By Andrea Marsh from Cotswold Menopause
As someone who has experienced a large variety of symptoms, I’m committed to helping women alleviate their worst menopause and perimenopause symptoms naturally, using my learnings as a Shiatsu and Chinese Medicine Practitioner, my personal experience, and that of my clients.
What I want to discuss here, is some of those more personal experiences and symptoms, and how improving my gut health helped alleviate these menopause and perimenopause symptoms.
I was 45, when I first realised I was suffering from symptoms of menopause, but I didn’t know that’s what it was at first. I associated menopause with hot flushes and stopping your period, and I still had my periods, and my main issue was with anxiety.
Symptom: Anxiety
There was anxiety in my stomach every single day for no apparent reason, my emotions seemed flat, I found nothing enjoyable, and I cried at literally everything on the telly. I hadn't heard of the word perimenopause and I thought the menopause would happen in 10 years or so.
But the perimenopause can bring on hormone changes in the years leading up to your periods ending, and once I did some research into perimenopause, I realised that this was what my anxiety was linked to. As a Shiatsu and Chinese Medicine Practitioner, I started looking into what I could do to combat the anxiety.
Like most things, anxiety is linked to both your brain and your gut. The underlying cause is a fatigue of your adrenal system which is responsible for creating hormones. This allows adrenalin and the stress hormone cortisol to be too easily released into your gut. I think of it as a chemical that is squirting too easily and leaves you with that feeling in your gut. The feeling you then attribute a negative emotion too, and the label for that is anxiety. Hanging onto this feeling, thinking about it, worrying about it, and remaining focused on it, keeps you in a state of fight or flight – which allows further adrenalin and cortisol to be more readily released. Keeping you locked in a cycle of anxiety. Better gut health can help combat these feelings.
Symptom: Increased allergies
Many women notice their allergies are exacerbated as they progress through their 40s, with no explanation for why this is happening. I spent my life being a hay fever sufferer, to the point of being given extreme injections as a child, and still getting more allergic; grass pollen season was a misery. I'd tried every potion out there for hay fever, but no one ever said 'what about your gut health?’ So, it was a wonderful irony that as I approached my 50s, and menopause symptoms kicked in, my hay fever symptoms disappeared.
Research shows that allergies are affected by hormonal changes that take place during the perimenopause and menopause. An increase in allergies, and in asthma, occur due to oestrogen receptors all over the body, including on immunoregulatory cells, appearing to skew the body's response to allergies and inflammation.
This process is generally held in check by the hormone progesterone, but during the peri-menopause and menopause progesterone levels are low and so your asthma, allergies and even hay fever may get worse. Secondly, histamine intolerance can be made worse at the time of menopause which can lead to more symptoms including eczema and asthma. It therefore makes sense that lowering of oestrogen during menopause means allergies become less problematic.
This doesn’t always help during perimenopause, but the gut’s symbiosis with the immune system means that better gut death could help alleviate some symptoms of allergies.
Symptom: Body odour
A few years ago, I picked up a gut parasite called Giardia, it’s quite rare and difficult to get, and it took me six weeks to get diagnosed. In that time, I could barely stand straight and my stomach always felt tight and distended. Once diagnosed and taking antibiotics (for the first time in over 10 years), I started to feel a lot better. But did I really get better? I began to experience a whole host of new symptoms. I'd never had body odour like it!
I was already suffering from gums bleeding easily, the bloating and stomach pain was almost a way of life, but belching, brain fog and body odour was something new to me.
I've come to understand that the stress the hormonal change of the menopause puts your health under is like a magnifying glass, highlighting health imbalances you probably weren't aware of. Some of the more embarrassing symptoms that appear like body odour aren't talked about but smells that escape are a sign that your body isn't functioning as well as it can, and this goes for having bad breath too. In my case, the antibiotics used to treat the Giardia may have been the issue. Antibiotics can wipe out both good and bad types of gut bacteria, so new perimenopause and menopause symptoms could be linked to gut health.
Symptom: Brain fog
While, brain fog has many contributing factors, the root of them all is what passes through the gut. When you eat foods that cause inflammation, they are missing nutrients that your brain desperately needs; the bacteria in your gut extract and utilise the nutrients in your diet - that's their job - but if those nutrients are missing then your brain suffers too. All of the symptoms listed above (and many more) are a sign your gut needs help.
Solution: Keep your gut healthy
Keep your gut in balance to keep your health in check. The microbiome is the environment in your gut where a vast diversity of bacteria resides and utilises energy and nutrients from your food, they also help support the circulation of oestrogen in the body which is essential during perimenopause and menopause.
These bacteria, or microbes, need to eat too, so if we feed our microbiome well, it flourishes; if the bacteria are diverse and strong, so is your brain health, immunity and overall digestive system. Our microbiome is formed as we grow up, so how we eat and live in our younger years sets up patterns for life. However, this can change for better or worse as we get older. If you live on processed foods your bacteria will die off, if you live on vegetables and whole foods you will be feeding your bacteria, and in turn strengthening your immunity. A good probiotic will help the diversity of your microbiome.
Solution: Choose a good probiotic
I first picked up a bottle of microbz women at an event a few years ago. This probiotic is a game changer in women's health and can be especially good support during hormonal upheaval. Their probiotic range contains a variety of bacteria which is so important for your gut health at this time. A lot of health issues are exacerbated when the bacteria of the microbiome are not flourishing well; a probiotic puts the bacteria back in.
The beneficial herbs in microbz women include stress adaptogens, these are herbs that interrupt the adrenal response and calm it down; Moringa, Schisandra and Korean Ginseng work together to do this. Then herbs such as Fennel are working to balance your hormones, whilst Lady's Mantle and Shepherd's Purse aim to regulate your periods making this a great probiotic for the perimenopause specifically.
Solution: Add prebiotics
To keep the microbiome healthy, a daily dose of prebiotics is required. This isn't anything fancy, it's about eating a vast variety of vegetables, fruits like berries, and some natural whole food. Don't think ‘five a day,’ think 30 a week. In this way you're giving your gut the variety of vegetation it needs to work optimally, and to give you a strong immune system too. And the reason why this is also vitally important for anxiety, is that 90% of your brain chemicals are made in your gut. A healthy gut is a healthy mind, literally.
Shop the microbz range of probiotics here
