A Leading Nutritional Expert’s Tips for Losing Your Belly and Finding Your Waist

Marilyn Glenville PhD, is a leading expert in nutritional health for women. The advice she offers in her 2006 book, “Mastering Cortisol: Stop Your Body’s Stress Hormone From Making You Fat Around the Middle,” explains in plain language how our eating habits are making us listless and fat around the middle – two common complaints of menopausal women.  In a previous blogpost, I highlighted  a section of her book that focused on vitamins, minerals and herbs that can help women eliminate “that bulge.” Here, I provide a top-line summary of her tips for  what and how to eat in order to lose excess weight  and belly fat in particular.  Her detailed explanations will help you understand the importance of her advice, so if you’re complaining of weight gain and belly fat,  I highly recommend that you read this book:

Magnesium Deficiency Could Be the Cause of All Those Muscle Cramps or Heart Palpitations

Dr. Marsha Nunley’s comment on my previous blogpost (“Three Supplements That Can Help Banish Belly Fat”- see below) motivated me to write about my own experience taking magnesium. As she points out, magnesium is essential for more than 300 biochemical reactions in our bodies. Among them muscle and nerve function and cardiovascular stability.  That explains why my taking 500 mg twice daily (one at bedtime) has reduced the frequency of irregular heart beats and muscle spasms in my feet and legs that I was experiencing at night.  I think it has also helped me sleep better too.

Three Supplements That Can Help Banish Belly Fat

In her excellent book about the connection between stress and Belly Fat, Mastering Cortisol: Stop Your Body’s Stress Hormone from Making You Fat Around the Middle, Marilyn Glenville PhD, a leading nutritional expert in Britain, suggests a number of supplements — vitamins, minerals and herbs — that can help women lose “that bulge,” as she puts it.  Two of the three listed below offer the added benefit of promoting calmness, which can help us sleep better too. Here, taken from her book, are her recommendations. (But, please, consider this good information to review with your own physician to make sure they’re beneficial for you):

Managing Stress Will Ease Your Journey Through Menopause

Of the many menopausal women I see in my practice, stress is a very common theme.  Managing one’s stress reaction while working towards better work/life balance are extremely helpful to decreasing one’s menopausal symptoms and helps the body to safeguard and increase necessary energy needed for our “golden years.”  Aside from the question of “What can I do to get rid of these horrible hot flashes and night sweats?  I feel like I’m going crazy…”, I also am asked, “Could I have prevented this (menopausal symptoms) from being so horrible?”  The answer is yes.

How To Save Money on Prescription Medicine

Hormone balancing is an expensive proposition. There’s no doubt that hormone therapy and other supplements can put you on an even keel so that you’ll feel normal again. But just how many of us can afford the consultations with medical professionals (Ka-ching!), lab testing (Ka-ching!) and finally, the annual cost of  Hormone Therapy and over-the-counter supplements (Ka-Ching). Even with a good insurance plan, the high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs force many women to go through the menopause transition feeling miserable.

In the course of my research, I’ve discovered some online resources that can really save you money on lab tests and prescription drugs. In this post, I’ll focus just on the medicines and I’ll tackle the lab work in a separate blogpost soon. Here are two ways that you can save on many of your prescription drugs, including hormone therapy.

Try Eastern Medicine’s Approach to Menopause and Aging Well

Menopause seems to creep up on us. It doesn’t start with a big bang. Rather, for most women, it starts like a whisper, in our mid to late-forties, with symptoms like insomnia, foggy brain, and sometimes depression.  So, you consult your physician who, after a 10-minute office visit, gives you prescriptions for Ambien to help you sleep better and maybe an anti-depressant for the mood swings. A year or two later, perhaps your blood pressure or cholesterol has risen to a level requiring medication, a common problem for midlife women. Now you’re up to four pills a day. And you’re still feeling really crummy.  Isn’t there a better way to take care of ourselves during the menopause transition?

Your Risk Factors for Stroke May Be Higher Than You Know

Do you know if you are at risk for a stroke?  If you think you’re not old enough to suffer this fate consider the fact that stroke, which is caused by a sudden loss of blood flow to the brain, is the number three cause of death and the leading cause of disability in the U.S.   The two most important risk factors are hypertension (high blood pressure), which damages arteries so they clog or burst more easily; and high LDL Cholesterol, a fatty substance in the blood, which builds up plaque on artery walls, causing arteries to narrow.   Because blood pressure and LDL cholesterol markers rise as estrogen declines, midlife women should be concerned.

So, to find out what you can do to reduce your risk of stroke, start by reading the April issue of Consumer Reports onHealth Newsletter , which devoted its cover story to new guidelines from the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association for preventing a first stroke. As they explain, controlling your blood pressure and keeping your LDL cholesterol in a healthful range, through lifestyle changes and/or medication, can reduce your risks by a third.  I asked Dr. Orly Avitzur, a board-certified neurologist and medical advisor for Consumer Reports Health, how diet also influences our risk of stroke:

Stock Up On Fans – Hot Flashes Can Last More Than A Decade for Some Women

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about a study that looked into the duration of vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes) in menopausal women. After tracking more than 400 Australian women, ages 45-55, researchers at the Melbourne Women’s Midlife Health Project reported that hot flashes averaged nearly six years in hormone users and just over five years for nonusers.  That was pretty discouraging news. But those statistics are looking pretty good compared to a new study  that paints a significantly worse scenario for some women.  The Penn Ovarian Aging Study followed 259 women for 13 years as they progressed through menopause (from pre to post) and this was what they found:

When It Comes To Heart Health, Know Your Numbers!

The number of women who have heart attacks increases dramatically once you turn 55, especially after menopause. There are many factors that affect your risk for heart disease and stroke. Some, like age, race and family history, you can’t control. But others, such as obesity, stress, smoking and cholesterol, you can.  If you are at risk, for any reason, take your heart health seriously. Begin by  knowing what your numbers are.

Waist Size Matters When Determining Future Heart Health

A new report looking at the link between obesity and cardiovascular disease points to belly fat as the main culprit. Even if your BMI score (body mass index) indicates that you’re at a normal weight, you’re still not in the clear, say researchers.