The Wisdom of Menopause (4th Edition): Creating Physical and Emotional Health During the Change
880
The Wisdom of Menopause (4th Edition): Creating Physical and Emotional Health During the Change
880Paperback(Revised)
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Overview
Newly revised and updated for this fourth edition, this groundbreaking book has inspired more than a million women with a dramatically new vision of midlife—and will continue to do so for generations to come.
As Dr. Christiane Northrup explains, the “change” is not simply a collection of physical symptoms to be “fixed,” but a mind-body revolution that brings the greatest opportunity for growth since adolescence. The choices a woman makes now—from the quality of her relationships to the quality of her diet—have the power to secure vibrant health and well-being for the rest of her life.
In this fourth edition, Dr. Northrup draws on the current research and medical advances in women’s health, including:
• Up-to-date information on hormone testing and hormone therapy, with new options and new research
• A whole new take on losing weight and training your mind to release extra pounds
• New insights on the relationship between thyroid, Hashimoto's Disease, and Epstein Bar Syndrome
• New, less invasive and more effective fibroid treatments
• Which supplements are better than botox for keeping skin looking youthful
• How taking the supplement Pueraria mirifica can optimize many aspects of midlife health and wellness
• Why older women don't need the HPV vaccine
With this trusted resource, Dr. Christiane Northrup shows that women can make menopause a time of personal empowerment—emerging wiser, healthier, and stronger in both mind and body than ever before.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780525486138 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/11/2021 |
| Edition description: | Revised |
| Pages: | 880 |
| Sales rank: | 189,037 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1
Menopause Puts Your Life Under a Microscope
It is no secret that relationship crises seem to go hand in hand with menopause. Usually this is attributed to the crazy-making effects of the hormonal shifts occurring in a woman’s body at this time of transition. What is rarely acknowledged or understood is that as these hormone-driven changes affect the brain, they give a woman a sharper eye for inequity and injustice, and a voice that insists on speaking up about them. In other words, they uncover hidden wisdom—and the courage to voice it. As the vision-obscuring veil created by the hormones of reproduction and one’s cultural programming begins to lift, a woman’s youthful fire and spirit are often rekindled, together with long-sublimated desires and creative drives. Midlife fuels those drives with a volcanic energy that demands an outlet.
If it does not find an outlet—if the woman remains silent for the sake of keeping the peace at home or work, or if she holds herself back from pursuing her creative urges and desires—the result is equivalent to plugging the vent on a pressure cooker: something has to give. Very often what gives is the woman’s health, and the result will be one or more of the “big three” diseases of postmenopausal women: heart disease, depression, and breast cancer. On the other hand, for those of us who choose to honor the body’s wisdom and to express what lies within us, it’s a good idea to get ready for some boat rocking, which may put long-established relationships in upheaval. Marriage is not immune to this effect.
“NOT ME, MY MARRIAGE IS FINE”
Every marriage or partnership, even a very good one, must undergo change in order to keep up with the hormone-driven rewiring of a woman’s brain during the years leading up to and including menopause. Not all marriages are able to survive these changes. Mine wasn’t, and nobody was more surprised about that than I. If this makes you want to hide your head in the sand, believe me, I do understand. But for the sake of being true to yourself and protecting your emotional and physical health in the second half of your life—likely a full forty years or more—then I submit to you that forging ahead and taking a good hard look at all aspects of your relationship (including some previously untouchable corners of your marriage) may be the only choice that will work in your best interest in the long run, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
From the standpoint of physical health, for example, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the increase in life-threatening illnesses after midlife, which cannot be accounted for simply because of growing older, is partly rooted in the stresses and unresolved relationship problems that simmered beneath the surface during the childbearing years of a woman’s life, then bubbled up and boiled over at perimenopause, only to be damped down in the name of maintaining the status quo. The health of your significant other is also at stake. Remaining in a relationship that was tailor-made for a couple of twentysomethings without making the necessary adjustments for who you both have become at midlife can be just as big a health risk for him as it is for you.
This is not to say that your only options are divorce or heart attack. Rather, in order to bring your relationship into alignment with your rewired brain, you and your significant other must be willing to take the time and spend the energy to resolve old issues and set new ground rules for the years that lie ahead. If you can do this, then your relationship will help you to thrive in the second half of your life. If one or both of you cannot or will not, then both health and happiness may be at risk if you stay together. One of the most common midlife wake-up calls for women (and many men, for that matter) is the realization that you have been pouring your life energy into a dead-end job or relationship that will never change—no matter how much you care or how much you give. Like the line in the popular song “Say Something,” which Christina Aguilera helped make famous, you finally have to face the truth about some of the characters who have been draining your bank account or life energy account without ever replenishing it. They are not going to change no matter how much faith, hope, and commitment you possess. For those who have almost unlimited faith in the power of hope and love, this realization is simultaneously devastating and liberating. And the pattern is so common that I wrote a separate book on the subject, entitled Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power (Hay House, 2018). More on that later.
Preparing for Transformation
At midlife, more psychic energy becomes available to us than at any time since adolescence. If we strive to work in active partnership with that organic energy, trusting it to help us uncover the unconscious and self-destructive beliefs about ourselves and our unhealed hurts that have held us back from what we could become, then we will find that we have access to everything we need to reinvent ourselves as healthier, more resilient women, ready to move joyfully into the second half of our lives.
This process of transformation can only succeed, however, if we become proactive in two ways. First, we must be willing to take full responsibility for the problems in our lives. This is the most difficult step you will ever take, and the most liberating one. It takes great courage to admit our own contributions to the things that have gone wrong for us and to stop seeing ourselves simply as victims of someone or something outside of ourselves. Even if it’s true, such as in cases of sexual abuse or domestic violence, we must not allow ourselves to stay in this victim role overly long, because continuing this stance and arguing for it long after the initial trauma is over is ultimately devoid of any power to help us change, heal, grow, and move on to a more fulfilling and joyful life. And trust me, each of us has far more power to create a joy-filled life than we’ve been led to believe.
The second requirement for transformation is more difficult by far: we must be willing to feel the pain of loss and grieve those parts of our lives that we are leaving behind. And that includes our fantasies of how our lives could have been different if only. Facing and feeling such loss is rarely easy, and that is why so many of us resist change in general and at midlife in particular. A part of us rationalizes, “Why rock the boat? I’m halfway finished with my life. Wouldn’t it just be easier to accept what I have rather than risk the unknown?”
The end of any significant relationship, be it a marriage, a job, or any major phase of our lives, even one that has made us unhappy or held us back from our full growth and fulfillment, feels like a death—pure and simple. To move past it, we have to feel the sadness of that loss and grieve fully for what might have been and now will never be. And we must speak the truth of it out loud without trying to make it sound noble or uplifting. We must be willing to break the silence that keeps so many women stuck in dead-end situations.
And then we must pick ourselves up and move toward the unknown. All our deepest fears are likely to surface as we find ourselves facing the uncertainty of the future. During my own perimenopausal life changes, I would learn this in spades—much to my surprise.
By the time I was approaching menopause, I had worked with scores of women who had gone through midlife “cleansings”; I had guided and counseled them as their children left home, their parents got sick, their marriages ended, their husbands fell ill or died, they themselves became ill, their jobs ended—in short, as they went through all the storms and crises of midlife. But I never thought I would face a crisis in my marriage. I had always felt somewhat smug, secure in my belief that I was married to the man of my dreams, the one with whom I would stay “till death do us part.”
Table of Contents
List of Figures xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: The Journey Begins 3
Midlife: Redefining Creativity and Home 6
Blazing a New Trail 7
Chapter 1 Menopause Puts Your Life Under a Microscope 11
"Not Me, My Marriage Is Fine" 12
The Childbearing Years: Balancing Personal and Professional Lives 15
Why Relationships Must Change at Midlife 19
My Personal Fibroid Story: The Final Chapter 25
The Joy of Co-creative Partnership 29
The Forces That Change the Goose Also Change the Gander 30
Real Menopause Hits 31
My Marriage Goes Bankrupt 32
Armadillo Medicine: The Power of Vulnerability 36
Celebrating the Past While Creating a New Future 37
Chapter 2 The Brain Catches Fire at Menopause 41
Our Brains Catch Fire at Menopause 43
Learning to Recognize and Heed Our Wake-Up Calls 44
Is It Me or Is It My Hormones? Debunking the Myth of Raging Hormones 47
The Multiple Roles of Your "Reproductive" Hormones 53
Embracing the Message Behind Our Menopausal Anger 59
Emotions, Hormones, and Your Health 63
How Our Midlife Brains and Bodies Are Set Up to Heal Our Pasts 74
Finding a Larger Meaning 79
Chapter 3 Coming Home to Yourself: From Dependence to Healthy Autonomy 86
The Empty-Nest Syndrome 86
Boomerang Babies 91
Powerful Feelings, Powerful Healing 93
Caring for Ourselves, Caring for Others: Finding the Balance 96
Hitting Pay Dirt: Getting Clear About Money at Midlife 104
Coming Home to Yourself 114
Vocational Awakening at Midlife 116
A Road Map for Navigating Unknown Territory 119
Chapter 4 This Can't Be Menopause, Can It? The Physical Foundation of the Change 123
What Is Happening in Your Body: Hormonal Changes 124
Perimenopause Is a Normal Process, Not a Disease 126
The Three Types of Menopause 129
Perimenopause and Hormonal Levels 131
Is There a Test I Can Take? 132
Menopause and Thyroid Function 136
Menopause and Adrenal Function 148
What to Expect in Your Transition 158
Chapter 5 Hormone Therapy: An Individual Choice 172
A Brief History of Hormone Therapy 173
Bioidentical Hormones: Nature's Ideal Design 177
A Hormone Primer: Essential Information Every Woman Should Know 187
How to Decide Whether or Not to Take Hormones 201
A Dusting of Hormones 220
How Long Should You Stay on Hormones? 222
Chapter 6 Foods and Supplements to Support the Change 226
Basic Principles of Herbal Therapy at Menopause 228
Foods That Help Perimenopause 235
Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture for Menopause 241
Start Somewhere 244
Chapter 7 The Menopause Food Plan: A Program to Balance Your Hormones and Prevent Middle-Age Spread 245
Making Peace (Once Again) with My Weight 246
How to Train Your Mind to Release Excess Weight 249
What Should You Eat? 259
Six Steps to Midlife Weight Control 267
The Hormone-Balancing Food Plan 285
Optimizing Midlife Digestion 304
The Final Frontier: Accepting Our Bodies 309
Chapter 8 Creating Pelvic Health and Power 312
What Is Yours, What Is Mine, What Is Ours? Reclaiming Our Boundaries 313
Hormonal Imbalance: Fuel to the Fire 318
Menstrual Cramps and Pelvic Pain 318
Heavy Bleeding 321
Fibroids 325
An Empowered Approach to Surgery or Invasive Procedures 333
Master Program for Creating Pelvic Health 347
Urinary Health 361
Chapter 9 Sex and Menopause: Myths and Reality 372
The Anatomy of Desire 373
Sexuality at Menopause: Our Cultural Inheritance 386
Menopause Is a Time to Redefine and Update Our Relationships 396
Hormone Levels Are Only One Part of Libido 400
Secondary Libidinal Support: Estrogen, Progesterone, and Herbs 402
Testosterone: The Hormone of Desire? 407
Aids to Lubrication 409
Telling the Truth 414
Ten Steps to Rekindling Libido 419
Chapter 10 Nurturing Your Brain: Sleep, Mood, and Memory 427
Enhancing Midlife Sleep 431
Depression: An Opportunity for Growth 444
Memory Loss at Menopause: Is This Alzheimer's? 456
Hormones and Alzheimer's 462
Nonhormonal Ways to Protect Your Brain 463
Maximizing Midlife Wisdom 469
Chapter 11 From Rosebud to Rose Hip: Cultivating Midlife Beauty 477
Making Peace with Your Changing Skin 479
Preventing or Treating Wrinkles 487
Midlife Acne 503
Rosacea 508
Hair in the Wrong Places 511
When Good Skin Care Isn't Enough: Deciding on Cosmetic Procedures 517
Varicose Veins 521
Chapter 12 Standing Tall for Life: Building Healthy Bones 528
Osteoporosis: The Scope of the Problem 530
We're Designed for Lifetime Sturdiness 532
How Healthy Bone Is Made 533
Are You at Risk for Osteoporosis? 542
Measuring Bone Density 546
What About Bone-Building Drugs? 555
Get Strong 559
Healing Your Fitness Past 561
The Sunlight-Bone Health Connection 571
Shore Up Your Earth Connection with Plant Medicine 577
Straight, Strong, and Flexible for Life: Master Program for Healthy Bones and Joints 577
Chapter 13 Creating Breast Health 583
Our Cultural Inheritance: Nurturing vs. Self-Sacrifice 584
The Emotional Anatomy of Breast Cancer 588
Program for Creating Breast Health 592
Breast Cancer Screening 607
The Promise of Thermography 615
Putting Breast Cancer Risk in Perspective 627
The Breast Cancer Gene: Should You Be Tested? 628
The Effect of HT on Breast Health 631
Bioidentical Hormones and Cancer Risk 634
The Tamoxifen Dilemma 643
Chapter 14 Living with Heart, Passion, and Joy: How to Listen to and Love Your Midlife Heart 650
The Heart Has Its Say at Menopause: My Personal Story 651
Cardiovascular Disease: When the Flow of Life Is Blocked 656
Palpitations: Your Heart's Wake-Up Call 658
Gender Bias and Heart Disease: Our Cultural Inheritance 663
Reducing Your Risk for Heart Disease 666
Refined Carbohydrates, Sugar, and Heart Health: What Every Woman Should Know 693
Cardioprotective Supplements 695
Foods for Heart Health 705
What About Aspirin? 708
Get Moving! 711
The Heart-Estrogen Link: What's Really Going On? 715
How to Love and Respect Your Midlife Heart 718
The Heart-Opening Effect of Pets 720
The Intellect Is Certain It Knows, but the Heart Always Wins 722
Epilogue: The Calm After the Storm 725
From Karma into Grace 726
Awakening to Our Power, Awakening to Beauty and Pleasure 729
Resources 731
Notes 763
Index 839
About the Author 859
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