By Women should be aware of the detrimental effects of menopause and how to combat them
I’ve been on the self-discovery road towards menopause lately. I mean, all females will inevitably cross that path at one time or another. Hopefully, most of us will get there when our body naturally transitions. But unfortunately for many women, it happens a lot earlier than anticipated. Menopause causes a range of problems for women, which may impact the quality of our life. After moving ahead with a hysterectomy — I’ve never looked back. For some women, removal of the ovaries as well is a must. We all have to decide between our health and the side effects of menopause. One supplement I am surprised to report which helps stop bone density loss is probiotics. Hopefully, you use a probiotic for gut health, which may also protect your bones throughout menopause. For this study, mice had their ovaries removed, inducing hormonal changes in menopausal women. The findings suggest that probiotic bacteria may have the potential as a very inexpensive treatment for postmenopausal osteoporosis. However, although this is a positive result, clinical evidence that probiotics can have a lasting effect on the bacteria mix in the body is limited. Women’s immune system is involved in postmenopausal osteoporosis, although the mechanism was previously unclear. The loss of estrogen increases gut permeability (in mice), allowing bacteria to activate immune cells in the intestine. This signals the immune cells to release signals that break down bone. In addition, probiotics help tighten up the gut’s permeability and dampen inflammatory signals that drive the immune cells. Robert Pacifici, MD, says: “Our findings highlight the role that intestinal microbes play in modulating gut permeability and inflammation in the context of sex steroid depletion. We think there are direct implications for treatment of osteoporosis that should be clinically tested.” After a month of having their ovaries removed, the mice who didn’t take a probiotic lost half of their bone density, whereas the probiotic group stayed the same. Mice who did not have their ovaries removed still benefited from the use of probiotics, increasing their bone density in the process.
Key take away
We can gather that everyone will benefit from taking a probiotic supplement daily. Although you may not yet have the symptoms or are close to menopause, it’s still a good idea to increase the diversity of your gut bacteria — or preserve it through the use of probiotics. It’s also essential to increase your gut microbiome by eating a lot of greens. The more variety of vegetables you eat, the more diverse your gut bacteria will become — helping to preserve your healthy gut bacteria. Don’t forget to include legumes, various seasonal veggies and fermented foods. It will be no surprise to say that although the diet is one way to combat osteoporosis, you can use the right kind of exercise — like weight training- to strengthen your bones and build muscle to protect bones from fracture. Use the leverage of good nutrition, probiotic supplementation and exercise throughout your life to stop the occurrence (or minimise it at least) of the detrimental effects of menopause. All women should prepare for that stage in life — but it’s within our power to stop the adverse effects of an inevitable phase in our life. I hope you got some valuable and actionable insight from this piece. Feel free to read more about it here, as my interpretation is but a summary of the essential and digestible information.
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