When A Period Is Very Late (Post-Menopause)
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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!
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The Diet Myth – by Dr. Tim Spector
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Why are we supposed to go low-carb, but get plenty of whole grains? Avoid saturated fat, but olive oil is one of the healthiest fats around? Will cheese kill us or save us? Even amongst the well-informed, there’s a lot of confusion. This book addresses these and many such topics.
A main theme of the book is howa lot of it relates to the state of our gut microbiome, and what is good or bad for that. He also discusses, for example, how microbes predict obesity better than genes, and the good news is: we can change our microbes a lot more easily than we can change our genes!
In the category of criticism, he repeats some decades-old bad science in some areas outside of his field (i.e. unrelated to nutrition), so that’s unfortunate, and/but doesn’t detract from the value of the book if we keep to the main topic.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand better the physiology and microbiology behind why dieting does work for most people (and how to do it better), then this is a great book for that.
Click here to check out The Diet Myth, and learn the science behind the confusion!
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Chicken or Fish – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chicken to fish, we picked the fish.
Why?
To understand the choice, we have to start a bit earlier on the decision tree. For most people most of the time, when it comes to a diet high in plants or high in animals, the plant-centric diet will generally be best:
Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
When it comes to animal meats, red meat is a fairly uncontroversial first thing to strike off the list:
…with pork and some other meats not being much better.
But chicken? Poultry in general appears to be quite health-neutral. The jury is out and the science has mixed results, but the data is leaning towards “it’s probably fine”.
See for example this huge (n=29,682) study:
this same paper shows that…
❝higher intake of processed meat, unprocessed red meat, or poultry, but not fish, was significantly associated with a small increased risk of incident CVD, whereas higher intake of processed meat or unprocessed red meat, but not poultry or fish, was significantly associated with a small increased risk of all-cause mortality❞
So, since poultry isn’t significantly increasing all-cause mortality, and fish isn’t significantly increasing all-cause mortality or cardiovascular disease, fish comes out as the hands-down (fins-down?) winner.
One more (this time, easy) choice to make, though!
While fish in general (please, not fried, though!) is generally considered quite healthy, there is a big difference (more than you might think, and for reasons that are quite alarming), between…
Health Risks & Nutrition: Farmed Fish vs Wild-Caught
Enjoy, and take care!
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The Two-Second Advantage – by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney
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The titular “two-second advantage” can in some cases be literal (imagine you got a two-second head-start in a boxing match!), in other cases can refer to being just a little ahead of things in a way that can confer a great advantage, often cumulatively—as anyone who’s played Monopoly can certainly attest.
Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney give us lots of examples from business, sports, politics, economics, and more, in a way that seeks to cultivate a habit of asking the right questions in order to anticipate the future and not just be ahead of the competition—some areas of life don’t have competition for most people, like health, for example—but to generally have things “in hand”.
When it comes to personal finances, health, personal projects, and the like, those tiny initial advantages that lead to incremental further improvements, can be the difference between continually (and frantically) playing catch-up, or making the jump past breaking even to going from strength to strength.
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An Unexpected Extra Threat Of Alcohol
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If You Could Use Some Exotic Booze…
…then for health reasons, we’re going to have to say “nay”.
We’ve written about alcohol before, and needless to say, it’s not good:
(the answer is “no, we cannot”)
In fact, the WHO (which unlike government regulatory bodies setting “safe” limits on drinking, makes no profit from taxes on alcohol sales) has declared that “the only safe amount of alcohol is zero”:
WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health
Up there, where the air is rarefied…
If you’re flying somewhere this summer (Sinatra-style flying honeymoon or otherwise), you might want to skip the alcohol even if you normally do imbibe, because:
❝…even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases.
These effects might be even greater in older people; cardiovascular symptoms have a prevalence of 7% of inflight medical emergencies, with cardiac arrest causing 58% of aircraft diversions.❞
Source: Alcohol plus cabin pressure at higher altitude may threaten sleeping plane passengers’ heart health
The experiment divided subjects into a control group and a study group; the study group were placed in simulated cabin pressure as though at altitude, which found, when giving some of them two small(we’re talking the kind given on flights) alcoholic drinks:
❝The combination of alcohol and simulated cabin pressure at cruising altitude prompted a fall in SpO2 to an average of just over 85% and a compensatory increase in heart rate to an average of nearly 88 beats/minute during sleep.❞
In contrast, that was 77 beats/minute for those who had alcohol but weren’t at altitude pressure, or 64 beats/minute for those who neither drank nor were at altitude pressure.
Lots more metrics were recorded and the study is interesting to read; if you’ve ever slept on a plane and thought “that sleep was not restful at all”, then know: it wasn’t just the seat’s fault, nor the engine, nor the recycled nature of the air—it was the reduced pressure causing hypoxia (defined as having oxygen levels lower than the healthy clinical norm of 90%) and almost halving your sleep’s effectiveness for a less than 10% drop in available oxygen in the blood (the sleepers not at altitude pressure averaged 96% SpO2, compared to the 85% at altitude).
We say “almost halving” because the deep sleep phase of sleep was reduced from 84 minutes (control) to 67.5 minutes at altitude without alcohol, or 46.5 minutes at altitude with alcohol.
Again, this was a pressure cabin in a lab—so this wasn’t about the other conditions of an airplane (seats, engine hundreds of other people, etc).
Which means: in an actual airplane it’s probably even worse.
Oh, and the study participants? All healthy individuals aged 18–40, so again probably worse for those older (or younger) than that range, or with existing health conditions!
Want to know more?
You can read the study in full here:
Want to drop the drink at any altitude? Check out:
Want to get that vacation feel without alcohol? You’re going to love:
Mocktails – by Moira Clark (book)
Enjoy!
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Your Health Audit, From Head To Toe
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Health Audit Time
Here at 10almonds, we often cover quite specific things, ranging from “the effect of sodium on organs other than your heart” to “make this one small change to save your knees while driving”.
But, we’re each a whole person, and we need to take care of the whole organism that makes up the wonderful being that we each are. If we let one part of it drop in health too much, the others will soon follow suit because of the knock-on effects.
So, let’s do a quick self-check-up, and see what can be done for each! How’s your…
Mental Health
We’re doing this audit head-to-to, so let’s start it here, because mental health is also just health, and it’s difficult to tackle the others without having this one at least under control!
Are you experiencing chronic stress? Anxiety? Depression? Joy?
If you answered “no” to “joy” but also “no” to “depression”, you might want to rethink your answer to “depression”, by the way. Life should be a joyous thing!
Some resources to address your mental health:
Brain Health
Your brain is a big, powerful organ. It uses more of your daily energy (in the physiological sense of the word, we’re talking calories and mitochondria and ATP) than any other organ, by far.
And when it comes to organ failure, if your brain fails, then having the best joints in the world won’t help you, for example.
Some resources to address your brain health:
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It
- How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
- The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
Heart Health
Everything depends on your heart, head to toe. Tirelessly pumping blood with oxygen, nutrients, and agents of your immune system all around your body, all day every day for your entire life.
What’s your resting heart rate like? How about your blood pressure? And while we’re on the topic of blood… how’s your blood sugar health?
These are all important things to a) know about and b) keep on top of!
Some resources to address your heart health:
- 1-Minute Heart Health Check-Up Tips
- A Five-Point Plan For Heart Health
- High Blood Pressure? Try These!
Gut Health
By cell count, we’re about 10% human and 90% bacteria. By gene count, also. Pretty important, therefore, that we look after our trillions of tiny friends that keep our organism working.
Most people in N. America, for example, get vastly under the recommended daily amount of fiber, and that’s just the most basic courtesy we could do for these bugs that keep us alive (they need that fiber to live, and their process of consuming it is beneficial to us in a stack of ways).
Some resources to address your gut health:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- The Surprising Link Between Gut Health And Serotonin
- The Vagus Nerve: The Brain-Gut Highway!
Hormonal Health
Hormones are weird and wonderful and affect so much more than the obvious sex-related functions (but yes, those too). A lot of people don’t realize it, but having our hormones in good order or not can make the difference between abject misery and a happy, fulfilling life.
Some resources to address your hormonal health:
- What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
- Healthy Hormones And How To Hack Them
- Too Much Or Too Little Testosterone?
Bone/Joint Health
Fear nothing! For you are a ghost operating a skeleton clad in flesh. But also, you know, look after that skeleton; you only get one! Being animals, we’re all about movement, and being humans, we’ve ended up with some lifestyle situations that aren’t great for that mobility. We sit too much; we walk too little; we cramp ourselves into weird positions (driving, anyone?), and we forget the range of motion we’re supposed to have. But let’s remember…
Some resources to address your bone/joint health:
- Collagen’s benefits are more than skin deep
- Cool As A Cucumber (Move Over, Glucosamine + Chondroitin)
- 5 Best Bodyweight Exercises For Incredible Mobility
Lastly…
While it’s good to do a little self-audit like this every now and again, it’s even better to get a professional check-up!
As engineers say: if you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you.
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Sunflower Corn Burger
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Burgers are rarely a health food, but in this case, everything in the patty is healthy, and it’s packed with protein, fiber, and healthy fats.
You will need
- 1 can chickpeas
- ¾ cup frozen corn
- ½ cup chopped fresh parsley
- ⅓ cup sunflower seeds
- ⅓ cup cornichon pickles
- ⅓ cup wholegrain bread crumbs (gluten-free, if desired/required)
- ¼ bulb garlic (or more if you want a stronger flavor)
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for frying
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (or 1 tsp yeast extract)
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- To serve: 4 burger buns; these are not usually healthy, so making your own is best, but if you don’t have the means/time, then getting similarly shaped wholegrain bread buns works just fine.
- Optional: your preferred burger toppings, e.g. greenery, red onion, tomato slices, avocado, jalapeños, whatever does it for you
Note: there is no need to add salt; there is enough already in the pickles.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine all the ingredients except the buns (and any optional toppings) in a food processor, pulsing a few times for a coarse texture (not a purée).
2) Shape the mixture into 4 burger patties, and let them chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
3) Heat a skillet over a medium-high heat with some olive oil, and fry the burgers on both sides until they develop a nice golden crust; this will probably take about 4 minutes per side.
4) Assemble in the buns with any toppings you want, and serve:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Sunflower Seeds vs Pumpkin Seeds – Which is Healthier? ← pumpkin seeds have more micronutrients; sunflower seeds have more healthy fats; feel free to use either or both in this recipe
- What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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