What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand

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What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand

Dr. Jen Gunter provides important information on menopause.

This is Dr. Jen Gunter. She’s a gynecologist, specializing in chronic pain and vulvovaginal disorders. She’s also a woman on a mission to demystify things that popular culture, especially in the US, would rather not talk about.

When was the last time you remember the menopause being referenced in a movie or TV show? If you can think of one at all, was it just played for laughs?

And of course, the human body can be funny, so that’s not necessarily the problem, but it sure would be nice if that weren’t all that there is!

So, what does Dr. Gunter want us to know?

It’s a time of changes, not an end

The name “menopause” is misleading. It’s not a “pause”, and those menses aren’t coming back.

And yet, to call it a “menostop” would be differently misleading, because there’s a lot more going on than a simple cessation of menstruation.

Estrogen levels will drop a lot, testosterone levels may rise slightly, mood and sleep and appetite and sex drive will probably be affected (progesterone can improve all these things!) and not to mention but we’re going to mention: vaginal atrophy, which is very normal and very treatable with a topical estrogen cream. Untreated menopause can also bring a whole lot of increased health risks (for example, heart disease, osteoporosis, and, counterintuitively given the lower estrogen levels, breast cancer).

However, with a little awareness and appropriate management, all these things can usually be navigated with minimal adverse health outcomes.

Dr Gunter, for this reason, refers to it interchangeably as “the menopausal transition”. She describes it as being less like a cliff edge we fall off, and more like a bridge we cross.

Bridges can be dangerous to cross! But they can also get us safely where we’re going.

Ok, so how do we manage those things?

Dr. Gunter is a big fan of evidence-based medicine, so we’ll not be seeing any yonic crystals or jade eggs. Or “goop”.

See also: Meet Goop’s Number One Enemy

For most people, she recommends Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT), which falls under the more general category of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

This is the most well-evidenced, science-based way to avoid most of the risks associated with menopause.

Nevertheless, there are scare-stories out there, ranging from painful recommencement of bleeding, to (once again) increased risk of breast cancer. However, most of these are either misunderstandings, or unrelated to menopause and MHT, and are rather signs of other problems that should not be ignored.

To get a good grounding in this, you might want to read her Hormone Therapy Guide, freely available as a standalone section on her website. This series of posts is dedicated to hormone therapy. It starts with some basics and builds on that knowledge with each post:

Dr. Gunter’s Guide To The Hormone Menoverse

What about natural therapies?

There are some non-hormonal things that work, but these are mostly things that:

  • give a statistically significant reduction in symptoms
  • give the same statistically significant reduction in symptoms as placebo

As Dr. Gunter puts it:

❝While most of the studies of prescription medications for hot flashes have an appropriate placebo arm, this is rarely the case with so-called alternative therapies.

In fact, the studies here are almost always low quality, so it’s often not possible to conclude much.

Many reviews that look at these studies often end with a line that goes something like, “Randomized trials with a placebo arm, a low risk of bias, and adequate sample sizes are urgently needed.”

You should interpret this kind of conclusion as the polite way of saying, “We need studies that aren’t BS to say something constructive.”❞

~ Gunter, 2023

However, if it works, it works, whatever its mechanism. It’s just good, when making medical decisions, to do so with the full facts!

For that matter, even Dr. Gunter acknowledges that while MHT can be lifechanging (in a positive way) for many, it’s not for everyone:

Informed Decisions: When Menopause Hormone Therapy Isn’t Recommended

Want to know more?

Dr. Gunter also has an assortment of books available, including The Menopause Manifesto (which we’ve reviewed previously), and some others that we haven’t, such as “Blood” and “The Vagina Bible”.

Enjoy!

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  • The Case of the Armadillo: Is It Spreading Leprosy in Florida?

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    GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In an open-air barn at the edge of the University of Florida, veterinarian Juan Campos Krauer examines a dead armadillo’s footpads and ears for signs of infection.

    Its claws are curled tight and covered in blood. Campos Krauer thinks it was struck in the head while crossing a nearby road.

    He then runs a scalpel down its underside. He removes all the important organs: heart, liver, kidneys. Once the specimens are bottled up, they’re destined for an ultra-cold freezer in his lab at the college.

    Campos Krauer plans to test the armadillo for leprosy, an ancient illness also known as Hansen’s disease that can lead to nerve damage and disfigurement in humans. He and other scientists are trying to solve a medical mystery: why Central Florida has become a hot spot for the age-old bacteria that cause it.

    Leprosy remains rare in the United States. But Florida, which often reports the most cases of any state, has seen an uptick in patients. The epicenter is east of Orlando. Brevard County reported a staggering 13% of the nation’s 159 leprosy cases in 2020, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of state and federal data.

    Many questions about the phenomenon remain unanswered. But leprosy experts believe armadillos play a role in spreading the illness to people. To better understand who’s at risk and to prevent infections, about 10 scientists teamed up last year to investigate. The group includes researchers from the University of Florida, Colorado State University, and Emory University in Atlanta.

    “How this transmission is happening, we really don’t know,” said Ramanuj Lahiri, chief of the laboratory research branch for the National Hansen’s Disease Program, which studies the bacteria involved and cares for leprosy patients across the country.

    ‘Nothing Was Adding Up’

    Leprosy is believed to be the oldest human infection in history. It probably has been sickening people for at least 100,000 years. The disease is highly stigmatized — in the Bible, it was described as a punishment for sin. In more modern times, patients were isolated in “colonies” around the world, including in Hawaii and Louisiana.

    In mild cases, the slow-growing bacteria cause a few lesions. If left untreated, they can paralyze the hands and feet.

    But it’s actually difficult to fall ill with leprosy, as the infection isn’t very contagious. Antibiotics can cure the ailment in a year or two. They’re available for free through the federal government and the World Health Organization, which launched a campaign in the 1990s to eliminate leprosy as a public health problem.

    In 2000, reported U.S. cases dropped to their lowest point in decades with 77 infections. But they later increased, averaging about 180 per year from 2011 to 2020, according to data from the National Hansen’s Disease Program.

    During that time, a curious trend emerged in Florida.

    In the first decade of the 21st century, the state logged 67 cases. Miami-Dade County noted 20 infections — the most of any Florida county. The vast majority of its cases were acquired outside the U.S., according to a Times analysis of Florida Department of Health data.

    But over the next 10 years, recorded cases in the state more than doubled to 176 as Brevard County took center stage.

    The county, whose population is about a fifth the size of Miami-Dade’s, logged 85 infections during that time — by far the most of any county in the state and nearly half of all Florida cases. In the previous decade, Brevard noted just five cases.

    Remarkably, at least a quarter of Brevard’s infections were acquired within the state, not while the individuals were abroad. India, Brazil, and Indonesia diagnose more leprosy cases than anywhere, reporting over 135,000 infections combined in 2022 alone. People were getting sick even though they hadn’t traveled to such areas or been in close contact with existing leprosy patients, said Barry Inman, a former epidemiologist at the Brevard health department who investigated the cases and retired in 2021.

    “Nothing was adding up,” Inman said.

    A few patients recalled touching armadillos, which are known to carry the bacteria. But most didn’t, he said. Many spent a lot of time outdoors, including lawn workers and avid gardeners. The cases were usually mild.

    It was difficult to nail down where people got the illness, he added. Because the bacteria grow so slowly, it can take anywhere from nine months to 20 years for symptoms to begin.

    Amoeba or Insect Culprits?

    Heightened awareness of leprosy could play a role in Brevard’s groundswell of cases.

    Doctors must report leprosy to the health department. Yet Inman said many in the county didn’t know that, so he tried to educate them after noticing cases in the late 2000s.

    But that’s not the sole factor at play, Inman said.

    “I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that something new is going on,” he said.

    Other parts of Central Florida have also recorded more infections. From 2011 to 2020, Polk County logged 12 cases, tripling its numbers compared with the previous 10 years. Volusia County noted 10 cases. It reported none the prior decade.

    Scientists are honing in on armadillos. They suspect the burrowing critters may indirectly cause infections through soil contamination.

    Armadillos, which are protected by hard shells, serve as good hosts for the bacteria, which don’t like heat and can thrive in the animals whose body temperatures range from a cool 86-95 degrees.

    Colonists probably brought the disease to the New World hundreds of years ago, and somehow armadillos became infected, said Lahiri, the National Hansen’s Disease Program scientist. The nocturnal mammals can develop lesions from the illness just as humans can. More than 1 million armadillos occupy Florida, estimated Campos Krauer, an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences.

    How many carry leprosy is unclear. A study published in 2015 of more than 600 armadillos in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi found that about 16% showed evidence of infection. Public health experts believe leprosy was previously confined to armadillos west of the Mississippi River, then spread east.

    Handling the critters is a known hazard. Lab research shows that single-cell amoebas, which live in soil, can also carry the bacteria.

    Armadillos love to dig up and eat earthworms, frustrating homeowners whose yards they damage. The animals may shed the bacteria while hunting for food, passing it to amoebas, which could later infect people.

    Leprosy experts also wonder if insects help spread the disease. Blood-sucking ticks might be a culprit, lab research shows.

    “Some people who are infected have little to no exposure to the armadillo,” said Norman Beatty, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Florida. “There is likely another source of transmission in the environment.”

    Campos Krauer, who’s been searching Gainesville streets for armadillo roadkill, wants to gather infected animals and let them decompose in a fenced-off area, allowing the remains to soak into a tray of soil while flies lay eggs. He hopes to test the dirt and larvae to see if they pick up the bacteria.

    Adding to the intrigue is a leprosy strain found only in Florida, according to scientists.

    In the 2015 study, researchers discovered that seven armadillos from the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is mostly in Brevard but crosses into Volusia, carried a previously unseen version of the pathogen.

    Ten patients in the region were stricken with it, too. At the genetic level, the strain is similar to another type found in U.S. armadillos, said Charlotte Avanzi, a Colorado State University researcher who specializes in leprosy.

    It’s unknown if the strain causes more severe disease, Lahiri said.

    Reducing Risk

    The public should not panic about leprosy, nor should people race to euthanize armadillos, researchers warn.

    Scientists estimate that over 95% of the global human population has a natural ability to ward off the disease. They believe months of exposure to respiratory droplets is needed for person-to-person transmission to occur.

    But when infections do happen, they can be devastating.

    “If we better understand it,” Campos Krauer said, “the better we can learn to live with it and reduce the risk.”

    The new research may also provide insight for other Southern states. Armadillos, which don’t hibernate, have been moving north, Campos Krauer said, reaching areas like Indiana and Virginia. They could go farther due to climate change.

    People concerned about leprosy can take simple precautions, medical experts say. Those working in dirt should wear gloves and wash their hands afterward. Raising garden beds or surrounding them with a fence may limit the chances of soil contamination. If digging up an armadillo burrow, consider wearing a face mask, Campos Krauer said.

    Don’t play with or eat the animals, added John Spencer, a scientist at Colorado State University who studies leprosy transmission in Brazil. They’re legal to hunt year-round in Florida without a license.

    Campos Krauer’s team has so far examined 16 dead armadillos found on Gainesville area roads, more than 100 miles from the state’s leprosy epicenter, trying to get a preliminary idea of how many carry the bacteria.

    None has tested positive yet.

    This article was produced through a partnership between KFF Health News and the Tampa Bay Times.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Lifespan – by Dr. David Sinclair

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    Some books on longevity are science-heavy and heavy-going; others are glorified manifestos with much philosophy but little practical.

    This one’s a sciencey-book written for a lay reader. It’s heavily referenced, but not a challenging read.

    This book is divided into three parts:

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    2. What we’re learning (the present)
    3. Where we’re going (the future)

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    The first part lays the foundational knowledge that’s critical for understanding why the second part is so important.

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    It’s not all animal studies though…

    We learn of how NAD-agonists such as NMN have been promising in human studies too, along with resveratrol and the humble diabetes drug, metformin. These things alone may have the power to extend healthy life by 20%

    Other recommendations pertain to lifestyle; the usual five things (diet, exercise, sleep, no alcohol, no smoking), as well as intermittent fasting and cryotherapy (cold showers/baths).

    Bottom line: this book is informative and inspiring, and if you’ve been looking for an “in” to understanding the world of biogerontology and/or anti-aging research, this is it.

    Get your copy of “Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have To” from Amazon today!

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  • 100 No-Equipment Workouts – by Neila Rey

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    For those of us who for whatever reason prefer to exercise at home rather than at the gym, we must make do with what exercise equipment we can reasonably install in our homes. This book deals with that from the ground upwards—literally!

    If you have a few square meters of floorspace (and a ceiling that’s not too low, for exercises that involve any kind of jumping), then all 100 of these zero-equipment exercises are at-home options.

    As to what kinds of exercises they are, they each marked as being one or both of “cardio” and “strength”.

    They’re also marked as being of “difficulty level” 1, 2, or 3, so that someone who hasn’t exercised in a while (or hasn’t exercised like this at all), can know where best to start, and how best to progress.

    The exercises come with clear explanations in the text, and clear line-drawing illustrations of how to do each exercise. Really, they could not be clearer; this is top quality pragmatism, and reads like a military manual.

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    Click here to check out 100 No-Equipment Workouts, and find the joy and freedom in not needing anything at all for full-body training!

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    We all know that growing our own veg is ultimately not only healthier on the plate, but also a very healthy activity. Cheaper too. So why don’t more of us do it?

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    Richards gives, as promised, a month-by-month well-illustrated guide to growing a wide variety of vegetables. He does, by the way, assume that we are in a temperate climate in the Northern Hemisphere. So if you’re not, you may need to make some adjustments.

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  • What pathogen might spark the next pandemic? How scientists are preparing for ‘disease X’

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Before the COVID pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) had made a list of priority infectious diseases. These were felt to pose a threat to international public health, but where research was still needed to improve their surveillance and diagnosis. In 2018, “disease X” was included, which signified that a pathogen previously not on our radar could cause a pandemic.

    While it’s one thing to acknowledge the limits to our knowledge of the microbial soup we live in, more recent attention has focused on how we might systematically approach future pandemic risks.

    Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously talked about “known knowns” (things we know we know), “known unknowns” (things we know we don’t know), and “unknown unknowns” (the things we don’t know we don’t know).

    Although this may have been controversial in its original context of weapons of mass destruction, it provides a way to think about how we might approach future pandemic threats.

    Anna Shvets/Pexels

    Influenza: a ‘known known’

    Influenza is largely a known entity; we essentially have a minor pandemic every winter with small changes in the virus each year. But more major changes can also occur, resulting in spread through populations with little pre-existing immunity. We saw this most recently in 2009 with the swine flu pandemic.

    However, there’s a lot we don’t understand about what drives influenza mutations, how these interact with population-level immunity, and how best to make predictions about transmission, severity and impact each year.

    The current H5N1 subtype of avian influenza (“bird flu”) has spread widely around the world. It has led to the deaths of many millions of birds and spread to several mammalian species including cows in the United States and marine mammals in South America.

    Human cases have been reported in people who have had close contact with infected animals, but fortunately there’s currently no sustained spread between people.

    While detecting influenza in animals is a huge task in a large country such as Australia, there are systems in place to detect and respond to bird flu in wildlife and production animals.

    Scientists in a lab.
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    It’s inevitable there will be more influenza pandemics in the future. But it isn’t always the one we are worried about.

    Attention had been focused on avian influenza since 1997, when an outbreak in birds in Hong Kong caused severe disease in humans. But the subsequent pandemic in 2009 originated in pigs in central Mexico.

    Coronaviruses: an ‘unknown known’

    Although Rumsfeld didn’t talk about “unknown knowns”, coronaviruses would be appropriate for this category. We knew more about coronaviruses than most people might have thought before the COVID pandemic.

    We’d had experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) causing large outbreaks. Both are caused by viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID. While these might have faded from public consciousness before COVID, coronaviruses were listed in the 2015 WHO list of diseases with pandemic potential.

    Previous research into the earlier coronaviruses proved vital in allowing COVID vaccines to be developed rapidly. For example, the Oxford group’s initial work on a MERS vaccine was key to the development of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.

    Similarly, previous research into the structure of the spike protein – a protein on the surface of coronaviruses that allows it to attach to our cells – was helpful in developing mRNA vaccines for COVID.

    It would seem likely there will be further coronavirus pandemics in the future. And even if they don’t occur at the scale of COVID, the impacts can be significant. For example, when MERS spread to South Korea in 2015, it only caused 186 cases over two months, but the cost of controlling it was estimated at US$8 billion (A$11.6 billion).

    Coronavirus statistics on a screen.
    COVID could be regarded as an ‘unknown known’. Markus Spiske/Pexels

    The 25 viral families: an approach to ‘known unknowns’

    Attention has now turned to the known unknowns. There are about 120 viruses from 25 families that are known to cause human disease. Members of each viral family share common properties and our immune systems respond to them in similar ways.

    An example is the flavivirus family, of which the best-known members are yellow fever virus and dengue fever virus. This family also includes several other important viruses, such as Zika virus (which can cause birth defects when pregnant women are infected) and West Nile virus (which causes encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain).

    The WHO’s blueprint for epidemics aims to consider threats from different classes of viruses and bacteria. It looks at individual pathogens as examples from each category to expand our understanding systematically.

    The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has taken this a step further, preparing vaccines and therapies for a list of prototype pathogens from key virus families. The goal is to be able to adapt this knowledge to new vaccines and treatments if a pandemic were to arise from a closely related virus.

    Pathogen X, the ‘unknown unknown’

    There are also the unknown unknowns, or “disease X” – an unknown pathogen with the potential to trigger a severe global epidemic. To prepare for this, we need to adopt new forms of surveillance specifically looking at where new pathogens could emerge.

    In recent years, there’s been an increasing recognition that we need to take a broader view of health beyond only thinking about human health, but also animals and the environment. This concept is known as “One Health” and considers issues such as climate change, intensive agricultural practices, trade in exotic animals, increased human encroachment into wildlife habitats, changing international travel, and urbanisation.

    This has implications not only for where to look for new infectious diseases, but also how we can reduce the risk of “spillover” from animals to humans. This might include targeted testing of animals and people who work closely with animals. Currently, testing is mainly directed towards known viruses, but new technologies can look for as yet unknown viruses in patients with symptoms consistent with new infections.

    We live in a vast world of potential microbiological threats. While influenza and coronaviruses have a track record of causing past pandemics, a longer list of new pathogens could still cause outbreaks with significant consequences.

    Continued surveillance for new pathogens, improving our understanding of important virus families, and developing policies to reduce the risk of spillover will all be important for reducing the risk of future pandemics.

    This article is part of a series on the next pandemic.

    Allen Cheng, Professor of Infectious Diseases, Monash University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Good to Go – by Christie Aschwanden

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Many of us may more often need to recover from a day of moving furniture than running a marathon, but the science of recovery can still teach us a lot. The author, herself an endurance athlete and much-decorated science journalist, sets out to do just that.

    She explores a lot of recovery methods, and examines whether the science actually backs them up, and if so, to what degree. She also, in true science journalism style, talks to a lot of professionals ranging from fellow athletes to fellow scientists, to get their input too—she is nothing if not thorough, and this is certainly not a book of one person’s opinion with something to sell.

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    Bottom line: for those who wish to be better informed about how to recover quickly and easily, this book is a treasure trove of information well-presented.

    Click here to check out Good To Go, and always be good to go!

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