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Identifying the Early Signs of Menopause aka Perimenopause

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First Symptoms of Menopause


Menopause has been the butt of many jokes not only from comedians but also from women themselves who are either going through it or negatively are anticipating it. The bottom line is that it all boils down to the fact that different bodies will exhibit different first symptoms of menopause. Some women will experience every known symptom attributed to “the change” while other women will experience few if any symptoms other than a lack of menstruation.

There are certain early menopause symptoms that you will notice and these could occur in a greater or even lesser degree depending on your individual case, and if you are lucky, you could escape with just the barest symptoms, though in other instances the symptoms could be pretty severe causing a lot of distress and anxiety to the affected person.

If you normally experience pre-menstrual symptoms like cramps and mood swings, chances are that these symptoms will worsen as time gets closer to menopause. Other early signs of menopause include irregular periods, tenderness of the breasts, sleeping problems and fatigue. In terms of sex, your libido may decrease and there may be some pain during sex due to vaginal dryness.

Urinary problems may also be early signs of menopause but should always be checked out by a doctor to re-affirm the cause. Frequent need to urinate, development of a urinary tract infection and even leakage of urine when sneezing, coughing or exercising can also be attributed to perimenopause.

Countless problems with your bladder and vagina are also among your first signs of menopause as your hormone levels fluctuate. The vaginal dryness may be an issue and sex could become painful as the skin thins out and surrounding areas becoming more sensitized. In addition, urinary problems count as some of the first signs of menopause due to that same thinning of the skin, in this case, the bladder. Some muscle tone in the bladder may be lost as well due to hormonal changes attributed to menopause.

The first signs of menopause are quite a bit to handle but many of them gradually present themselves as a way to ease into the transition.  These signs can also include mood swings, fatigue, sleeping problems and even changes in your body like not being able to lose weight as easily as you once could.

The actual event itself will likely come with little fanfare as you have been experiencing the early signs of menopause for years. You are in true menopause when you have not had a period for at least one year. Of course, those symptoms will likely continue for a while longer past the perimenopausal stage. The real kick in the pants comes with the fact that you can still get pregnant while still exhibiting the early signs of menopause. As long as you are still having periods, that means you are still ovulating and thereby there is always a small chance of pregnancy.

 

To get more info on menopause go to Menopause and Weight Gain

Keep The Motivation on your Wedding Day Diet

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You may be thinking that if you have some weight to shed before your wedding day that you’d be quite justified in getting all stressed-up and worried. It’s not at all unusual for prospective brides to want to lose a few pounds to get into their wedding dress. Or they may just believe that the skinnier they are, ther better they will look. This is wrong by the way. 

OK, we don’t want to be overweight at our wedding, but there’s no need to go mad and put ourselves on a starvation diet. You require what we call a wedding day diet. Everyone knows that if you simply stop eating your body recognises the lack of food going into the digestive system and begins to slow down your metabolism. The result is that your body burns fewer calories per day but you get the concomitant side effects of tiredness and general feeling of lethargy. When you are finally building up to the big day, then you certainly don’t need that. There is generally an awful lot to do in the run up to any wedding and you’ll need all the energy you can muster and that’s why a wedding day diet is so important.

What better asset could you wish for than the motivation of just knowing that your wedding is on the horizon and that you NEED to look good for it. With the motivation provided by your wedding day, the wedding day diet is leaps and bounds ahead of the others because it’s tailored to take advantage of this once in a lifetime situation.

Now, as you have probably discovered for yourself, it’s all down to motivation. But with all the pressures of today’s day to day business, it’s not always easy to keep that motivation going. Look around you (figuratively speaking) – everywhere we look there are candy bars, snacks, snax, take-aways, food to go,…. it’s everywhere. When food was nowhere near as pleniful as it is now, putting on a few pounds before your wedding was never an issue, but nowadays, we have lots of parties and celebrations as our wedding day approaches and it’s very easy to put on the pounds when we should be losing them. 

Fear not, however. There are, thankfully, specially developed wedding day diet programs that are meant to shift those pounds as quickly as possible and keep them shifted too. Until now, dieting advice tended to focus on particular individual foods. e.g. the cabbage soup diet. Or the rice water diet. I’ve never heard such nonsense. If cabbage soup doesn’t exactly get your taste buds tingling (has anyone ever had cabbage soup?) then a diet of that kind would never work for you in a month of Sundays. And this wedding day diet shows you how to eat healthily and slimmingly (if that’s a word!) without relying on single foods.

Then there was all that points business. Two points for an apple and er.. how many points for a cookie, I’d better look it up in my book. Who the hell wants to keep calculating and recalculating their running total and checking each snack bar to see if it’s allowed under the remaing number of points for the day. The wedding day diet doesn’t use a points system.

Today things are a lot more sophisticated, they are also a lot easier to handle during a busy day and consequently much more effective. The wedding day diet program (a review of which can be found here) prepares tailor made meal plans based on the foods that YOU specify, making the whole experience much more enjoyable (and doable) for you. You put yourself in charge of your daily food intake. and giving you the control improves your chances of success hugely.

So don’t be worried – if you have the motivation that only an approaching wedding day can give you and if you’re enjoying what you’re eating and losing weight at the same time then you can hardly fail, can you? 

By far, the best wedding day diet on the market is Strip That Fat, a modern wedding day diet plan that can help you to lose ten pounds in just fourteen days. If you read this review, you will probably come to realize that now is the best possible time to get started on your wedding day diet and stop worrying.

 

Conquer Menopause With Diet and Exercise

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Menopause, for women this is just another one of those events in our lives we just can not avoid. It is also frustrating for many women because there are not always hard answers to certain questions. Some women sail through the experience while others suffer miserably. Some begin to see signs and experience symptoms in their thirties while others do not hit any speed bumps until they are in their late fifties.

Whatever the case may be for you, there are steps that you can take that will assist in making the ride through menopause a little easier. To begin with the absolute basics, not surprising, nutrition and diet have tremendous affects on the symptoms of menopause.

As always it is important to consume a wide variety or fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes as these food groups are a rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and numerous other compounds that are essential to overall health. More importantly they help your liver process hormones and at the same time reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Another fabulous food for conquering menopausal symptoms is flaxseed. This little seed packs a real punch; flaxseed is rich in fiber but more importantly contains lignans which help to balance estrogens and in turn reduce your symptoms. Soy foods contain isoflavins which also reduce symptoms. Foods loaded with Vitamin D and Calcium are highly recommended. Beets or beet juice is considered a must when battling menopause as they are extremely rich in nutrients, vitamins and minerals as well as carotenoids such as beta-carotene and lutein. It is recommended that you avoid saturated fats, caffeine, alcohol and spicy foods as these are all known to acerbate hot flashes.

Regular exercise isn’t it always listed as a benefit. Putting all of the other benefits aside, a couple different exercises will greatly improve your experience with menopause. First of all we know that aerobic exercise is a huge benefit to your cardiovascular system. The health of your cardio system has a direct effect on the occurrence of hot flashes. This does not mean you need to go out and start running five miles a day, intentional walking will do the trick as long as you are getting a workout and incorporating it regularly. Another line of activities that are good choices are Yoga, Qigong, or Tia Chi. Exercises such as these not only improve your body physically but also mentally and emotionally, again great for avoiding hot flashes.

Exercise regardless of the type you choose to incorporate into your daily routine also has the benefit of reducing stress which in turn helps with the menopausal symptoms of hot flashes, the sweating, irritability, anxiety, depression, mood swings. Exercise in general will also help to reduce other symptoms such as weight gain, fatigue, head aches, memory loss, insomnia and low libido. In addition it would be beneficial to practice some sort of relaxation technique such as meditation or deep breathing.

Very small changes in our daily life style can have tremendous effects on how we experience menopause. Diet and exercise are essential to our over all health however there is a direct correlation between these and menopausal symptoms.

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