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What to Expect in Your Fifties: A Woman's Guide to Health, Vitality, and Longevity - Softcover

 
9780440508106: What to Expect in Your Fifties: A Woman's Guide to Health, Vitality, and Longevity
Softcover
ISBN 10: 044050810X ISBN 13: 9780440508106
Verlag: Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

Featuring interviews with medical experts in thirty-eight different fields, a comprehensive guide written in a handy question-and-answer format provides women turning fifty with vital information about their physical and emotional condition. Original.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Judy Mandell is the author of seven books and numerous feature articles, with topics ranging from kicking caffeine to getting published.  She lives with her husband, Jerry, and two huge dogs in North Garden, Virginia (near Charlottesville).

Aus dem Klappentext

ide out...the changes a woman faces, the empowering choices a woman can make.<br><br>Extra pounds...hot flashes...loss of sexual desire. Are these inescapable changes as women age?<br><br>The inspiring answer for every woman who wants to feel good and look great in her fifties is no. This comprehensive guide, conveniently organized in a question/answer format, offers straight answers and advice from America's top specialists in gynecology, oncology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, plastic surgery, and more.<br><br>From essential vitamin supplements to breakthrough drugs to the latest approaches in hormone replacement therapy, this authoritative one-volume resource provides vital information about a woman's changing body and mind, including:<br><br> The latest developments in hormone replacement therapy--what it means to your body and your lifestyle<br> The biggest threat to your skin...and an FDA-approved cream that can really t

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Understanding Menopause

JoAnn V. Pinkerton, M.D.

JoAnn Pinkerton graduated from college with a degree in psychology. After  graduation, she attended the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. She  completed her obstetrics and gynecology residency at the University of  Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, where she joined the  faculty in 1985. Dr. Pinkerton developed a specialty in menopause and  hormone replacement therapy. She has been medical director of the  University of Virginia's Women's Midlife Center since 1995.

The Midlife Center is a multidepartmental, academic-based center that  provides a comprehensive approach to women's midlife health through  prevention and early diagnosis of common health problems such as  osteoporosis and heart disease.


Q. As the medical director of a women's midlife health center, you see  thousands of women who are approaching or are in their forties and fifties.  Please paint a picture of a typical patient.

A. Sally is forty-nine. She is at the peak of her profession and is balancing career, husband, and children. Her father died two years ago and her  mother has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her older sister had a  nonfatal heart attack at fifty-eight. Sally has begun skipping four  periods a year. She is very irritable premenstrually and has been on the  verge of tears during recent meetings with her boss. She has recently  developed hot flashes ten times a day and night sweats that interfere  with her sleep. She has gained five pounds per year over the last four  years, going from a trim size 8 to a size 14. Her self-esteem is  dropping. She knows she is eating due to stress but can't help it. Her  last period caught her unaware and unprepared, and she ruined her  favorite suit. She is embarrassed by her inability to cope because she has  always been "strong" and in control. She comes to the Midlife Center  hoping for a miracle--to feel the way she felt ten years ago.


Q. Let's talk about menopause. What is menopause?

A. The word "menopause" literally means the cessation of menses (menstrual  cycles), but it's actually a series of changes that occur as a woman's body gradually loses estrogen. A woman is truly menopausal six to twelve months after her last normal menstrual period.


Q. When do most women become menopausal?

A. The average age of menopause is fifty-one, plus or minus five years.


Q. How have attitudes toward menopause changed?

A. In the "old days," women didn't often survive past menopause. It's only in recent years that women have begun to outlive their menopause.

The male scientists of the seventeenth century described menopause as a character disorder, a chronic disease, or a sign of female weakness. In the nineteenth century, investigators began to study menopause, but they dwelled on negative emotional traits, such as melancholy, mood swings, and irritability. Women were valued primarily for their childbearing capabilities, so menopausal women were thought of as useless, sexless, and undesirable. Back then menopause was considered to be the end of meaning to a woman's life. In 1929 scientists isolated the hormone estrogen, which ushered in our current understanding of the physiologic processes of menopause.

Today women live into their eighties, nineties, and, it is hoped, into their hundreds. Midlife has been redefined as ages forty to sixty-five. The average woman will live about one-third of her life postmenopausal. Although myths still abound in a society where youth is prized, women are quickly changing the negative image of menopause as a disease, a tragedy, and a sign of old age. Instead of hot flashes, women now have "power surges." Menopause is viewed as a natural transition.


Q. What is perimenopause?

A. Perimenopause is the five to ten years preceding menopause when women begin to have irregular periods, hormonal fluctuations, and never quite know what to expect from month to month.

While most twenty- and thirty-year-old women have regular menstrual cycles--they usually can pinpoint when their periods will arrive each month and how many days the flow will last--menses become erratic for women in their forties or early fifties, with frequent cycles--every twenty-one to twenty-three days--followed by one or two missed periods, followed again by a forty-day or sixty-day cycle. One period may be heavy, lasting only three days, the next a lighter ten-day cycle. Women at this stage begin to develop menopausal symptoms. We now know that the perimenopause is the hardest time for women because of the fluctuations in hormones and erratic symptoms. Once women are menopausal, it is much easier.


Q. Why do these changes occur as women get older?

A. In their late thirties and early forties, women begin to have fluctuation of ovarian function, causing estrogen levels to decline. Eventually the ovary completely fails to ovulate. It's a complicated process. The pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain, works with the ovary. As the ovary begins to produce less estrogen and fewer eggs, the pituitary tries to stimulate the ovary to work harder. This process continues, causing menstrual fluctuations--a woman might have normal ovarian function for three to six months or even a year, skip several cycles and not make an egg, and then make another egg. There are 2,000 to 4,000 eggs remaining at menopause, but these seem no longer to respond to stimulation by the pituitary gland.


Q. What are the common symptoms of menopause that may cause upheaval in women's lives?

A. The most common symptoms are hot flashes, night sweats, irregular bleeding, weight gain, premenstrual syndrome and mood swings, depression or depressed mood, heart palpitations and anxiety, insomnia, memory changes and concentration problems, headaches, joint and muscle aches, changes in urination, changes in sexuality, vaginal dryness, and skin changes. Often, at the same time, women may experience significant stress with career changes, marital problems, issues of aging parents, and dealing with teenagers or an empty nest. This is often referred to as the "Big Squeeze."


Hot Flashes

A hot flash is the perception of warmth, usually starting from the head  downward, which may be associated with sweating. It can be mild or  profuse. Temperature changes in the body can be documented. When the  temperature goes up, the body perceives that it's too hot and dilates the  blood vessels so that the temperature will drop. We don't know the actual  trigger. We used to think that hot flashes were due strictly to decreases  in estrogen levels, but we now know that's not true. However,  fluctuations in estrogen levels are part of the trigger.

About 70 percent of women get hot flashes. Hot flashes are minor for some  people, with occasional warm feelings. Some women never experience them.  We don't know why.

Other women can have five, ten, twenty, even forty hot flashes in a day.  They can last from thirty seconds to fifteen minutes and may persist for  three to five years.


Night Sweats

Night sweats can be as mild as waking up in the middle of the night just feeling warm or as extreme as producing enough sweat to soak the sheets. The majority of women who experience night sweats have them for less than three to five...

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Verlag
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
044050810X
ISBN 13 
9780440508106
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
359
Herausgeber
Mandell Judy
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Dell GmbH
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DE.CustomerSupport@dell.com

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