Maneuvering through the menoverse
Maneuvering through the menoverse
+ your free weekly roundup of hopefully helpful things
In today’s newsletter:
menopause in France, Australia and Denmark
peri power tool:
social media mic drops
FRANCE: The French company Robertet Group has launched a product for menopause support called Menobelle, an intriguing-sounding mix of lemon balm, bergamot and peony. Lemon balm takes aim at sleep, mood, brain health, digestion and bloating; bergamot cardiovascular health. Peony reportedly has analgesic and antispasmodic effects. The company has conducted their own two-month clinical trial on the product on 153 women ages 45 to 55 and reported that they found relief, without providing further specifics.
AUSTRALIA: Cutting larger-dose patches in half, stockpiling and way-finding pharmacies who have stock:. In Frustration over menopausal hormone therapy patch shortage, 9News reports that the culprits of the current issue in Australia seem to be catching up after a discontinued brand, government red tape and manufacturing issues.
DENMARK: A Danish production company has announced a new documentary series called Welcome to Menopause, aka Velkommen til Overgangsalderen. The program will feature researchers, regular menopausal folks and celebrities including world champion rower Mette Bloch and actors Lærke Winther and Lone Hertz, all talking about their experiences.
Peri power tool: An anti-inflammatory diet
For those battling body pain or weight gain they can’t budge, and other perimenopause symptoms, there is an approach that can work wonders.
As estrogen falls over time, perimenopause is increasingly being recognized as an “inflammatory life phase”. When I was battling intense body pain in my 40s, one of the most helpful tactics was going on the Whole 30 Diet. It took 10 days to go from intense pain experienced just rolling over in bed to waking up one beautiful day with about 80 percent of it gone. I didn’t realize what was going on back then – inflammation discourse was only nascent. But I figured out that processed food, sugar, wheat and alcohol were not my friends. And for all the questions I get about the right supplements to take for this kind of body pain, I think there’s really no point in spending a lot of money on them if you are going to torpedo any effects by not addressing inflammatory aspects of your lifestyle. (Orthopedic surgeon Dr Vonda Wright says the same thing in this week’s must-listen Hotflash inc podcast, in an episode you can now find right here on Substack in the podcast section!).
Over to actress Gabrielle Union, who continues her paid perimenopause tour as a spokesperson for ClearBlue’s menopause test. As she told Parade, many of her symptoms radically improved when she began following functional nutrition and women’s hormone expert (and FLO Living founder) Alisa Vitti’s advice to go anti-inflammatory and cut out gluten, dairy, caffeine and alcohol.
No one wants to do this, of course. It’s not easy. (But neither is total body pain, right?) This approach does not work for all of us, obviously. And of course the intuitive eating movement will be opposed to any form of overly restrictive eating, and Whole 30 certainly has been criticized for this. Way too many of us bring some form of disordered eating into perimenopause, and for those in that corner of this transition, cutting out food groups isn’t a good idea. But for the rest of us, it really can’t hurt to try.
Social media mic drops
Where we look at the few minutes when all that scrolling makes sense
The We’re Not Breaking A Hip Club:
@imdoinggreattttt nails it. We thought our moms were so ollllllld at our age. How hard was that for them? I mean, we struggle and it’s totally different now. I remember my mom in her 40s, searching for the right hairstyle, learning about opera and becoming the object of a major crush by a young fellow waiter named Jim when I brought her into the restaurant where I worked for dinner. Of course she was just getting started – again. While we can be glad this is changing, it bears remembering that growing up thinking of our mothers this way surely shaped our perceptions about aging, too.
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3. Sophia Loren talking about how she turned 50 and finally learned how to say no (and what she lost all those years she didn’t):
Editor’s note
This week I said no to a major project I wanted to do but couldn’t possibly. I feel like it has created an ocean of space, and now I have the capacity to figure out what to do next.
What did you say no to this week? Drop a comment or hit reply and let us/me know.
AMx
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