Menopause is a condition that will affect all women at some point in their lives. Menopause is the transition from the childbearing years to the 40s and 50s in which women’s menstrual cycles cease. Although some women experience the menopausal transition with little discomfort or negative side effects, an increasing number of women complain of menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes, alternating chills and hot flashes, irritability, weight gain, memory problems, and sexual problems. to name a few.
I found BodyTalk to be a perfect way to treat and relieve the symptoms and discomfort of menopause.
What are the causes of these symptoms? Sure, fluctuating hormone levels cause them… but then why do some women complain of some symptoms while others complain of others?
The answer to this question is complicated by the fact that HRT, while causing rampant breast cancer among users, actually did a very good job of relieving menopausal symptoms for many years. Only after the link between HRT and breast cancer became public did menopausal women begin to try alternative therapies in greater numbers.
One of the most challenging aspects of menopause is its tendency to make pre-existing problems worse. If there are allergies, addictions, pain, or even tendencies toward various ailments or behaviors, menopause will exacerbate them. And conversely, if there are allergies or pre-existing conditions, their presence often causes more severe menopausal symptoms.
This is due to the fact that hormones seem to mask health problems to some extent. Witness, so to speak, the eczema or asthma that children seem to “disappear” as they get older. As boys approach puberty and sex hormone levels rise, some chronic health problems seem to improve for no apparent reason. However, as women become perimenopausal, those same health issues (or others) can rear their ugly heads.
So when we treat menopausal symptoms at BodyTalk, we first and foremost treat what we find. Each client is a very special mix of sensitivities, hormone levels, and life experiences; therefore, we do not administer a patent dose of anything. Rather, we look at what’s there and listen carefully to what specific part of the body is out of balance.
For some women, the big problem is progesterone. For others, it’s estrogen/estradiol/estrone. For others, however, stress has driven them into a state of complete adrenal exhaustion and we must balance cortisol levels before doing anything else. Many women have problems with specific environmental factors that cause excess heat in the body, making hot flashes unbearable. For them, we must balance these sensitivities at the same time that we balance the hormones.
BodyTalk’s brilliant blend of Western and Chinese medicine, along with its respect for the body’s innate wisdom, makes this the perfect modality for working with menopausal women and their symptoms.
