Why is it that some women have life-altering perimenopause symptoms and others don’t? It seems quite unfair to those women that experience hot flashes, feel cranky, crave sweets and their libido has all but disappeared. Are you one of these women? Are you waking up every night from night sweats? It must be hard to watch some of your friends sail through perimenopause without the same symptoms.
How Much Stress is To Much?
The answer may seem obvious – but there’s more to it than you may think: the answer is STRESS.
But that doesn’t mean you need to quit your job, take up yoga and move to the country side. There are SPECIFIC protocols to handle the SPECIFIC stress chemicals that are out of balance for each woman.
Cortisol
The stress hormone cortisol is made in the adrenal gland. It’s job is to mobilize resources – such in increasing blood sugar so you have energy to fight or flee. Your adrenal glands create cortisol from the same building block used to create as estrogen, so when the body is under long term stress cortisol and estrogen COMPETE for this precursor. Guess which one wins?
Since the threat of stress is more urgent than reproduction, cortisol “steals” all the building blocks and as a result… your estrogen and progesterone levels suffer. This underlying deficiency of the hormonal building blocks is a major cause of perimenopause symptoms.
Many of the later symptoms of perimenopause like hot flashes and night sweats, are caused by a drop in estrogen levels as Dr. Christiane Northrup also recognizes.
Why Do Some Women Suffer More Than Others?
While every woman’s estrogen drops during perimenopause, not everyone experiences stress-induced cortisol levels that interfere with estrogen production on top of it.
Women with healthy adrenal function going into menopause are likely to have a lot fewer symptoms.
Healthy cortisol levels can be the difference between having perimenopause symptoms or not.
Next Steps
Click here to take Dr. Rose’s Nutritional Profile Quiz and get an overview of what your nutritional imbalances could be. You’ll get your results immediately.
Dr. Marina Rose practices in Los Altos, CA and recommends a simple saliva test to check your adrenal function. This Functional Nutrition approach has helped thousands of women with perimenopause symptoms and other challenging, chronic health conditions.
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