Hot New Topics > Menopause and Weight Loss

As a woman enters into her menopausal period of life, her previous metabolic subtype undergoes further changes due to the loss of ovarian estrogen production. This loss can amplify the effects of other underlying hormonal imbalances (Growth hormone, DHEA, Thyroid, etc) associated with aging and your subtype.

These hormonal shifts tend to further inhibit the mobilization (lipolysis) of fat for energy production whilst promoting the deposition of fats into the adipose (fat) tissue. This results in the gradual increase in obesity associated with the menopausal change.
There is a however a significant difference to where the fat is being deposited compared to the premenopausal phase of life.

During the premenopausal phase (high estrogen : testosterone phase), fat preferentially deposited around the hips and buttocks. During Menopause when the ratio of estrogen to testosterone is markedly decreased, fat is preferentially deposited around the waist and upper body.

This location of fat distribution is extremely important in relation to establishing your risk to chronic degenerative diseases. Fat accumulation around the waist (abdominal or visceral fat) is associated with a dramatic increase in the risk to hypertension, diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease, and all cause mortality. Additional consequences may include hormone-dependent cancer (breast, uterine, colon), gallstones, kidney stones, and osteoarthritis.

Apart from the increase in abdominal fat during menopause, there is a progressive loss of skeletal muscle (sarcopenia) as well. Muscle plays an extremely important role in determining your metabolic rate or the ability to burn calories. So by losing muscle through hormonal changes or previous yo yo dieting practices, you will find your weight gradually increasing over time even though you haven’t changed your eating or exercise habits.

Muscle actually plays an even more important role than just burning calories and supporting your ability to move. The muscle acts as a reservoir of critical nutrients and growth factors that sustain all the major organs during times of high demand or stress. The immune system can also be affected by a lack of muscle during times of stress, leading to increased rates of infections. This is why the amount of muscle a person has is considered by many scientists to be the number one biomarker of aging.

What if I told you a person who is not overweight could have the same high rate of disease risk as a person with obesity. These people have what we call “Sarcopenic Obesity” which refers to the progressive loss of muscle whilst increasing their stores of in abdominal fat, without any major change in weight. These people represent a huge percentage of people (35%) who are currently not being identified as high risk candidates for heart disease and cancer. Menopause represents a time when sarcopenic changes can become accelerated leading to poor resistance to stress and compromised health.
Why Do Some Women Have Very Little Menopausal Symptoms?

Common menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes, dry aged skin, insomnia, anxiety, depression, loss of libido and urinary tract infections are associated with the decreased level and activity of estrogens during menopause. So why do some women have very little if any symptoms compared to the majority of menopausal women?

The answer lies in their ability to make estrogens from sources other than the ovaries.
This is determined by two major factors:
1.Adrenal Gland function
2.Amount of fat

The adrenal glands produce DHEA and other androgen hormones that can be converted into estrogens by enzymes found predominantly in fat cells. This is why thin menopausal women are much more prone to severe menopausal symptoms than women with some extra fatty tissue. The key is have just enough fat and muscle to optimize your health without going too much under or over the mark

Prolonged stressful relationships, lifestyle and poor nutrition over a many years causes serious malfunction of your adrenal glands ability to produce the right amount of DHEA and androgen hormones to compensate for the loss of estrogen during menopause. This combined with the increased activation of the stress response (Hypothalamic – Pituitary- Adrenal response) during the menopausal change results in a lack of adrenal hormone production for conversion into estrogens. The result being, severe onset of menopausal symptoms.

Treatment of Menopausal Symptoms and Obesity

The good news is we can correct menopausal symptoms, weight gain and disease to have a life full of vitality and longevity. Menopause is a natural progression of women’s nature into a more fulfilling phase and shouldn’t be viewed as a disease process. The ability to make the transition into this next phase of life requires understanding of the processes that need balancing into a new state of equilibrium. This typically requires addressing three major areas of imbalance in a women’s system during menopause.

1.Over activity of the Nervous System leading to states of increased anxiety, irritability, depression, insomnia, muscular aches and pains.

2.Dysfunction of the Stress Response system (hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal axis) with correction of growth hormone and adrenal androgen deficiencies that restore estrogen activity, stimulate muscle growth and the burning of fat.

3.Reduce excess levels of cortisol and insulin which promote accelerated fat production, glucose intolerance (prediabetic state) and degenerative diseases associated with states of low grade inflammation and immune dysfunction.

Metabolic Subtyping is the Key to Success

Each of the above areas of menopausal hormonal imbalance requires different corrective therapeutic strategies based on your own individual metabolic subtype.

This is where it becomes completely ridiculous to think that a one type of treatment approach or supplement is going to correct multiple metabolic abnormalities that are expressed differently into many different subtypes. One treatment approach will work great for some part of the problem in one person but have no or little effect for someone else whose baseline hormone levels are vastly different.

To give you an example of how this might influence the treatment recommendations, let’s consider a woman whose nervous system dysfunction is based on an imbalance of key neurotransmitters in various parts of the brain.

One persons subtype may have an excess of noradrenalin and deficiency of dopamine, with resultant states of nervousness, anxiety, leading to a history of addictive behavior or substance abuse. This imbalance produces increases in the hormone prolactin, responsible for breast tenderness, fluid retention and infertility.

Another woman’s nervous system dysfunction is commonly due to a lack of both noradrenaline and serotonin production in various parts of the brain, whose impact on behavior produce anxiety that fluctuates with depression, without the above changes in dopamine and prolactin. These women often complain of irritable bowel syndrome and chronic muscular aches and pains due to changes in pain perception pathways.

This is but one example of two common subtypes of nervous system disorder in menopause which typically consists of six major subtypes of nervous system dysfunction.
Which one you fit into can be determined when you fill out the subtype questionnaire and after assessment by our team of experienced clinicians.

Remember there are three major areas of dysfunction in Menopause and each one of these areas has multiple subtypes which each require a different therapeutic approach in order to correct the underlying basis of the problem. It’s no wonder people can’t obtain effective results for their menopausal symptoms and weight gain without the benefit of metabolic subtyping to navigate through the darkness of the metabolic dysfunction.