Do you find yourself forgetting things? The car keys? Someone’s name? Are they minor so-called senior moments or indicators of something more serious?
When women reach menopause, they get a domino effect from a dying ovary. And that domino effect snowballs into their memory, their weight, their attention and the stability of their mood.
The ovaries start out as the size of a peanut in childhood, then grow to the size of a walnut after puberty, then shrink back down to the size of a peanut during and after menopause, no longer delivering vital estrogen and progesterone.
Hormone replacement therapy — medications containing female hormones to replace the ones the body no longer makes after menopause — used to be a standard treatment for women with hot flashes and other menopause symptoms. Hormone Replacement Therapy may also have long-term benefits of preventing heart disease and possibly dementia.
The Anti-Aging Doctor
Once, middle-aged women sought out a gynecologist for menopausal symptoms, or an internist for fatigue. Now anti-aging doctors are treating the symptoms using Hormone Replacement Therapy, and deliver much more: better sex, a fitter body, dewier skin.
Bioidenticals, a type of hormone replacement therapy, mimics the estrogen and progesterone that the body produces, and are manufactured to have the same molecular structure as those in the body. They are considered “natural,” and thus different from conventional hormone therapy, which are synthetic.
Yet aging is a natural process, not a medical condition, and there isn’t any therapy that can reverse it or slow it down all the way.
There are traditional doctors, such as endocrinologists (who specialize in hormones) and geriatricians (who focus on the elderly) are specifically trained to treat age-related conditions such as hormone imbalances, but anti-aging doctors have a specific skill with middle –aged women.
The good news is no one is saying that you have to just deal with hot flashes, weight gain, or any other midlife change. Fifty-plus women may not have the biology of twentysomethings, but they can still feel vibrant, healthy, and even sexy.
Our best advice is to get your hormone levels checked annually and take nutritional supplements daily.
Tips to Living Longer:
- Go on a weight loss plan.
- Take iodide for thyroid disease.
- Take lipoic acid for liver disease.
- Drink copious amounts of teas – they’re filled with nutrients!
- Add spices like cumin, garlic, tarragon, cinnamon and cayenne pepper to meals, as they are chock full of nutrients as well.
- Eat lots of vegetables! Not only are they filled with nutrients, but they increase the amount of times you chew your food, thus decreasing appetite.
- Exercise!
- Don’t smoke.
- Sleep.
- Add spices to every meal.
- Eat yogurt daily.
- Have a dark green salad, glass of vegetable juice or a bowl of vegetable soup 20 minutes before a meal to cut calorie consumption by 30 percent.
- Vitamin D.
- Have sex at least two times a week to reboot the brain. Sex is one of the few activities that both excites and relaxes the brain at the same time, which is the key to the reboot process.
