TRY DIGESTIVE ENZYMES. (See “What to Do About Bloating” box on page 264.)
THE FINAL FRONTIER: ACCEPTING OUR BODIES
Ultimately, our digestive, food, and weight problems will not be healed completely until we have accepted our bodies unconditionally. Part of creating health at midlife is to regain the body acceptance and self-esteem that most of us lost when we entered adolescence. This is not inconsistent with wanting to make changes—and in fact may facilitate them. May the following story from one of my newsletter subscribers inspire all of us about what is possible when we cultivate enough compassion and self-acceptance and resolve to heal our third emotional center at last.
TRACEY: Reconnecting with Body Acceptance at Menopause
I disconnected from my body when I became pregnant at eighteen, an unmarried freshman in college who dropped out for my “shotgun wedding.” I hated being pregnant—it was a daily reminder of my guilt and shame at having had sex before marriage, out there for the whole world to see and know. I never caressed my big belly, rubbed my aching feet or back, felt the wonder and magic that was going on inside me. I looked at myself totally nude only once and felt nothing but shame and disgust.
From that point onward, Tracey was anywhere from fifty to a hundred pounds overweight and at war with her body. In retrospect, she reasoned that the extra weight was a way to keep herself safe from sexual relationships, since the negative self-image it created kept intimacy at arm’s length. Over the years, with maturity and years of self-discovery and therapy, Tracey slowly realized that she no longer needed such protection. Now, at the age of forty-seven and in the midst of perimenopause, her insights have clarified. She wrote:
I remembered something I said to my therapist many years ago. We were talking about what I liked about my body, and I honestly couldn’t say there was anything I liked. I said, “Well, look at me—I look pregnant!” And it’s true. In varying degrees of heaviness since my pregnancy, my body has always looked pregnant, patiently waiting for me to love it, which I never did when I was actually pregnant. Now I can mourn the loss of enjoying the real experience and move on. I love my essence. I’m very happy with who I am inside. I’ve come to understand that my physical body is the way my essence can have presence in this world. Therefore I can celebrate it now—I can reconnect my essence with my body. I can celebrate that my hands and senses allow me to express creativity and my body allows me to express my love.
No matter what your size, shape, percentage of body fat, or BMI, you and I, like Tracey, can start right this minute to express gratitude to our bodies for being home to our souls and allowing us to express our uniqueness on the earth at this time. The best way to do this is to stand in front of the mirror, look deeply into your eyes, and say, “I love you. You are beautiful.” Over time, this will change every cell in your body!
8
Creating Pelvic Health and Power
The pelvis is the body center for our creative energy. The most obvious form this takes is making and birthing babies. What is less obvious is that our sexual energy, which is nothing more than life force energy, is concentrated here. I like to think of the pelvic floor as an energetic trampoline from which our life force bounces to our heart and brain, then out into the world. Because perimenopause is a wake-up call that urges us to reevaluate how we’re using our creative energy, it’s not surprising that this is the most common time for women to develop problems with their pelvic organs, ranging from heavy bleeding to fibroids and urinary incontinence. It is also the most common time for women to undergo hysterectomies or other surgical procedures to treat these conditions.
Though numerous approaches help alleviate midlife pelvic symptoms, women can heal fully only when they acknowledge the message behind the symptoms. The emotional and energetic reason that so many women have midlife pelvic problems is associated with the rising need to undergo individuation at midlife and to transform the relationship struggles that tend to make themselves known in the organs of the second emotional center: the genitals, lower bowel, lower back, and bladder. As the transforming kundalini energy rises through us, it often stops in our pelvic organs to create symptoms that will nudge us to address the money, sex, and power issues that are related to this area of our bodies. Whether or not we need surgery or other treatments, perimenopause is a crucial time to develop pelvic power by claiming and shoring up our boundaries, and by assuming more dominion over our creative energy.
WHAT IS YOURS, WHAT IS MINE, WHAT IS OURS?
RECLAIMING OUR BOUNDARIES
The health of the second emotional center is tied in to our creative drives: how well do we balance going after what we want in the world with spending time and energy on our relationships? As I’ve pointed out, young women are both biologically and culturally predisposed to funnel a great deal of creative energy into maintaining relationships. Men, on the other hand, are biologically and socially programmed to focus on the outer world. However, as the energy in our bodies shifts during perimenopause, many women begin to turn their focus toward more worldly accomplishments. Men of the same age often turn inward and become more interested in relationships and nurturing.
Given both our cultural heritage and our shifting creative drives, it is not surprising that boundary conflicts often emerge as we begin, sometimes for the first time, to go after what we really want. This always requires us to claim or reclaim the healthy personal boundaries that allow us to access our power and autonomy.
BETTY: Unmet Creative Needs
Betty was forty-two when she first came to see me for recurrent urinary tract infections. She seemed surprised when I asked her what was going on in her life and what gave her life meaning, but she clearly welcomed the chance to talk.
Betty had graduated from college over twenty years before and had made her living as a freelance writer before her marriage. She clearly had a keen mind and lots of ambition. When she was thirty-two Betty met a wonderful man named Ralph who was supportive of her writing. Ralph’s dream was to run his own business, a family restaurant.
In the first year of their marriage, Betty became more flexible with her usual productive writing schedule. After all, Ralph needed help interviewing personnel for his restaurant. And could she help set up the accounting books?—it would take just a week or so, he said. But what started out as a week expanded into a month, and so on, until it became a nearly full-time job.
Despite Ralph’s stated support for her writing, Betty’s projects invariably took a backseat to the needs of his restaurant. As she started missing due dates, referrals began to dry up. More and more of her waking hours were spent on his business—which he was now calling “their” restaurant. Somehow, inexorably, “his” had turned into “theirs.” And “hers” (Betty’s writing career) had nearly disappeared.
It is imperative that in midlife, we assume responsibility not only for our current circumstances, but also for the often-outmoded beliefs that created them—beliefs that usually result from childhood programming. When I asked Betty about her family history, she told me that her father had been very demanding and invasive when she was growing up. He had a finger on every detail of their lives, and he kept after her about how she spent every minute: “You should be working on your homework now.” “When are you going to do the dishes?” “Why aren’t these clothes being put away as soon as you get home?”
Betty’s body had registered this invasion of her second emotional center at an early age. She was only eight when she started to have bladder infections. They continued intermittently until she left for college, after which they cleared up for nearly twenty years. Five years into her marriage, they began again.
As she told her story, Betty realized that her bladder and its symptoms were part of her inner wisdom letting her know that her life was out of balance. She had been overrun by her father as a child, and she had re-created a similar pattern with her husband. In addition to checking out her urinary system thoroughly, I suggested that it was time for Bett
y to begin shoring up her leaky boundaries.
How Healthy Are Your Boundaries?
Every single one of us has experienced some violations of our personal identity—attempts to control how we think, dress, spend our money or our time, use our creativity, pursue a career. As children, we do not have the ability to form our own boundaries, and we need our parents to help us make healthy choices. But as we get older, we need more and more distance between our own choices and those of our parents. Individuation actually begins when we are two or three years old, which is why toddlers delight in saying no. In many cases, however, this process is incomplete, leaving us with less-than-ideal boundaries—which we may not even be aware of until the wake-up call of perimenopause.
Whatever our history, we must learn to live with healthy respect for our own boundaries—and for those of others. When we do, we’ll have an easier time creating health in our second emotional center.
Become Aware of Ongoing Boundary Problems
What events seem to make your symptoms worse? What makes them better? When was the last time you felt really healthy? Betty noticed, for example, that her UTIs disappeared completely when she was in college and during the first few years of her writing career—times when she did not feel required to compromise her creativity to meet the needs of a loved one.
A boundary violation may be so unconscious or subtle that you do not notice it. For example, one of my patients couldn’t buy shoes without checking with her husband first. When I questioned her about this, she said, “Well, he’s paying for them, isn’t he?” I pointed out that the shoes were for her feet, not his. Consider the following questions.
Can you buy an article of clothing without asking your partner’s opinion or permission? Do you feel guilty if you do so?
Have you ever made a major purchase (such as a camera or appliance) without first running it by your mate? Does your mate make such decisions without consulting you?
Does your mate have the right to veto your decisions? Do you have an equal right to veto his/hers?
If you bring a purchase home and your mate doesn’t like it, do you feel you must return it?
At election time, do you and your mate decide together for whom you are both going to vote? How do you resolve any differences of opinion?
Do you find yourself eventually giving in to your mate’s preferences for how to spend time and money?
Do you defer your career development needs for the sake of your mate’s business or well-being?
If your mate makes more money than you, does that automatically mean that his/her career is taken more seriously and gets more support than yours?
Are you constantly on the receiving end of criticism or unsolicited advice from your mate or family about how you should live your life?
Sometimes awareness alone can help create healthier boundaries. However, if you think your boundary problems are affecting your physical health, it is almost always helpful to discuss your situation with a trusted friend or counselor. He or she can help you get clear on what healthy boundaries look and feel like in a relationship, and, most important, whether you are likely to be able to create them in your current relationship.
HORMONAL IMBALANCE: FUEL TO THE FIRE
The emotional imbalances that demand our attention at perimenopause are fueled by—and in turn contribute to—hormonal imbalance at a cellular level. This hormonal imbalance is characterized by a relative excess of estrogen, not enough progesterone, and, often, too much insulin, all of which can also result in the overproduction of androgenic hormones. Stress of all kinds, emotional, physical, or nutritional, also leads to an imbalance in the evanescent cellular hormones known as eicosanoids, such as prostaglandins and cytokines, which govern every aspect of cellular metabolism and are responsible for cellular inflammation. These same midlife metabolic imbalances also contribute to physical conditions such as fibroids, cramps, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and heavy bleeding. Some women have all of these simultaneously.
Whether your problem is an asymptomatic fibroid or heavy bleeding, the dietary and nutritional supplement approach to these conditions is identical, because both estrogen dominance and eicosanoid imbalance are related to the same dietary factors. Follow the guidelines in chapter 7 with regard to refined carbohydrates, protein, types of dietary fat, and essential vitamins and minerals. In the sections that follow, I will discuss additional medical approaches to each pelvic condition.
MENSTRUAL CRAMPS AND PELVIC PAIN
Starting in the teenage years, about 50 percent of all females suffer from menstrual cramps (dysmenorrhea). During perimenopause, the tendency toward cramping may worsen because of hormonal imbalance and the conditions associated with it, such as fibroids and adenomyosis. My own menstrual cramps started when I was about fourteen and occurred on the first two days of each cycle until I had my first child. They went away for a couple of years (which is very common because of the changes that pregnancy makes in the uterus) but came back in my mid-thirties. My cramps responded to acupuncture and dietary change, and by the age of forty I had recovered from them completely.
Too Many “Bad” Eicosanoids
Cramps result when the uterine muscle and the endometrium produce too much of the eicosanoids called prostaglandin E2 and F2-alpha. When these prostaglandins are released into your bloodstream (usually within an hour or two after the onset of your period, but sometimes even before) you begin to experience the effects of these hormones: spasm in the uterine muscle, sweating, hot flashes, feeling cold alternating with feeling hot, loose stools, and possibly feeling faint. A gel made of prostaglandin E2 (one of the eicosanoids) is used to induce labor, and it can produce exactly the same symptoms you get when your period starts. However, in the case of cramps, the eicosanoid imbalance starts in your own body and is affected by the food you eat and the amount of stress you’re under, among other factors.
The Wisdom of Cramps
Are your cramps trying to get you to slow down, rest, and tune in to yourself? Slowing down and resting can help balance eicosanoids. How do you view your menstrual cycle? Is it merely a biological inconvenience for you—or do you see it as part of your wisdom? The menstrual period is a natural time for rest and renewal. It’s nature’s way of slowing you down so that you can replenish your body for the next lunar cycle. In many ancient cultures, and even in some contemporary societies such as parts of India, women were expected to take it easy during their periods. But in this society all of us have been taught to try to be efficient, upbeat, and at 100 percent energy all the time. No wonder our wiser bodily processes try to get our attention! Women are lunar. Our bodies and our energies quite naturally follow the phases of the moon. Though this has been considered a sign of female weakness, once you begin to listen to your body, you will find that your cyclic energy shifts are a source of inspiration. If we have not been doing this regularly in our twenties and thirties, our pain can become particularly acute during perimenopause, when the wake-up call to health becomes louder. As one of my perimenopausal patients said, “If I just slow down, take a long bath, and take care of myself, I rarely suffer during my cycle. But when I try to bull my way through and ignore my needs, my body—and my cramps—really try to get my attention.”
As you learn to slow down during your premenstrual and menstrual times, not only will your cramps diminish, you’ll often find that your intuition is at an all-time high. Insights may come to you more easily. And you’ll begin to look forward to this special time.
Keep the following in mind: whenever the majority of a population—in this case, the majority of women—suffers around a perfectly normal function like menstruation, you can be sure that there is a cultural blind spot in operation. Waking up and seeing the blind spot—and how it might be related to your cramps—is part of embracing your woman’s wisdom.
Treating Pelvic Pain and Cramping
Follow the Master Program for Creating Pelvic Health, later in this chapter. If you need additional help, consid
er the following options:
~ NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES (NSAIDS). Nonste-roidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil), naproxen sodium (Anaprox, Aleve), and ketoprofen (Orudis) work by partially blocking your body’s production of prostaglandin F2-alpha. (So do aspirin and acetaminophen [Tylenol], but through a slightly different mechanism.) For best relief, NSAIDs must be taken before you get uncomfortable. If you take them only after the pain has begun, the prostaglandin will already be in your bloodstream. The drug stops production of prostaglandin F2-alpha, but it cannot stop the effect on your cells once the prostaglandin has been released.
~ BIRTH CONTROL PILLS. All pelvic conditions tend to quiet down when the natural hormonal cycles are put to sleep by the steadystate synthetic hormones in birth control pills. Take the lowestdose pill available. Avoid birth control pills altogether if you are a smoker.
HEAVY BLEEDING
Many women develop heavy and irregular bleeding in the years before menopause because estrogen dominance causes the lining of the uterus to overgrow. Stress of all kinds—whether emotional, dietary, or physical (including not getting enough sleep)—can make this worse. Instead of the normal monthly buildup and shedding of the uterine lining, too much endometrial tissue builds up and then breaks down in a disordered way that results in spotting or irregular heavy bleeding.
The Wisdom of Menopause Page 33
