”My Menopause journey”
Trudi Roscouet, 53, talks about her experience with the menopause and some of the natural remedies that helped
“In 2017, when I was aged 49, I had just come back from holiday and saw the photos of myself. I was so shocked. What had happened to me? Where had all this weight come from? Why did I look like this? I had previously been working in the fitness industry and specialised in training women but had left the industry full-time in 2016. I tried dieting – shakes, pills and fad diets – but nothing really got to the bottom of the issue.
”Roll on to 2019. I was moving to Spain and due my routine thyroid blood test. I remember the lady doctor calling me and saying: 'Well the good news is that you are not diabetic but you are going through the menopause. Pop in and I’ll leave you a script for HRT which you can take with you.' And that was that. No discussion. No options.
”I hadn’t had a period since 2005 as I’d been taking the Mirena coil, and of course the most well-known symptom is the lack or diminished frequency of periods, so without knowing I was already perimenopausal. The first real sign for me, apart from the increase in weight, was the hot flushes. The way I would describe them was like a spontaneous self-combusting heat which rose from the depth of your belly and radiated out, down your arms, legs and eventually to your forehead. There were days when my anxiety levels would escalate and I couldn’t understand why. The butterfly feeling in my tummy just wouldn’t shift all day. The other major issue was brain fog. My dad had died of dementia and I worried that I might have it too. I tried everything from endless lists to post-it notes to jog my memory. I had horrendous insomnia and experienced joint pains as well.
”I was now living in a foreign country with no medical support, friends or family, and to make matters worse we were locked down due to Covid-19. Unable to leave our apartment, I decided to use this time to do some research. I realised that as the body’s oestrogen levels deplete during menopause, this can lead to the symptoms I was experiencing – anxiety, irritability, insomnia, joint pains and more.
”As I did my research, I began to realise the importance of the four pillars of health: nutrition, fitness, sleep and wellbeing, and how they affected each other. I switched to a Mediterranean-type diet which mostly consisted of fish, chicken and plant-based meals. I started taking turmeric with curcumin for inflammation, which really helped with the joint pain, and I discovered that CBD helped with my insomnia. Other natural remedies that helped me were magnesium and zinc. The magnesium helped with restless legs but I found that it was better to take it in the form of a body lotion rather than a tablet, to ease any stress on the liver.
”Given the situation with lockdown, my stress levels should have been high, but I was serenely calm because everything was out of my control. I realised that once you learn to let things go that are not in your control, you begin to understand about ‘living in the now’.
”There are many alternative and natural ways of dealing with the menopause. A registered naturopath or homeopath will treat the symptoms individually; many correlate to issues or problems that we experience in our younger years. However I can only stress how important it is to keep the four pillars of nutrition, fitness, sleep and wellbeing in balance.”
Trudi Roscouet is the founder of Vitality 40 Plus. To find out more, visit www.vitality40plus.com
Read articles from our latest issue here...