It’s a mild diuretic and blocks the action of testosterone on the hair follicle. The bad news? I can’t tolerate it. Headaches and stomach upset actually trump the hair loss in my case.

However, it is a viable and useful option for a number of women, so discuss it with your physician if you are undergoing menopausal hair loss. (Most health care practitioners are relatively uninformed about this so go armed with info to help educate them- check out www.wegohealth.com for some of the latest internet info on female hair loss. (I had to educate my MD, who is pretty darn progressive and informed.)

So the mourning process over my fragile little hairs leaping off my head has continued. Theresa-Venus claims she went through the same freakout 2 years ago, and while her hair is thinner, she still has enough. Thanks to her and the support of the other goddesses, I’ve been feeling marginally better. I might be able to uncover my eyes soon, but I won’t be wearing any ponytails, that’s for sure.

Scientific explanations notwithstanding, I KNOW what really happened to my hair. My hot flashes fried my hair follicles! I only hope they can regenerate. There is a modicum of good news, however - that bikini wax I’ve been meaning to get for so long? Won’t be needin’ it.
(Adapted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age: The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddesses". To comment or learn more about our virtual menopause goddess community, visit our main website at www.menopausegoddessblog.org .)