When A Period Is Very Late (Post-Menopause)
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.
Knowledge Is Power Safety, Post-Menopause Too
Note: this article will be most relevant for a subset of our subscribership, but it’s a very large subset, so we’re going to go ahead and address the reader as “you”.
If, for example, you are a man and this doesn’t apply to you, we hope it will interest you anyway (we imagine there are women in your life).
PS: the appendicitis check near the end, works for anyone with an appendix
We’ve talked before about things that come with (and continue after) menopause:
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- What Menopause Does To The Heart
- Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear
But what’s going on if certain menstrual symptoms reappear post-menopause (e.g. after more than a year with no menstruation)?
Bleeding
You should not, of course, be experiencing vaginal bleeding post-menopause. You may have seen “PSA” style posts floating around social media warning that this is a sign of cancer. And, it can be!
But it’s probably not.
Endometrial cancer (the kind that causes such bleeding) affects 2–3% of women, and of those reporting post-menopausal bleeding, the cause is endometrial cancer only 9% of those times.
So in other words, it’s not to be ignored, but for 9 people out of 10 it won’t be cancer:
Read more: Harvard Health | Postmenopausal bleeding: Don’t worry—but do call your doctor
Other more likely causes are uterine fibroids or polyps. These are unpleasant but benign, and can be corrected with surgery if necessary.
The most common cause, however is endometrial and/or vaginal atrophy resulting in tears and bleeding.
Tip: Menopausal HRT will often correct this.
Read more: The significance of “atrophic endometrium” in women with postmenopausal bleeding
(“atrophic endometrium” and “endometrial atrophy” are the same thing)
In summary: no need to panic, but do get it checked out at your earliest convenience. This is not one where we should go “oh that’s weird” and ignore.
Cramps
If you are on menopausal HRT, there is a good chance that these are just period cramps. They may feel different than they did before, because you didn’t ovulate and thus you’re not shedding a uterine lining now, but your body is going to do its best to follow the instructions given by the hormones anyway (hormones are just chemical messengers, after all).
If it is just this, then they will probably settle down to a monthly cycle and become quite predictable.
Tip: if it’s the above, then normal advice for period cramps will go here. We recommend ginger! It’s been found to be as effective as Novafen (a combination drug of acetaminophen (Tylenol), caffeine, and ibuprofen), in the task of relieving menstrual pain:
See: Effect of Ginger and Novafen on menstrual pain: A cross-over trial
It could also be endometriosis. Normally this affects those of childbearing age, but once again, exogenous hormones (as in menopausal HRT) can fool the body into doing it.
If you are not on menopausal HRT (or sometimes even if you are), uterine fibroids (as discussed previously) are once again a fair candidate, and endometriosis is also still possible, though less likely.
Special last note
Important self-check: if you are experiencing a sharp pain in that general area and are worrying if it is appendicitis (also a possibility), then pressing on the appropriately named McBurney’s point is a first-line test for appendicitis. If, after pressing, it hurts a lot more upon removal of pressure (rather than upon application of pressure), this is considered a likely sign of appendicitis. Get thee to a hospital, quickly.
And if it doesn’t? Still get it checked out at your earliest convenience, of course (better safe than sorry), but you might make an appointment instead of calling an ambulance.
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Can I Eat That? – by Jenefer Roberts
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.
The answer to the question in the title is: you can eat pretty much anything, if you’re prepared for the consequences!
This book looks to give you the information to make your own decisions in that regard. There’s a large section on the science of glucose metabolism in the context of food (other aspects of glucose metabolism aren’t covered), so you will not simply be told “raw carrots are good; mashed potatoes are bad”, you’ll understand many factors that affect it, e.g:
- Macronutrient profiles of food and resultant base glycemic indices
- How the glycemic index changes if you cut something, crush it, mash it, juice it, etc
- How the glycemic index changes if you chill something, heat it, fry it, boil it, etc
- The many “this food works differently in the presence of this other food” factors
- How your relative level of insulin resistance affects things itself
…and much more.
The style is simple and explanatory, without deep science, but with good science and comprehensive advice.
There are also the promised recipes; they’re in an appendix at the back and aren’t the main meat of the book, though.
Bottom line: if you’ve ever found it confusing working out what works how in the mysterious world of diabetes nutrition, this book is a top tier demystifier.
Click here to check out Can I Eat That?, and gain confidence in your food choices!
Share This Post
-
Your Science-Based Guide To Losing Fat & Toning Up
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.
This health coach researched the science and crunched the numbers so that you don’t have to:
Body by the numbers
Let’s get mathematical:
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) consists of:
- Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): 70% of daily calorie burn (basic body functions, of which the brain is the single biggest calorie-burner)
- Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): 15% (the normal movements that occur as you go about your daily life)
- Exercise Activity: 5% (actual workouts, often overestimated)
- Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): 10% (energy needed for digestion)
Basic BMR estimate:
- Women: body weight (kg) × 0.9 × 24
- Men: body weight (kg) × 24
But yours may differ, so if you have a fitness tracker or other gadget that estimates it for you, go with that!
Note: muscle burns calories just to maintain it, making muscle mass crucial to increasing one’s BMR.
And now some notes about running a caloric deficit:
- Safe caloric deficit: no more than 500 calories/day.
- Absolute minimum daily intake: 1,200 calories (women), 1,500 calories (men) (not sustainable long-term).
- Tracking calories is useful but not always accurate.
- Extreme calorie restriction slows metabolism and can lead to binge-eating.
- Your body will adjust to calorie deficits over time, making long-term drastic deficits ineffective.
Diet for fat loss & muscle gain:
- Protein Intake: 1.5–2g per pound of body weight.
- Aim for 30g of protein per meal (supports muscle & satiety).
- Protein has a higher thermic effect (20-30%) than carbs (5-10%) & fats (2-4%), meaning more calories are burned digesting protein.
- Fats are essential for hormone health & satiety (0.5–1g per kg of body weight).
- Carbs should be complex (whole grains, vegetables, fruits, etc.).
- Avoid excessive simple carbs (sugar, white bread, white pasta, etc) to maintain stable hunger signals.
- Hydration is key for appetite control & metabolism (often mistaken for hunger).
Exercise for fat loss & muscle gain:
- Resistance training (3-5x per week) is essential for toning & metabolism.
- Cardio is NOT necessary for fat loss but good for overall health.
- NEAT (non-exercise movement) burns significant calories (walking, taking stairs, fidgeting, etc.).
- “Hot girl walks” & daily movement can significantly aid weight loss.
- Women won’t get “bulky” from weight training unless they eat like a bodybuilder (i.e. several times the daily caloric requirement).
Some closing words in addition:
Poor sleep reduces fat loss by 50% and increases hunger. High stress levels lead to fat retention and cravings for unhealthy foods. Thus, managing stress & sleep is as important as diet & exercise for body transformation!
For more on all of this (plus the sources for the science), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Lose Weight (Healthily) ← our own main feature about such; we took a less numbers-based, more principles-based, approach. Both approaches work, so go with whichever suits your personal preference more!
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Is It Possible To Lose Weight Quickly?
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.
In Victorian England, weight-loss trends like the dangerous tapeworm diet were popular. While modern fad diets can seem less extreme, they often promise similarly fast results. However, these quick fixes can have similarly harmful consequences:
Not so fast
To illustrate the difference between gradual and extreme dieting, the video bids us consider two identical twins, Sam and Felix:
- Sam adopts a gradual approach, slowly reducing calorie intake and exercising regularly. This causes his body to burn glycogen stores before transitioning to fat as an energy source. Regular exercise helps Sam maintain muscle mass, which boosts his metabolism and supports sustained weight loss.
- Felix drastically cuts calories, forcing his body into starvation mode. He quickly depletes glycogen stores, loses muscle mass, and burns fewer calories, making long-term weight loss more difficult. Although Felix might initially lose water weight, this is temporary and unsustainable.
You cannot “just lose it quickly now, and then worry about healthiness once the weight’s gone”, because you will lose health much more quickly than you will lose fat, and that will sabotage, rather than help, your fat loss journey.Healthy weight loss requires gradual, balanced changes in diet and exercise tailored to individual needs. Extreme diets, whether through calorie restriction or things like elimination of carbs or fats, are unsustainable and shock the body. It’s important to prioritize long-term health over societal pressures for quick weight loss and focus on developing a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.
In short, the quickest way to lose weight and keep it off (without dying), is to lose it slowly.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Lose Weight (Healthily)
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)
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.
The first trick to exercising with bad joints is to have better joints.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean you can take a supplement and magically your joint problems will be cured, but there are adjustable lifestyle factors that can and will make things relatively better or worse.
We say “and will”, because you don’t get a choice in that part. Everything we do, every little choice in our day, makes our health a little better or a little worse in some aspect(s). But we do get a choice between “relatively better” and “relatively worse”.
With that in mind, do check out:
- Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis
- How To Really Look After Your Joints
Ok, you have bad joints though; what next?
Let’s assume you’re doing your best with the above, and/or have simply decided not to, which is your call. You know your circumstances best. Either way, your joints are still not in sufficiently good condition to be able to exercise the way you’d like.
First, the obvious: enjoy low-impact exercises
For example:
- Swimming
- Yoga (much more appropriate here than the commonly-paired “and tai chi”)*
- Isometric exercises (i.e. exercise without movement, e.g. squeezing things, or stationary stability exercises)
*This is not to say that tai chi is bad. But if your problem is specifically your knees, there are many movements in most forms of tai chi that require putting the majority of one’s weight on one bent leg, which means the knee of that leg is going to suffer. If your knees are fine, then this won’t be an issue and it will simply continue strengthening your knees without discomfort. But they have to be fine first.
See also: Exercising With Osteoporosis
Second: support your joints through a full range of motion
If you have bad joints, you probably know that there’s an unfortunate paradox whereby you get to choose between:
- Exercise, and inflame your joints
- Rest, and your joints seize up
This is the way to get around that damaging dilemma.
Moving your joints through a full range of motion regularly is critical for their maintenance, so do that in a way that isn’t straining them:
If it’s your shoulders, for example, you can do (slow, gentle!) backstroke or front-crawl or butterfly motions while standing in the comfort of your living room.
If it’s your knees, then supported squats can do you a world of good. That means, squat in front of a table or other stable object, with your fingertips (or as much of your hands as you need) on it, to take a portion of your weight (it can be a large portion; that’s fine too!) while you go through the full range of motion of the squat. Repeat.
And so forth for other joints.
See also: The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
Third: work up slowly, and stop early
You can do exercises that involve impact, and if you live a fairly normal life, you’ll probably have to (walking is an impact exercise). You can also enjoy cycling (low-impact, but not so low-impact as we discussed in the last section) and work up to running if you want to.
However…
While building up your joints’ mobility and strength, it is generally a good idea to stop before you think you need to.
This means that it’s important to do those exercises in a way that you can stop early. For example, an exercise bike or a treadmill can be a lot of use here, so that you don’t find you need to stop for the day while miles from your house.
If you get such a device, it doesn’t even have to be fancy and/or expensive. This writer got herself an inexpensive exercise bike like this one, and it’s perfectly adequate.
Fourth: prioritize recovery, even if it doesn’t feel like you need it
Everyone should do this anyway, but if your joints are bad, it goes double:
Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise (According To Actual Science)
Fifth: get professional help
Physiotherapists are great for this. Find one, and take their advice for your specific body and your specific circumstances and goals.
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
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.
There’s a lot more to breast cancer care than “check your breasts regularly”. Because… And then what? “Go see a doctor” obviously, but it’s a scary prospect with a lot of unknowns.
Dr. Simmons demystifies these unknowns, from both her position as an oncologist (and breast surgeon) and also her position as a breast cancer survivor herself.
What she found, upon getting to experience the patient side of things, was that the system is broken in ways she’d never considered before as a doctor.
This book is the product of the things she’s learned both within her field, and elsewhere because of realizing the former’s areas of shortcoming.
She gives a step-by-step guide, from diagnosis onwards, advising taking as much as possible into one’s own hands—especially in the categories of information and action. She also explains the things that make the biggest difference to cancer outcomes when it comes to eating, sleeping, and so forth, the best attitude to have to be neither despairing and giving up, nor overconfident and complacent.
She does also talk complementary therapies, be they supplements or more out-of-the-box approaches and the evidence for them where applicable, as well as doing some high-quality mythbusting about more prescription-based considerations such as HRT.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one have a breast cancer diagnosis, or you just prefer knowing this sort of thing than not, then this book is a top-tier “insider’s guide”.
Click here to check out the Smart Woman’s Guide To Breast Cancer, and take control!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Non-Alcohol Mouthwash vs Alcohol Mouthwash – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing non-alcohol mouthwash to alcohol mouthwash, we picked the alcohol.
Why?
Note: this is a contingent choice and is applicable to most, but not all, people.
In short, there has been some concern about alcohol mouthwashes increasing cancer risk, but research has shown this is only the case if you already have an increased risk of oral cancer (for example if you smoke, and/or have had an oral cancer before).
For those for whom this is not the case (for example, if you don’t smoke, and/or have no such cancer history), then best science currently shows that alcohol mouthwash does not cause any increased risk.
What about non-alcohol mouthwashes? Well, they have a different problem; they usually use chlorine-based chemicals like chlorhexidine or cetylpyridinium chloride, which are (exactly as the label promises) exceptionally good at killing oral bacteria.
(They’d kill us too, at higher doses, hence: swill and spit)
Unfortunately, much like the rest of our body, our mouth is supposed to have bacteria there and bad things happen when it doesn’t. In the case of our oral microbiome, cleaning it with such powerful antibacterial agents can kill our “good” bacteria along with the bad, which lowers the pH of our saliva (that’s bad; it means it is more acidic), and thus indirectly erodes tooth enamel.
You can read more about the science of all of the above (with references), here:
Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
Summary:
For most people, alcohol mouthwashes are a good way to avoid the damage that can be done by chlorhexidine in non-alcohol mouthwashes.
Here are some examples, but there will be plenty in your local supermarket:
Non-Alcohol, by Colgate | Alcohol, by Listerine
If you have had oral cancer, or if you smoke, then you may want to seek a third alternative (and also, please, stop smoking if you can).
Or, really, most people could probably skip mouthwashes, if you’ve good oral care already by other means. See also:
Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
(yes, it’s the same link as before, but we’re now drawing your attention to the fact it has information about toothpastes too)
If you do want other options though, might want to check out:
Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← miswak sticks are especially effective
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
