Acupunture and Perimenopause

First, let's be clear about this: menopause is not a disease, it's a natural part of life. The end of menstruation and fertility is as natural and healthy at the beginning, although the associated symptoms and implications may not be comfortable.

Perimenopause, which is a pattern of hormonal imbalance that preceeds menopause, often slips by unnoticed, especially if a woman is healthy. During perimenopause, levels of estrogen and progesterone rise and fall unevenly causing a variety of physical and emotional disturbances.

According to the Mayo Clinic, perimenopause lasts between 2 to 8 years, but woman's health guru Dr. Christine Northrup asserts that it is a six to 13 year process that begins in a woman's 30s or 40s. Symptoms of perimenopause include:

• Hot flashes
• Breast tenderness
• Worsening of PMS
• Fatigue
• Irregular periods
• Spotting after intercourse
• Vaginal dryness or pain during intercourse
• Urinanry leakage or urgency
• Mood swings
• Difficulty sleeping

Although perimenopause signals a shift away from fertility, you can still become pregnant during perimenopause. It's just that the process will be more difficult than you were lead to believe in high school health class.

Western medical doctors cope with symptoms of perimenopause by prescribing a low-dose birth control pill. In addition, all medical authorities seem united on these three lifestyle tips: good nutrition, regular exercise, and stress reduction.

What can acupuncture do? First and foremost, acupuncture relieves stress. When your body is under stress, your endocrine system shifts its emphasis away from your reproductive system, which can speed up the process of perimenopause. Additional risk factors for early onset of perimenopause include childhood cancer treatment and never delivering a baby.

Herbal medicine balances your hormones the same way a low dose of birth control pills can, but better. Chinese herbs provide the building blocks for hormones, rather than supplementing your body with the hormones you are lacking.

Why is it better to give your body the building blocks rather than the completed hormones? Because your endorcrine system works on a negative feedback system. This means that if your body senses a certain level of estrogen, it will stop producing estrogen to avoid an excess of that hormone. If you supplement with hormones, your body produces less.

In the end, both the low dose birth control pills and Chinese herbs will control the symptoms, and it's up to the patient which they would rather take. Factors that will affect this decision include whether or not the patient is trying to get pregnant, severity of symptoms, ability to incorporate treatment into a busy lifestyle... the list goes on and on.

Whatever treatment you chose, know that there are solutions out there, and it is possible to get relief from symptoms of perimenopause. Start by taking really good care of yourself - getting regular exercise, eating well and reducing stress - and the rest will follow.

Risks of Low Cholesterol

Everything you've heard about cholesterol numbers is... debatable. Turns out that although LDL cholesterol is often the bad guy for middle-aged patients, both LDL and HDL are essential for the health of the elderly.

UK and French scientists studied 3,673 civil servants and found that patients with low levels of HDL cholesterol were 53 percent more likely to suffer memory loss, which is often a precursor to Alzheimer's and dementia.

This makes perfect sense. Cholesterol is not a disease: it's one of the building blocks of life. Cholesterol is found in every cell in your body. It helps build and maintain cell membranes. It aids in the production of bile, which helps the body digest fats, and it is important for the metabolism of fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K.

Cholesterol is essential for the synthesis of Vitamin D. If you're an avid reader of the latest health research, you know that Vitamin D is now considered an essential piece of anti-cancer nutrition.

In addition, cholesterol is an essential precursor for steroid hormones such as progesterone, estrogen and testosterone.

In fact, a 2005 study discovered that while cholesterol lowering medications decreased mortality levels in middle-aged patients, there remained a strong correlation between low cholesterol and mortality in elderly patients. In short, low cholesterol was clinically linked to increased mortality.

Obviously, if you are middle-aged and at risk for heart attack or stroke, you should make an effort to lower your cholesterol. But these numbers suggest that if you aren't at risk for heart disease, the decision to lower your cholesterol should be weighed against the health risks associated with low cholesterol.

You've got to do what's right for you. And, if you have any doubts, just eat a balanced diet, get plenty of rest, exercise, drink a bunch of water and everything else will sort itself out.

Ailing U.S. Healthcare System Diverts Resources from Third World

This news story should embarrass all U.S. citizens and government officials into some sort of policy action. Either we are a developed country with abundant resources able to care for our own population, or perhaps we should just admit that the United States is about to become a Third World country.

If you weren't already motivated to vote this fall, let politicians know that health care is the reason you are voting and that you expect action on this issue.

Read more about the state of U.S. health care here and here.

Any questions?

To Vegan or Not to Vegan

Personally, I'm completely down with the vegan lifestyle, although I am not a vegan myself. Our planet is overwhelmed with people, resources are strained, and anything that we can do as individuals to help the planet breathe and process all the waste that humanity generates is a-ok.

Also, I'm a big proponent of using purchasing power to communicate political views. I don't own a car and I don't buy gas, so I don't support the oil companies or the war in the Middle East. I strive to spend more money at Trader Joe's than whole foods because they treat their employees better and they've never busted up an attempt to unionize.

Not only that, but I think it's admirable to choose a lifestyle that theoretically causes no harm to other life. The spiritual tradition of vegetarianism, especially in the East, is rich and long, but, as you will learn below, there is a big difference between being a vegan and being a vegetarian.

As a medical practitioner, however, I have mixed feelings about the vegan diet. Too often I see patients suffering the symptoms of Vitamin B12 deficiency, or symptoms of generalized anemia.

Why is Vitamin B12 deficiency a problem for vegans? Vitamin B12 is found primarily in animal products, and supplements that introduce Vitamin B12 into the stomach are not properly absorbed in the body. The only way to absorb any Vitamin B12 without eating an animal product is through a shot or a sublingual supplement.

Frankly, by the time you are experiencing deficiency symptoms, the sublingual supplement will probably not cut it. If you are a vegan and thing you might be experiencing a Vitamin B12 deficiency, you should get a blood test and, if the test reveals that you have pernicious anemia, ask you doctor about Vitamin B12 shots.

This process is sort of long and costly and the strain on the environment from producing all the supplements and shots and the added expense to our already bloated medical system which will cause a decrease in paying out benefits for people with other medical conditions should be considered.

Is there an easy answer? YES. A primarily vegan but partially vegetarian diet. If you incorporate dairy products into your vegan diet, you will live a longer, happier, healthier and more productive life with less suffering to yourself and the planet as a whole.

For those who do not digest or tolerate dairy well, a cultured dairy product is ideal. Yogurt or cottage cheese contains live cultures which begin the digestion process before you even start eating, and are widely tolerated.

Again, respect to those who want to do no harm. But sometimes you need to recognize when you are harming yourself, and evaluate the cost of that harm to yourself and others.

Namaste.

Spice Up Your Medicine Cabinet with Ginger

As far as I'm concerned, it's important to have a solid arsenal of natural remedies at home so that you can put a stop to common illnesses before they begin. For me, this mean that I've got some Rescue Remedy and some Yin Qiao San, and a variety of herbal teas, including ginger.

Ginger is one of those herbs that it's okay to eat with the same frequency as food. You can drink ginger beer, eat gingerbread, throw ginger in your stir-fry or eat a couple slices after a piece of sushi.

In Western Herbalism, ginger is most often used to treat motion sickness, which presents as nausea, dizziness, sweating and vomiting. When compared to factory-engineered medicines in clinical trials there were no conclusive results, but ginger did have a similar effect to the medications.

Ginger is used also for morning sickness, although pregnant women should not take more than one gram daily. It has performed better than placebo for relieving both nausea and vomiting in several studies.

Patients undergoing chemotherapy can use ginger to relieve the nausea associated with their treatments. A recent study found a significant reduction in nausea in patients who consumed a high-protein diet with ginger.

In addition to its stomach settling properties, ginger is also adept at treating inflammation and pain associated with arthritis and ulcerative colitis. In fact, ginger performed better than ibuprofen in a study on patients with osteoarthritis of the knee.

Traditional Oriental Medicine considers ginger a warming herb to treat not only the digestive and inflammatory conditions listed above, but also cough, common cold, and pain. Studies have shown that ginger dilates blood vessels, which could account for its warming and pain relieving effects.

A word of CAUTION: Ginger has an anti-platlet effect, so patients on any sort of blood-thinning medication such as Coumadin, Warfarin, or Plavix (to name a few) should consult their doctor before taking ginger in medicinal doses.

Maintaining Sexual Health in the Big City

This weekend one of my girlfriends shared a truly horrific story with me, and the real tragedy of her tale is that it could have been prevented by open and honest communication. This story contains adult content, so the young and faint of heart should probably stop reading right here.

All of you grown-ups who could use a little tale that's one part Brothers Grimm, one part Sex in the City, and too many parts "happens all the time," gather 'round.

My friend met her last boyfriend when she was about 30. He was a well-educated guy who used big words to describe art and came from a nice middle-class household. When they started dating, they did all the right things, like practicing safe sex (or so she thought).

After they had been intimate for three months, her new boyfriend sat her down and confessed that he was having an outbreak of herpes. He told her that they should abstain from having sex until it passed, and hoped that she would be understanding.

She was, unfortunately. Here's my problem with the whole scenario: he put her at risk the moment they became intimate. Condoms help prevent herpes, but they don't protect against it completely. And most people don't use condoms when performing oral sex, if you get my meaning.

Even though her partner knew he had an incurable sexually transmitted disease (STD) and could have informed her so that she could have taken the necessary precautions, he chose not to divulge his condition until it was impossible to hide it. He changed her life forever without giving her a choice.

Again, this was a clean-cut, well-educated guy from a good family.

A recent Canadian study showed that most people rely on subjective measures to judge their partners' "safety" when it comes to STDs. These criteria included how long that they've known their partner or their partner's intelligence.

If you are going to be sexually active in the big city you need a healthy balance of trust, which is tricky to achieve in our modern world. On the one hand, you've got to trust your partner to be healthy and faithful - otherwise why would you sleep with them?

On the other, more important hand, you need to communicate openly, honestly, and specifically about sexually transmitted diseases before you engage in foreplay. Most STDs can be cured with a healthy dose of antibiotics, but viruses like herpes and HIV last a lifetime.

What's more uncomfortable? A five minute conversation with an attractive person or a lifetime of randomly-occurring itching, painful and oozing sores?

Ultimately,we're all responsible for our own health and our own bodies, and it's inappropriate to blame someone else for not protecting us properly. If we're sexually active, we're all adults (or, at the very least, we all have adult responsibilities) and, therefore, responsible for our own choices.

Choose wisely. Stay informed.