Menopause Is Natural Transition. Menopausal Symptoms Are Not the Result Of Aging, But The Condition Of Your Body Long Before Menopause Begins. 


What is menopause?

According to National Library of Medline, Menopause is time in a woman's life when her menstrual periods eventually stop and the body goes through changes that no longer allow her to get pregnant. It is a natural event that normally occurs in women age 45 - 55.

In ancient medical texts of Traditional Chinese Medicine, menopause does not appear as a medical word in Traditional Chinese Medicine’s dictionary.  Menopause seems more a western concept and word. Traditional Chinese Medicine recognizes that women’s menstrual cycle has a beginning and an end, which is nature’s way.

According to Nei Jing, the oldest and highest authorship of Traditional Chinese Medicine that compiled over 2000 years ago, women have seven-year cycles—like the phases of the progressed moons such as the new moon, half-moon and full moon. 

Women’s cycles start with the first seven years, during which a healthy young girl’s kidney Qi will manifest the growth of her hair and permanent teeth.  At the second seven year cycle, about 14 years of age, the Qi and life force reaches its peak, causing the arrival of puberty and the beginning of menstrual periods.

A woman blossoms through her fertile years, then at about age 35, the fifth of seven years, her Qi starts to decline, which is part of the natural aging process. No one can stop this process, but how steeply and how rapidly the aging curve declines is totally up to you.

Menopause typically occurs between the sixth and seventh cycles from 42 years old to 49 years old. TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) believes 49 years old as a benchmark age for gauging the normalcy of menopause occurrence. It is commonly perceived as pre-mature menopause if a woman’s menstrual cycle ends before 45 years old. It is also considered as out of normalcy if a woman’s menstrual period does not end before her eighth 7-year cycle at 56.

So in another words, the actual age that menopause occurs to different women can vary widely but really depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to genetic reason, lifestyle, health condition, etc.

TCM believes women’s menstrual cycles ending as a natural part of a woman’s life, just like there is a beginning and an end for any cycle.

During this transitional time, a woman may experience a variety of different problems, if she is not healthy or had not been healthy before reaching this phase.

In other words, if a woman has not been healthy during her 30s, 40s or before menopause, for sure she is going to experience far worse problems as she heads into menopause.

How do we define healthy in this context?

According to TCM views, if a woman’s menstrual cycle has always been regular and mostly problem-free, she should not experience a difficult menopause at all.

In an ideal world, if a woman is healthy, her menstruation will be regular and free of any problems. No period cramps, no blood clots, no spotting, no headaches, no migraines, no early or delayed periods, no mood swings. She has always been happy and healthy and her menstrual period has always been smooth, and she does not experience stress from work or family. She is like a beautiful flower blossoming throughout her fertile years, and she will not experience any menopause problems at all.

But in the real world, this is rare.  Usually after 35, we feel a lot of things starting their downward spiral. This happens at different speeds for different people. Some of us notice obvious problems, some of us feel a lot of tiny things accumulating in a relatively unnoticeable way, and suddenly, overnight, and we don’t feel the same anymore. We are constantly under tremendous pressure -- work, family, children, emotions, spirituality -- and modern society imposes an extremely demanding lifestyle on us. Sometimes we think we are taking good care of ourselves, but we aren’t, not because we don’t want to, but because we don’t know how to. We try to live a healthy lifestyle, we eat right, we work out, yet we are still on this downward spiral. We want to take charge of our own health, yet we don’t know how.

We trust our doctors, but they cannot tell us why we got the problems in the first place, and they cannot tell us how to prevent the same problems from coming back.

Most of the time, doctors only help relieve the symptoms, not the actual root cause of our problems.

We constantly face the dilemma of whether to do what doctors say, even when we are not fully convinced that it is in our interest. It is hard; I know.  I have been there, I hear you. I thought I was going to die. I never knew I would make it through, much less be where I am today enjoying radiant health. Just imagine, with all the problems we have along the way, we fix one thing, and before we know it, here comes another one.

It seemed nothing really big at the time because we thnk we are still far away from menopause. We thought we were fine, just a few female problems, and if they are too bothersome, doctors have advanced technologies and surgery to be able to handle them. They can burn the uterus lining to fix heavy bleeding. They can perform a hysterectomy to remove the uterus to take care of endometriosis and uterine fibroids.

Severe Stress and Life Changing Events Often Relates to Premature Menopause

When you reach menopause, the entire energy of your body starts a tremendous shift. Bang! Everything suddenly gets a lot worse.  Of course, the changes don’t happen overnight; they are the result of accumulated effects over an extended time. Now we are trained to believe that serious issues related to menopause are entirely normal!

Say NO! Be brave enough to say No to a difficult menopause!

Now you know, menopause is not really the problem, but the condition of your body before the transition even gets underway.

In my personal experience, almost all my western girlfriends accept difficult menopause as normal because their sisters, their mothers, their friends, their colleagues all experience it. Even doctors tell you that you are getting to that age and are destined to have those problems. The doctors have a solution for you: your female hormones are declining, so you can take Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), be it progesterone cream, or an estrogen patch or pill. Even though you feel better, you soon find out you can’t live without hormone therapy. If you don’t want the HRT, the only other alternative is to deal with the problems on your own.

I started asking my girlfriends if they had any menstrual problems, or other gynecological issues, or severe stress before menopause. It startled me that 100% of the women had menstrual problems, and almost every single woman who had premature menopause before they were 45 years old experienced major life-changing events or were under severe stress, such as divorce, job loss, relocation, family tragedy etc.

Severe stress almost always accompanies premature menopause. This just further confirms and proves that the TCM view that I learned from Nei Jing is so true.

If a woman is in poor health and her internal energy, or Qi, is not balanced or is deficient, her body expresses its condition through many types of menstrual symptoms: premenstrual syndrome (PMS), irregular periods, painful periods, breast tenderness, headaches, cramping, and fever during cramps, to name just a few.

If a woman doesn’t suffer from menstrual irregularities during a lifetime of cycles, it is highly unlikely that she will experience difficulties during menopause transitional time; on the other hand, women who have menstrual difficulties on a regular basis are likely to have a difficult menopause.

The reason is simple: their bodies are out of balance and their energy has declined long before they reach menopause.

According to Neil Jing, menopause is one of the biggest transitions of any woman’s life. During this period, there is an enormous energy shift within a women’s body that goes far beyond physical changes, which is natural and normal.

If you are able to understand this special opportunity and take the time to readjust, replenish, rejuvenate and strengthen your internal Qi, you can help prevent new problems arising from this transitional time.  Otherwise, after this turning point, without a sufficient level or reserves of internal Qi, you will not have the strength to deal with many health problems that often come along with aging. 

As we age, our Qi naturally declines. This means we have less energy to “spend” doing our normal daily routine. If no adjustment is made for this energy “gap,” the body and its organs will be affected

So if you are currently experiencing any menopausal symptoms -- night sweats, thinning hair, hot flashes, lower libido, et --take a deep breath, look back over the past three to seven years of  your life  to see if you had ignored all the small peri-menopause signs that your body was trying to send you.

You probably tried to take good care of your body, but lack of holistic knowledge and wisdom that truly works may have hindered your efforts to go through a problem-free menopause.

It is never too late to take complete charge of your body. With the knowledge you are obtaining from this book, you can rebuild your temple in the most effortless way.