Isabelle Huot, doctor of nutrition and key figure in well-being, has joined forces with DD Lyne Desautels, family physician specializing in the field of bio-identical hormone therapy, to write an enlightening and highly topical book, Better live the menopause. These two experts explain this inevitable phenomenon in women’s lives, describe the unpleasant symptoms that characterize it and provide keys to better get through it. Both hormone therapy and targeted foods to improve daily life are covered.
The obligatory passage of menopause leads to a hormonal imbalance and, with this imbalance, comes a whole host of bothersome symptoms: hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, weight gain, irritability, sexual difficulties, aging of the skin, cognitive decline. Great painting, isn’t it?
Fortunately, solutions exist to minimize these symptoms: hormone therapy and healthy eating.
In the book, Isabelle Huot and the DD Lyne Desautels explains the phases of menopause, the roles played by hormones and describes what distinguishes synthetic hormones from bio-identical hormones. They go around the question and offer concrete tools to help women find harmony in all this hormonal storm.
Isabelle Huot wanted to address this subject for a long time.
“In the clinic, I saw women in menopause who were freaking out, who had all the physical, psychological, cognitive symptoms associated with the hormonal drop. I want to offer solutions to these women,” she explains in an interview.
“Myself, I experienced it quite intensely because I had an ovary removed when I was 22 and a second in my mid-thirties. I have always had hormonal problems and the consequences [qui viennent avec]. I approached the DD Lyne Desautels saying to her: you have to help me help women with concrete tools that address this period of life when it seems that all the symptoms are omnipresent.
Change the power supply
Isabelle Huot has advice for women to get better.
“With the knowledge we have today, we can relieve women with food and with the help of hormone therapy to ensure that it is a pleasant period. There is still a third of our life, or even a little more, after our menopause, because life expectancy is increasing.
On the nutrition side, the expert recommends including phytoestrogens – estrogens found naturally in food – in your daily diet.
“The first step is to add soy and its derivatives, for example edamame beans, tofu, tempeh, roasted soy nuts. The equivalent of maybe half a cup of edamame beans every day.”
She also suggests adding flax seeds daily.
“In flaxseed, we have an advantage that chia seed does not have: phytoestrogens.”
As the increase in abdominal fat is also to be expected with menopause, Isabelle Huot recommends choosing a more vegetable than meat diet, a Mediterranean type diet, and consuming fewer processed foods.
“You really have to think about the health of your heart, monitor your cholesterol, integrate soluble fiber, eat more plants, reduce your consumption of red meat,” she adds.
web program
Isabelle Huot has also set up, with Chantal Lacroix, an eight-week web program, in parallel with the book: SOS Menopause.
This program offers to support women and give them access to the advice of nine experts, including DD Desautels, a psychologist, a sexologist, a kinesiologist.
“They will support women in a process of change. We will work symptom by symptom. Women will be able to talk to each other.”
EXTRACT
Photo courtesy of Les Éditions de l’Homme
Better live the menopause. Isabelle Huot and Dr. Lyne Desautels. Editions de l’Homme, 256 pages
“I’ve always had hormonal issues. My first periods came late, at the age of 16, and I only had one or two menstrual periods a year. When I turned 20, a huge dermoid cyst was discovered on my right ovary. It had reached the size of a grapefruit! I then underwent my first oophorectomy. Several years later, my left ovary was also affected and I had a second operation at the age of 38. Although at the time my gynecologist believed that I had developed ovarian cancer, the biopsy revealed that the mass was benign. What a relief ! My specialist also took care to preserve a small piece of my ovary in the hope that this would be enough to produce a little hormone, thus avoiding a menopause before the age of 40.