Menopause is a joke amongst comedians and dreaded my women and men who live with a women going through menopause.
Did you know that only 7% Japanese women experience hot flashes?
What’s The Secret?
Is menopause really what you think it is? What’s the difference with Japanese women and western society in their experience of menopause and the symptoms?
Research suggests their diet may be useful as they include a lot of tofu and Soy product’s into their meals. Soy beans contain the compounds, Genislein & Diadzein which are best known for being estrogenic and also anti-angiogenic. This all sounds a bit scientific but, may explain why only 7% of menopausal Japanese women suffer from hot flushes.
The Japanese don’t even have a word in their vocabulary for ‘hot flushes’ or hot flashes’.
Don’t ya just love those moments when a light bulb goes off in your head. When you get an understanding or realisation that you had failed to see before?
As a Hypnotherapist and Mind Coach this excites and interests me in how our expectations create our perceived reality. Everything we experience starts out as a thought so I am curious how western women, with a different diet would react to menopause if they had grown up in an environment which had no experience or expectation around menopause and the symptoms around the diagnosis.
We experience what we expect to experience, if we think we are going to have a hot flush, night sweats or even thicken around the waist and put on weight. The law of attraction attracts that experience into our life.
So how do we change our experience with menopause?
The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we think. But it’s not the thought that causes our distress but the thoughts about the thoughts. When you recognise that just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have to ‘think about it’. This sort of thinking is what creates the uncomfortable feeling resulting in the experience you don’t want.
We as human beings always live in the feeling of our thinking. So the first step of changing our reality is to recognise our thoughts.
The thing is, we can’t stop thoughts popping into our mind, BUT, we can learn to allow that thought to pass by, this creates space for a new thought to pop in. If the thought makes you feel good then run with the thought.
Our emotions or feelings, sensations in our body are indicators of our thinking, if you feel bad it isn’t about the situation or event, it’s not because of your age or your hormones or the fact that you have put on weight etc. It is your thinking about the situation.
We all have good days and bad days, some days we wake up in a good mood and our day goes well and other days we feel fed up, sluggish and like there is a black cloud hanging over us. This happens even when nothing has changed. Proof that our reality comes from our thinking on the inside and not from our outside experiences.
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
“We only see what we know”–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]
Imagine you had no experience with insects and you were shown a green, hairy caterpillar.
You would be able to describe its physical characteristics, perhaps have an emotional reaction to it only because you had experience with the colour green, with hair.
Since you knew nothing about the life cycle of caterpillars, your knowledge is limited to what is directly observable.
Another interesting observation is that women who understand menopause as a medical condition rate it significantly more negatively than those who view it as a life transition or a symbol of ageing.
Menopause in Japan was viewed as a symptom of the inevitable process of aging, rather than a “revolutionary transition”, or a “deficiency disease” in need of management.
Therefore, the frame that Japanese women had on menopause was that it was a celebration of something important, a life stage, something positive rather than a negative reaction and a release of the fear of getting pregnant in some cases.
However, hot flushes and night sweats within Japanese culture seems to be increasing, with research conducted by Melissa Melby in 2005 finding that of 140 Japanese participants, hot flashes were prevalent in 22.1%.This was almost double that of 20 years prior.
Whilst the exact cause for this is unknown, possible contributing factors include significant dietary changes, increased medication of middle-aged women and increased media attention on the subject. The world is a much smaller place in how we interact with different cultures.
Even in the past ten years with social networks like Facebook becoming so popular, people are learning and taking on beliefs through reading, watching, listening and being convinced about issues that they were previously unaware of .
A Few Key Points
- Diet – more soy and less fat
- Expectation – expect to feel bad and you will do!
- Thought – thoughts are powerful
- Media – Question what you read, is this true? is this positi
Some of my own experience with menopause symptoms a few years ago after being diagnosed with breast cancer are discussed in an old blog post you can read here.
What has been your experience with menopause?
Have you got any useful hints or tips that helped you with your own experience of menopause?
If you would like help with your own menopausal symptoms. I have a special 6 session hypnotherapy offer for $600. Click here for more information