Yoga and Hormone Therapy

Good Morning Ladies,

I started hormone therapy on Monday night of this week and already I'm sleeping and feeling better.  As you all know, this has been almost a 2 year journey since I started this blog. 

Menopause can be a very traumatic experience in our life and our family's lives.  This is because it affects everyone we come in contact with to an extent.  Our attitudes, feelings, emotions, and illness during this transition in life are affected all the time if we are not in a good place.

About 6 weeks ago, I felt so horrible that I thought my body was ageing daily by a high rate of speed.  I decided after I saw my spine doctor ( I have been diagnosed with scoliosis) that I should fight what my bones are trying to do to me.  He informed me that because I was in menopause now that my curvature changed by .5%.  For me that was a scary thing to hear.  That meant I was now at 30% curvature. This 5% change happened in one year. Once someone is at 35% back surgery is highly recommended.  This meant I only had .5% more to go.

So, I prayed and decided that I needed to do something about it.  After I saw the movie Eat, Pray, Love I felt a new kind of courage welling up inside of me.  I knew that if Liz could find her balance after what she went through in her divorce by seeking God then Yoga was for me too.  She talks about Yoga in her book in detail.  She shares that Yoga is designed to help us get in contact with our God. My God of choice is Jesus.

As I started to think about this process of Yoga and faith I decided to do a search on the internet about Yoga and scoliosis.  Sure enough, I found a book that promised I would find relief and could actually move my spine to correct my curvature.  Yep! That's what happened to this woman, a doctor, who wrote the book. Back Care Basics: A Doctor's Gentle Yoga Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief by Mary Pullig Schatz, B.K.S. Iyengar and William Connor (May 1992). 

I decided to find a Yoga teacher in my area and to my surprise she was only 5 minutes from me in Fairfield, California and she was very interested in helping me achieve wellness and a straight spine. The class is every Saturday for 1 1/2 hours and I can tell you that I have never experienced so much good pain in my life. When I'm done, I feel like a new woman. I feel like I have just taken a drink of living water. Not only have I met some great ladies and men but I finally feel like I'm not letting my body make decisions for me any longer.  Plus, I lost 15 pounds and it also encouraged me to start eating better.

My OB decided that I needed a blood test to check my hormone levels again since I had not had a period in 6 months.  The results were conclusive and showed I was definitely in menopause for good. She set up an appointment to discuss hormone therapy and some alternatives to what I had already tried (creams) from online doctors that swear it will help my hormone levels, hot flashes, weight gain, and a myriad of other things.  However, once I got the news about my spine I knew I could not take this approach any longer. Plus, my thyroid was starting to overact again. According to the experts, this is all symbiotic.

Therefore, my doctor prescribed the lowest dose of progesterone and estrogen.  You cannot take one without the other.  Plus, they must be taken at the same time every day and not on an empty stomach. So I am taking the following:

ESTRADIOL 0.5 MG TABLET


MEDROXYPROGESTERONE 2.5 MG TABLET


PREMARIN 0.625 MG/G CREAM



The premarin cream is for a dry vagina.  My husband and I enjoy intercourse but with the dryness and tightness I am experiencing, we needed some help.  She also recommended that I use this cream as long as I want to continue having sex.  She also recommended Astrolube..can't wait to try it :)

Needless to say, I have taken my pills for 2 nights now and I feel good already.  I did have a mild headache both mornings but they went away on their own after I got up.

I'm excited to share this information with all of you and pray and hope you don't give up.  Remember, this is something all of us women go through....and that's the great thing, we go THROUGH, we don't stay there if we don't want to.

God bless you,

Lilia