For years we’ve heard the same old conventional wisdom: eat less and exercise more to lose weight. Americans have spent billions on diet programs which offer them less food with less nutrition.
New studies suggest the key to weight loss and maintenance is eating a diet that keeps our insulin levels low. Insulin helps your body store fat, and makes sure it stays put. This means that if you control insulin, you control fat. It’s that simple.
Eating too much sugar (in ANY FORM!) makes you fat, by triggering insulin. It’s also linked to aging, cancer and a compromised immune system. If you would immediately cut your sugar intake down to 10-15 grams per day (a couple teaspoons), you would greatly reduce your risk for illness, diabetes and cancer. Cutting down on your body’s production of insulin is key to reducing fat production. One apple equals 12 grams of sugar.
It is also important to increase the fiber in your diet. Fiber promotes belly fat loss by creating optimum digestive health. When you do consume sugar, if you eat it with a good amount of fiber, like an apple, you ease the amount of sugar going directly into your system. Artichokes, oats, beans and whole grain products are excellent sources of fiber. Also add a morning dose of acidophilus to your diet to promote intestinal health!
Exercise to strengthen and tone your muscles and to relieve stress, not to look better.
Take it from me. I cut out all sugar, alcohol, antibiotics, most dairy and artificial sweeteners (EXCEPT STEVIA) from my diet this past April, because of an overwhelmingly bad case of Candida overgrowth. I limited my diet to meat and vegetables and then added in a few apples and blueberries gradually. I now bake my own breads and desserts so I can make them with Stevia instead of sugar. And I feel 1000% better, lost 20 pounds and inches from my waist and thighs! The weight comes off slowly, but it does come off.
A friend of mine had terrible headaches and sinus infections for a year until she cut the sugar and aspartame (Diet Coke) out completely. Now she’s feeling so much better!
Learn to choose healthier snacks. Popcorn (my personal favorite!) reigns supreme among whole grain snack foods, with the highest level of antioxidants. Focus on looking for whole grain snacks (the first ingredient in the list!), which are rich in antioxidants!
In the popular 1966 book “Feminine Forever,” Dr. Robert A. Wilson, a gynecologist, used disparaging descriptions of aging women (“flabby,” “shrunken,” “dull-minded,” “desexed”) to upend the prevailing idea of menopause as a normal stage of life. Women and their physicians, Dr. Wilson wrote, should regard menopause as a degenerative disease that could be prevented or cured with the use of hormone drugs.
“No woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay,” Dr. Wilson wrote. “There is no need for either valor or pretense. The need is for hormones.”
I don’t think this is a very good time in history for women to grow old. We’re surrounded by media messages saying you can have great sex after menopause, into your 60s, your 70s, your 80s! (The mag articles almost always features an older woman with ‘my much-younger lover’.)
So they’re holding out this enticement about having great sex, but the older I get, the less able I am to find romantic partners. The men I meet are either married, or want to be with someone younger.
Assuming I do find a partner, sex is actually difficult b/c i’m going thru menopause. I’m bleeding all the time. And when mnps is done, sex without RX creams will be problematic, and just not as fun anymore.
And yet we’re surrounded by those damn media messages about how great it can be!
It’s like being lactose-intolerant and living in a Baskin Robbins.
I wish our culture would just say it’s ok to go with the natural flow of things and not want sex anymore, and quit trying so hard.
And don’t even get me started on the artificially extended sex lives of men, with Viagra.
In general, after 50 years of hormone contraception since we were students, with more than a hundred million women now on low-dose hormone contraception, such synthetics – a progestin with or without ethinylestradiol EE2 – are considered pretty safe in current low dose compared to unplanned pregnancy or physical contraceptive methods, provided contra-indications are respected; with almost 50% reduction in future endometrial and ovarian cancer; and no change in mortality from breast cancer.
Does that make such massively profitable contraceptive hormones that were designed in fierce competition for fertility (and ovarian) suppression in healthy young women both safe and effective for the ageing no-longer-healthy fattening (post)menopausal women? Parenteral physiological balanced HRT does not cause the fattening and muscle loss that OHT does.
Now young Janey asks an important question: “I am 56 yrs old and very happy with Yaz (ethinyl estradiol EE2 plus drospirenone). I do menstruate while on the placebo. I would like to find a doctor who will let me stay on Yaz, which I like a lot, or if absolutely necessary try the Testosterone, Bi-estrogen, Progesterone combo. I worry about weight gain that occurs in almost all cases of oral HRT. I need the bone protection and hair, skin and vagina health benefits that have been wonderful on Yaz. “
CANCER RISK OF ORAL XENOHORMONE THERAPY:
In July this column last visited ovarian cancer as a relatively rare disease but with high mortality, hence far more to be feared than other womens’ cancers eg breast, endometrial or ovary.
So it is worth revisiting the major Danish observational study spanning 10 years published last July ; which documented almost a million women for 8 years. The crude primary ovarian cancer OvCa incidence rate in never-users (5 million women-years) was only 0.04%, vs 0.052% in current HT users (1.4million women-years) ie overall, hormone therapy HT increased the risk by 1.3, or 30%. That study concluded: “Combined therapy with norethisterone was associated with an increased risk of epithelial ovarian cancer (RR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.36-1.76), which was not significantly different from the RRs associated with medroxyprogesterone, levo- norgestrel, or cyproterone acetate”.
The only regime in that series which was not statistically significantly associated with increase in OvCa was in the 23 women who developed OvCa on solo transdermal E2TD ie hormone replacement HRT (out of a total of 64000 women-years on E2TD), where OvCa relative risk increased by 13% but the 95% confidence interval spanned unity (0.74 – 1.71) ie p was > 0.05. By contrast, oral estrogen HT for some 287 000women years increased OvCa risk significantly by 34%; and any progestin added to estrogen ie in some 847 000 women years increased OvCa risk above no HT by 47% to 68%.
This neutral effect on OvCa only of unopposed EzTD is most reassuring for women. All the synthetic progestins they compared were associated with significantly more OvCa (let alone BRCA).
The nub of the matter is that gynecological cancers generally do not apparently proliferate without the influence of female cyclical hormone levels- FSH, LH, estrogen – and especially oral estrogens and progestins. In the main study of cancer with Turner syndrome, in 3425 women in UK followed for some 17years ie 58000 patient-years, breast cancer was 70% less common than average women, while the only gynecolological cancers that appeared to increase were endometrial cancer 8fold at age 15-44years, and gonadoblastoma of the ovary by 8% by age 25years- and gonadoblastoma is over 90% associated with the ‘male’ chromosome Y . These statistics are reassuring considering that most such women were treated with oral estrogen therapy, and that uterine cancer is avoidable if estrogen therapy is appropriately opposed with some progestin, with periodic withdrawal bleeding allowed.
Unbalanced anabolics eg vitamins or sex hormones merely promote dormant malignant cells already present, they do not cause cancer de novo; and adult cancers take an average of 20 years to present clinically.
There is no report on Pubmed of testicular cancer developing on testosterone TT replacement let alone abuse; nor of increased ovarian or breast or uterine or colonic cancer in long term female testosterone users – if anything long term testosterone replacement in women appears to diminish breast proliferation in rodents, monkeys and humans, as this column has regularly reviewed..
It is common cause from clinical menopause practice and trials that pharmacological ie unphysiological oral estrogen – progestin therapy – while improving bone density- increases body fat and if anything decreases lean ie muscle mass and collagen -hence the increasing postmenopausal fatness frailty and urinary incontinence of elderly women on oral HT.
DROSPIRENONE
The new combinations with drospirenone for contraception ( Yaz/Yasmin- drospirenone DSP -ethinylestradiol EE2 in fertile women), and post menopause (Angeliq – DSP -estradiol E2) certainly seems to reduce fluid retention and thus weight and hypertension problems, and to have anti-androgenic benefits when required. There is apparently no published longterm data on DSP to judge it’s influence on cancer and mortality.
This column has regularly detailed reasons for postmenopausal women PMW to avoid oral transhepatic sexhormone therapy with the high doses of oral estrogen needed to control menopause symptoms, and the multiple adverse effects of transhepatic xenohormones like EE2, premarin and progestins. But 50 years of experience including the under 60’s cohort of the WHI, and the Oulu trial (Heikkinen ea ) certainly showed overwhelming benefit of oral estradiol/conjugated estrogen-progestin combination when started appropriately in well young PMW for up to 10 years. It has been well known for three decades that continuing such OHT well beyond 10 years gradually increases the incidence of BRCA above non-users.
However, as we have repeatedly discussed, why should Kitty subject herself to the longterm risks of eg breast cancer from such oral use of any designer hormones like orohepatic estrogens and progestins? when evidence is that physiological human HRT with non-oral, or oral micronized (see Dr Lee Vliet’s books) sexhormones, has no risks, only benefits – especially when human E2+- estriol E3 are balanced by progesterone P4 and testosterone TT as by creams, or implants, or tiny subcutaneous self-injection, all easily available by prescription in US.
And when oral EE2 ethinylestradiol for contraception is associated with low but real thrombosis and biliary risks; and when it is enormously potent compared to human estradiol; and when it’s successor competitor diethylstilbestrol DES is still causing horrendous problems in women and their children and grandchildren after it was recklessly prescribed from the 1940s to the 1970 without there ever being evidence of benefit let alone safety.
Lowdose EE2 has certainly proved it’s relative safety when used as birth control in young healthy non-overweight women. But just as oral prempro has proved that it causes problems and little benefit when started after the age of 60years in overweight women ie those already with atheromatous disease, why take potent synthetic oral EE2 post menopause? Using a potent synthetic is neither prudent, physiological nor replacement.
Recently a Brazilian trial confirms equal benefit of “nonoral HRT (nasal spray- estradiol -micronized vaginal progesterone) ; or oral HT (low-dose estradiol-drospirenone ) for 2 years on metabolic, vascular and body fat risks in early postmenopause;” but once again that “Triglycerides and von Willebrand factor levels decreased significantly only with nonoral treatment”- ie the nonoral- parenteral- route is better protection against atheroma and thrombogenesis.
DSP combined with oral E2 is certainly theoretically advantageous HT for those PMW with hypertension and fluid retention. But since no longterm trials or studies of DSP use are available yet, it is too early to judge if DSP+E2 is as safe as physiological HRT with appropriate combination of E2/ estriol E3/ P4/ TT.
But as we have repeatedly pointed out, the evidence from both evolution, and 60 years of experience, and trials, is that physiological parenteral human hormones ie not by the orohepatic route have distinct safety and physiological benefits, as comprehensively detailed by l’Hermite, Genazzani ea on behalf of the International Menopause Society recently , as well as all the data this column has previously reviewed on the importance of balance non-oral testosterone as part of the HRT regime.
So the answer for KJaney is: be a volunteer guinea-pig if you like, try Taz -or, better, the natural estradiol -containing Angeliq – in low dose; but preferably enroll yourself in a longterm randomized comparative trial of the new oral Angeliq) versus the ancient (balanced human sex hormones) . Why risk the new but long-term unproven when the evidence for the old (as long as human evolution with balanced non-oral human estrogen +P4+TT) is so strong.
And while you may find out the best by your trial and error without longterm adverse effect, none of us may learn better by your self-experimentation?
For years we’ve heard the same old conventional wisdom: eat less and exercise more to lose weight. Americans have spent billions on diet programs which offer them less food with less nutrition.