Heart Health During and After Menopause

Posted on: April 23rd, 2013 by Constadina Zarokostas-Vasiliades No Comments

You suffered for years with hot flashes, crazy constant weight gain and loss, unpredictable mood swings, and finally your menopause symptoms are beginning to stop. You spent years increasing your exercise regime and following a healthier lifestyle to decrease your menopause symptoms, and now you are at the home stretch, getting better sleep, not snapping at the tiniest irritations coming from your family, and feeling close to your normal self again. Ahhhh, time to celebrate with a piece of chocolate cake!

It’s easy to fall back into bad habits when we start to feel good and confident about where we are in life. It’s also common when women hit post-menopause to stop following the healthier lifestyle they adopted to decrease their menopause symptoms. This can become a problem because post-menopause is also the stage in life where women are more at risk for heart disease. According to the American Heart …

Spring Clean Your Body & Balance Your Hormones with a Little Dandelion

Posted on: March 21st, 2013 by Constadina Zarokostas-Vasiliades No Comments

When you were a child I’m sure at some point when you saw dandelions you probably thought of them as a weed your parents hated seeing in their grass, but you loved it when they dried so you could blow all the seeds away into the wind like most kids…. I on the other hand, as a first-generation Greek kid, grew up with parents who didn’t use weed killer on them, but dug them up from the grass and used the leaves as food.  Sometimes we would even venture off into the cattle farm-land outside our home city and raid the edges of farmer’s fields in the spring time and relieve them of all their dandelions.  We would collect so many grocery bags full of these dandelion leaves that we would clean and freeze whatever we couldn’t eat by the end of the week, so we would have them throughout …

Hormone Disruptors in your Personal Care Products and the Effects on your Body

Posted on: February 18th, 2013 by Constadina Zarokostas-Vasiliades 1 Comment

Hormone Disruptors in your Personal Care Products and the Effects on your Body

By Constadina Zarokostas-Vasiliades

In my previous article, Exercise for Better Menopausal Health, I wrote about how hormones are affected during menopause and the importance of exercise to release toxins from the body, as well as get the body’s hormone levels back in balance to decrease and prevent a number of symptoms of menopause.  Your body’s hormone levels are so unpredictable when you don’t take an active role in keeping them in balance, which could lead to extreme reactions in your body such as severe depression and weight gain.  Although we can’t control the toxins in the air we breathe that can affect hormone levels, we can control the toxins, chemicals, and hormone disruptors that can get in our bodies when it comes to choosing cosmetics, face and body creams, as well as soap and bath products.…

Surgical Menopause Treatment Options

Posted on: January 14th, 2013 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

http://www.dailyrx.com/hrt-women-early-surgical-menopause-may-reduce-risk-cognitive-decline

In a report by DailyRx Janurary 14, 2013:  Researches are examining the possibility of memory and cognitive decline and surgically induced early menopause compared to women who went through menopause at a later age.  The study, led by Riley Bove, MD, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, found that in comparison to women who went through later menopause there seems to be a faster decline in women who went through early menopause who where not taking hormone replacement therapy but no difference with women who experienced early menopause who were taking hormone replacement therapy.  The final conclusion was that more studies are needed.

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The Hot Flash Swag

Posted on: January 10th, 2013 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

I’m delighted to share this little find with you!   It’s the coolest video I’ve seen that deals with hot flushes!  It’s called the Hot Flash Swag by Nrvibe, Erykah Badu. In my humble opinion, if your one of millions of women experiencing hot flushes this video could help you in three ways:

1. It will make you smile!
2. It demonstrates that we are not alone in expereincing hot flushes, millions of women experience hot flushes accross the globe!
3.  Dancing the Hot Flash Swag, is a healthy, and fun way to excercise!

Need I say more? Get the girls over and dance!  It’s a HOT FLASH SWAG, it’s a HOT FLASH SWAG . . . .

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Perimenopausal sleep disturbance: Beyond estrogen replacement

Posted on: January 6th, 2013 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

http://www.jaapa.com/perimenopausal-sleep-disturbance-beyond-estrogen-replacement/article/274549/

Sleep disturbance is a common problem noted to be more prevalent in peri-menopausal and menopausal women.   Sleep disturbance may manifest as difficulty falling asleep or middle of the night or early morning awakenings.  Sleep disturbances could also be associated with other chronic illnesses.  There are several ways and options for treating sleep disturbances such as short-term hormone replacement therapy, stress management and supplemental remedies.

In a previous blog we discussed some pro-active approaches for how to get a better sleep with the “Five Steps to a Better Sleep”  http://menopausemission.com/five-steps-to-a-better-sleep

Photo by:  wwwfreedigitalphotos.net…

Controlling diet and exercising may be the key in fighting breast cancer in post-menopausal women

Posted on: January 1st, 2013 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/13605/20121221/diet-exercise-menopause-reduce-risk-cancer.htm?w=300

A healthy diet is important to all of us but for post-menopausal women it is even more important.  According to a new study, the risk for breast cancer in post-menopausal women increases with diabetes and obesity according to Erin Giles, PhD, from the University of Colorado Cancer Center.   Erin suggests that in normal-weight women, excess calories go to healthy tissues while in obese women, the calories power tumor cells.   Read more

Photo by:  www.freedigitalphotos.net

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PubMed Fact Sheet: Menopause

Posted on: December 4th, 2012 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

Today’s average mature women is much better informed than our  previous generation of mother’s and grandmothers were about the topic of  ’the change of life,’ or also known as menopause.  And as such, we are much more open to talking about menopause and discussing it with our health care practitioners, family and even our friends.  In addition, today there is an abundance of readily available information on the topic making it much easier to become better informed.  The important thing here is to ensure that this information is credible which highly depends on your source.   Of course your mother is always credible . . . no question here!   But your  health care practitioner is the first and most important avenue for obtaining good information about menopause.  Other areas women can find information is  in brochures found at clinics or pharmacies, the countless books on the topic, magazines and …

Arteries may change at brink of menopause

Posted on: November 25th, 2012 by Anita Dyrbye 2 Comments

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in women.   A recent study shows that changes to a woman’s carotid arteries during perimenopause can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The findings also suggest that the changes in the diameter of the arterial wall may occur first in response to lower levels of estrogen during perimenopause. The thickening of the arterial wall likely follows as the body adjusts to the increased stress from the dilated artery, says El Khoudary.  http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/arteries-may-change-at-brink-of-menopause/

Read more at http://journals.lww.com/menopausejournal/Abstract/publishahead/Progression_rates_of_carotid_intima_media.98747.aspx…

Vitamin D & Calcium: Why such Confusion

Posted on: November 18th, 2012 by Anita Dyrbye No Comments

Vitamin D is a  is an essential nutrient needed to maintain good health. Your body naturally creates vitamin D when you are exposed to sunlight but you can also get it through your diet or with dietary supplements.

Vitamin D is an organic compound, and whether synthesized or found in nature, it is made up of the same elemental components. Health care practitioners have taught us the importance of taking high doses of Vit D and calcium per day for the prevention of Osteoporosis.

Vitamin D is only present naturally in a limited number of foods, and manufacturers add it to some foods, such as breakfast cereals and milk, during the production process. The nonfortified foods that have the highest amount of vitamin D include cod liver oil; different types of fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel; and eggs.

The importance of supplementing Vitamin D has been determined as …