Hotflash inc: Gut gut baby
Welcome to the Hotflash inc free weekend newsletter, where we try and figure out this thing called perimenopause and take personal responsibility for how we navigate it. (And try to wrap our heads around how many perimenopausal people we have heard being prescribed anti-depressants this week.)
science stuff
HEART: A new study out of Tulane University, using data from the UK Biobank cohort and published in the journal Atherosclerosis, found taking the stairs five times a day was a associated with a 20 percent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. (Meanwhile, follow along and join in over on Instagram where I have been taking whatever stairs I see – and there’s some fancy ones, I promise.)
GUT-BRAIN: No one else explains this stuff quite like science journalist Scott C Anderson. In The Gut-Brain Axis is More Important Than We Thought, Part 1, he talks about a recent study from China that found more than 70 percent of people with depression had GI symptoms. (Somewhat less scientifically, when I conducted a poll on my IG Stories, 79 percent of followers said they had gut issues)
perimeno product
I’ve come to realize that the majority of “healthy” balls and bars that are sold these days are not at all healthy. Almost all of them contain seed oils, and like they do for many people, those oils can be hard on our guts (where all disease begins, thank you Hippocrates). I’ve stopped eating all of them, while wondering if the people who make them are willfully blind or know exactly what they are doing, and not knowing which is worse. And meanwhile, what do I do when I need a snack? When founder Julie Gordon White shipped me a few boxes of MenoWell bars (formerly Bossa Bars) I did a label check followed by a little jig when I saw that they were made with MCT oil. MCT oil is one of the best oils around – check out what it can do for your brain – and it’s great on my gut. You can read the pleasingly short list of other gut-happy ingredients in MenoWell bars here. The best part? They are good. Like, really, really good.
*Even better, Hotflash inc readers can use the code HFINC10 for 10 percent off.
bookshelf
A lot of us came of age in an era when fat was the enemy. When low-fat yoghurt was healthy, when we seriously debated whether Olestra was worth it, when marathon Stairmaster sessions were considered an effective workout. It takes a lot to undo that conditioning and wrap the old head around functional medicine specialist Dr Gabrielle Lyon’s thesis: the key to what ails her patients is too little muscle – not too much fat.. Optimizing muscle, she argues in her new book Forever Strong, out this week, is key to losing weight, fighting autoimmune conditions, and avoiding the big three: diabetes, dementia and cardiovascular disease.
The roundup
DATA: Just 32 percent of women learned about pleasure in sex ed, according to a survey of 1,500 Americans ages 18-44 surveyed by Mira, the fertility-turning-perimenopause company.
KEEPING CALM: A joint report from the Australasian Menopause Society, the Jean Hailes Society and Monash University, using data from the 2023 National Women’s Health Survey, is the perfect antidote to menopause month mania, hype and alarmist hyperbole. (And as FutureFemHealth so rightly pointed out earlier this week, we can take a calm, informed approach to this and acknowledge how difficult it can be)
ALLIES: A Sussex supplement company partnered with Lewes FC, a feminist football club in the UK, on a menopause awareness campaign.
WORK: Fast Company reports on 6 steps teams can take to better support workers in menopause, something HR and compliance solutions provider Mineral found 94 percent of companies are not doing.
AMQ: what menopause means to me
“You have to be able to be honestly yourself. You just can’t stifle you if something is askew. You can’t ‘put up with it’ anymore, especially if the ‘it’ is something sh***y and disrespectful. It will become impossible, so you might as well start practicing.”
Hotflash inc PC
Dr Vikram Sinai Talaulikar is a specialist in reproductive medicine at University College London Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust, an associate professor in Women’s Health at the University College London, a certified menopause specialist by the British Menopause Society, a menopause trainer and just an all-around calm, reasonable, very helpful person. He is also part of the trio who established the Menopause Research Education Fund, alongside medical journalist Fiona Clarke and groundbreaking menopause campaigner Diane Danzebrink. Listen here.
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read, watch, click, follow, listen + like
• Gwyneth Paltrow says so many amazing things in this interview that I can’t pick just one, but if I have to: ‘I'm so much more interesting now than I was 20 years ago' The Today Show
• I still can’t quite believe I was able to write this story (I used to be the features editor at this newspaper; times have changed). Menopause in the Middle East: ‘It’s not taboo anymore’ The National
• Lucy Boulter is all of us: 'I bought a house 250 miles from home and moved there alone to cope with menopause rage’ OK UK
• “My cheeks get hot talking about perimenopause, but I love it”: Samantha Bee on her new sex ed–inspired comedy show Toronto Life
• Someone needs to make a documentary on Suzanne Somers, bioidentical hormones, and what the actual truth in all of it is and was. Not surprisingly, Dr Jen Gunter takes a “dangerous legacy” view. The Vagenda
Editor’s note
Hey there! A bit of a different format for the newsletter this week. I’m trying out different things: to be more helpful and informative, cut down on reading time, and give myself space to do deeper research.
Let me know what you think.
AMx
*I get a small commission when you use Hotflash inc discount codes