Part 2: A rock star in menopause

In Part 2 of this excerpt from "See ya later, Ovulator!", menopause expert Esther Blum gets into gut health and how it affects your hormones.

This excerpt is a continuation of a post on The-Midst.com. Read the first part of the excerpt here on the-midst.com.

This girl is on fire 

If you’ve never had a hot flash, think of it as shoveling coal into Dante’s Inferno and sweating like a hairy beast. 

Your face may also flush and turn red and blotchy. Or, you wake up in the middle of the night drenched in so much sweat, you can wring your clothes out. Left untreated, hot flashes can last for a couple of years or more after menopause. I’ve treated numerous women in their 60s and 70s who were still having flashes long after their periods were gonesies. 

Menopause, by definition, means 12 months have passed without a menstrual cycle. Some of us will start and stop our periods for years, wondering if our menstrual circuit system has gone awry. Some of us will go six months without a period, only to have Flo show up out of the blue. Regardless, every time you restart your period and have a cycle, you’ll also need to restart the menopause countdown clock. 

Some women go through menopause super fast like a high speed train moving through a narrow passage. For other women, menopause is slower and has more ups and downs. 

Caution: speed bumps ahead 

Some of the signs and symptoms you may notice during the transition are an increase in irritability and more irregular periods. Periods start getting shorter and closer together, or you might skip a month sporadically here and there. Your libido may also take a nosedive with vaginal dryness, and you put on 10 to 20 pounds practically overnight. 

Before you face plant into a tub of onion dip and chips from depression and worry, do not despair! I help women like you navigate through these stages all the time, and I am here to help make sure that your mind and body feel as good as possible throughout all these changes. We’ll put all the puzzle pieces together to help you understand what’s happening here. 

Do you got the menopot? 

A menopot is a special kind of muffin top that happens after the age of 40 when women enter menopause. Many of us experience weight gain (and feel like we gain weight just by looking at food), clothes that fit differently (or not at all), low libido, and brain fog. 

What is the reason for that damn menopot? It all starts with gut health. The gut has a huge influence on our hormones. When I began my practice, hormone testing on women going through menopause was the gold standard until I realized that gut health was also crucial in helping people get their hormones back on track. The healthier your gut function going into menopause, the better your experience will be throughout menopause. 

Our small intestinal tract has its own endocrine organ of good, healthy bacteria called the microbiome, with bacteria, funguses, viruses, and trillions of bacteria that make up our human genome—the complete set of genes present in our bodies. Pretty cool, right?