What is Medically Induced Menopause?
Menopause is something that every woman will go through at a certain point in her life, but how she gets there and what her experience of menopause is like is something that will vary greatly from person to person! Some women will naturally enter menopause at an earlier age than average, and some at a later age. For some women, their entrance into menopause won’t be natural at all, but will come as a result of some medical intervention.
Medically induced menopause is what happens when a surgery, medication, treatment, or other medical procedure permanently changes a woman’s hormones to cause her to enter menopause, often at an earlier age than she otherwise would have. This abrupt shift can be difficult for an individual to cope with on top of whatever condition caused them to need the medical treatment they have received, but with a good support system, some advance knowledge, and the right treatments like bioidentical hormone replacement therapy from Renewed Vitality, it’s possible to embrace this part of life! Here’s what you need to know about medically induced menopause.
What Causes Medically Induced Menopause?
Medically induced menopause can be caused either physically or chemically, but in both cases, it’s brought on by some medical treatment that stops the ovaries from producing estrogen and other sex hormones as they normally would. For example, if a woman were to get a partial hysterectomy where her uterus was removed but not her ovaries, she would likely deal with some hormone imbalances but not enter full medically induced menopause. A full hysterectomy that removes the ovaries would result in menopause because of the halt in hormone production.
There are also medications and treatments that can cause a woman to enter into menopause. Chemotherapy and radiation are some of the main ones. It’s also possible for hormone treatment, like the kind that’s sometimes used to treat specific types of breast cancer, to affect a woman’s ovaries and induce menopause. While these surgeries and treatments are difficult to deal with in their own right on top of how they affect fertility and hormonal health, their life-saving benefits outweigh their downsides, and there are ways to cope with medically induced menopause afterwards!
What are the Symptoms or Side Effects of Medically Induced Menopause?
While medically induced menopause is different from natural menopause in terms of its onset, they’re both relatively similar in their symptoms and how they affect someone’s daily life. Women who go through medically induced menopause can expect to experience hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, changes to weight and body, decreased libido, vaginal dryness, and other typical signs of menopause.
However, medically induced menopause does differ from natural menopause in that it comes on very abruptly. In most healthy women, their body slowly changes its hormone production over time as they age, allowing the symptoms of perimenopause to come on gradually. When a woman is experiencing medically induced menopause, she’ll begin to experience these side effects much more suddenly, which can be difficult to cope with both emotionally and physically.
How Can I Manage Medically Induced Menopause?
The most important thing to have in order to get through medically induced menopause is a good support system and a forgiving mindset that allows you to grieve and struggle while still accepting and adapting to this new phase of life. The second most important thing is the right treatment! Hormone replacement therapy can be a life-changing option for women who go through medically induced menopause, easing their symptoms, increasing their comfort, and making the entire process less difficult to get through.
Here at Renewed Vitality, helping women through all kinds of menopause with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is just what we do, and our team of skilled nurse practitioners is ready to come up with a personalized plan that suits your individual needs. If you’re interested in learning more, make sure to contact us today so that we can help you to start feeling like yourself again!
Menopause is something that all women eventually deal with. We all know it’s coming, but whether or not you ever actually feel ready for it is a different story! Menopause can feel pretty similar to how it felt being a young girl entering puberty for the first time– it’s a whole new world of confusing changes and strange symptoms that you have to learn how to navigate. Luckily, this time you’re going through it as a much wiser adult, and you can find ways to make it easier!
Educating yourself is one thing you can do to take the stress out of entering menopause. There are a lot of unfamiliar terms that you’ll hear being thrown around at this stage in your life, and learning what they mean can be helpful! Here are some common ones to know the definitions of.
Menopause
First off, what is the actual definition of menopause itself? We often use this term in a slightly inaccurate or nonspecific way to refer to anything and everything that has to do with a woman’s hormonal health during middle age and her later years. In actuality, menopause very specifically refers to a period of time when you have gone a full twelve months without experiencing a period. It’s the permanent ending of your menstrual cycle. While you can refer to yourself as being “in menopause” when you’re starting to experience things like hot flashes and irregular periods, you actually haven’t hit the real deal yet.
Perimenopause
This next term refers to the process of your period stopping. It means something similar to “pre-menopause,” and it’s what we often refer to as just plain menopause in casual settings. This stage can last anywhere from a few months to a few years. The main engine behind it is that your ovaries are slowly reducing their production of estrogen, leading to common symptoms like mood swings, hot flashes, body changes, sleep issues, and of course, irregular periods.
Early Menopause
The average age to enter menopause is 52. This isn’t the age, of course, that everyone will enter menopause at. Some people stop their periods much earlier or much later; between the ages of 45 and 55 is typical. However, if you enter menopause earlier than age 45, you’re considered to be in “early menopause.” If you hit it at younger than 40, you’re considered to be in “premature menopause.” Sometimes there is a definitive medical reason for this– for example, if a person has their ovaries removed, they are considered to be in “surgical menopause” since the abrupt lack of hormones in their body kickstarts the side effects of menopause regardless of age. However, sometimes early or premature menopause just happen with no clear cause. If women in your family have a history of early menopause, it might be a good idea to discuss it with your doctor.
BHRT
The term HRT refers to hormone replacement therapy, or any treatment where a lack of a certain hormone in the body is supplemented through prescribed hormones from a doctor. BHRT refers specifically to bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Bioidentical hormones are synthetic, or man-made, and the closest the hormones that your body naturally produces. They’re specially designed to be chemically identical to your natural hormones, so they’re easy for the body to absorb, recognize, and use. Here at Renewed Vitality, bioidentical hormones are the kind that we rely on for our life-changing treatments! You can learn more about our BHRT options here.
Your overall health and wellbeing is greatly affected by your genetics, and looking at the medical history of your family can be a good way to predict certain things. Conditions like heart problems or certain cancers can have a genetic component, and you can even be particularly prone to certain mental health disorders if they tend to run in your family.
You may wonder if this means that your genetics will have an impact on your experience of menopause. Will you begin menopause at the same age as your mother, grandmothers, and other female relatives? If they have a difficult time and struggle with their symptoms, does that mean that the same will be true for you? The answer isn’t entirely cut and dry, so let’s take a closer look at the link between genetics and menopause!
Early Menopause
Early menopause is something that can potentially affect any woman, but that can be very tricky to predict. The only time you can ever really know when you’re going to hit menopause is when you’ve actually hit it. However, there are some indicators that can help you to predict when the onset of menopause will begin for you, and your genetics are one of them.
If close female relatives of yours have begun menopause early or prematurely (before 45 or 40), especially if multiple women in your family have experienced the same thing, there’s a chance that this will be the case for you as well. However, it’s not a guarantee. There is a correlation between genetics and the age of menopause onset, but not a clearly identifiable link, and scientists are still working on understanding how much of the way your body works is because of your genes, how much is due to external factors, and how much is simply random.
Menopause Symptoms
In a similar vein, genetics can be a factor in how you experience menopause itself, but not the end-all-be-all that decides what your menopausal years will be like. If your mother, sisters, aunts, and cousins all experienced brutal hot flashes or gained a great deal of weight, for example, there’s a good chance you will as well, but it’s just that– a chance, not a sure thing.
Think of the link between genetics and menopause like the link between genetics and pregnancy. Things like having big babies or carrying past your due date might be common in certain families, but that doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to happen for every woman of one genetic line in every pregnancy she has. Just because your mother had terrible morning sickness when she was pregnant with you doesn’t mean that you’ll go through the same thing. Genetics do play a factor in the experience of things like pregnancy and menopause, but there are many other factors at play– even ones you can control!
Other Contributing Factors
So, genetics are a factor in menopause, but not the only factor you have to consider. So what else determines when you will enter menopause, and what it will be like for you? The answer: a lot of things, and many of them are within your control!
Your lifestyle choices can play an important role in how menopause plays out for you. Women who are heavy smokers and drinkers, for example, tend to enter menopause earlier than women who aren’t, and these substances can exacerbate the symptoms of menopause like hot flashes, sleep problems, and low energy levels. Quitting or at least limiting your intake can help to make menopause easier to manage. Diets lacking in certain nutrients can also contribute to early menopause, so ensuring that you’re eating well-rounded meals on a regular basis can be helpful. Other contributing factors are more difficult to control, but identifying them can help you to prepare yourself for menopause better, like certain chromosomal conditions or autoimmune diseases. Your doctor can tell you if you might be at risk for these issues.
Understanding human genetics is something that scientists around the world are working tirelessly on every day, but we do know this– looking to your family members for guidance when it comes to your health can be a very good thing, even when the familial ties of things like menopause aren’t fully understood. If you want to learn more about menopause and women’s hormones, Renewed Vitality can help you! Keep reading our blog here for more information.
Hormones are major contributors to our overall health as human beings, and having proper hormone levels and balances can make a world of difference in how good you feel and how well you function! If you’re getting into learning about your hormones, one of the biggest things that you’ll start hearing about is your thyroid. This part of your body is extremely important, and problems with the thyroid can lead to a whole host of unpleasant symptoms and health problems, but what actually is the thyroid? What does it do, and how do you know if yours is working the way it should? Let’s take a closer look at this organ and learn a little more about what it does for your body!
What is the Thyroid?
The thyroid is a gland that is one of the biggest pit stops in your body’s endocrine system, or the system that controls your hormones. It’s a small but mighty organ that contributes to many essential functions in your body!
What Does the Thyroid Do?
One of the thyroid’s main functions is to regulate your metabolism, or how your body uses energy. The food that you consume powers everything in your body, turning into energy sources that keep your heart beating, your brain working, your hair growing, and so on. Your thyroid makes several of the hormones that help this to happen, namely thyroxine, triiodothyronine, reverse triiodothyronine, and calcitonin. These hormones work together with other hormones and chemicals in your body to control your heart rate, breathing, digestion, body temperature, brain development, mental activity, skin and bone health, and even your fertility.
Where is the Thyroid?
The thyroid is located at the front of your neck, just below your larynx and around your trachea. The gland is about two inches long and roughly shaped like a butterfly. When you go to the doctor, they’ll sometimes push on the front of your throat on either side of your windpipe; when they do this, they’re feeling for your thyroid gland and making sure that it doesn’t have any problems like increased size, tenderness, or lumps and bumps that could indicate a problem.
What Causes Thyroid Problems?
Thyroid disease is a fairly common condition with four main types. You can either have an overactive or underactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism respectively), you can have an enlarged thyroid, referred to as a goiter, or you can have thyroid cancer. There are lots of different subtypes of thyroid disease under these umbrellas, such as Hashimoto’s disease, which is a type of hypothyroidism, or Graves’ disease, a type of hyperthyroidism. The specific type of thyroid disease that a person deals with determines how it presents in their life and how it can be treated.
What are the Signs of Thyroid Problems?
Because there are so many different types of thyroid disease, there are many different signs and symptoms that can indicate one or the other in a person. However, there are some general signs of thyroid problems that are the same between many of these conditions, and you can spot them by looking for issues in the body systems that the thyroid affects. For example, slow or fast heart rate, unexplained weight loss or gain, difficulty tolerating heat or cold, depression and anxiety, and problems with the menstrual cycle can all be indicators of a thyroid problem, especially when they occur together and don’t have other explanations. Your doctor can check for issues with your thyroid by running a blood test called a thyroid panel to see if the hormones that the thyroid produces are all present in normal levels. If you do have a problem with your thyroid, there are many treatments available that can help to get you feeling better again!
Understanding your hormones and how your endocrine system works can help you to be more in tune with your body and your health! If you’re interested in learning more about hormonal health, you can continue reading our blog here for more information.
While not a universal symptom, hot flashes are incredibly common for women to experience during menopause, and any woman who’s ever been through one will tell you that it’s no fun. Hot flashes can be uncomfortable and embarrassing, and you can end up moving through each day dreading the possibility of one occurring.
For many women, summer becomes a particularly stressful time of the year just due to their hot flashes. However, this pesky side effect doesn’t have to keep you from enjoying your favorite outdoor activities from now until fall! There are plenty of ways to minimize and manage your hot flashes to help you stay comfortable and enjoy yourself throughout the day. Here are a few of them.
Choose the Right Clothes
As a hot flash sufferer, you’ve probably been told a million times that choosing light, airy layers is the key to dealing with hot flashes, and that advice is absolutely true. However, you might not know that the type of fabric you’re choosing is just as important as the clothes themselves! During the summer months, it’s especially important to pay attention to the fiber content of your clothes, as some fabrics will wick away sweat and promote air circulation far better than others.
Polyester is the thing you’ll want to avoid above all, as each thread in a piece of polyester fabric is actually plastic, and will keep you hot and sweaty all day. Wool and silk are also fibers to avoid during the summer, as they breathe better but trap and hold heat against your body. Cotton and linen are light, breathable, and sweat-wicking, making them ideal choices for your summer wardrobe! Reach for these fabrics when you’re getting dressed, and don’t be afraid to throw on a loose, long-sleeved shirt over a tank top or a long, flowy skirt or pair of trousers. It may sound counterintuitive, but keeping the sun off your skin can actually help you to stay a little cooler if you’re choosing your fabrics right.
Avoid Triggers
Most women have their own set of triggers that can send them spiraling into a hot flash, and learning what your own triggers are and avoiding them can help you prevent a hot flash from starting in the first place! Warm rooms and spicy foods are common ones, and alcohol or caffeine can also leave you sweating.
If you’re a cigarette smoker or tobacco user, you might also find that these substances can trigger your hot flashes as well. Cutting back or quitting your nicotine habit can be transformative to your health, so ask your doctor for recommendations to help you quit if you can!
Keep Hydrated
Getting your recommended intake of water every day might seem like another obvious piece of advice, but you’d be surprised how many people today are chronically dehydrated, and the serious impacts that dehydration can have on your overall health and wellbeing. If you’re suffering from hot flashes on a regular basis, you need to be drinking even more water than the average person, as sweating saps water out of your system that needs to be replaced!
Grab that big water bottle or travel cup out of the back of your cabinet and sip on it during the day, making sure that you’re refilling it multiple times. You might be shocked at how much better you feel at the end of a week!
Lower Your Stress
It’s a cold truth that stress and anxiety, however unavoidable they may seem in today’s world, can have serious negative effects on your health, and your hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms are one place where you might notice these impacts. Stress and anxiety can often trigger hot flashes, not to mention that they can sap your energy and make it harder for you to deal with hot flashes when they do arise.
Try to look at places in your life where you might be able to reduce your sources of stress, and work on building your resilience and coping skills through practices like journaling, mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. Helping your hot flashes is just one of the ways that you can greatly improve your life by reducing stress!
If methods like these are still not helping you to manage debilitating hot flashes, hormone replacement therapy might be an option that can give you some relief. To learn more about this treatment, contact Renewed Vitality today!
Menopause is something that every woman both fears and dreads a little bit. Stopping your period might sound great after so many decades of dealing with it, but all of the other symptoms of menopause make you pay for it!
There’s a slight misconception when it comes to menopause. Most people know that it has to do with your period stopping, but you aren’t actually considered in menopause until you’ve gone a full year without having a period. The time before that happens, where you’re experiencing the classic symptoms like hot flashes and trouble sleeping, is actually called perimenopause, the transitional period where your hormones start changing in preparation for your period to stop completely. As you enter this portion of your life, you can experience a lot of changes to your periods themselves, leaving you dealing with a cycle that you might feel you had just figured out! Knowing what to expect can be helpful in dealing with these changes, so here are some of the ways that perimenopause affects your menstrual cycle.
Changing Cycle
Most women, once their bodies have reached full maturity, enter some state of regularity with their periods, even though “regular” can look incredibly different from person to person. Some people may get their period every twenty-eight days like clockwork, while others get it every three months. What matters is that everyone has the frequency that’s normal for them.
Perimenopause is likely to come in and completely disrupt that cycle that you’ve gotten used to. You may find that your periods are noticeably longer or shorter than they used to be, or that they’re heavier or lighter than before. (If they become significantly heavier to the point where you’re bleeding through pads and tampons in under a few hours, it’s time to see your doctor. The same goes for if you’re bleeding longer than seven days.) You might have your cycle shift a few days or even weeks earlier or later than normal, and you may even see a change in your menstrual blood– it may be a different color or consistency than before.
Irregular Periods
As if your periods suddenly changing their schedule wasn’t bad enough, sometimes in perimenopause, you can just skip a period or several for no apparent reason. This can be alarming for most adult women, as it’s typically a sign of either pregnancy or a serious health problem, like malnourishment. When menopause is approaching, however, it’s not usually a sign that anything is wrong. Your body is simply changing and experiencing extreme hormonal changes, and it’s no different to young girls missing periods when their cycle is first starting up.
If you’re sexually active during perimenopause, just remember that ovulation does still occur at this point in your life, and you can still get pregnant! Be sure to use a reliable method of birth control if that’s not what you want right now, and keep an eye on your cycle as usual, skipped periods and all.
Spotting
Spotting is a very annoying symptom of perimenopause, but a common one nevertheless. Spotting is light bleeding, usually not enough to require a pad or tampon. It’s common to experience spotting right before or after your period, or right around the middle of your cycle when ovulation occurs. If your spotting is becoming very bothersome, it’s a good idea to start keeping track of it in an app or journal so that you can relay that information to your doctor. They’ll help you determine if it’s normal or not, and if there’s anything you should do about it.
Increased PMS Symptoms
Headaches, cramps, backaches, mood swings, bloating– the list of unpleasant PMS symptoms goes on and on, and unfortunately, some women get far more acquainted with this list during perimenopause than any other time in their lives. The shifting hormone levels of this change can sometimes translate into an increase in the severity of your PMS symptoms, and your period can become more difficult to deal with than ever.
To deal with these symptoms, all the usual suspects are a good place to start– prioritize a regular sleep schedule, healthy eating, and moderate exercise, reduce your stress levels, increase your water intake and lower your caffeine and alcohol intake, and so on. However, if you still find that an encroaching period is taking you out of commission these days, it might be time to speak to a professional about other ways to start feeling better. Going on a birth control pill can sometimes help, and hormone replacement therapy can often be transformative for women approaching menopause. If you’re interested in learning more, let Renewed Vitality bring you into the loop!
Having an understanding of the different ways that your body works is absolutely essential to being your best, happiest, and healthiest self, and understanding your hormones is a big part of that! Hormones are the body’s message system, allowing different organs and systems to communicate with each other and keeping everything in your body, from your sleep to your digestion to your reproductive system, working as it should. Today, let’s take a look at a hormone you’re probably familiar with: insulin!
What is Insulin?
Most people know what insulin is, but many people don’t actually realize that it’s a hormone! Just like other hormones that your body produces such as melatonin, estrogen, and testosterone, insulin is a naturally occurring chemical that plays an important role in one or many of your bodily functions– in this case, your digestion.
What Does Insulin Do?
Insulin’s main role is to help the body process glucose, or sugar. Pretty much all foods have some amount of sugar or glucose in them, since all carbohydrates are made of sugars in different forms. In your digestive system, carbohydrates are broken down into smaller molecules of basic glucose, which is then absorbed into your bloodstream. Insulin is how your body takes that sugar and uses it, turning it into energy that can be burned to help you do anything from running a marathon to doing some paperwork. Everything your body does needs energy, even just keeping your heart beating, and insulin turns the food you eat into the fuel that powers the entire mechanism of your body!
Where is Insulin Made?
Hormones are made in all different places over the body; some in the reproductive organs, some in the brain, and so on. Insulin is a digestive hormone, and it’s produced in the pancreas! Producing insulin and releasing it into your bloodstream is one of two main functions that the pancreas has. The other is producing an enzyme to help food break down and digest in your system.
How Does Insulin Affect Me?
In healthy people with properly functioning pancreases and no insulin-related problems, insulin is a hormone that does its job quietly and reliably. It turns glucose into energy and helps that energy get to the places in your body it needs to go. However, there are some common problems people can have with insulin, making up the different types of diabetes. Here are a few of them, and how they work.
What Causes Insulin Problems?
If you have problems with your insulin levels or blood sugar, you have some form of diabetes. There are many different types of diabetes that can affect people in different ways and at different forms in their lives.
Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic, or lifelong, condition that’s believed to be an autoimmune disorder. It’s typically discovered in childhood, with kids complaining of symptoms like excessive thirst, weakness or dizziness, blurred vision, frequent urination, irritability and mood changes, intense hunger, and unexplained weight loss. The pancreas of someone with Type 1 diabetes either makes very little insulin or no insulin at all, leading to an inability for that person’s body to regulate their blood sugar levels or use glucose properly.
The cause of Type 1 diabetes has yet to be identified, and the condition is incurable, but it is highly treatable with the help of prescribed insulin, regular blood sugar testing, and careful monitoring of glucose intake.
Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes, unlike Type 1, develops over time rather than someone being born with it. It more commonly develops later in life, although younger people can get it. It has similar symptoms to Type 1 diabetes and similarly includes the pancreas not producing insulin properly, but in Type 2, the cells in the body also don’t respond to insulin the way they should.
There are certain risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes, including genetics, weight, inactivity, age, and certain comorbid conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Type 2 diabetes can create a huge amount of health risks if not addressed, but the condition is luckily very treatable. There are many medications available to help people with this disease control their blood sugar levels, and lifestyle changes can also be extremely beneficial.
Gestational Diabetes
This is a type of diabetes that develops in a woman during pregnancy when she’s never been diabetic before. No one knows exactly what causes it, but it’s believed that the major changes that happen to all of the body’s hormones during a pregnancy are involved in the sudden inability to manage glucose correctly. Usually, gestational diabetes only lasts for the duration of the pregnancy, with blood sugar levels going back to normal shortly after the birth of the baby.
While the condition is temporary and manageable with medications and a healthy lifestyle, it can pose serious health risks to both the mother and the baby if left untreated. Gestational diabetes also can be more difficult to notice than other types, as its symptoms, like frequent urination, overlap with normal and healthy symptoms of pregnancy. This is why most mothers undergo a test to screen for gestational diabetes at some point during their pregnancy. Women who have gestational diabetes also have a higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes later in life, and may need additional testing to monitor their blood sugar over time.
Latent Autoimmune Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is a type of diabetes that someone is born with, a malfunction in their pancreas that has always been there. Latent autoimmune diabetes, or LADA, is similar in that it’s a malfunction in the way the pancreas produces insulin, but it develops and presents more slowly than Type 1, usually discovered in adulthood. It’s sometimes called Type 1.5 diabetes. People with LADA are sometimes diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes by mistake, because the body still makes some insulin but slowly loses its ability to do so. Many people with LADA don’t start out needing insulin injections but reach that point over time. Other medications and lifestyle changes can help LADA to be more manageable.
Like all hormones and functions of your body, insulin is interconnected with many other different hormones and systems, and helping one often helps the other. If you’re interested in learning more about hormones and how hormone therapy might be a helpful treatment for you, you can find more information here!
Your gut health is something that’s important to be cognizant of at every stage in your life. It’s one of the foundations of the overall health of your entire body! During menopause, however, when changing hormone balances throw everything in your system off-kilter, staying on top of your gut health becomes more important than ever.
Your gut, like your hormone system, is deeply involved in the way you feel. The state of your digestive system affects you emotionally, chemically, and physically. The “gut microbiome,” or the thriving ecosystem of healthy bacteria that live in your digestive tract, changes in response to big changes in your body, and menopause is one of them. Paying attention to your digestive flora and taking care of your gut health can be beneficial to many women as they cope with the symptoms of menopause! Here’s how.
Menopause and Your Gut
So, your gut. Exactly what does it have to do with changes to your hormones and your reproductive system? As it turns out, quite a bit! Current research indicates that there is a connection between the microorganisms of your digestive system and your hormone levels, although the study of this phenomenon is still in its very early stages.
There’s also a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg problem, as gut health and menopause can affect a lot of the same things, including weight, mood, cognition, strength, and mobility. Do these things change during menopause because menopause creates changes in the gut, or do these changes spark the alterations in your gut health? It’s too early to say, but one thing is clear– the gut flora and the hormone levels of menopause are definitely connected in some way, and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that taking care of your gut health helps many menopausal women to gain better control over their symptoms!
Eating for Gut Health
There’s a small difference between simply eating healthy and eating for gut health specifically. Eating healthy takes into account all the systems of the body and the nutrients they need, while gut health zooms in and takes a closer look at what you can put into your body that will keep the thousands and thousands of bacteria in your digestive system happy. There’s a good amount of overlap between the two– eating for gut health usually means eating broadly healthy by default! However, when you’re trying to focus on your gut, there are some main factors to keep in mind.
Fiber
First things first, your gut microbiome loves fiber. A fiber-rich diet is heaven for gut flora, which eat the soluble fiber you take in, while the insoluble fiber works to keep your digestive tract functioning like it should. Adding lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes to your diet will give your gut microbiome plenty to work with.
Probiotics
Many of us know the word probiotic and that it applies to foods like yogurt and sauerkraut, but fewer people actually know what the term means. Probiotic foods actually contain living bacteria and microorganisms of their own– this is why fermented foods are usually considered probiotic. Adding these foods to your diet helps keep up the population of bacteria in your gut. Adding things like tempeh, kimchi, kombucha, kefir, and other fermented foods to your diet is a good step towards maintaining your gut health. It’s good to look for labels that advertise “live cultures,” as this means the bacteria in the food are still alive and ready to go to work.
Prebiotics
Probiotics and prebiotics– what’s the difference? Essentially, probiotics bring more good bacteria into your system, and prebiotics give them their very best source of food, mostly nutrient-dense soluble fiber. Prebiotic foods like asparagus, bananas, oatmeal, artichokes, onions, garlic, and leeks are delicacies for your gut microbiome, giving them the fuel they need to thrive and maintain a steady balance.
Hormone Replacement Therapy for Menopause
Addressing your gut health through your diet can have a positive ripple effect on the health of your entire body, especially during a turbulent time like menopause. For some women, however, this still isn’t enough. Seeking out other means of addressing your menopausal symptoms, like hormone replacement therapy, can often be a helpful option that lets you get the most out of lifestyle changes like eating for your gut microbiome. You can learn more about this option here!
