Hormones, Business and YOU

Our lives are speeding up. The Internet has made communication very instant and the demands on us are now incessant. Many of us are constantly on the go and eating on the run. Toxic overload, stress and poor nutrition is a lethal combination causing hormonal imbalance and heart disease.

Here's what we know:

• Heart disease is an epidemic in the western world. It kills 1 in every 2.4 women. So, if not you, it may be your mother, sister, aunt, daughter or friend.
• 3 out of 10 people will not survive their first heart attack.
• Heart disease increases for women after menopause and at this time, women become 6% more likely than men to die of heart disease.
• 1 in 3 women are clinically obese in the UK.
• ? children between 11-16 yrs are clinically obese – the majority of these are girls, which has serious implications for their hormonal health.
• Girls are starting their periods much younger – as young as 9 and 10 yrs old. Many of those girls are overweight and this is bringing on puberty much earlier.

What does a normal hormone cycle look like?

• Ideally progesterone and oestrogen rise together in the teenage years to bring on puberty. They should stay stable (with natural daily fluctuations depending on the stage of the menstrual cycle) and then drop off gradually at the same rate in our 40s and 5os
• Menopause refers to the last period you ever have.
• Peri-menopause is the time before that, which usually starts around 35-37 years. This is why fertility treatments tend to start around this age because the egg quality goes into sharp decline after 35 years of age.

What does a healthy menstrual period look like?

• Flow lasts 3-5 days.
• Two days of moderate flow is normal. It should not be too heavy or too light Changing a tampon/pad/mooncup every 1-3 hours is normal.
• You should not have flooding or leaking, this is abnormally heavy. If you don’t have to change your tampon all day, this is abnormally light.
• The blood should be bright red, not pink, brown or dark and thick.
• The consistency should be fluid – not stringy or watery.
• You should have little or no clots. A few are normal. 5p sized clots are considered small, 50p sized are considered large.
• You should have mild/no cramps, PMS or low back ache.  

The "Menopause"

We know that women produce far less oestrogen after menopause, so it would be logical to assume that oestrogen steadily declines until women reach menopause. In fact for many years, that’s exactly what Doctors did assume, but in the last 25 years research has shown that this isn’t the case. In reality, during the peri-menopause, it is often levels of progesterone that decline, while oestrogen levels remain stable or even increase. This leads to a situation where oestrogen is relatively high in relation to progesterone, known as ‘oestrogen dominance’.

Women who have excess levels of oestrogen read more