Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (17 page)

BOOK: Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being
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Now
those
are words of wisdom and inspiration!

Hormones and Breast Health

As I’ve said, I believe the hormones you most need to be concerned with in midlife are your stress hormones. If you need some adjustments to your sex hormones, avoid synthetics and try plant phytoestrogens instead. But if you’re taking synthetic hormones or those made from horse urine (such as Premarin) for menopause, be aware that the research shows you’re at greater risk for breast cancer.

Plant-based phytoestrogens, on the other hand, do not increase breast cancer or ovarian cancer risk. And they work beautifully for many women. For those for whom plant phytoestrogens are not effective, bioidentical hormones may be an option.

Keep in mind that the Women’s Health Initiative study that gave thousands of women HRT in the form of Prempro (Premarin, which is horse urine, and Provera, which is synthetic progestin) had to be halted suddenly in 2002 when researchers discovered that menopausal women taking these hormones had higher rates of breast cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, researchers don’t always distinguish between the three types of hormone replacement—synthetic, bioidentical, and plant phytoestrogen. What’s more, many doctors and health care providers do not understand the differences.
Hence, women are often needlessly scared away from the very thing that can give them relief.

Thankfully, some exciting new research is finally confirming the fact that bioidentical hormones are far safer than synthetic ones. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden led by Professor Gunnar Söderqvist found that different types of HRT a woman takes and the way they are administered can have a wide range of effects on genes associated with breast cancer. Their studies of gene activity in the breasts of healthy young women found that synthetic Provera and Premarin (the kind used in the Women’s Health Initiative study) were far more likely to cause gene expression associated with cancer than bioidentical estrogen gel applied to the skin along with oral bioidentical progesterone. This finding, presented at the World Congress on the Menopause in Cancun, Mexico, in 2014, opens the way to identify which forms of HRT have minimal effect on breast cancer risk. That is very good news.

THE SEAT OF YOUR CREATIVE POWERS

The pelvic bowl and the muscles, connective tissue, and organs cradled in this area (uterus, ovaries, bladder, urethra, female erotic anatomy, pelvic floor muscles, and large bowel) make up the body’s creative center. This is the place in our bodies from which all creative energy arises. Although some women will use this creative center to give birth to babies and others will not, we all access its life-force energy to birth new ideas into new projects and create new perceptions of who we are and what we would like to contribute while we’re on the earth. The pelvic bowl is associated with the second chakra, the body’s energy center that is governed by our relationships with money, sex, and power.

If you haven’t severed your mind from your body and developed a sense of disconnection from your lower half, you’re probably aware that pleasurable thoughts, actions, and activities increase blood flow and feeling in your sex organs and pelvic bowl. Our souls come into our bodies through our hips at the
back of our pelvic bowl, where the sacrum—or “sacred” bone—is located. This is the place in the body that physical therapist Tami Lynn Kent, author of
Wild Feminine
(Atria Books, 2011), calls the “spirit door.” It’s the entryway into the “birthing field”: the place where energy becomes form. Your pelvis and genitals are your sacred center, the area in the body where you access the energy to create everything—whether it’s a book, a relationship, or a baby.

When we listen to the call of our pelvic energy to live with greater creativity, take more risks, feel more pleasure, and not be afraid of what others might say or think, we are honoring the creative female force within us. If we don’t listen to this call, it’s likely that we’ll experience symptoms of imbalance and disruption in the pelvic area. Fibroids and prolonged heavy bleeding can be Mother Nature’s way of saying, “Pay attention! Are you directing your creative energy into a dead-end job or relationship? Are you abdicating responsibility for your own creative expression to something or someone else while resenting them for holding you back? What needs to be born through you?”

I once heard Esther Hicks tell the story of admiring a gorgeous painting done by an artist friend. Esther asked her, “How long did it take you to paint that?” The woman answered, “Seventy-six years.” Our creative expression is like that. Each year that we walk the earth, we become more creative—
if
we allow ourselves to connect to this life force. And those who open themselves up to creative channels tend to live very joyful and happy lives. That’s why orchestra conductors tend to live a long time, even though they have heavy travel and rehearsal schedules. In his 80s, comedian George Burns, whose career was rejuvenated when he was in his late 70s, would tell people he had to live to be 100 because “I’m booked.” When you have a mission of living creatively, expressing yourself and your ideas to the world, when you let joy and humor flow through you, you’ll find you’re booked. (Yes, George Burns did make it to 100, in good humor and good health. And his cigar habit was one of the “pleasurable rituals” that was obviously part of his health plan!)

Too often, we women repress our creative urges because we don’t trust ourselves or don’t want to bring attention to ourselves.
One of the reasons our culture has such an ongoing love affair with famous actors, musicians, performers, and celebrities is that these people perform the function of being willing to get up on stage and do what so many of us don’t have the courage to do: risk failing in public and being humiliated and judged for our contribution. Celebrity women, whether they’re performers or speakers and cultural innovators, have great courage and enormous self-esteem to keep putting themselves out there year after year despite the shaming they face as women in a culture that is uncomfortable with bold, creative expression by women. Believe me, they aren’t doing it for the money. It’s so easy to stand back and take potshots at those who are willing to play full out and get on a stage or a television screen. But it’s far healthier to, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “Dare greatly.” Have the courage to live creatively from your own center.

At some point in our lives, perhaps when we’re finished with up-close-and-personal mothering, we need to access and channel our creative energy in ways that give us pleasure and inspiration—writing a book or poetry, learning how to paint, learning how to dance. The creative urge can also express itself in coming up with new ideas, new business models, or new ways of working with technology. The possibilities are endless. The older we get, the more direct access we have to our creative energy flow.

There are times when a woman wants to honor her creative urges but is stopped in her tracks by fear. How can she spend time innovating and inventing when her retirement accounts are underfunded? The unmet callings of our spirits are often due to playing it safe and being afraid to say no to loved ones who think we should have different priorities. The only way out of this dilemma is to name your fears and then learn the skills of standing up for yourself—even when your children, spouse, or boss has other ideas about how you should spend your time and energy.

Fibroids, cancers, and pain in the pelvic bowl are all indicators that you should explore your longings to live more creatively and authentically with less fear and more adventure. And much of what I’ve already discussed about cancer risk and screening applies in this area of the body as well. The pelvic bowl houses our “low heart,” if you will. Have you been raped, or felt violated
to the point where your sense of security was shattered? If so, it will show up in your pelvis. The health of your pelvic organs is also related to how well you have learned to negotiate the creative energies embodied in money, sex, and power. Ovaries are, quite literally, your female balls—the organs associated with your drive to go after what you want in the world. Quite often this drive has been routed through a man—or through the masculine aspects of ourselves—and pelvic disease is often the result. At the very least, you want to make sure you keep your ovaries. They are removed routinely far too often when women have hysterectomies for benign disease. Ovaries are necessary for hormone production throughout your life, and the risk of removal in terms of overall bone and brain health is far greater than the risk of ovarian cancer in the vast majority of cases. For very extensive discussions on these points, please see
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
and
The Wisdom of Menopause.

If you’re reading this book, you have the ability to connect with your birthing field and bring in the resources and support you need to create heaven on earth for yourself. Just ask Spirit to show you exactly how to do this. And be sure to read the chapter on sexuality in this book so you can learn even more about your pelvic bowl and its relationship to your power and sexuality—and more about the psoas (pronounced SOH-us) muscles connected to it.

PELVIC FLOOR MUSCLE TONE

Being disconnected from our pelvic bowl correlates with our ignorance of our pelvic floor muscles. I’m willing to bet you weren’t taught about these muscles in health class back in school!

The pelvic floor muscles involve several interconnected muscles that support the internal organs of the pelvis. Together, they’re like a trampoline or hammock that stretches from your tailbone to your pelvic bone. These muscles lose tone when they are not used properly and regularly, which is the case with most women who sit too much and almost never squat. They stop working together as they should, creating an imbalance. If the pelvic floor muscles lose too much tone, you can even experience
prolapse, which is when the organs the muscles support actually fall through what is called the pelvic diaphragm. Prolapses are usually treated surgically, but it’s better to go to a women’s health physical therapist who knows how to rehabilitate your pelvic floor—or use classical Pilates training for rehabilitation.

Weak pelvic floor muscles may result in stress incontinence (urine leaking upon sneezing, laughing, or moving) or urge incontinence (the feeling that you have to urinate right now or you’ll have an accident). Both these forms of incontinence can get worse over time if the root cause, a weak pelvic floor, isn’t addressed. In the U.S., urinary incontinence is a major reason older women are admitted to nursing homes, but no one wants to talk about how Mom needs help going to the toilet. About one in four women experiences stress incontinence. It’s time to put an end to the shame and secrecy and get serious about this very preventable and treatable problem that, left unchecked, is likely to lead to urinary incontinence down the road!

Women will say, “I have a small bladder,” or “ever since I had babies, I have to ‘go’ all the time,” but neither is an accurate description of urge incontinence or stress incontinence. Both are very treatable conditions that women experience when their pelvic floor muscles aren’t toned. Physicians are likely to recommend pads and adult diapers, surgery, and pharmaceutical drugs. The drugs block the nerve endings that affect the muscle that keeps the bladder from releasing urine, and they are effective. But they can have side effects such as dry mouth, and they don’t address the underlying problem of low tone in the pelvic floor muscles.

Why is low tone in our pelvic floor muscles so common? Our bodies are designed for continual movement and for squatting: for hundreds of thousands of years, women spent much of their time squatting as they prepared meals, cooked, gathered roots from the earth, socialized, defecated, urinated, or gave birth vaginally. But we’re always standing, sitting, or lying down, which causes our pelvic floor muscles to lose tone. The situation can worsen after childbirth or abdominal surgery such as a C-section or hysterectomy, but this risk has been overstated. Even teenagers and women who have never given birth can have low pelvic floor muscle tone. Whatever your age, you can train your muscles and
bladder to feel the urge to urinate, and go, every three to four hours during the day and once, if that, at night.

How to Support Your Pelvic Floor

~
Drink plenty of water.
You need to be well hydrated to be healthy, so even if you experience urge or stress incontinence, don’t make the mistake of not drinking enough water in the vain hope that this will solve the problem. The bladder actually holds 16 ounces or about two cups of liquid, so even if you’re drinking eight glasses of water a day, you shouldn’t feel the urge to pee every two hours. The bladder feels the urge to go when it doesn’t actually have to be voided because it’s confused by signals from the brain, which originate in the pelvic floor muscles and the muscles that hold the bladder closed. When you actually need to urinate, the pelvic floor muscles should signal the brain, which signals the bladder muscle to contract so that the opening to the bladder widens and urine flows out naturally. If your pelvic floor muscles are weak, they will send this signal when it’s not needed, your bladder muscles will contract, and you’ll have to consciously try to prevent yourself from letting the urine flow.

~
Exercise your pelvic floor muscles regularly.
Many women have learned how to do Kegel muscle exercises, which were invented by a gynecologist named Arnold Kegel back in the late 1940s. His exercises, commonly called Kegels, involve the building up of one pelvic floor muscle, the PC (pubococcygeus), which is used to stop the flow of urine from the bladder. Dr. Kegel was on to something, but building up just one of the pelvic floor muscles is incomplete. The idea isn’t to make one muscle strong, because that allows other muscles in its muscle group to remain weak. For overall pelvic floor tone
and functionality, you want to get a feel for where your pelvic floor muscles are so you can exercise all of them properly. Simply standing up 32 times per day, then sitting back down at your desk, will apply gravity to your pelvic floor. That alone will help. Another effective pelvic floor toner is to lie on your back with your knees bent and your lower back resting on the floor. Insert your middle finger into your vagina. Squeeze your vagina so that you feel pressure against your finger. Don’t tighten other muscles such as the muscles in your buttocks. Just squeeze your finger inside your vagina. Do a series of quick and long squeezes at least once a day, building to the point where you can feel a difference in the pressure against your vagina and you’re experiencing less stress incontinence or urinary urgency.

~
Squat!
Squatting supports the natural stretching and toning of all the muscles. Whenever you take a shower, squat to urinate. The butt muscles you use to help you balance in this position will support the toning of the pelvic floor muscles. Your urethra will be pointed downward, allowing gravity to help you naturally release urine. Squat when you can during the day too.

~
Use your toilet time to build your pelvic floor muscles.
One habit all of us should change is how we use a toilet. Women tend to sit up straight like proper ladies instead of leaning forward or putting our feet on a stool to raise the knees. Whether you’re sitting to urinate or defecate, lean forward and place your elbows on your knees, or put your feet up on a step stool to raise your knees above your waist. This squat-like position supports the toning of pelvic floor muscles. I like to use the Squatty Potty toilet stool for this purpose, which you can find online. See if using it regularly doesn’t reduce the number of times you have to urinate during the day and night.

~
Squat regularly to strengthen your glutes.
Understand that most pelvic floor problems are the result of misalignment, not the aging process. Check out the work of Katy Bowman, who has a wonderful series of YouTube videos available to teach you proper pelvic alignment:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrMU2tQ2SUk
.

~
Relax, don’t push, when you urinate or defecate.
Because we want to please other people and stick to our hectic schedules, we develop the habit of retaining our urine in our bladders until we get a chance to sit on the toilet, where we push so we can quickly get out all the urine. The pushing builds muscles that take over for weak pelvic floor muscles. Stop worrying about the next person in line for the ladies’ room and take your time!

~
Stop the urge to pee unnecessarily.
There’s a simple trick to get rid of the false urge to urinate when you feel you absolutely have to go but know you didn’t drink enough liquid to justify another trip to the toilet. Squeeze your pelvic floor muscles and hold them tight for five seconds before releasing the muscle tension. Do this five times. Then, take a couple of deep, slow breaths. The urge should have been greatly reduced. You might need to repeat this exercise to reduce the feeling that you must urinate immediately.

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