Is Your Pelvic Floor as Weak as a Kitten? Then Try This.

BySandra Ishkanes

The prevailing view of our reproductive organs is that while they get some action, they don’t actually do anything themselves. This idea is debunked in this article: “The pelvic floor muscles play a pivotal role with respect to vaginal and sexual function, their contractions facilitating and enhancing sexual response. They contribute to arousal, sensation during intercourse and the ability to clench the vagina and firmly “grip” the penis. The strength and durability of their contractions are directly related to orgasmic potential since the pelvic muscles are the “motor” that drives sexual climax and can be thought of as the powerhouse of the vagina. During orgasm, the pelvic floor muscles ‘shudder.’ There is great variety in the bulk, strength, power and voluntary control of the pelvic floor muscles that support the vagina. Some women are capable of powerfully “snapping” their vaginas, whereas others cannot generate even a weak flicker.” Symptoms of weak pelvic muscles The most obvious signs of a weak pelvic floor are leaking when coughing, sneezing, running and even worse, laughing. Other symptoms include: The most common advice is to strengthen the pelvic floor with Kegel exercises – regularly squeezing the vaginal and anal sphincters to build up muscle strength. After I give birth to my daughter I found that I sometimes had the dribbles and so I did these religiously for weeks. They didn’t make any difference at all. It was quite a terrifying prospect to think that I would stuck with my useless pelvic floor forever, but then something wonderful happened. Bounce your way to toned pelvic muscles One of my favourite activities is trampolining, and as soon as I was up to it post-birth, I got out my mini trampoline and had my first joyful bounce. What I wasn’t expecting was that I would instantly wet myself all down my legs and all over my beloved trampoline. It was quite shocking. Undeterred, and after a tiresome clean-up job, I bought a maxi pack of maxi pads (I think they were the maternity ones) and started again. I usually bounce for about 20 minutes every other day, and the first few times I had to change pads 2-3 times. But after a couple of weeks I only had to change pads once and after 3 weeks I realised that I didn’t need them at all. At the same time the day-to-day leaks stopped and after a while I realised that the old girl was back to her old self – plumped, moisturised, responsive and happy. I also lost weight and got my glow back. I can safely say that I now have the pelvic muscles and vaginal musculature of my teenage years – bouncing up and down against gravity and the focus on balance and stability while trampolining forces big and small muscles to contract, toning the whole area. Pelvic musculature – floor or trampoline? The pelvic floor is made of 2 muscles that intertwine under the bladder, the bowels and uterus, holding these organs in place. The phrase ‘pelvic floor’ suggests that this is something that is flat, solid and rigid, like a floor. In fact its the opposite of a floor – it is exactly like a trampoline! These muscles should be taut but stretchy and precisely the right length. When the pelvic musculature is weak, it’s like a hammock instead of a trampoline – it has lengthened and weakened, and lost its purpose. I suppose that once upon a time the idea of Kegel exercises made sense: if a muscle is weak then it’s necessary to strengthen it by exercising it regularly. But the pelvic musculature is not like a bicep or a stomach muscle, which improves as it gets ever shorter and bulkier. The musculature has to be flexible, and it has to adapt to all kinds of daily movements. If it gets shorter then it will get weaker, which is why Kegel exercises are not really the solution, and can make things worse. Benefits of bouncing Trampolining can not only resolve pelvic muscle issues, but its also wonderful for overall health: It’s fun and easy to do, although I would avoid it if there was even a hint of uterine prolapse or other health conditions. I still use my trusty Urban Rebounder, but there quite a few to choose from. It’s great to have a 5 minute bounce when taking a break from working at home or just from sitting down for ages. I’m not an advocate of wearing bras, but a bra in this case is really helpful – I’ve had my ShockAbsorber for years and it has held up very well under pressure. Can’t bounce? Squat! There is a wonderful kind of congruence that the act of trampolining helps to tone the pelvic trampoline, but what if you can’t bounce? Or don’t want to? Then you can do something that women have been doing since forever, and are still doing now all over the world while working in the fields, or feeding children or cooking or socialising: whole body squats. Squatting 4 or 5 times a day will tone and contract the muscles in your buttocks which positively impacts the pelvic floor. Its easy to do: pretend that you are peeing in the woods while out camping. If you’re not that fit then starting with a few repetitions a day and building up is the way to go. The key thing is not to think of it as exercise, but make it part of day to day movement: a couple of squats in the morning before getting dressed, a few in the evening before going to bed, a few more at the weekends. Putting up a few post-it notes around the house can be a useful reminder to do a few squats here and there. Pelvic TLC Having a weak pelvic floor is not the depressing disaster that it seems. All that is required is a little pelvic TLC via trampolining or squatting or both. Are you thinking of…

Winter Metabolism – Get It Up and Keep It Up

BySandra Ishkanes

“Nothing burns like the cold”George R.R. Martin Winter is creeping up, is anyone else feeling it? A research paper out a while ago showed that more women go through the menopause in the winter than in the summer, which would make sense from an evolutionary perspective. The summer is a time of abundant sunlight, warmth and calorie dense food which keeps metabolism high to allow for high activity. The menopause is a time when our bodies are switching from using sugar as energy to using fat, and this would be the natural state of being in the winter, when the amount of sugar from fruits and vegetables is low. If we consider that the menopause is an energetic issue rather than a hormonal issue then it makes sense that women who experience menopause in winter have the lowest number of symptoms, whereas summertime brings an increase in the number of hot flushes. How to keep your metabolism revved up in the winter: https://www.maturitas.org/ar…/S0378-5122(04)00340-8/fulltexthttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209489/ I hope you find this article useful, I will be updating it as new information comes to light. Keep well, Sandra

Have You Got Rushing Woman Syndrome?

BySandra Ishkanes

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”Chinese Proverb Rushing Woman Syndrome is a phrase coined by Dr Libby Weaver and it speaks to the phenomenon that is modern woman: a woman in a mad rush to do everything, and be all things to all people. The woman who is wired but tired, who has the perception that there is not enough time in the day, combined with a never-ending to do list. Women are now working at work and working at home for their families, doing a frantic double shift with very little rest. This is changing the face of women’s health in such a detrimental way, with stress causing everything from IBS to PMS to menopausal issues. Adrenalin is the hormone that is unleashed in times of stress. It is the body’s response to danger signals, and it starts and maintains a metabolic cascade: it forces sugar into to the blood stream to maintain high activity, digestion shuts down, the immune system shuts down and the body is on high alert. The upshot is that sleep becomes elusive and isn’t refreshing, we crave sugar to give us energy and to replace the sugar that we are burning, and whatever sugar is left over gets stored as fat (while at the same time we give ourselves a hard time for giving in to sugar cravings). Sugar causes inflammation, hormones become unbalanced, we get bloated, are unable to burn fat and put on weight. Why do we rush around like that? I definitely can’t say it any better than Libby Weaver herself: “One reason is because we care so much for the people in our lives. On one level this way of living comes from such a beautiful place. It comes because we have beautiful hearts, but even deeper than that it comes because we made up a story a really long time ago that we aren’t enough the way we are; that we aren’t good enough, tall enough, slim enough, pretty enough, brainy enough, on time enough, that we’re just not enough the way that we are, so we spend our lives trying to please everyone in our realm, putting their needs ahead of our own. We rush around and do all we can to make sure that others love and appreciate us so that we never, ever have to feel rejected, ostracised, unlovable, criticised, yelled at, and like we’ve let others down. It’s not just the physical health consequences that concern me for women. It’s that they live their lives so out of touch with those beautiful hearts, out of touch with how extraordinary they are and in the cloud of false belief that they aren’t enough.” Dr Weaver’s TedTalk – The pace of modern life versus our cavewoman biochemistry – is awesome, I highly recommend it. I hope you find this article useful, I will be updating it as new information comes to light. Keep well, Sandra

What ‘Menopausal Syndrome’ Does to Women’s Brains

BySandra Ishkanes

More misinformation in this article from the Atlantic – starting with the title – “What Menopause Does to Women’s Brains”. It’s not the menopause that’s causing the problems with women’s brains – the menopause is a natural and normal rite of passage, like puberty. The title should be – What Peri-menopausal Syndrome Does to Women’s Brains. Peri/menopausal Syndrome – as I now call it – is the constellation of symptoms in peri/menopause that includes a decline in brain function. The articles gets the data right: Two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women. Why? For women, there is a marked decline in brain energy and an increase in Alzheimer’s plaques as they go from premenopausal to fully menopausal. Estrogen is a neuroprotective hormone. When it declines, the brain is left more vulnerable. So if a woman is somehow predisposed to Alzheimer’s, that’s when the risk manifests itself in her brain. The loss of estrogen means that glucose metabolism in the brain, its primary fuel, is reduced by about 20 to 25 per cent. That’s why women experience that they’re off their game. They still can play the game, just not as well. If naturally low glucose metabolism in the brain of a peri/menopausal woman is causing cognitive problems, then the answer is simple: peri/menopausal women MUST switch their energy source from glucose to FAT. This will provide the brain with the energy that it needs and not only will brain function improve, but all the other symptoms completely disappear. The author goes on to say: “At one point during my interview with Mosconi, she happened to mention that women who undergo hysterectomies have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. A chill shot up my spine. In my early 40s, I had a hysterectomy to remove a uterus beleaguered by adenomyosis. I’m certain no one ever warned me of the risk pre-op, even though the information was already out there. I couldn’t have forgone the surgery; my adenomyosis had left me fatally anemic. But I at least could have been informed. I was so upset to learn this, I had to shut off the digital recorder to catch my breath.” Women need to know that there is a nutritional and lifestyle approach that can completely eliminate this very real worry. The low carb/high fat approach I have developed works to resolve symptoms in 100% of women in my clinic and in the PeriMenoFix course. READ THE ARTICLE

Menopausal Symptoms – Not Actually a Mystery

BySandra Ishkanes

An article from the Guardian on 27th August 2019, and the headlines are: “The menopause: why so little research on the middle-aged ovary?” “Even the way a woman’s decline in oestrogen relates to her symptoms is a mystery, scientists say” It’s not a mystery to me! Honestly, who are these scientists?? It’s taken me 3 years to find the answers but the research is there. Although they’re looking in the wrong place for a start. The issue is not with the ovary – the issue is with what oestrogen has stopped doing! Here is a sample of what I’ve written for the PeriMenoFix course: One of the many functions of oestrogen is to deliver blood sugar to the cells of the body. This sugar is the energy that powers the whole body and the brain. As oestrogen levels start to decline in peri/menopause, the delivery of blood sugar also starts to decline, which means that the cells are getting less and less energy and: You start feeling tired, all the time. Your brain is deprived of energy which leads to brain fog, depression, memory loss and possibly eventually dementia. The energy crisis in your brain initiates a huge adrenaline rush to release high amounts of glucose from the liver into the blood stream – this causes hot flushes in the daytime and night sweats at night. Adrenaline rushes at night mean that going to sleep and staying asleep becomes difficult; Adrenaline rushes create anxiety which can lead to panic attacks. High adrenaline destabilises potassium balance which means the heart can’t function properly and this leads to heart palpitations. High levels of blood sugar causes weight gain as unused blood sugar is converted to fat.   To sum up: peri/menopausal symptoms are not an oestrogen problem, they are an energy problem. The less oestrogen you have, the less blood sugar your body can use. If you eat too much sugar or carbohydrates, it gets converted to fat and you are left with a dwindling energy resource – you put on more and more weight while your body and your brain are starving. This is why women in peri/menopause end up with sugar cravings, high blood sugar and gain weight while their bodies are starving for energy. This leads to debilitating fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, hot flushes, night sweats and the long list of other problems. Women with these symptoms are eating the wrong food and their bodies and brain are starving. The PeriMenoFix fixes all these problems 🙂 The article goes on to say: “We don’t fully understand that aspect of it,” said Waljit Dhillo, a professor in endocrinology and metabolism at Imperial College London. …Even within a single individual, the way a woman’s decline in oestrogen relates to her symptoms is a mystery. In basic terms, hot flushes are known to be caused by the decline in oestrogen experienced when the fertility cycle comes to an end and more sudden drops in oestrogen tend to cause more extreme symptoms, but beyond that our knowledge seems to taper off.” Professor Dhillo might not get it, but it makes perfect sense to me: the more drastically oestrogen drops, the more drastic the drop in blood sugar delivery to the body, and the brain, which means more drastic low energy symptoms. More from the article: “Some scientists say they are met with puzzlement when trying to justify new research into possible treatments. Hormone replacement therapy has long been the most widely used intervention, but there is still a lack of basic understanding about how HRT interacts with a woman’s body. One of the reviewers for our grant asked ‘Aren’t you medicalising a physiological process?’,” said Dhillo” Well yes! You totally are! Adding unnecessary oestrogen is working against what a woman’s body is trying to do, which is to get rid of oestrogen. Taking HRT, soya, flaxseed, maca etc is adding to the oestrogenic burden, which then has to be detoxified, adding to the work that the liver has to do. The fix is so simple: low carbohydrate, high fat nutrition that is adapted to women’s biology. Working with the body instead of against it, and switching nutrition from burning sugar to burning fat is the foundation of the PeriMenoFix. ARTICLE

Menopause Mechanics: Hot Flushes: Overheated and Underpowered

BySandra Ishkanes

“God, it was hot! Forget about frying an egg on the sidewalk; this kind of heat would fry an egg inside the chicken..”– Rachel Caine The hot flush – that sudden feeling of warmth that can leave a woman flushed and drenched in sweat – has long been considered the defining symptom of menopause, experienced by around 80% of women. The typical narrative around hot flushes is that they last for 3-5 years around the last menstrual period, that every woman follows the same pattern, and that they are all about the decline in oestrogen hence replacing oestrogen – whether synthetic, bio-identical or plant based – is key to reducing their frequency. So let’s bust these myths: Some women – the ‘early onset’ hot flushers – begin to experience hot flushes 5-10 years before the menopause while still having regular periods, and these can stop around the menopause; The ‘late onset’ hot flushers start experiencing them after their last period; The ‘lucky few’ never experience a hot flush, or only have a few near the end of the menopausal transition; The ‘super flushers’ – about 25% of women – begin to have hot flushes early on in peri-menopause and these can continue well past the menopause, possibly lasting for 15 years or more, and into the 70s; For many women, oestrogen replacement makes little or no difference to having hot flashes. Hot flushes are commonly linked to physiological changes in the body such as: cardiovascular disease; low-grade inflammation; high cholesterol levels; increased heart rate; sleep disruption. What is less well known is that hot flushes are also significantly associated with reduced brain function: Women who experience more hot flushes, particularly while sleeping, are more likely to have lesions on the brain and are more at risk for stroke and other brain blood flow problems; Hot flushes are often accompanied by clear reductions in brain blood flow; Hot flushes are related to poorer verbal memory function i.e. difficulty remembering words; Hot flushes – especially during sleep – are associated with greater connectivity in the brain when it is at rest, which can lead to depression, pain and insomnia. Why do hot flushes happen? In a nutshell, hot flushes compensate for the lack of glucose delivery to the brain (brain starvation): Before the menopausal transition, oestrogen helps to push glucose into the brain. As oestrogen levels start falling off, the amount of glucose that can be pushed into the brain starts dwindling. To increase the level of glucose in the blood, the brain initiates an adrenaline rush. Adrenaline is also known as the “fight or flight” hormone. It’s released in response to a stressful, exciting, dangerous, or threatening situation. Adrenaline helps your body react more quickly. It makes the heart beat faster, increases blood flow to the brain and muscles, contracts muscle cells below the surface of the skin to stimulate sweat, floods the body with glucose and can make you feel jittery, nervous or anxious. So the adrenaline rush – in the form of a hot flush – rapidly increases the amount of glucose to the starving brain, but all that sugar can have a detrimental effect on the body, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity and inflammation. Luckily for us, glucose is not the only source of energy that the body can use. The alternative fuel source is fat, and this comes to the forefront in menopause. During the menopausal transition, the energy processing machinery is physically changing to burning fat only. This fat is sourced from breaking down the fat in our bodies and converting it to ketones. When ketones become the primary energy source for the body and the brain, many of the menopausal symptoms – including hot flushes – can be completely resolved. How can we eliminate hot flushes in the long term? The key is to allow your body to become an efficient fat-burning, ketone-producing machine, so that the brain is not constantly spiking adrenaline to boost glucose levels. Ketones are made in the liver, which means that the liver has to be in good shape, which is probably why women who drink high amounts of alcohol have worse menopausal symptoms. Fat stores can only be accessed if your carbohydrate intake and insulin are very low (i.e avoiding all bread, pasta, biscuits, grain, rice, beans etc), protein intake is moderate, and fat intake is high. This proportion of fat, carbohydrates and protein in the diet is the basis of the ketogenic diet that you might have heard of. Not all ketogenic diets are created equal, and peri/menopausal women need a particular flavour which I will be writing about soon. How can we eliminate hot flushes in the short term? Having hot flushes means that the brain is desperately lacking in energy and is short-circuiting (see here). Research shows that an efficient way of delivering ketones to the brain is via coconut oil. Lauric acid is a medium-chain fat found in coconut oil which goes straight to the brain where it is converted to ketones and used for energy. How much coconut oil is needed to make a difference? Each woman will have different requirements, but I would start with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil in the morning and 1 in the evening. Yes, 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil could be all that is needed in the short term to get rid of hot flushes altogether. I hope you find this article useful, I will be updating it as new information comes to light. Keep well, Sandra PS. Don’t forget: this article is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice. Every woman experiences peri/menopause differently and if you would like specific advice, I recommend that you book a consultation to have a protocol personalised to your specific symptoms: a thorough assessment of your health will provide vital insights and allow me to create the perfect health plan…

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