Manage Your Menopause Naturally. Maryon Stewart
migraines, or we may regret the loss of fertility in the acknowledgment of aging. Most women feel a mixture of emotions, but what we really want is information about the process. We want to know what options are available so that we can make informed decisions about our future health and feel comfortable with our choices. This book is designed to help women do this.
Just as all women are emotionally, physically, and spiritually different, so are their experiences with menopause. Some women never experience a hot flash or night sweat, while others find their quality of life seriously compromised by hot flashes (or hot flushes, as we call them in the UK), night sweats, and a host of other debilitating symptoms that leave them feeling like shadows of their former selves, often scared and isolated.
Menopause is not a disease. It is a normal transition in the life of every woman who lives long enough to experience it. And regardless of the symptoms experienced before, during, or after menopause, it is a good time for a woman to take stock of her health and make changes that will help her to live a long, healthy, and happy life. After all, we can now expect to live as long after menopause as before menopause.
What women choose to do about their symptoms, or their health, at menopause is a highly individual decision. Whether or not a woman needs, or chooses, to use hormone therapy, all women should know what they can do to feel better — perhaps even better than before menopause.
With more than twenty-eight years of expertise in women’s health, Maryon Stewart is bringing her highly successful menopause program from the United Kingdom to the United States. Women going through perimenopause and menopause now have a chance to improve their quality of life naturally through her Six-Week Natural Menopause Solution.
Manage Your Menopause Naturally helps women understand what to expect at menopause. More important, it enables women to make choices that will help them stay healthy and vital in the ensuing years. Health and vitality do not come in a bottle. They are reliant on the choices we make regarding our diet, exercise regimen, and other behaviors. Maryon Stewart’s Natural Menopause Solution helps guide women to make healthy, science-based choices from perimenopause through to their postmenopausal years.
— Emmanuela Wolloch, MD, FACOG, holistic gynecologist
WELCOME TO THE SECOND HALF OF YOUR LIFE
Making This the Time of Your Life
What if I told you that in a few weeks you could be feeling serene, sexy, wise, and calm, with harmonious hormones and free of your menopause symptoms? Wouldn’t you want that? My Six-Week Natural Menopause Solution has already helped thousands of women improve their well-being. You can be next.
In 2020, more than 50 million women are going through menopause in the United States, and it’s estimated that one billion women around the world will be experiencing menopause by 2025. That’s 12 percent of the entire world population! You are certainly not alone. And while more than 75 percent of women will experience symptoms of meno-pause — such hot flashes, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, sleep problems, and loss of sex drive — for a decade or longer, 55 percent of those women won’t do anything to try to alleviate them.
Often healthcare providers aren’t stepping in to help, either. A Mayo Clinic study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019 found that many doctors and gynecologists lack training or even a basic understanding of menopause management. Only 7 percent of them felt adequately educated to help women going through meno-pause. So women are simply left wondering what has hit them, understandably feeling that this is the beginning of the end.
It seems completely unfair to me that so many women of a certain age are experiencing misery unless they are armed with sufficient knowledge to do a U-turn. The information and tools to do that are out there. But conflicting advice and information overload on the internet often make it difficult to know where to start and whom to believe.
Many women who are savvy, straight-talking problem-solvers in other areas of life seem to roll over and become victims when it comes to problems with perimenopause and menopause. Why is it that so many of us accept discomfort and stress and assume it’s all part of being a woman? It’s a time when huge numbers of us lose ourselves and feel as if we’ve been taken over by an alien. It can be frightening and isolating: the symptoms are sometimes even too personal to discuss with our best friends.
While this book was in production, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, creating additional responsibilities, anxiety, stress, and fear that most of us had never anticipated. In addition to all the other challenges and difficulties women face at midlife, we have had to worry about our own health and that of our friends and families; about our income, jobs, and education; and about what the “new normal” will look like for those who survive the crisis. Many of us have been stressed by being confined in our homes and isolated from others, caring for family members twenty-four hours a day, and having to adapt to working and learning from home. Essential workers have faced extraordinary demands on their mental, physical, and emotional stamina. It’s not surprising that many women feel they’re being pushed into a danger zone, feeling unable to cope mentally.
We can’t control external events, but we can take steps to improve our own well-being and resilience. Andrea Bauer, one of the women whose stories are featured in this book, hit the nail on the head when she told me, “Following your program I realized that I didn’t need to degenerate at menopause, but instead, with adequate knowledge and support, I could regenerate.” Even in a time of worldwide anxiety and uncertainty, that is so true.
Cutting through the Confusion and Taking Control
A few years ago, a friend of a friend posted on Facebook that she felt like she’d been hit by a steamroller. Her doctor had put her on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to mitigate menopause symptoms, but the side effects were as bad as the symptoms.
After this woman’s Facebook post, she was inundated with advice from friends offering “solutions.” Hearing about them made me realize just how confused women are. Most of them warned her not to take hormones at any cost, because family members and friends had been diagnosed with cancer after taking them. Some of the suggestions involved gritting her teeth and bearing it without any treatment. Others recommended she try a range of supplements or creams, or make changes to her diet. None of them got it quite right. But one of her contacts suggested that she get in touch with me, because she knew that I had pioneered a scientifically based, nondrug approach that has been helping women overcome their symptoms for decades.
I am amazed, frustrated, and angry that women are still in the dark, fending for themselves, with so little direction at such a crucial time in their lives — especially when many of us have busy and challenging work and home lives. In my 2019 survey of 1,100 women, titled “What Women Want,” 82 percent were hunting online for solutions to their suffering, without any clear road map or ability to distinguish good information from bad. In this survey, 37 percent of the women said they were given antidepressants for menopause; of these women, 80 percent felt this treatment was inappropriate. Although 41 percent were given hormone replacement therapy, 14 percent of those women didn’t take it out of fear. Of those that did, 62 percent reported they came off it because of adverse side effects. Ninety percent of all the women in this survey said they would like information to manage their menopause naturally.
The health issues associated with menopause go beyond managing the symptoms that hit us at perimenopause and menopause. In the years that follow, as our estrogen levels decline, we are at greater risk of heart disease, dementia, and osteoporosis. One hundred years ago, when women didn’t live long past the age of fifty, these were less significant concerns. But these days, when the big 5-0 is just the halfway mark for many of us, it’s hugely important to keep ourselves in good shape and to avoid becoming reliant on a