Purely Menopause Blog

Nutrition is always important. But during menopause, your body is particularly reliant on vitamins and nutrients to keep you healthy and strong. Eating a healthy diet and living a healthy lifestyle should always be your first line of defense. Supplements should be viewed as an addition rather than a substitution. Choose wisely as some supplements are more harmful than helpful.

Studies suggest that half of women age 50 and older will break a bone due to osteoporosis, a condition in which bone density is significantly lower than normal. In postmenopausal women, fractures that result from osteoporosis are more common than stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer combined, and fractures can result in disability or death. Notably, the symptoms of osteoporosis may not be noticeable until a bone is fractured.

Reducing stress is a key component to feeling and performing your best through menopause. Anxiety is a common symptom of menopause. Hormone changes, life stresses, and sleep problems may all cause anxiety at this time. Conversely, anxiety can worsen sleep disturbance. In addition to generalized anxiety, menopausal women may also experience sudden, intense panic attacks.

The weight-loss plateau is basic biology. When your body registers something threatening its survival, it automatically triggers a series of physiological responses to protect against the threat. When you reduce your food intake to try to compensate for the weight gain associated with menopause, your body believes it's under threat and reduces your metabolic rate to use less energy, which slows the rate at which you lose weight. Unfortunately, the common response by women is

In the first two parts ( here and here ) of our series entitled Let's Talk About Sex & Menopause, we discussed a woman's anatomy, the sexual response cycle, libido changes during menopause, medical treatments for common issues with sex for menopausal women, and scheduling sex and mindfulness as ways to improve desire and arousal. This blog focuses on a few other ways to increase your sex life.

In the first part of our series entitled Let's Talk About Sex & Menopause, we discussed a woman's anatomy, the sexual response cycle, libido changes during menopause, and medical treatments for common issues with sex for menopausal women. This blog focuses on other therapies and self-care practices to increase your desire and arousal.

As women age, they are two to three times more likely than men to be affected by a decrease in sexual desire. We'll spend the next few weeks talking about sex and menopause, including describing some of the common issues experienced by menopausal women and ways to get your sex life back on track. Please let me know in the comments if there is anything in particular that you'd like to know.

Some menopausal women report chronically dry and scratchy eyes, sometimes with light sensitivity, blurred vision, or swollen or reddened eyelids—a condition called chronic dry eye. Because the eye produces more tears to compensate for the eye condition, some women report more tearing. The mechanism by which menopause causes dry eye is unclear, but it does appear that decreased androgens (which women have little of to begin with but also decrease after menopause) reduce tear p

Menopause plays havoc with a woman's temperature control system. Studies have shown that as many as 80% of women report moderate to...

Menopause affects every woman a bit differently, but few escape without a few bothersome symptoms and some suffer debilitating symptoms. For all women, the reduction of estradiol produced by the ovaries during reproductive years can significantly increase the risk of some serious, life-altering (sometimes life-ending) conditions such as heart attack, stroke, osteoporosis, depression, diabetes, and dementia. Much has been said about the use of MHT for symptom relief and to red

Menopause marks a time of dramatic hormonal and social change for women. And if you are one of them, know that you are far from alone....

One of the most common complaints I hear from peri- and menopausal women is that they don't sleep well anymore. The inability to sleep impacts every part of your life - women experience more irritability, have more brain fog, don't have the energy to exercise - and women can't figure out how to break the negative cycle. As women's hormones decline into menopause, sleep disturbances - trouble falling asleep, frequent awakening, and/or early morning awakening - increase. Common

No, you are not imagining it. Your body composition begins to change at peri-menopause, and those changes persist throughout the rest of your life. It's not your "fault," and there is no more reason to be alarmed than when your body underwent changes during puberty. Menopause is a normal process for women. It's not a disorder, and it doesn't need to be fixed. You just need to learn how to work with the changes.

Vaginal dryness and itching are common symptoms for menopausal women. Some doctors disregard the problems as simply being annoying and "part of getting older." But there is help, and you should not take no for an answer. In short, as women approach and move into menopause, ovarian production of estradiol drops dramatically, which causes thinning of the vaginal walls and inflammation. The most direct solution is to use estradiol applied directly to the vagina to correct the de

Most trends are not well supported by science and the keto diet as a solution to manage unwanted weight gain in menopausal women is no exception. To be fair, there is some data to support using the keto diet to improve health in men, particularly those with obesity or diabetes - those men reduced their weight and controlled their blood sugar on a keto diet.

Menopause results in many changes within a woman's body, including disruptions in the gut. Evidence shows that reduced estrogen in menopausal women changes the gut microbiome (the types and amounts of bacteria in your digestive system.) Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes bacteria make up approximately 90% of your gut microbiome and are responsible for carbohydrate metabolism. They also participate in energy production and conversion, amino acid transport and metabolism, and produc

Women are led to believe that menopause is a time of decreasing estrogen. And although that may be true in one sense, it's not completely true. Estradiol (E2) is the main hormone that is made during a woman's reproductive life. And it is true that E2 declines during menopause. But women make at least two other kinds of estrogen. Pregnant women make estriol (E3), but women make little E3 at any other time. After menopause, women mostly produce estrone (E1), which is 10x less p

Taking birth control pills (oral contraceptives) can mask symptoms of peri-menopause. Once you're in your mid to late 40s, talk to your gynecologist about transitioning off the pill and onto an IUD, progestin-only pill or other option to prevent pregnancy. Be aware that women using birth control pills during the menopause transition might continue to have what appears to be a period every month, but in fact, it's just a withdrawal bleed from the pill usage that mimics a perio

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Hi. I’m Rochelle Bernstein, a board-certified OBGYN with over 20 years of experiencing helping women navigate their health. I’m transitioning from a traditional practice to focusing on how best to help women navigate the most exciting time of their lives -menopause. Women should have more information about how to take back control of their bodies and minds so that they can continue being healthy and happy. Science is far behind in studying this period in women’s lives for ma