Exercise snacks for the win, again
A small study in 11 midlifers has showed huge health benefits in using regular walking to break up a day of sitting. Researchers found five minutes every half-hour reduced blood glucose spikes after eating by 58 percent over an eight-hour period, compared with sitting the entire time, a reduction lead author Keith Diaz compared to someone on diabetes medication.
The researchers found big reductions in systolic blood pressure with the five-minute routine too, at levels you’d expect to see in someone who had exercised daily for six months.
Now if you, like me, are a) terrified of pre-diabetes and the fact that perimenopause increases our vulnerability to it, and b) thinking ‘how the hell would I manage to walk for 5 minutes every half hour’, Diaz has this motivation: “While that may sound impractical, our findings show that even small amounts of walking spread through the work day can significantly lower your risk of heart disease and other chronic illnesses.”
Odds improve on HRT for dementia risk
This week brought another indication that menopause hormone therapy – specifically estrogen – may have a protective effect in brain deterioration in menopausal women. In the most recent study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, the introduction of HRT in women who had the APOE4 genotype – aka the gene that heightens risks for later development of Alzheimer’s – led to improvements in memory and cognitive function, and larger brain volumes later in life.
According to researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, where the research was conducted, the findings demonstrate the “potential importance” of HRT in the face of our outsized risks: two-thirds of dementia cases happen in women.
“It’s too early to say for sure that HRT reduces dementia risk in women, but our results highlight the potential importance of HRT and personalized medicine in reducing Alzheimer’s risk,” Prof Michael Hornberger told The Guardian. “The next stage of this research will be to carry out an intervention trial to confirm the impact of starting HRT early on cognition and brain health. It will also be important to analyze which types of HRT are most beneficial.”
To be clear here, I haven’t looked at the full study, just the abstract and the news reports. The team analyzed MRI scan data from almost 2,000 women across 10 countries “over time” (no specifics). The women, who were all over 50, were part of the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia initiative and did not have dementia when it started.
I’ve been following a new person on Instagram, she’s Wendy Allen Miller, Menopause Maverick, and she wrote something awesome in a book review recently about the incredible amount of negativity that surrounds the peri/menopause conversation: “Words have power and cast spells on our consciousness.”
I remembered this as I read one of the big new menopause articles courtesy of The Guardian. It starts out with the lovely Karen Arthur, founder of Menopause Whilst Black, friend of Hotflash inc and a past guest on the podcast. She’s been very open about the mental health challenges she faced during perimenopause, helping many women along the way, and this article is no different. It opens with Karen saying she came within a “hairs breadth of killing herself” at her lowest point.
I’d say, on the particularly horrible morning after my 47th birthday when I woke up hungover, in the thick of a triple-punch of personal life horrors, I did too. There were a few other times that devastating summer when I had a running tape of “I don’t want to be here, what’s the point of me” in my head that I came uncomfortably close to turning my suicidal ideation into actual plans.
I have one main issue with the Guardian story, and that’s the eternal bugbear of a very misleading headline. This is a temporary transition. “Destroys” is a word indicating a permanent situation.
Sadly, for a very few people, that will be true. But just a few lines below this headline, Karen talks about what happened next, and it’s one most uplifting things I’ve ever read: Instead, she walked to the nearest pub, ordered chips and a hot chocolate with rum. Then “I took my journal out and decided that I wanted to live. I started to write about the things I wanted to do. That was the lowest point but also the highest point – it brought me back from the brink.”
There it is: the complexity of perimenopause, which most definitely wreaks havoc on our mental health, and can tip it over the edge when coupled with the sort of multiple blows that often happen at midlife. But the entire story is about a range of women having various forms of their own personal dark night of the soul, and then rising from the ashes in the most fantastic ways. Hard times are a big part of who we are, and midlife by its very nature is a virtual bullseye for hard times. Would it have been easier if we'd all had HRT or known what was happening to our hormones? Sure, and the whole reason Karen, myself and the other women in the article do the work that we do is so the people who come behind us have this information.
But it’s not all perimenopause. And it never has been.
I have a deadline for my contribution to Mona Eltahawy’s crowdfunded anthology Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: March 31. Now I just have to decide what to write and write it, and not get twisted up by the fact that this essay will be in a very important book alongside many incredible people I admire. One thing I’m delighted about is that this is a time when we can go deep. As Mona has written, menopause is about much more than “to go on hormone replacement therapy or not and ‘how to lose menopause belly’.” I can’t wait and I’m terrified all at the same time.
Click, watch, listen, follow, read...
• What color is your urine? Best headline for a great piece about later-in-life sex and UTIs Oldster
• Check out their top 4 takeaways at the end: Scientists Share 8 Recent Trends in Longevity Research Insight Tracker
• Who’s Getting Rich off Menopause? featuring Slate Money co-host Emily Peck and New York Times writer Amy Larocca talking about the current “menopause gold rush”, the problem with ‘get back to myself’ and what is really at the heart of it all: mortality The Waves podcast
• Why Strength Training is Essential Through Menopause and Beyond Mindbodygreen
• Jennifer Crichton writes eloquently about an unexpected Meno-interlude (aka writer’s block) The Flock
• “… my ability to have a child is leaving me. But I don't agree that that's what fertile means, I don't agree that that's what woman means…" Tracee Ellis Ross digs deep on some not-often-explored aspects of perimenopause We Can Do Hard Things podcast
• What Is Menopause Like for Women of Color? Tell your stories… New York Times
Editor’s note
One of the people I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with through this platform is Nina Lorez Collins, founder of The Woolfer, which was acquired last summer by Revel. Rough news this week that Revel is closing, unable to get funding at a pivotal juncture, despite a truly phenomenal combined run. Nina’s midlife baby reached 35,000 members, 600+ events per month, and so many more accomplishments than that. I’m in awe of her drive to connect women and create amazing midlife content. And I can’t wait to see what she does next.
This just in: Revel member Dale Pollekoff is hosting the Finding Female Friends Past Fifty group on MeetUp and welcomes any Revel member to join her there, while Jenn English has organized the virtual series Revel Womxn Moving Forward Together for the end of this month.
AMx