By Karrie Osborn
After months of hot flashes, fatigue, and irritability, oftentimes the last thing a woman in the throes of menopause wants is to be touched. Yet, this is exactly when a woman needs to experience touch, especially massage and bodywork. When she most needs to be nurtured, comforted, and reminded of her beauty and inner spirit, is often when a woman's body rebels and begins fighting against her.
Many say touch, and a host of other complementary therapies, can rebuild a woman's trust with her physical self and help her ride through the transition known as menopause. For the 4,000 new members joining the club each day, that's good news.
Menopause -- The Stages, The Symptoms
A natural occurrence in life, menopause usually begins in a woman's early 50s and signals the end of her reproductive years. Just as with pregnancy and childbirth, each woman experiences menopause differently. Some women sail through this time without much trouble, others are debilitated by the laundry list of symptoms that accompany it.Menopause has three stages, each presenting varying degrees of challenges. Perimenopause is the first phase and usually begins a few years before full-onset menopause begins. Menstrual cycles change and become erratic, while hormone production begins to diminish. Hot flashes and some of the other more intense symptoms can start during perimenopause as well, although they usually occur in the second stage, known simply as menopause.
During this second phase, all the symptoms you're going to have will make their arrival, hormones take an even greater nosedive, and menstruation stops. Symptoms can last as few as two years or go on for a decade or more. Most women hover around the five-year mark.
The final stage of menopause is postmenopause. It's at this time, with all the hormonal changes in effect, that women are especially susceptible to the ravages of osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.
The symptoms accompanying menopause are both varied and extensive, with hot flashes winning out for the most recognizable of them. Some women will notice slight changes in their body temperature when a hot flash strikes, others will have the full-blown effects of flushed face, intense heat, profuse sweating, even disorientation.
Other symptoms of menopause that don't get as much fanfare include insomnia, irritability, irregular menstrual cycles, night sweats, skin and vaginal changes, fatigue, memory loss, anxiety, headaches, and depression, to name a few. If not addressed, the intense hormonal changes that occur, especially the reduction of estrogen in the body, can lead to more serious problems, such as glaucoma, bone loss, and heart disease.
The school of thought for relief from many of these symptoms and conditions had, until recently, relied on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Women around the world quickly halted their pharmaceutical HRT regimen when studies began showing that other, even deadlier dangers lurked behind the benefits of HRT.
Now women are seeking out other avenues for balancing hormones and finding peace during this sometimes difficult journey.
Bodywork Answers
In their book Your Menopause, Your Menotype, naturopaths Angela and Mark Stengler say it's important for women to be good to themselves during this time. "Remember, major hormonal and metabolic shifts occur during menopause. Your body needs adequate rest. The more you can relax, the easier the transition will be for you. Your stress glands (adrenals) need to be working optimally to make up for the shutting down of your ovaries."1
One solution -- a few extra massages. They say their patients who scheduled more bodywork time during the "heat" of menopause were happy with the results.
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