Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (13 page)

Now that you know about your inner healer, which works with the guidance and assistance of Divine Love, let’s look at some common health conditions and the tests used to diagnose them from the perspective of knowing that your inner healer is on the job. Whatever your health concerns, you can transmute any fear or anxiety into actions that nourish the garden of your health. And remember that the inner healer works only in an environment of faith and trust. You can always use the following to calm your mind while you’re waiting for clarity: “Divine Beloved, change me into someone who trusts my divine guidance and knows that I will be shown the next step.”

CHAPTER FOUR

GODDESSES UNDERSTAND THE CAUSES OF HEALTH

I have come to believe that cancer is the physical metaphor for the extreme need to grow.

— L
EWIS
T
HOMAS
, M.D.,
FORMER DIRECTOR OF
M
EMORIAL
S
LOAN
-K
ETTERING
H
OSPITAL

R
ecently, I was asked to provide ten health tips for a well-known women’s publication. It’s a common request I receive, because everyone wants simple keys to good health. The editor wanted me to come up with a list of things like cutting back on sugar, drinking more water, and having good friends—and all that’s good stuff. But I also mentioned that it was important to have a relationship with the Divine. The editor said, “We’re a traditional magazine. And talking about God is a little far out for our readers. Can you please replace that tip with
something like ‘get regular checkups’?” Now, keep in mind that regular checkups have not been found to improve health! And 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God. But a magazine editor doesn’t want to “go there” because we’ve been taught to put spirituality in one box and health in another.

When you reconnect with Spirit and your own spirit, seeing yourself as a goddess, you have a completely different perspective on health. You realize you have more power than you thought to create wellness because you’re not doing it alone—you’re doing it with the help of the divine feminine force that knows how to cleanse the toxins in her waters, prune away the old growth, and bring forth new life. Of course, you want your healthspan and lifespan to match up—and they can, allowing you to relish great health. However, you also have to acknowledge your need to access your inner healer, whose wisdom and power are informed by Spirit. Good health starts upstream, with emotions and thoughts—not supplements and medical tests (although those can help).

If you have a chronic disease or ailment, you probably already know the basics of managing your medical condition—and you know that stress will worsen the symptoms, while tending to your body’s needs will improve them, sometimes dramatically. But whether you have a medical condition or not, let’s dispel the idea that health is determined by your genes or by the march of time.

Too often, discussions of women’s health after 40 focus on fluctuations in the sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone), diseases, and decline. It’s easy to forget that our bodies are designed to repair and replenish our cells and balance our biochemistry. But you’re on your way to adopting a completely new way of looking at health—and at how to balance your systems to optimize your body’s functioning.

Yes, your hormonal system is involved in your state of health, but the hormones you most need to start paying attention to are your stress hormones. You also have to look at the amount of sleep or rest you’re getting, because you need to give your body time to recharge and generate new, healthier cells. And instead of worrying about the diseases of the heart, breast, uterus, ovaries,
and brain, you have to support all your organs with good nutrients, pleasurable thoughts and emotions, and activities that are vitally important for your physical health—and I’m not simply talking about moving your body. I’m talking about listening to your ageless soul and expressing love, creativity, and joy. When you look at typical women’s health issues, even as you give your body the physical support it needs, I want you to think beyond the literal and start seeing your state of physical being as reflective of your state of emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. Your heart isn’t just a muscle and your pelvis isn’t just the place where your body nurtures a baby. You are so much more than the sum of your parts!

Dr. Mario Martinez describes disease as an imbalance of our bodies’ systems over time that eventually leads to measurable pathology. Modern medicine is nothing more than the study of that pathology. When we engage in what Dr. Martinez calls the “causes of health,” we stay way ahead of the pathology curve. He identifies the causes of health as: exalted emotions such as compassion, joy, and love; elevated cognition (focusing on what’s positive); and righteous anger, allowing yourself to feel angry when your innocence has been violated. It doesn’t matter if the violation took place years earlier; feeling your righteous anger and getting it out of your system can improve your health. No matter what your diagnosis or state of health, know that you can improve it by indulging in behaviors and thoughts that actually improve your health—not just treat disease.

THE SECRETS OF HORMONES

Hormones have received a lot of press, but the truth is that in perimenopause or menopause, the number-one hormone to be concerned about is not estrogen or progesterone, or even testosterone, but cortisol. A stress hormone, cortisol is designed to be used by the body in situations of acute stress to help you deal with physical danger quickly. Imagine yourself as a cavewoman throwing a big rock at a hissing poisonous snake that’s about to strike, or running away at top speed. Cortisol also temporarily activates the immune system in case the danger isn’t a snake but
a bacteria or virus that has entered your system. It sets off an inflammatory response in which white blood cells gather around the pathogen to isolate it before attacking it. This sympathetic nervous system reaction happens very quickly. The problem is that if the cortisol and its partner, epinephrine (adrenaline), are not cleared from your system quickly and instead linger for days or even weeks or months, they have the opposite effect of lowering your immunity and energy. Chronic fear, anger, sadness, and resentment keep stress hormones in your system for too long, breaking down your immunity, thinning your skin and bones, causing weight gain, and setting the stage for poor health—including depression, cancer, and heart disease. If you’ve ever seen someone blow up like a balloon on high-dose steroids such as prednisone, you’ve seen the effect of excess stress hormones.

Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone get much more press than cortisol and adrenaline do even though they’re far less likely to adversely affect your health. It’s true that the amounts of these hormones in the body change during the transitional period of perimenopause, and sometimes that shift causes uncomfortable symptoms. But there’s nothing about menopause per se that will plummet you into hormonal hell, rage-aholic behavior, and a feeling of being lost in a sexual desert. It’s a myth that in a healthy, happy woman, menopause will shut down her ovaries for good and make her shrivel into an asexual crone. After perimenopause has ended, hormones return to the level of preadolescence, and there’s nothing wrong with those levels. Fatigue, insomnia, low libido, mental sluggishness, irritability, and hot flashes—particularly when they interfere with sleep—do not have to be a part of the perimenopausal or menopausal experience. You can reduce these symptoms naturally with a minimal amount of outside hormonal help when necessary.

Let’s look at how things can get out of balance. With your ovaries now decreasing their hormonal output, your adrenal glands take over some of the work of generating progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone—as well as DHEA, which serves as a building block for the other hormones. But if your adrenal glands, which are walnut-sized organs that sit on top of your kidneys, are overproducing cortisol and adrenaline, they will start to become tired
out and overwhelmed by their task of generating the stress hormones. Your multitasking adrenals have to set priorities. They will favor your need for stress hormones, which can then throw off the production and metabolism of your other hormones.

When your hormones are out of balance due to overproduction of cortisol, you feel the effects. You get cravings for sugar—particularly around 4:00
P.M.
when cortisol naturally peaks. If you reach for a cupcake rather than taking a short walk to help your body break down the cortisol, you’ll stimulate the adrenal glands further, causing them to release even more cortisol, which will spike your blood sugar levels. Four o’clock is like the PMS stage of the daily cycle; you’re meant to go for a walk, take a nap, or get in touch with your feelings and inner wisdom, not reach for sugar. When you’re aware of and in control of the relationship between your blood sugar, your emotions, your diet, and your exercise patterns, you’ll be far less likely to respond to your cortisol spikes by consuming sugar or alcohol—a move that only worsens your hormonal state.

If you’ve had your uterus and/or ovaries removed—or if you’re too stressed out by hormonal shifts to put the effort into exercising, changing your eating habits, or experiencing pleasure through sex or other means—you may need to check your hormone levels and take steps to adjust them, specifically with either bioidentical hormones or phytoestrogens such as
Pueraria mirifica
(see Resources). There are three ways to test hormones: saliva tests, blood tests, and urine tests. After working with all three of these for many years, my favorite—and the one I consider the most reliable at the moment—is serial urine testing, which tests for not only estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone but also patterns of stress hormone release. (You can learn more at
www.precisionhormones.com
and in Resources.)

If test results and symptoms confirm that you’re low in estrogen, I suggest that you try taking a phytoestrogen, derived from plant sources (you’ll find specifics on that and other recommended supplements and products in the Resources section). There’s been a lot of confusion on this issue and many women worry unnecessarily that taking a supplement such as black cohosh, maca, flaxseed, or
Pueraria mirifica
could lead to cancer. Let me be
very clear: there is no solid evidence that links phytohormones with cancer. If you were to look at the molecules for plant sterols such as phytoestrogens under a microscope, you would see that their chemical structure is completely different from mammalian estrogen. They can’t stimulate the growth of estrogen-sensitive tissues in the same way a prescription hormone would. For the record, broccoli, peanuts, almonds, apples, and many other common foods also contain phytoestrogens.

Keep in mind, too, that there’s often no correlation between how a woman feels and what her hormone levels are. I’ve seen women with very low estrogen and testosterone whose sexual appetite is just fine, and others who have perfectly healthy amounts of testosterone and estrogen but no sex drive at all. If you rely entirely on a test instead of how you feel to determine what’s going on with you, you can scare yourself into taking medications or supplements you don’t need.

SLEEP AND CELLULAR REPAIR

One of the most common complaints shared by many women is insomnia. Sleep is, hands down, the most effective way to metabolize excess stress hormones, which are the real culprits when it comes to hormone imbalance. Good quality sleep is absolutely essential to hormone health, and reducing stress improves sleep.

Fortunately, simple lifestyle changes can make a difference in your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night. Try the following: Remove all electronic devices, including clocks with lighted displays, from your bedroom. At the very least, cover them at night. Don’t work on a computer or mobile device such as a tablet when you’re winding down for bed.
¹
And create a sleep routine of going to bed around the same time every night and sleeping for at least eight hours. Don’t watch the news or an intense movie before turning in for the night, and don’t do any strenuous exercise either. If you feel a hot flash coming on, close your eyes and envision something cool, like sitting inside an igloo. Or take off a layer of clothing and stand in front of a fan. I’m a big supporter of the Chillow pillow, which you fill with water and insert into your pillowcase, where it stays cool throughout the night. Research has
also shown that meditation, such as the “relaxation response” in which you close your eyes and repeat a mantra to yourself (such as “peace” or “inhale” and “exhale”) for 20 minutes, reduces hot flashes significantly by reducing the stress hormones that contribute to them. In fact, anything you can do to decrease stress hormones decreases hot flashes. (You can find more ideas for managing menopausal symptoms naturally in
The Wisdom of Menopause.
)

When sleep disruption and hot flashes due to perimenopause are too disruptive, I recommend the herbal supplement
Pueraria mirifica
. Other helpful tools are valerian, melatonin, and Epsom salts, and you might want to try gels, oils, or bath crystals that promote relaxation.