Menopause, like a lot of things in life, is part of being human and female.
No two women are the same. Not only are we different physically and physiologically but we all differ in our psychological preferences, even identical twins who have so much in common will have very different experiences with their menopause and how they chose to manage their symptoms.
There are many things to take into consideration when you are experiencing and going through your own menopause.
Analyse your issues and make choices for yourself
With so much changing in your body and brain it can be an absolute minefield knowing where to start. Every article you read tells you something different. Your friends tell you what they did, or didn’t do, how awful it was for them, how much weight they put on, how everything dried up, they feel like they’ve lost themselves. They will tell you to take this pill, drink this potion, use that cream, it can go on and on and on.
The key to success in managing your menopause and navigating your journey through is to apply the following principles to analysing your issues and making choices for yourself.
To help you successfully manage your way through your own menopause is to adopt the following principles in analysing your symptoms and making your own choices:
- It’s your body, you know yourself better than anyone else does. Trust your intuition, you have lived in it for many years.
- In making management choices for menopause, you need to balance the benefits and risks of each option.
- Biased information is useless to you. Its goal is to persuade you to think accordingly with someone else’s preference rather than giving you the information to allow you to come to your own conclusion.
- When making your personal plan for menopause, you need to balance the benefits of each option against the risks of each option.
- When you have all the information, and you know its accurate and complete, you are then able to make the best choice for you at that time.
- Its menopause, you may have to use trial and error to get to the decision that is best for you
- You will need to stick with each regimen for at least three months, to allow your body enough time to make adjustments. Chopping and changing more frequently will impair your ability to determine the best choice.
- You can change your mind. You have the right and freedom to choose what you feel works best for your body.
You are a human being, so your needs, preferences and options will change over time as your body changes.
Be honest with yourself. If you are sedentary or super active, admit it to yourself. If you love to eat a diet of sugary foods or have to have a couple of glasses of wine every day admit it. Make a list of all the things that are important and unique to you to you such as:
- Your symptoms of menopause and their severity.
- Your health issues and disease risks.
- Your family history.
- Your quality of life factors.
- Your lifestyle.
- Your personal preferences
- Your ability to accomplish your goals
- The side effects of any of your medications.
You decide what is important for your quality of life and what that means for you
Its important to consider both the short, and long term consequences in order to address both your present and future benefits and risks.
When you are thinking of making your menopause management plan, the great thing is that you get to decide what you feel is important for your quality of life and what that actually means for you.
What are your possible options?
You can:
- Do nothing
- Manage your menopause with the focus of improving your day to day life.
- Manage your menopause with the focus on preventing future diseases associated with menopause.
- Use a combination of treatments and measures to address both your short-term and long-term goals.
As you start the process of considering the options for managing your menopause you need to ask yourself what form of management you would prefer, if anything at all. For example, do you want to try a pharmaceutical option such as hormones in the form of a pill, skin patch, cream, or do you prefer an alternative or complementary treatment such as herbs, plants, or whether you are patient enough to find individual treatments for individual symptoms and the health risks associated?
To date, no single agent eliminates all menopausal symptoms and risks as effectively as estrogen, but that doesn’t mean estrogen is the answer for all women.
The nice thing is that you have the options and opportunity to make that choice for yourself.
So where does that leave you?
Well, the various management options generally fall into the following categories.
- Do nothing to manage your menopause
- Make diet and lifestyle choices that work for you and your menopause.
- Alternative or complimentary medicine approach which will include vitamins, minerals and /or botanicals and herbs.
- Use acupuncture, hypnosis, reflexology.
- Use medical therapy with bio-identical, natural or synthetic hormones.
- Use a combination of the above.
Some women choose to let menopause take its natural course without any intervention. Other women chose to do whatever they can to limit the discomfort, unpredictability and inconvenience associated with menopause.
Do you remember making a birth plan? It’s a document that enables you to dictate what you think you may want to have during your labour in terms of medication, or not, personal care, baby etc. The problem is that when you were in labour you often want something completely different., that’s understandable, labour is unpredictable and pregnant women can’t predict what or how she will feel when she’s experiencing labour.
The same applies to menopause. It’s good to have a management plan in mind. But remember your body may have other plans for your menopause and it may not respond in the way you want it to. It doesn’t mean you have failed. It just means you will need to be more open minded.
Listen to your body, it knows what you need more than you do.
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This article is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.
