Sleep disorder is probably one of the most miserable symptoms of menopause, primarily because of the negative impact on the mood of the sufferers and their frustration for not being able to sleep well. When hormone deficiency becomes evident, and you haven’t consulted your doctor about bioidentical hormone therapy, making good use of the time you stay awake can be very gratifying. The key is to get creative and take those long hours awake at night as an opportunity to do something productive. Releasing the tension of not being able to sleep and using that energy to perform an activity you like, may transform the ordeal of your sleep disorder into a relaxing time, dedicated to yourself.

Here are some ideas to help you use those “extra hours” every night and which curiously enough, will help you relax and fall asleep sooner:

1.    WRITING: All you need is pen and paper, or a computer if you feel so inclined. As long as you remember some facts of your daily life you’ll have material to write about. Use those hours when no one’s disturbing you and write to your heart’s content: stories, fantasies, dreams or illusions…anything will do. Who knows? You may even discover a secret talent you didn’t know about.

2.    BEAUTY TREATMENT: If your daily activities won’t let you take care of yourself as you’d like, those extra hours at night might be the best opportunity to have a relaxing bath, a facial mask and that yoga workout you’ve been planning for so long. You can also do your nails or use a sophisticated gadget (as sold on TV) to get rid of cellulite. The results will be evident in the short term and having time for yourself will transform your insomnia into a less stressing experience. Use your favorite music and earphones as your best company.

3.    LEARN SOMETHING: Internet is the access to knowledge everywhere. List your main interests and start surfing the web. You’ll soon find all kinds of courses to complement what you already know or add new bits of knowledge to your mind. What you find on the web may even help you start a new business or even a new life. Being awake can bring a lot of good things too! Besides, there’s a good chance you’ll find some extra relaxation techniques to learn.

4.    HAVE A PASTIME: crossword puzzles, knitting, reading, watching movies or any form of art may be an excellent activity to perform during the odd hours you will be awake. Make sure you don’t disturb other people in the house. Relaxation techniques, reiki, or meditation may be great options for a pastime, as you will invest your hours awake in something beneficial to both your body and mind.

Losing sleep can be stressing, but it can feel even worse with the wrong attitude. If you try to remain positive all the way, your sleeplessness may be just a blessing in disguise. Even the great Leonardo Da Vinci used to sleep very little, and though imitating his genius is virtually impossible, you can take your sleep disorder as something natural or helpful. This will make you feel happier by doing something productive with those extra hours awake. Stop complaining and find out what you can do for yourself when nobody interrupts you…

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

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There are many things that can bring a mature person down, and one of the most important ones is the Empty Nest Syndrome.  You may find yourself crying for no reason; days seem endless and empty; you may feel useless, and forget about friends and the things you love to do… in a few words, life has stopped.  This is how this syndrome may manifest itself in your life right after your children leave home, and they don’t need you on a daily basis anymore.

The Empty Nest Syndrome is especially strong in the case of parents who have a very strong bond with their children and have sacrificed their personal lives for a long time to take care of them.  The parents’ lives normally revolve around the children and their activities, making it a shock when they leave home to start their own lives.

Do not despair!  There are ways to avoid falling into the dark void this syndrome presents, and live your own life fully and happily, sharing it with your grown up children instead of subordinating yourself to them.

1.    Prepare in advance. Recognize early on that your children will grow up and leave.  Get ready to let them go.  Understand that love involves freedom, respect for the other’s individuality and right to experience life.  Allow yourself, and be open, to live all the possibilities life brings.  Accept the fact that your children will not need you in the same way forever and look forward to the stage when you will have time for yourself.

2.    Look for someone to listen to you. Whether it is through counseling or through a good friend, having somebody you can share your pain with is an important part of healing, of looking at things positively and taking the necessary steps to rebuild your life.

3.    Stay busy. Use the free time you have now to take on those activities that interest you and never had time to pursue.  Go back to school, learn to paint, take up gardening, travel, write a book, do yoga! There are endless possibilities to what you can do during this new stage of your life; you can actually live it for you and not someone else!

4.    Make new friends. Get in touch with old friends you haven’t seen in a long time and make new ones in new places, while you pursue new activities.  Contact that person you stopped talking to so many years ago and don’t recall why; renew your life.

5.    Keep in touch with your children. Take advantage of the modern means of communication: phone, Skype, Messenger, etc., to talk to your kids and see them regularly.  Visit them as much as possible and take joy in their new life. Support them in their new endeavors; participate in any way you can.

6.    Take better care of yourself. Eat healthy and see your physician about an exercise program. Consult your gynecologist and find out about bioidentical hormone treatment to get some relief from any discomfort or depression that may be associated to menopause.

7.    Stay positive and learn to see the bright side of life. Look at the new relationship you have with your children. It is now a grown-up relationship, and rejoice in it.  Look back with pride at what you have accomplished and look forward to all the new doors that are opening up for you!  Can it get any better?

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

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Breast cancer is the black shadow over every woman’s head.  In 2008, it killed 40,480 women, and 182,460 were diagnosed with it, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In view of this, it is frightening how most women wait until the next mammogram or a self-exam reveals the dreaded lump.  At that point, cancer is already inside the body, and it must be fought.

The wise action is to learn how to prevent that lump from revealing itself, ever.  Dr. James LaValle wrote the article “Breast Cancer- Real Prevention” where he explains:  “Most breast cancer is determined by how estrogen is metabolized in the body and whether it is balanced by adequate levels of progesterone.”

Knowing this is key to a woman’s health, because with the correct testing and nutrition, there is no chance for cancer to creep in.  So, know this and pass it on:

Test your estradiol, estrogen metabolites, and progesterone levels.  A progesterone deficiency makes you four times more likely to develop breast cancer.  If tests reveal there is a lack of this hormone, you can find a bio identical hormone therapy available to suit your needs and balance your hormone levels.

An estrogen test will reveal if your body is separating estradiol, the primary estrogen, into safe or dangerous metabolites.  20H, an estradiol’s metabolite, suppresses breast cancer, but 40H and 160H increase the risk, so you want to keep those levels down.

Luckily, you can make your body create more good estrogen and dispose of the bad by keeping your intestine flora healthy and by adding more antioxidant-rich and omega-3 foods and less carbs to your diet.

The thyroid affects breast health also.  A deficient thyroid or thyroid antibodies may prevent you from developing enough natural killer cells, which look for cancer cells and destroy them.  Thus, check your thyroid regularly to ensure its activity is normal.

The essential thing to understand here is that women have the power to reduce the risk of breast cancer simply by balancing their hormones and eating nutritiously. It is not a sickness left to fate or genetics.

If you thought that a yearly mammogram was the best you could do to be safe, you are wrong!  Make hormone and thyroid testing a yearly routine and ensure you never have to face one of the deadliest battles women are threatened with today.

Education is key in every aspect of life.  Imagine how many lives could have been saved if women knew about these preventive procedures.  There is no excuse today.  Information is everywhere, and as you are reading this blog today, many women will find similar information in other places, and they will start investigating more about it, and they will learn.

Do not wait for the medical community to teach you, they won’t!  Sadly, the majority of pharmaceutical companies need you to get sick so that they can make money, and most doctors get the information on research from them.  Obviously, these companies only research what “cures” diseases, not what prevents them.  It is your responsibility to care for your body, so, take control of your life and health right now and eliminate the threat of breast cancer from your life.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

We may say a person cannot BE happy, but can FEEL happy.  What is it that makes you feel happy? A great job? Lots of money in the bank? A fulfilling relationship?

Normally, when you get what you want, you feel happy, but immediately lose that feeling when that thing you wanted disappears; and it eventually will, as life is change and most probably, what you enjoy today will not be there tomorrow.

So, how would you feel if you knew you don’t need anything to feel happy all the time?  How would you feel if you discovered a way to feel happy even after losing what you cherish the most right now?

Believe it… it is possible!  There is a way to feel at peace and content regardless of your external situations.  The secret is to bring happiness into your daily life activities instead of trying to extract it from these, and you can learn to do this easily!

Follow these 5 tips and stop pulling the world’s strings up and down to make yourself happy.

1.    Choose Joy.
We humans tend to focus on the negative instead of the positive.  Our minds give more importance to the negative aspects.  If you don’t believe it, think about this: a person is complimented six times in a day and criticized one, what does this person think about the most in the following days? Yes, the negative.  And most people are like this because it is a survival mechanism. To change this, make it a habit to feel the positive things in your life; the smile of your child, the taste of food, the melody of a song you love, kind words from others towards you.  Take your time to savor these moments and think about them for 30 second periods during the day.  Remember to wear a smile on your face all the time.

2.    Trust the Universe.
Happy people believe the Universe is friendly.  If things go wrong, they try to identify the lesson and gift in the situation instead of feeling victims.  So,     when something not so good comes along, reflect on it and ask: What is the     higher purpose behind this happening?

3.    Surrender to Love.
Make it a habit to focus your life on love.  Love for your family, friends, and strangers.  Feel how everyone is in your same situation and bless them while on a traffic jam, on line at the bank or supermarket or just when walking next to them.  Just by wishing others good you will boost it in your life.

4.    Take care of your body.
Your brain is in charge of producing the endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin and     dopamine which are essential natural chemicals that thrust happiness into     your     system.  Your eating, exercising, resting and even, expression habits     greatly influence the way these chemicals spread through your body.  So,     again, smile all you can to get the ball rolling inside you and, if you feel kind     of imbalanced somehow, get some help, there are excellent natural balancing procedures like the bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, check it out!

5.    Choose Happy People.
The energies of other people affect us directly, so select your friends and     acquaintances well.  Get close to people who are happiness magnets and     keep your distance with people who like to be doomed.  Meet regularly with     friends who cheer you up and make you have great hope.

Feeling happy all the time is not difficult, you just have to understand what your life is all about and see it as the blessing it is in itself.  How everything that happens, good or bad, has a greater motive of wellness for you and the whole Universe and if you catch that opportunity to grow, happiness and bliss will fill your life every single day of your existence, no matter what.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

Try driving your convertible to work on a winter day without getting funny looks from the other drivers. The vision of a middle-aged woman indulging in such eccentricities brings more than a chuckle or estranged glance, it can actually disturb a traffic agent enough to pull you over – believe me, it happened to me. I’ve even been seriously scolded by my physician for going to those extremes to escape the smothering despair that comes with hot flashes at 8:00 a.m. He strongly believes I put myself at risk of an aneurysm due to temperature shock.

Many unashamed women have been known to pull such shenanigans to both vent their frustration and get some fresh air to alleviate their symptoms. I once heard of a lady who would invariably get hot flashes at dinner time, and got so tired of it that she would keep a cold pack in the freezer ready to place on her seat when it was time to sit down. This obviously got the attention of her husband and kids, who just could not believe that she could sit on an ice-cold cushion through dinner. She would have continued the practice, but her butt skin started suffering the consequences and she had to stop after a couple of weeks.  She even thought about inventing and bringing to market a version of her ice-cushion that would insulate a bit more to protect the skin. She found out just how crazy she was; a marketing study found most women wouldn’t go for freezing their butt as a remedy to hot flashes.

But it’s not just unannounced hot flashes; we have to endure all manner of strange symptoms when we get to that dreaded time in life with a name just as dreadful: menopause. It is not really so, but we all believe it symbolizes the end of womanhood and that admitting to its arrival is tantamount to joining the ranks of knitting grandmothers. Therefore, we try to look composed and unaffected in those first months of discomfort and then, having accepted reality, develop all manner of quirks to placate the awful manifestations.

Fortunately, relief did come for me at last. No, it’s not that I finally made it through menopause and the discomforts stopped. Rather I found out about bioidentical hormone replacement, which is a therapy designed to balance hormonal problems by using hormones formulated to be equal to those made by your body. I was already comfortable in my role as a crazy middle-aged woman by the time I visited a specialist to look at the possibility of being treated. However, after consultation and some tests, the doctor determined it would be very simple to treat me. He explained the much lower risks involved in the use of bioidentical hormones vs. the use of synthetic hormones. I decided to go ahead with the treatment, and have never driven with the top down in winter ever since.

If you suffer premenopausal or similar symptoms, you should find yourself a specialist immediately and stop the unnecessary discomfort. Here are three good reasons to do it:

Reason 1:  No woman should have to suffer through the embarrassment of having to wipe sweat off her forehead at a perfectly air-conditioned French restaurant.

Reason 2: The Witches of Eastwick might have been an interesting movie, but we want to remain lovely women, no matter how appealing the role of sexy witch might have seemed to you in the movie.

Reason 3: If science has brought us women bioidentical hormones, reducing the risk of after-effects to negligible in most cases, why would we continue being eccentric and not rejoin the feminine human race?

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

1. Work out
Maybe you are already doing it, but there is a big chance that you have not been to a gym or even gone for a walk in years. In case you choose the first option, do it two or three times a week and live the experience as a time to enjoy. Just live those moments with no pressures.

2. Learn something
There are many things you can choose. It could be speaking a new language, taking yoga classes or learning about the Internet. You can even take an online course. It will amazingly increase your self-esteem and as a plus you will acquire new and useful skills.

3. Travel
If you can fly to other countries, go ahead. Have dinner in Paris or visit Egypt. You will accumulate unforgettable experiences that will change your life. If you can’t afford big trips, you can go around your own country or even, your own city. There are places in your town which you didn’t know even existed. Start researching and visit those hidden spots.

4. Go shopping
You don’t need to spend a thousand dollars on a pair of heels to feel better but pick a new painting to hang in your living room, or a portrait to put on your desk, and you will easily change the entire room’s look. Changes are always good.

5. Take care of your health
Visit one of those bioidentical hormone doctors. They will help you minimize the symptoms women experience as they grow older, and you will feel ready and fresh to achieve new goals without annoying symptoms or mood changes.

6. Read a book
It doesn’t need to be a self-esteem book or a How-To guide. Choose a title by your favorite author and get lost in one of his/her stories. You will find literature enriches your soul and spirit. You will build up new vocabulary as well.

7. Create your blog
Find out how to do it (it is incredibly easy) and start writing an online journal. Or just upload photos of your children, grandchildren, or even your pets. You can also make friends through the Internet by telling them about your experiences and letting other people leave comments.

8. Teach something
Years must have taught you something that you would like to share. Use your knowledge to make other people’s lives better. Do it as a hobby and if it turns out to be succesful, you can charge for your services. Don’t miss the chance to do what you love while you are making money.

9. Meet your friends for a meal or coffee
Maybe you’re still in touch with some of them, but there must be others whom you haven’t seen for years. Call them and organize lunch together. You will have the chance to catch up and to reconstruct your friendship.

10. Change your look
Dye or cut your hair, change your clothing style, or just do your make up differently. You will feel completely revitalized.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

The generation of women reaching menopause at this time is much more health-driven than its predecessors. They feel younger and live another life as well, with careers and jobs, plus motherhood. So you do not miss anything in your life because you’ve reached this stage, I’ve made this list of tips that will help you go through menopause with greater ease than previous generations of women.

There’s no reason to hide the pain or suffering if you can avoid it. That’s why, you have the chance to pick up a treatment that will improve your quality of life noticeably, which is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, a completely natural and non-invassive approach. Don’t forget to mention it to your doctor so he will derive you to a specialist.

Whether or not you decide to go the treatment route, there’s something you can’t miss, which is dieting. You might even have to change your eating habits, since your organism and the way it functions is changing, and so will your metabolism. Actually, the loss of estrogen causes anxiety and apetite to increase. It’s highly recommended not to have large amounts of food for dinner, since digestion will be forced and you will be forcing your digestive system.

Try to find workout or exercise routines that appeal to you; this will not only help you stay fit, but will also help you with your heart rate and performance. Your bones will also become stronger, and you don’t have to do everything every day, just a routine that you enjoy and helps you.

Keeping up skin health is also very important since certain vitamins and minerals are not produced by the body any longer. A way to aid your skin is exfoliating, keeping it always hydrated and using supplement creams that will help it regain flexibility, texture, and strength. Fiber-based foods are really helpful for your skin as well.

Heart and mind have to stay safe and strong; a lot of cardiovascular diseases are related closely to estrogen and the lack of it, which your body suffers as you face menopause. Your stress also plays a big role in these kinds of problems, since it tends to threaten your cardiovascular health, as well. Stress can also be the cause of some forgetfulness that you might have; it’s possibly not just aging, but stress also makes your mind worry too much about one thing, and this will most likely lead you to forget other things. Omega3 and Ginkgo Biloba are supplements you can take to try keep yourself sharp.

At this stage in life your metabolism changes, that’s why you have to keep in mind all kinds of health issues that might be triggered in you, such as chronic or genetic tendencies.

Please do not underestimate your symptoms and contact your doctor, there’s no need to endure pain while you can do something about it and even improve your quality of life as well.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).