Most women don’t understand menopause or the real cause of their menopause problems. Too often, women think of menopause as a medical condition that carries with it stress, hot flashes, anxiety, depression and other difficulties. That’s not the case.

Menopause doesn’t naturally cause these problems at all. Hormone imbalance does. And hormone imbalance doesn’t come along with menopause automatically. Women were terribly misinformed about this when told by their doctors that they needed Hormone Replacement Therapy, a fictional cure for a fictional medical condition that studies revealed caused heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Women undergoing menopause who are not in hormone imbalance are free from the problems that plague women who are.

Depleted adrenal glands drive most hormone imbalance for menopausal women. But before we consider this, let’s get the menopause story straight.

If you’re a women near or in menopause-you should know this.

Perimenopause and Menopause

Perimenopause is the transitional time preceding “official” menopause. It begins around 7 years before your last period. You’re “officially” in menopause when you haven’t menstruated for one full year.

Menopause is not a single event or something that occurs suddenly. As noted, it’s a process that begins before your last period, a process that can continue for years after it. Perimenopause and menopause involve complex mindbody changes, changes driven by hormones.

Hormonal changes in menopause take place in your liver, fat cells, adrenals, pancreas, thyroid, hypothalamus and your ovaries. The physical events of menopause are initiated by your Involuntary Nervous System, by your hypothalamus and your pituitary gland, the master gland for your endocrine system.

Three things happen to your body during perimenopause

1. Your body’s production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone declines

2. You stop producing eggs

3. Your menstrual activity decreases and then stops

These perimenopause changes do indeed trigger hormonal imbalance. But this period of hormone imbalance is designed to be short-lived. And it’s actually a signal to your body to balance your hormone system through other means.

With other words, women are not hard wired to have chronic hot flashes and other menopause problems.

The Key Issue: Your Adrenal System

While other things can contribute to hormone imbalance, adrenal exhaustion is the primary cause. Consider this: When perimenopause changes throw Far Eastern women into hormone imbalance, their adrenal glands respond to restore hormone balance.  Their adrenals function like a back-up system that kicks in when perimenopause changes trigger their temporary hormone imbalance.

But, because of exhaustion, the adrenals of Western women cannot perform properly to restore their hormone balance. And so they stay stuck in a chronic state of hormone imbalance and suffer the consequences.

This not only causes hot flashes and other difficulties, but it also it sets the stage risky health problems, including heart disease. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women.

Your Adrenal Glands

Your adrenals are round 3 inch or so glands that sit atop your kidneys. They produce a large number of hormones that have a critical impact on menopause, including aldosterone, DHEA, estrogen, progesterone and pregnenelone.

Your adrenal function can become depleted and create adrenal insufficiency, burnout or exhaustions, serious problems not easily relieved. Most physicians fail to recognize adrenal depletion in women undergoing menopause despite that fact that research demonstrates that 99% of menopausal women have impaired adrenal function.

And so the real problem for 99% of Western women is that their adrenal glands fail to produce enough estrogens, progesterone and other necessary hormones in the right balance and quantities to avoid the problems that occur when their ovaries stop producing these hormones.

Stress Depletes Your Adrenals

A woman’s adrenal glands become exhausted from years of wear and tear caused by the chronic release of stress hormones. When you are chronically stressed, your adrenals are working overtime and they never get a proper rest. And so they become exhausted and lose their ability to function.

Keep these  summary points in mind as a guide:

• Your perimenopause and menopause problems are driven by hormone imbalance

• It’s very likely that your adrenal system, designed to restore hormone balance, fails to do its job properly-because it’s exhausted.

• As a result, your hormone system is chronically imbalanced

• Hormone balance is the normal condition for women

• Your hot flashes and other problems are driven by an extreme condition- hormone imbalance

• You don’t need drugs, including hormones. You need to learn how to restore your adrenals and rebalance your hormonal system, so you can return to hormone balance.

Get Busy Restoring Your Adrenal Glands.

Eat healthy, exercise and get quality sleep and rest. And learn how to turn your stress hormone faucet off and flush stress hormones out of your system.

Download “The Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets” on this page, while it’s still Free- it tell you what to do and why and show you.

The book will give you a deeper understanding of the dangers of stress and stress hormones along with some techniques and exercises you can start using right away to restore your adrenals and get back into hormone balance.

You’ll feel a lot better when you do.

One reason this is the case is the false views western women download about what midlife and menopause are really all about. But that’s changing, thankfully. These false views have led to a counterproductive “mindset”, an outlook that has burdened western women with misinformation and false assumptions.

Menopause has long been shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. But it’s now understood as a natural part of aging. It’s the gateway to the second half of a woman’s life, a time when a woman can actually be free from worry about pregnancy and free from menstrual periods.

Most importantly, midlife is a time inner change, not just bodily change. It’s actually a time of change involving deepening and discovery. But Western culture fails to offer women a clear, accurate mindset that could serve as a map for understanding and negotiating these inner changes, changes that come naturally at midlife.

Far Eastern women expect and believe that the second half of their lives will be rich and rewarding and their culture supports those expectations and beliefs. Not so in the West.

Midlife involves powerful inner change. It’s not just about your body. But in the West “inner change” is barely recognized and understood. And the focus and often times the obsession is on looking young.

Our culture’s biases and misconceptions about women, and about aging, leave most women with the wrong outlook, one that that views aging as decline, a view that makes growing older a burden.

The idea that life is all downhill after midlife and menopause is like a cultural virus that infects many women’s minds. It’s a bogus and harmful idea. In truth, midlife opens up new possibilities for powerful growth within a woman’s personality, possibilities informed by her soul, by her deeper inner life.  Midlife awakens the soul to make a grab for the steering wheel.

If you don’t buy into the false negative views about menopause and midlife, and if you can recognize and honor your soul, then the second half of your life can be a powerful adventure. It can be an adventure filled with discovery, meaning and satisfaction.

But only if you recognize midlife and menopause for what they truly are. Instead of making the mistake of viewing menopause as a medical problem and midlife as an indication that you’re already half dead.

“Body-Only” assumptions about menopause are like flat earth theory-in error and obsolete. Unfortunately, the medical and drug industries remain committed to the idea that a woman’s menopause is a body-only medical condition. This view grants them power, control and profit.

Well if menopause isn’t a medical condition, then why do so many women think it is? Why is this wrong view so widespread in the media and in the medical community? There’s a few important reasons why, reasons you should know about. Let’s consider some of them.

One is that hormone imbalance in menopause can trigger problems that can be easily be placed in the wrong context to look like symptoms of a medical condition. For example, problems such as hot flashes, insomnia, weight gain, loss of sexual desire, vaginal dryness, moodiness, stress, depression-among others. But these are not typically indications of a medical condition.

They’re problems that get triggered by a natural stage of woman’s life. Hormone changes are a natural part of a woman’s aging. But for most Western women-these hormone changes create long-term hormone imbalance, whereas they don’t for Far Eastern women.

And stress and a chronic flow of stress hormones are the main reasons why Western women fail to regain their hormone balance. Not only does this lead to great discomfort, but it also puts Western women at risk for heart disease. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women in the West.

Did you know that while menopause is a natural part of aging and an important life stage, long-term hormone imbalance is NOT. Nor are the hot flashes, insomnia, weight gain and other menopause problems that travel with continuing hormone imbalance.

Long-term hormone imbalance is the culprit that drives menopause problems. Women can empower themselves considerably if they learn how to regain hormone balance and how to revision their obsolete ideas about midlife, menopause and about what the second half of life is really all about.

Grab the “Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets” while it’s still free. It will give you the real skinny on stress hormones as well as some tools to help restore your hormone balance. You’ll feel the difference.

How about you? Do any of the following describe you in menopause?

• You are having trouble with hot flashes, insomnia, weight gain, anxiety, depression or other problems-but you don’t want to take risky medications

• You are feeling a lot of stress and anxiety-but you don’t know what to do about it

• Your family or friends tell you that you’re more moody and grumpy than you used to be

• You are having problems with sex

• You’re feeling bummed out and your life feel all downhill from here

• You just don’t feel well a lot of the time

You Are Not Alone

If one or more of these statements describes you, you’re not alone. Millions of women suffer problems with menopause and midlife-unnecessarily. Yes that’s right, unnecessarily. Here’s why.

Most women are badly misinformed. And so they don’t know what menopause and midlife really are and what they can do about them. But fortunately all that is beginning to change.

Would you like to know about these changes? They are already making a big difference in how some women go through menopause and in how they live the second half of their life.

Are You Stuck in the “Old Menopause Mindset?”

If you’re like most women, you operate out of an “Old Menopause Mindset”, an outlook that views menopause as a medical condition that comes with “aging and decline”. This Old Mindset rests on misinformation and wrongheaded ideas.

Most women develop an Old Menopause Mindset because of what they are told by

• physicians,
• by men who head drug companies,
• by their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts,
• by the media, and
• by their society and culture.

Unfortunately, the information that you have been told, that your mother was told and that your grandmother was told—is simply incorrect. Nevertheless, these incorrect ideas still define what many women believe and expect, and so what they experience. Our beliefs and expectations often define our reality.

Consider this: In primitive cultures, if a witch doctor puts a curse on someone by telling them: “You will die in 48 hours”, there’s a very good chance the cursed person will die within 48 hours.

Why did she die?

Because her “mind was set” on the witch doctor being all powerful and his curse being deadly. Her beliefs and expectations killed her.

What’s Behind the Old Menopause Mindset?

Many things are behind the Old Menopause Mindset, including money and power. John R. Lee, M.D, now deceased, was an international authority on menopause and women’s health. He put it this way:

“Menopause as a disease has been largely fabricated by physicians and the pharmaceutical industry.”

Over a decade ago, Dr. Lee published his views that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was dangerous. He saw it as a serious health threat to women’s health. Dr. Lee’s ideas were not taken seriously at first, and, unfortunately, his views proved to be correct.

A National Institute of Health’s Women’s Health Initiative Study confirmed Dr. Lee’s and a few other doctor’s worst fears. The study’s results were shocking. They showed that women on hormone replacement therapy for menopause were at increased risk for heart disease, cancer and stroke.

“Voodoo Menopause”

Since so many women have now stopped hormone replacement therapy, breast cancer rates have dropped remarkably. For years, millions of women were led to believe that menopause was a medical condition requiring “medication”. This is a kind of Voodoo Menopause that affected both doctors and women. Keep in mind that most medical physicians get their information from drug company reps, not from independent research. And that drug companies spend upwards of $15 billion a year marketing to physicians.

Sound scary? Well it is. Medications can be a godsend when properly prescribed by well-informed medical professionals. But when the bean counters in drug companies view women as customers, then women are intentionally misled for profit.

And the problem is not limited to hormone replacement drugs. Tranquilizers and risky antidepressant medications are routinely prescribed for menopause problems too.

Consider this: Not long ago medical physicians regarded a woman’s hot flashes as a sign that she was emotionally unstable. That’s ridiculous. Do you think you have hot flashes because there is something wrong with you? Let’s hope you don’t. If you do, that’s the Old Menopause Mindset shovel hitting you in the head.

I will tell you what hot flashes actually are. And I will tell you how you can decrease the number of hot flashes you have and possibly eliminate them all together.

But for now, back to the “Old Menopause Mindset” that you probably have downloaded, the one the pharmaceutical companies want you to adopt.

Old Menopause Mindset Ideas

Here’s some Old Mindset ideas you need to watch out for. These ideas are false.

• False: Menopause is a medical condition that requires medication or “hormone therapy”

Women have suffered and died as a result of this now discredited idea. You can control your hot flashes, insomnia, depression, weight gain, moodiness etc, without risky drugs

• False: Hot flashes, insomnia, depression, weight gain, moodiness etc, are a natural part of menopause

• False: Life is all downhill after menopause and midlife

• False: Midlife is a bridge into decline and old age

Note: Aware women become elders—not elderly, and midlife is a bridge to a deeper life, a life that can be well-lived, loved and understood

• False: Old age is a wasteland of wrinkles, illness and irrelevancy

So if a women believes all these false Old Menopause ideas, what do you think her menopause, midlife and second half of life will be like?

Again, take a moment and ask yourself: What is your mindset about menopause?

The New Menopause Mindset

The good news is that the “New Menopause Mindset” shows us how to safely prevent and remedy menopause troubles. But there’s a problem.

Because although the “the Old Menopause Mindset” is dead wrong—it’s deeply ingrained in the minds of most women. And special interests who profit from the Old Mindset would like to keep it that way.

But why should your menopause be difficult and even dangerous—when it doesn’t have to be. Not if you have a New Menopause Mindset. Here’s some of what the New Menopause Mindset truths are all about.

• True: You don’t need to risk your heart and well-being to reduce or eliminate menopause problems such as hot flashes

• True: Many Far Eastern women have no hot flashes, no depression, no insomnia, no weight gain, no etc.

Because they are not caught in what we call the Menopause Vicious Cycle™, (MVC) a vicious cycle of hormone imbalance triggered and maintained by stress.

• True: The Menopause Vicious Cycle not only makes you feel miserable with menopause problems but it also puts your heart at risk. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women.

• True: You can learn how to avoid getting caught in the Menopause Vicious Cycle and you can learn how to stop it

• True: Midlife is a profound stage of your life

Midlife brings forth your deepest possibilities, and you can learn to recognize, honor and realize them.

• True: It’s not that you have grown too old to have children, rather, it’s that you’ve entered a stage of life where you’ve grown beyond having children

• True: The second half of your life is meant to be the best

So Why Should You Stay Stuck in False and Dangerous Views About Menopause and Midlife?

Consider this: You can learn safe and powerful ways to

• get relief from your menopause problems, including hot flashes, depression, low energy and mood changes
• create and maintain hormone balance
• avoid and stop the Menopause Vicious Cycle
• protect your heart and dodge the heart disease bullet
• write a great screenplay for the second half of your life and live it with gusto

And you can separate yourself from the women who are misled by lies, misinformation and by the wrongheaded views of a culture obsessed with youth and the things keep women stuck at the surface of life.

Women are growing weary of a culture that is blind to many of the things that really makes life worth living for a woman, including the wisdom and well-being that only come to her with age.

Age is something to be honored, not disrespected. That’s why the ancient Roman’s called anyone under 50 “junior”. The second half of your life is not only NOT downhill-but it is actually wired in to be the deeper, better and more enjoyable half of your life.

Do these ideas sound a chord in you? Are you interested in learning more about the New Menopause Mindset so you can go through menopause safely and move into the second half of your life as an adventure?

If yes, then keep a look out for my new book. It will be ready soon and really open things up for you. It’s called “The New Menopause Mindset: How to Avoid the Mistakes Most Women Make”.

Listen, well informed women go through menopause a whole lot better than misinformed women. I want you to be among them. Because then you will live a longer and more fulfilling life.

If you’d like information sooner, write me at wandastevens@comcast.net