Tag Archive for: Symptoms

Silence is Stupid!

There’s a quote that says, “Silence is Golden.” But, I disagree. I think silence is stupid!

You know, we humans are odd. We tend to behave in ways that are not in our best interest. Instead of behaving in ways that conform with our natural tendencies, we modify our behavior.

For instance, do you realize that your body talks to you? It doesn’t talk verbally, like we do to each other. Instead, it talks to you by creating symptoms to get your attention and make you aware that something’s wrong. The problem is that we ignore the things our bodies are trying to tell us.

When you came into the world as a newborn, you couldn’t do much of anything. You had needs, but you depended on others to meet them. Your job was to make sure they knew you needed something. So, even though you were completely incapable of doing anything for yourself, the one thing you could do quite well was cry. Crying was your only way of communicating. And, boy, did it work to make everyone take care of you. If, as a newborn, you had remained silent when you needed something, there’s no telling what disasters might have befallen you. Silence could have resulted in your demise. Silence would have been stupid.

Then, as you got older, you discovered that your own body had a way of communicating its needs to you. Pain indicated an injury. Itching indicated an allergy. Aching indicated muscle soreness. Your body created a whole smorgasbord of sensations to let you know something was wrong. So your body was not silent. It “spoke up” to let you know when there was a problem. And then you spoke up to get help. Silence would have been stupid.

When puberty came along, you had no difficulty announcing the arrival of your first period. Your mom had probably already been plenty vocal in warning you of its inevitability. Unfortunately, she probably didn’t bother to include anything about menopause as the bookend to puberty. But, why not? Why the silence? Menopause is really just puberty in reverse. So why did she tell you about puberty, but not menopause?

And as you aged, you talked a lot about your periods over the next 30 years or so. You even talked quite a bit about PMS. All these things were your reality. So why hide them? Half of the world’s population experienced them. So it just seemed stupid to be silent about them.

And, pregnancy, … oh my goodness! Not only is there no silence about that, there’s endless conversation about it. It’s one of the biggest events of your life. So most women talk about it before, during, and after the actual event.

Women are known for talking! We talk about everything … except menopause.

So why are we silent on the subject of menopause?

The odd thing about human behavior is that, although we refuse to listen to our own bodies, we do listen to everything and everybody else: Dr. Google, celebrities who are not experts on the topic, advertisers, marketers, ignorant girlfriends, hype, scare tactics. We listen to all the wrong things instead of listening to the one right thing.

Somewhere during the course of your life, you got the notion that you shouldn’t speak up about certain things. For some odd reason, you decided that speaking up was a form of weakness. And, odder still, you got the idea that suffering in silence was a form of martyrdom. You adopted phrases like, “Grin and bear it;” “No pain, no gain,” “I can tough it out,” etc. They all implied that you should not acknowledge the signs and symptoms that your body provided to protect you. They implied that you should just ignore your body’s way of speaking up to let you know something was wrong.

And, finally, you ended up here, at the time of menopause. Mother Nature instilled your body with a whole host of symptoms to get your attention when you lose your estrogen at post-menopause. You have over 20 horrible symptoms from your head to your toes that turn every aspect of your life upside down and make you absolutely miserable. But, … you ignore them and remain silent.

They are all symptoms of estrogen deficiency, which is the very definition of menopause. Of course, this huge list of symptoms usually follows years of wacky periods that were also a warning that menopause was just around the corner. But, even though all those horrible symptoms hit most women over the head like a ton of bricks and turn their lives upside down, most women remain silent. It’s as if they seem to think their silence constitutes some type of martyrdom. I assure you that no man would endure all those miserable symptoms silently.

You are so entrenched in your silence that you don’t even wake up to the fact that all your symptoms are your body’s way of hollering at you to alert you to the fact that estrogen is missing. Every cell in your body is starving. That’s why you have symptoms from your head to your toes.

But, you’re so good at staying silent that you just pretend everything’s fine. And, because you refuse to admit that you just might be experiencing menopause, you fail to get the education you need to manage it. You think your silence is stoic. But, in reality, it’s stupid.

You don’t speak up and tell your doctor that you’re having over 20 miserable symptoms of estrogen deficiency. And your doctor doesn’t speak up and tell you what to expect. You both remain silent. The silence is just soooo stupid!

Menopause is a hormone deficiency just like any other hormone deficiency. All hormone deficiencies produce a long list of symptoms to alert you to the fact that a hormone is missing. This is true regardless of the particular hormone that’s deficient.

Diabetes, which is insulin deficiency produces a long list of symptoms. Likewise, hypothyroidism, which is thyroid hormone deficiency, produces a long list of symptoms. And if you don’t replace the missing hormone for those situations, the hormone deficiency causes diseases that are ultimately fatal.

Oh my! Do you think the same could be true for estrogen deficiency? And if it is, why in the world would everyone be silent about it?

Well, my dear, I’m breaking the silence to tell you that estrogen deficiency is like any other hormone deficiency. It is not just about hot flashes. It’s about the diseases that are due to estrogen deficiency. What are they? Heart attack, Osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s.

The sad thing is that most women have no idea that these diseases are a direct consequence of losing their estrogen at menopause. And, with all the silence on the topic of menopause, it’s usually too late once they find out.

You see, there’s another facet to why silence is stupid. Have you ever heard of a “silent disease”? A “silent disease” is one that does not produce any symptoms. You have no idea the disease is lurking because you feel fine.

But the horrible thing about a silent disease is that it progresses until … bam! … a catastrophic event occurs. And the ironic thing about all the silence that characterizes menopause is the fact that all 3 of these diseases (Heart attack, Osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s) are silent until they are deadly.

Heart attack is the biggest killer of menopausal women. It kills 1 out of 2 women. But doctors don’t warn you about that. Their silence is inexcusably stupid. Without estrogen, you build up plaque in your heart arteries for years or decades without a clue that it’s happening. And then, when you least expect it, you have a heart attack.

But there’s more! The symptoms of a heart attack in a woman are very different from those in a man. Men have crushing chest pain with radiation into their left arm. Women don’t. Women have jaw, neck, or back discomfort that they don’t even describe as pain.

So there are 2 forms of silence with a heart attack: (1) You don’t know you’re heading for one, and (2) You don’t know you’re having one.

So, why, oh why, don’t people talk about this so that women are aware?

Osteoporosis is just as bad. When you lose your estrogen, you start losing bone. But, there are no symptoms of bone loss. It’s a silent disease. So you lose bone like crazy for years and then, bam! Your first indication of a problem comes in the form of a fracture of your spine or hip from something that should never cause a fracture. Women fracture their spines by merely coughing or sneezing. They fracture their hips when just standing still, doing nothing. They don’t fall and fracture. They literally fracture first and then fall … all because there’s no bone there. And the reason there’s no bone there is because estrogen loss causes bone loss, period.

The mortality rate after the first osteoporotic fracture is 20%. But fractures beget fractures. So most women have one after another. And they never heal because there’s no bone there. They are crippled for life, and cannot ever live independently again. Go to any nursing home in the world. I guarantee that 90% of the residents are women who have fractured.

Yet, nobody tells you about all this in advance. Isn’t that stupid?

Alzheimer’s is pretty much the ultimate in why silence is stupid. Your brain has estrogen receptors. Estrogen is its fuel, and it cannot function without it. Why do you think you get brain fog when you hit menopause? Well, if you extrapolate that brain fog over the next decade or so, what do you think is happening to your brain? It’s shrinking! That’s what Alzheimer’s is: Brain shrinkage. Your brain goes from large to small, ever so slowly and silently. And it’s silent until you’ve lost 40% of your brain.

That forgetfulness and brain fog you have for years is your brain’s attempt to wake you up and get your attention … but most women just ignore it and remain silent. That silence is stupid!

Alzheimer’s has a 100% mortality rate. That makes it 100% stupid.

So why don’t doctors equip you with the knowledge that there are silent but deadly diseases associated with estrogen deficiency?

To have 3 deadly diseases that all creep up on you silently is just super-stupid.

The message that I’m delivering to you loudly and clearly is this: Menopause is estrogen deficiency that produces symptoms to wake you up so that you’ll speak up before you develop the 3 silent diseases that can kill you. There are all sorts of things you can do to prevent both the symptoms and the diseases. But they are not all equal in their abilities. So you have to learn about the limitations of each of your management options.

If you live as long as expected, your menopause will constitute the longest hormonal phase of your life. Once you reach menopause, you will be a menopausal woman for the rest of your life. Are you going to stay silent about it for half of your life? You have more control over the menopausal portion of your life than you do over any other time. But you relinquish that control if you remain silent. Why would you do that? And if you do remain silent into your golden years, there won’t be anything “golden” about them. So give all this silence some thought. And then speak up and never shut up.

Cry like a baby if necessary. It’s the first thing you learned to do upon entry into this world. Don’t stop. It served you well when you were born, and it will serve you well now. Refuse to grin and bear the misery. Don’t settle for anything less. Make a lot of noise to get what you want for managing your menopause your way.

Silence is a form of bondage. The only way you’ll break out of bondage is to break the silence.

Silence is stupid!

While You Weren’t Sleeping

Not sleeping! We all hate it.

While you weren’t sleeping, you were lying in bed wishing you were sleeping, but to no avail. Then you started searching for the reasons you weren’t sleeping.

All the tossing, turning, re-positioning, thinking of things that might have put you to sleep. And all the while, you were assessing just how many hours were left before you had to get up and start your day. Tick, tick, tick. Your entire night inched by, leaving you exhausted even though you hadn’t done anything but lie there … not sleeping.

The irony is that the longer you weren’t sleeping, the more anxious you got about not sleeping. And the more anxious you got about not sleeping, the more you weren’t sleeping.

And then you tried to figure out why you weren’t sleeping.

Was it stress? Too much caffeine? That argument you had with your spouse? Or perhaps it was some environmental disturbance, like a noise or the room temperature. But, he’s sleeping soundly. There’s certainly nothing in the environment bothering him.

And then it hits you: This must be menopause!

Sure, there have been other times when you weren’t sleeping very well. The most memorable was right after having your baby. But back them you weren’t sleeping for an obvious reason. It was all about the baby. The baby was hungry. The baby was wet. The baby was sick. Even though not sleeping was tiring, it made sense that you weren’t sleeping.

But now, at menopause, the fact that you aren’t sleeping is one of the most bothersome and senseless symptoms of all.

Of course, there’s an obvious reason that you aren’t sleeping: loss of estrogen. But, unlike the obvious reason you weren’t sleeping with a newborn, loss of estrogen just doesn’t seem a worthwhile reason for not sleeping.

I mean, you weren’t sleeping when you’d had your baby, and now you aren’t sleeping when you don’t have your estrogen.

You can dissect the sequence of events that characterized your night … last night and every night … while you weren’t sleeping:

First, you weren’t able to fall asleep. Whereas you normally drifted off to sleep when your head hit the pillow, on the nights when you weren’t sleeping, it took an hour or two just to get to sleep.

But then, you had night sweats. The night sweats were like the hot flashes you had during the day. You felt a wave of intense heat throughout your body as if it was coming from the inside out. And it swept its way from head to toe, leaving a thick film of slimy sweat behind. And, along with it, your heart started pounding heavily, wildly, as if it was going to jump out of your chest.

Of course, that made you even more anxious and constituted an obvious reason as to why you weren’t sleeping.

And since the heart-pounding resolved after a couple of minutes, you thought you should have been able to go back to sleeping.

But you were drenched. Your nightgown, the sheets, even the pillow were damp. They were so damp that they were cold. So, you had to get up and change your nightgown. And once you were fully awake doing that, you realized that you had to change the sheets, too, lest they dampen your new nightgown.

That required waking up your snoring spouse, who saw no reason to care about soiled sheets. He actually accused you of wetting the bed. And that made you angry enough to bite his head off … and really wake yourself up.

Finally, after all that, you went back to sleeping … but only for an hour before the whole cycle repeated itself again.

Needless to say, you woke up after you weren’t sleeping because of all the interruptions throughout the night.

And that set the stage for a profound feeling of fatigue in the morning. Even lifting the coffee mug to your lips seemed like a huge effort. You didn’t bother to put yourself together for the sake of appearance. It was just too much work. But off to work you went, moving slowly, feeling sluggish and old.

Because you weren’t sleeping, you also couldn’t seem to remember anything. Forgetfulness became the theme of the day. You couldn’t remember what you were supposed to do or when you were supposed to do it. So you spent the entire day scrambling to make up for lost time, covering your mishaps, and forgetting the next thing while compensating for the last forgotten thing.

It was really exhausting. And it was all because you weren’t sleeping when you should have been sleeping.

Within the first couple of hours of your day, you’d had had it. You became irritable. No one could say or do anything without upsetting you in some way. You lashed out at your co-workers, and even your boss.

Then you felt badly about it and tried to make amends. You were sugary sweet for about ten minutes. But then, wham! Something made you angry again. Over and over, all day long, you had mood swings like a pendulum. One minute you were be mad as a wet hen; the next, you were be calm as a cucumber. Eventually, everyone around you … at work and at home … felt like they were walking on eggshells. So they all started distancing themselves from you.

And when you realized that you’d alienated virtually everyone in your circle of family, friends, and co-workers … all because you weren’t sleeping … it made you depressed. The full-on gloom and doom enveloped you.

And your depression made you unable to sleep.

So now, you aren’t sleeping because of estrogen loss on top of not sleeping because of depression.

It’s a vicious cycle … not sleeping at night leads to all the events that follow because of it:

Insomnia Night Sweats Interrupted Sleep Fatigue

Depression Irritability Mood Swings Forgetfulness

So, while you weren’t sleeping, a whole lot of other things were brewing to really affect the quality of your life … negatively! Not sleeping is not just a sleepless night anymore.

Waste Product or Waist Product?

One of the things menopausal women hate most is the accumulation of fat around their waist. Even if you never had a fat waist before, you notice an increase in its size at menopause. No more hourglass figure. No more firm, flat belly. 

Suddenly, every gram of weight you gain seems to end up around your waist. It’s as if everything you eat becomes a “waist product”!

It’s partly due to a slowing of our metabolism at the time of menopause. But it’s also due to aging. Mother Nature apparently thought it would be a good idea to make human females gain weight as we age. And it turns out that having a little bit of extra weight around our waist is evolutionarily a means of ensuring survival of our species.

Well, that’s all fine and good, but individual women aren’t thinking about survival of the whole darn species. We’re each thinking about our own waist! So, while a larger waist may be a product of aging, we view the whole phenomenon as a waste.

Speaking of waste, isn’t it odd that the word for our feminine middle is the same as the word for what’s an unimportant by-product? 

When you eat food, your body absorbs the nutrients in the food and discards the left-overs as “waste products.” So, waste is junk. And the more junk food you eat, the more waste your body has to discard.

It turns out your slower metabolism at the time of menopause contributes to your waste products. The faster your body metabolizes food, the faster it uses the calories as fuel. But the slower it metabolizes food, the less efficient it is at utilizing the calories. So, more of them end up being labeled as “waste products” which end up around your waist as “waist products.”

Not only that. There’s another factor at play. It’s called “transit time.” Transit time is the time it takes your food to go from your mouth to your toilet. Of course, when you put it in your mouth, it’s food. When it reaches your toilet, it’s a “waste product.”

Foods with faster transit times produce fewer waste products. Plants fit in to this category. If you’re a vegan, your transit time is very fast … so fast that there’s hardly any time to form any waste products as the food speeds through your digestive tract on to the wasteland in your toilet.

That’s one reason why vegans tend to be thinner than meat eaters. The waste ends up in the toilet rather than around their waist.

Foods with slow transit times s-l-u-g their way through your digestive tract. As they do so, they start rotting. And all that rotting food turns in to waste products. Unfortunately, once they turn into waste inside your body, you’re stuck with them forever. Not only are they “waste products” that become “waist products,” they even wreak more havoc than that. They become something called “free radicals.” Free radicals are what cause cancers … all sorts of different cancers.

And other waste products are stored as fat. Of course, fat waste products end up around your waist. And they have a special significance of their own simply because they’re a waist product: They cause heart attacks!

So, it turns out that all this talk about waste products has more significance than meets the waist.

The waste that your body doesn’t want either ends up as a waste product or a waist product. If it ends up as a waste product in the toilet … hopefully soon after you’ve eaten it, it doesn’t become a “waist product.” But, if it takes a long time to become as waste product headed for your toilet, it ends up producing even more waste products that cause cancer or waist products that cause a heart attack.

It’s all so circular. But, no matter how you look at it, waste products are supposed to be waste products that end up in your toilet, not waist products that end up around your waist to cause heart attacks and cancer.

It would have been a whole lot better if Mother Nature had come up with some other way to ensure survival of the species as we age. Making waist products from waste products is just such a waste.

Face Fat or Belly Fat; That is the Question

It seems that life is all about trade-offs. You just can’t have things both ways. For most matters, we’re pretty used to these trade-offs. We know we can either spend our money or save our money. We trade freedom for companionship when we enter into a romantic partnership. We accept that we have to forfeit sweet treats if we want to maintain our girly figures. These trade-offs make sense to us even though we don’t necessarily like them.

Menopause entails trade-offs, too. There are all sorts of options for which there are advantages and disadvantages. And, typically, the advantages of one are the disadvantages of another.

But one of the most frustrating trade-offs during menopause is fat. Well, not just the presence of fat, but rather it’s location. And, for most women, it boils down to a trade-off between face fat and belly fat.

Menopause is all about shifting fat.

In some ways, it’s no different than any other hormonal phase of your life. Puberty involves changes in your fat, most notably, gaining it anew. Pregnancy, too. All sorts of things get fatter when you’re pregnant. And menopause creates another instance in which shocking fat shifts occur.

But there’s one that just doesn’t make sense. It’s the shifting of fat from your face to your belly.

Before menopause, your face is full, round, and plump in all the right places to give you a smooth, expressive, soft appearance. And your belly is flat, firm, and naturally hourglass shaped.

But, at menopause they both change. And it’s as if they can no longer co-exist. You can have one or the other, but not both.

With the shifts of fat at menopause, most women notice a loss of face fat. The nice, smooth contours give way to a loss of collagen … which makes your face hollow. And since your skin now has less volume beneath it, it starts to sag. The sagging skin makes you look old. And this is without even acknowledging the wrinkling that accompanies this undesirable look.

But at the same time you’re losing that plump, fullness in your face, … you gain it in your belly!

Your hourglass waistline turns into a box. With time, it begins to look like an apple: Pudgy, bulgy, with rolls of fat that cause your skin to stretch.

So you end up with less face fat and more belly fat. It’s a trade-off.

We all hate both of these changes, so we seek to fix them and restore them to their pre-menopausal state. But what we discover is that doing so is a trade-off too. It becomes an issue of face fat or belly fat.

If you lose enough fat to be satisfied with your belly, your face looks absolutely skeletal. And the more skeletal it looks, the more your skin sags and the older you look.

And if you gain enough fat to fill out your face to its former contour, your belly is absolutely huge!

It’s as if Mother Nature has issued you an ultimatum. Face fat or belly fat; that is the question. You have to pick one or the other, and you can’t have both!

You can immediately spot the women who have chosen face fat. They waddle around with beautiful smiles on their perfectly-contoured faces … but they have long ago forfeited any hope of maintaining their figures.

Those who have chosen belly fat are scrawny, wiry, frail, creatures with boney faces covered with sagging skin.

Looking in the mirror is painful for either.

While most trade-offs make sense, this one does not. It’s a cruel trick of nature. No woman should have to choose between face fat and belly fat.

I mean, the two areas encompass completely different parts of our bodies. They aren’t even nearby one another. And, faces are a lot smaller that bellies. How did they become linked in this fat trade-off?

It would have made sense to trade off face fat for neck fat. Or belly fat for butt fat. But face fat versus belly fat? That’s just … well, unjust!

Maybe it is intended to be some sort of consolation. If your face looks freakishly thin, at least you can have a nice belly. And if your belly is fat, at least your face is pretty.

The problem is that we all want both. Face fat versus belly fat isn’t a question. It’s a curse.

Leakage and Shrinkage

We live in an era of name changes. The reasons for name-changing vary, but some are quite baffling to me. Let’s see, the “trash man” is no
longer the trash man. Now he’s a “waste management worker.” A woman who stays at home rather than going to a job somewhere else used to be called a
“housewife.” But, now she’s a “household engineer.” A waiter at a restaurant is now called a “server.” And a secretary is now an “administrative assistant.”

More interesting than these name changes themselves are the reasons for the name changes in the first place. Most often, the need for a name change has to do with being politically correct. Alternatively, it’s about making the people who function in a certain capacity feel better about their job titles.

Such name changes for job descriptions always struck me as things outside the realm of medicine. But not anymore. Now, doctors are
“providers.” But so are nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants. A distinction between them might hurt someone’s feelings.

More commonly in medicine, names for diseases change from time to time, but it’s usually due to a new discovery or refinement of information that makes the former name outdated, or even inaccurate. But that’s changing, too. The need for political correctness and making patients feel good about themselves has even begun to induce name changes for actual diseases.

Recently, the name for some of the symptoms of menopause have changed.

Two of the most bothersome symptoms of menopause are Urinary Incontinence and Vaginal Atrophy.

“Urinary incontinence” is when you leak urine unexpectedly. You may dribble when you laugh, sneeze, cough, jump, or lift a heavy object. Or, you might just leak spontaneously with no activity at all. It’s very common at menopause, and there are many ways to manage it or cure it.

“Vaginal Atrophy” means that your vagina shrinks … literally. You notice symptoms like vaginal dryness, itching, burning, and pain with intercourse. But the reason all these symptoms occur is because you lose the vitally important estrogen on which your vagina depended. So, without it, your vagina cannot survive. Thus, it begins to shrink … or disappear. And the medical term for that is “Vaginal Atrophy.” But, it’s something that you can prevent entirely.

So, the terms “Urinary Incontinence” and “Vaginal Atrophy” are both absolutely accurate for the symptoms they designate. I’m all about simplicity. Why have complicated names when you can use simple ones? In simplistic terms, Urinary Incontinence and Vaginal Atrophy are nothing but “Leakage” and “Shrinkage.”

But they both recently underwent a name change. And their names were not changed simply to “Leakage” and “shrinkage.”

Why the name change for two perfectly accurate names?

Well, for the sake of political correctness and good feelings, of course … just like so many other name changes in our lives today!

It turns out that medical authorities claimed that women found the terms “Urinary Incontinence” and “Vaginal Atrophy” demeaning. So, they changed their names. Not only that, they merged the two entities into one single entity … even though they don’t always or even typically occur together. Maybe that was to make women feel like they had only one problem instead of two.

Now, instead of having “Urinary Incontinence,” and / or “Vaginal Atrophy” you have “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause.”

Oh, and you can’t name anything without giving it an acronym!

So, Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause is “GSM.” That makes it sound nifty.

Now, I have no problem with name changes. But I do have a problem with focusing on the wrong thing. And, in my opinion, all this focus on the names of these entities rather than on education about them and treatment of them is an example of putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

The fact is that, while many women suffer from these two symptoms of menopause, no one talks about them! And, since no one talks about them, women are not educated about them. And if your so-called “education” involves using long fancy terms like “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause,” you might have trouble learning what you need to know in order to do something about it.

I think it’s best to keep things simple. Patients don’t need fancy, complicated names for their symptoms or diseases. What they need is comprehension. With such convoluted, merged, modified names, patient comprehension is lost.

If you start dribbling urine, but refuse to speak up about it or have no idea that there are ways to correct it, what good is it to give
it a different name? That’s putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble. It would be a whole lot more direct and useful to just call it “Leakage.”

If you start having vaginal itching but have no idea it’s a warning signal that your vagina is shrinking, what good does it do to change
the name to make you feel better about it? That’s putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble. It would be a whole lot more direct and useful to just call it “Shrinkage.”

I think it would be a whole lot better for women if medical professionals focused more on educating their patients and offering them options
for these symptoms instead of changing their names.

I mean, rather than naming it, they should be taming it. Who cares what you call it when the goal is to forestall it? Why label it when you
should just disable it? And why give it some nifty acronym to abbreviate it when you can just alleviate it?

I imagine that this name change to “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause” involved a whole host of physicians getting together, mulling
over new names for hours or even days. It would have made a lot more sense if all that time and energy had been focused on how to educate more women about the urinary and vaginal changes that take place at menopause and offer them solutions. And labeling them as “Leakage” and “Shrinkage” would not have required much of an explanation. But, every woman would certainly understand them immediately.

Mama Comes Unglued

Mama! Good ole’ mamma. She’s everybody’s favorite. She takes care of us, pampers us, spoils us, and understands us. Mama is selfless. Never does she place her needs above ours. Her schedule yields to our wishes and desires. In essence, there’s nothing Mama won’t do for the ones she loves.

Mama! What would we do without good ole’ Mama? Read more

Menopause Isn’t About Hot Flashes; It’s About Heart Attacks!

Mention the word “menopause” to a woman, and her response will have something to do with hot flashes.

Go ahead. Try it.

Read more

Menopause is All About Compensation

What does the word “compensation” mean to you?

As with most things, it probably depends on context.

Read more

Upside Down Misconceptions About Menopause

One of the most striking things I’ve learned about menopause is that the vast majority of women have numerous misconceptions about it. And the misconceptions are sooooooo prevalent that women pass them from one to the other. Read more

From Winning Vagina to Whining Vagina

You probably haven’t thought much about your vagina before. In fact, it’s probably an afterthought most of the time.

But I’m bringing it up because it has a before and after with regard to menopause. And most women find out all too late about it. I want you to learn all about it before rather than after it’s too late.

Read more