So you are feeling like you are losing control of your body in midlife and the biggest culprit is your uncomfortable and out of control hot flashes and night sweats.
You keep having embarrassing moments during the day where you turn hot and beet red with perspiration dripping from your top lip and your just have to tear off the layers, and you are sick and tired of waking in the night with your sheets drenched and heart racing from a night sweat. It is draining and you feel exhausted and have lost trust in your own body.
Hot sweats and night sweats are the most recognized symptom of peri-menopause and are an indicator that your estrogen levels are beginning to fall as your ovaries move into a resting stage. You are moving towards the later stage of your peri-menopausal experience and other glands such as the adrenal glands will pick up the load and micro dose your body with estrogen in your post menopausal stage.
You need this trickle flow of hormone as estrogen is:
1. Bone protective
2. Brain health protective
3. Heart health protective
4. Prevents vaginal dryness and atrophy.
When our ovaries rest we need our adrenals to kick-in and take over this role.
Not all peri-menopauses are the same and we hear and read a lot about how women in the Western world experience a more symptomatic and medicated journey towards the hormonal balance of menopause.
I have a theory: Modern life is just so stressful and we are all so exhausted and run ragged that our adrenal glands just do not have the capacity to pick up where our ovaries have left off.
So where does that leave the midlife woman who wants to support her very best health?
Well there are are foods that help to boost estrogen levels in the body and alleviate symptoms of hot flashes and night sweats by introducing phyto-estrogen into our diet.
Phytoestrogens are plant-based, estrogen-mimics which circulate in the body and ‘trick’ the body into thinking that the trickle flow of estrogen is flowing and thus reduce symptoms of estrogen deficiency such as hot flashes and night sweats. Below is a list of foods that are rich in phytoestrogens and which you should load into your daily meal plan if you are waking hot and sweaty at night or hiding in the washrooms pulling a damp t-shirt away from your sweaty skin waiting for a hot flash to pass.
If you are curious to know more about what is happening to you body if you are experiencing hot flashes you can click here to join my private Facebook Group The Nourished Midlife Woman and watch a Facebook live training on just this topic.
And… so here is a fabulous place to start!
Breakfast muffins that are rich in ground flax and anti-oxidant rich blueberries that begin to bring in the foods that mimic estrogen in the body and calm those unpredictable sweats down.
I substituted the sugar in this muffin recipe for MONK FRUIT sweetener, a sugar substitute that does not raise blood sugar levels or spike insulin in the body. These muffins are sweet but sugar free and there is not the aftertaste that you sometimes get with the sugar substitute stevia. This is the brand I can buy easily in stores in Canada.
I made these muffins on a Covid 19 quarantine day when I could not get hold of plain flour so I played with the recipe and added the same quantity of a healthy pancake mix I had in the cupboard and the end of a bag of gluten free buckwheat flour. (This is why my muffins are so dark in the photo provided.) I also lazily added all of my ingredients into one bowl, but the quality of the muffins is much improved by adding the wet ingredients into the dry. My point here is that this is a very forgiving recipe so you can make it your own. Hello, my name is Louise, I am a food lover and very lazy cook!
Ingredients
113 g or 3/4 cup sugar
225g or 11/2 cups plain flour (spelt flour would be nice here or half and half plain flour and buckwheat flour)
2 heaping tbsp ground flax
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
rind of 1 lemon grated
pinch of sea salt
125g or 1 cup fresh or defrosted frozen blueberries
100g or 2/3 cup of coconut oil melted
1 cup live natural yoghurt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 lemon juiced (optional)
Instructions
Heat the over to 200C 400 F or gas mark 6
Place 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin ready to receive your muffin mixture.
Place all of the dry ingredients from the sugar through to the sea salt into a bowl.
Toss the blueberries through the dry ingredients.
In a separate bowl add the eggs, yoghurt and vanilla extract and whisk gently to combine.
Stir in the melted coconut oil taking care not to ‘cook’ the eggs with the warm oil.
Stir the ‘wet’ ingredients into the ‘dry’ ingredients and mix lightly to form a batter. Do not over mix.
Load the muffin batter into the muffin cases.
bake in the over for 15-20 minutes until the muffins are cooked through…a tooth pick pushed into the muffins will come out clean.
Enjoy warm with butter for a truly decadent treat.
If you are interested in more healthy breakfast options that will help you to start your day with nutrition so that you power through your morning with energy to spare, you can sign up to receive my FREE downloadable e-book Breakfast Essentials. Click here to get your copy.