Waste Product or Waist Product?
One of the things menopausal women hate most is the accumulation of fat around their waist. Even if you never had a fat waist before, you notice an increase in its size at menopause. No more hourglass figure. No more firm, flat belly.
Suddenly, every gram of weight you gain seems to end up around your waist. It’s as if everything you eat becomes a “waist product”!
It’s partly due to a slowing of our metabolism at the time of menopause. But it’s also due to aging. Mother Nature apparently thought it would be a good idea to make human females gain weight as we age. And it turns out that having a little bit of extra weight around our waist is evolutionarily a means of ensuring survival of our species.
Well, that’s all fine and good, but individual women aren’t thinking about survival of the whole darn species. We’re each thinking about our own waist! So, while a larger waist may be a product of aging, we view the whole phenomenon as a waste.
Speaking of waste, isn’t it odd that the word for our feminine middle is the same as the word for what’s an unimportant by-product?
When you eat food, your body absorbs the nutrients in the food and discards the left-overs as “waste products.” So, waste is junk. And the more junk food you eat, the more waste your body has to discard.
It turns out your slower metabolism at the time of menopause contributes to your waste products. The faster your body metabolizes food, the faster it uses the calories as fuel. But the slower it metabolizes food, the less efficient it is at utilizing the calories. So, more of them end up being labeled as “waste products” which end up around your waist as “waist products.”
Not only that. There’s another factor at play. It’s called “transit time.” Transit time is the time it takes your food to go from your mouth to your toilet. Of course, when you put it in your mouth, it’s food. When it reaches your toilet, it’s a “waste product.”
Foods with faster transit times produce fewer waste products. Plants fit in to this category. If you’re a vegan, your transit time is very fast … so fast that there’s hardly any time to form any waste products as the food speeds through your digestive tract on to the wasteland in your toilet.
That’s one reason why vegans tend to be thinner than meat eaters. The waste ends up in the toilet rather than around their waist.
Foods with slow transit times s-l-u-g their way through your digestive tract. As they do so, they start rotting. And all that rotting food turns in to waste products. Unfortunately, once they turn into waste inside your body, you’re stuck with them forever. Not only are they “waste products” that become “waist products,” they even wreak more havoc than that. They become something called “free radicals.” Free radicals are what cause cancers … all sorts of different cancers.
And other waste products are stored as fat. Of course, fat waste products end up around your waist. And they have a special significance of their own simply because they’re a waist product: They cause heart attacks!
So, it turns out that all this talk about waste products has more significance than meets the waist.
The waste that your body doesn’t want either ends up as a waste product or a waist product. If it ends up as a waste product in the toilet … hopefully soon after you’ve eaten it, it doesn’t become a “waist product.” But, if it takes a long time to become as waste product headed for your toilet, it ends up producing even more waste products that cause cancer or waist products that cause a heart attack.
It’s all so circular. But, no matter how you look at it, waste products are supposed to be waste products that end up in your toilet, not waist products that end up around your waist to cause heart attacks and cancer.
It would have been a whole lot better if Mother Nature had come up with some other way to ensure survival of the species as we age. Making waist products from waste products is just such a waste.
There’s a Very Fine Line Between “Ed” and “Ad”
It’s so difficult to get accurate information these days! Of course, the key word is “accurate.” There’s plenty of “information.” But how in the world are you supposed to separate what’s credible and accurate from what’s not?
The Internet was supposed to make information gathering better. But, has it? Historically, if you wanted to learn about something, you went to the library. The library only offered books that had been published by a publishing company, with all the vetting that went with it. To get a book published, an author had to prove his or her credibility to a publisher.
As a result, the number of resources available were limited, but the information in those resources was credible.
Nowadays, there aren’t many publishing companies. That’s because we’ve become primarily a paperless society. And, since there are fewer publishers, there’s more self-publishing.
And self-publishing means that anyone can publish anything … credible or not!
Information gathering from the Internet is even worse. It enables people with no credentials at all to promote any thing at all. So, now you’re exposed to people making false testimonials about products, unreliable people selling products, and uneducated people “educating “ you about the science and facts behind their products.
At the crux of it all is the unfortunate fact that there’s a very fine line between “ed” and “ad.”
“Ed” is educating. It’s what your teachers did when you went to school. Education is purely informational for the sake of knowledge itself. It has no agenda. It consists of principles that you can apply to anything. And education is powerful because it equips you with a knowledge base to assess products on your own. When someone educates you, they do not stand to gain something based on how you utilize that education.
“Ad” is advertising. Advertising is necessary for selling. It’s a means to get people to buy something. It has absolutely nothing to do with educating. It has to do with convincing, regardless of facts. And it includes distortions of the truth and false claims.
So, with all the resources in our Internet-governed, paperless world, you are the target of a whole lot of advertising disguised as educating.
Advertisers start out with a kernel or two of “educational” information. That gets your attention. It’s the hook. But then, they start veering off into information manipulation so that you assume they’re still educating you.
They aren’t.
They’ve switched gears without your knowledge. And now there in the process of advertising.
But, since they’ve gotten you “primed” with the initial educational tidbit, you’re now gullible and ripe for a sale. And you don’t even realize that your “educator” has transformed into a “advertiser”!
An educator’s reward is your understanding. Knowledge is the currency. If you learn, the educator was successful. If you don’t, they failed. Not so for the advertiser. The advertiser cares only about his or her own pocketbook. The goal is the sale. If you buy, it’s a success. If you don’t it’s a failure.
With so many people being much more adept at advertising than educating, you hardly recognize the difference.
Don’t fall for this. Avoiding it is very simple: If there’s a product involved, run!
No person with any product will ever tell you the truth, period. They don’t care about the truth. They care about the sale. And they’ll say whatever they have to say to make the sale. Your knowledge is of no interest to them.
So, get your education from resources that are purely educational. Make sure the educator doesn’t have any biases, doesn’t belong to any company that sells products, and doesn’t stand to gain anything by what you do with your new knowledge.
Any person who has a personal interest in your choice of products is not an educator. They’re an advertiser.
This fine line between “ed” and “ad” is subtle. But once you know how to recognize it, you’ll spot it easily. And when you do, leave the website, turn the channel, or find another YouTube video.
And always remember, if there’s a product involved, run!
Face Fat or Belly Fat; That is the Question
It seems that life is all about trade-offs. You just can’t have things both ways. For most matters, we’re pretty used to these trade-offs. We know we can either spend our money or save our money. We trade freedom for companionship when we enter into a romantic partnership. We accept that we have to forfeit sweet treats if we want to maintain our girly figures. These trade-offs make sense to us even though we don’t necessarily like them.
Menopause entails trade-offs, too. There are all sorts of options for which there are advantages and disadvantages. And, typically, the advantages of one are the disadvantages of another.
But one of the most frustrating trade-offs during menopause is fat. Well, not just the presence of fat, but rather it’s location. And, for most women, it boils down to a trade-off between face fat and belly fat.
Menopause is all about shifting fat.
In some ways, it’s no different than any other hormonal phase of your life. Puberty involves changes in your fat, most notably, gaining it anew. Pregnancy, too. All sorts of things get fatter when you’re pregnant. And menopause creates another instance in which shocking fat shifts occur.
But there’s one that just doesn’t make sense. It’s the shifting of fat from your face to your belly.
Before menopause, your face is full, round, and plump in all the right places to give you a smooth, expressive, soft appearance. And your belly is flat, firm, and naturally hourglass shaped.
But, at menopause they both change. And it’s as if they can no longer co-exist. You can have one or the other, but not both.
With the shifts of fat at menopause, most women notice a loss of face fat. The nice, smooth contours give way to a loss of collagen … which makes your face hollow. And since your skin now has less volume beneath it, it starts to sag. The sagging skin makes you look old. And this is without even acknowledging the wrinkling that accompanies this undesirable look.
But at the same time you’re losing that plump, fullness in your face, … you gain it in your belly!
Your hourglass waistline turns into a box. With time, it begins to look like an apple: Pudgy, bulgy, with rolls of fat that cause your skin to stretch.
So you end up with less face fat and more belly fat. It’s a trade-off.
We all hate both of these changes, so we seek to fix them and restore them to their pre-menopausal state. But what we discover is that doing so is a trade-off too. It becomes an issue of face fat or belly fat.
If you lose enough fat to be satisfied with your belly, your face looks absolutely skeletal. And the more skeletal it looks, the more your skin sags and the older you look.
And if you gain enough fat to fill out your face to its former contour, your belly is absolutely huge!
It’s as if Mother Nature has issued you an ultimatum. Face fat or belly fat; that is the question. You have to pick one or the other, and you can’t have both!
You can immediately spot the women who have chosen face fat. They waddle around with beautiful smiles on their perfectly-contoured faces … but they have long ago forfeited any hope of maintaining their figures.
Those who have chosen belly fat are scrawny, wiry, frail, creatures with boney faces covered with sagging skin.
Looking in the mirror is painful for either.
While most trade-offs make sense, this one does not. It’s a cruel trick of nature. No woman should have to choose between face fat and belly fat.
I mean, the two areas encompass completely different parts of our bodies. They aren’t even nearby one another. And, faces are a lot smaller that bellies. How did they become linked in this fat trade-off?
It would have made sense to trade off face fat for neck fat. Or belly fat for butt fat. But face fat versus belly fat? That’s just … well, unjust!
Maybe it is intended to be some sort of consolation. If your face looks freakishly thin, at least you can have a nice belly. And if your belly is fat, at least your face is pretty.
The problem is that we all want both. Face fat versus belly fat isn’t a question. It’s a curse.
Leakage and Shrinkage
We live in an era of name changes. The reasons for name-changing vary, but some are quite baffling to me. Let’s see, the “trash man” is no
longer the trash man. Now he’s a “waste management worker.” A woman who stays at home rather than going to a job somewhere else used to be called a
“housewife.” But, now she’s a “household engineer.” A waiter at a restaurant is now called a “server.” And a secretary is now an “administrative assistant.”
More interesting than these name changes themselves are the reasons for the name changes in the first place. Most often, the need for a name change has to do with being politically correct. Alternatively, it’s about making the people who function in a certain capacity feel better about their job titles.
Such name changes for job descriptions always struck me as things outside the realm of medicine. But not anymore. Now, doctors are
“providers.” But so are nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants. A distinction between them might hurt someone’s feelings.
More commonly in medicine, names for diseases change from time to time, but it’s usually due to a new discovery or refinement of information that makes the former name outdated, or even inaccurate. But that’s changing, too. The need for political correctness and making patients feel good about themselves has even begun to induce name changes for actual diseases.
Recently, the name for some of the symptoms of menopause have changed.
Two of the most bothersome symptoms of menopause are Urinary Incontinence and Vaginal Atrophy.
“Urinary incontinence” is when you leak urine unexpectedly. You may dribble when you laugh, sneeze, cough, jump, or lift a heavy object. Or, you might just leak spontaneously with no activity at all. It’s very common at menopause, and there are many ways to manage it or cure it.
“Vaginal Atrophy” means that your vagina shrinks … literally. You notice symptoms like vaginal dryness, itching, burning, and pain with intercourse. But the reason all these symptoms occur is because you lose the vitally important estrogen on which your vagina depended. So, without it, your vagina cannot survive. Thus, it begins to shrink … or disappear. And the medical term for that is “Vaginal Atrophy.” But, it’s something that you can prevent entirely.
So, the terms “Urinary Incontinence” and “Vaginal Atrophy” are both absolutely accurate for the symptoms they designate. I’m all about simplicity. Why have complicated names when you can use simple ones? In simplistic terms, Urinary Incontinence and Vaginal Atrophy are nothing but “Leakage” and “Shrinkage.”
But they both recently underwent a name change. And their names were not changed simply to “Leakage” and “shrinkage.”
Why the name change for two perfectly accurate names?
Well, for the sake of political correctness and good feelings, of course … just like so many other name changes in our lives today!
It turns out that medical authorities claimed that women found the terms “Urinary Incontinence” and “Vaginal Atrophy” demeaning. So, they changed their names. Not only that, they merged the two entities into one single entity … even though they don’t always or even typically occur together. Maybe that was to make women feel like they had only one problem instead of two.
Now, instead of having “Urinary Incontinence,” and / or “Vaginal Atrophy” you have “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause.”
Oh, and you can’t name anything without giving it an acronym!
So, Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause is “GSM.” That makes it sound nifty.
Now, I have no problem with name changes. But I do have a problem with focusing on the wrong thing. And, in my opinion, all this focus on the names of these entities rather than on education about them and treatment of them is an example of putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.
The fact is that, while many women suffer from these two symptoms of menopause, no one talks about them! And, since no one talks about them, women are not educated about them. And if your so-called “education” involves using long fancy terms like “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause,” you might have trouble learning what you need to know in order to do something about it.
I think it’s best to keep things simple. Patients don’t need fancy, complicated names for their symptoms or diseases. What they need is comprehension. With such convoluted, merged, modified names, patient comprehension is lost.
If you start dribbling urine, but refuse to speak up about it or have no idea that there are ways to correct it, what good is it to give
it a different name? That’s putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble. It would be a whole lot more direct and useful to just call it “Leakage.”
If you start having vaginal itching but have no idea it’s a warning signal that your vagina is shrinking, what good does it do to change
the name to make you feel better about it? That’s putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble. It would be a whole lot more direct and useful to just call it “Shrinkage.”
I think it would be a whole lot better for women if medical professionals focused more on educating their patients and offering them options
for these symptoms instead of changing their names.
I mean, rather than naming it, they should be taming it. Who cares what you call it when the goal is to forestall it? Why label it when you
should just disable it? And why give it some nifty acronym to abbreviate it when you can just alleviate it?
I imagine that this name change to “Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause” involved a whole host of physicians getting together, mulling
over new names for hours or even days. It would have made a lot more sense if all that time and energy had been focused on how to educate more women about the urinary and vaginal changes that take place at menopause and offer them solutions. And labeling them as “Leakage” and “Shrinkage” would not have required much of an explanation. But, every woman would certainly understand them immediately.
Who Moved My Estrogen?
Have you ever heard of a book written by Spencer Johnson, M.D. entitled Who Moved My Cheese? It’s a tiny little book of about 97 pages, easy to read, and unforgettable. It’s not really about cheese, though. It’s about change, and the cheese is a metaphor for something that disappears, forcing those who are affected by the change to adapt.
I absolutely love that book, and I think it applies to many things in life. It certainly applies to the change called menopause. But, in that case, I guess we would call it Who Moved My Estrogen?
Who Moved My Cheese is about four little characters in a maze. Two of the characters are mice. The other two are humans. And in the middle of the maze is a big mound of cheese. Every day, these four characters wake up, go out and eat the cheese, and haven’t a care in the world.
One day, one of the mice, named “Sniff,” sniffs the cheese and notices that it’s starting to smell a bit rancid. Shocked at this change, he stands back to see the entire mound of cheese. And, low and behold, he realizes that the mound is shrinking!
“Oh, my!” Sniff exclaims. “This cheese is gonna disappear some day.” And with that, Sniff takes off and goes in search of new cheese. He foresees the inevitable. And he acts on it in advance, before it hits him over the head like a ton of bricks.
The other three creatures in the maze just keep on going through the motions: Wake up, eat the cheese, and assume things will always stay the same.
Eventually, one morning, they wake up and find that all the cheese is gone.
They’re shocked! They didn’t see this coming!
The second mouse, Scurry, says, “Oh, well, the cheese is gone. I’m outta here.” And he hits the road to go find new cheese. He hadn’t anticipated the change, but as soon as he came face-to-face with it, he wasted no time in adapting to it by leaving his comfort zone to accommodate the change.
The two little humans fume. They have temper tantrums. They stomp around screaming, “Where’s my cheese?” “This isn’t fair!” “That cheese had better come back, or else ….” They resist the change. They refuse to adapt to it
After days of stonewalling, “Haw,” one of the humans, decides that he has no choice. The cheese is gone. It isn’t coming back. And that means he must force himself to go in search of new cheese. He isn’t happy about it. In fact, he’s terrified. He’s a creature of habit. He doesn’t’ like change.
But, the way he sees it, he can either stay put and die or he can venture out and manage his new situation.
So, with angst and trepidation, he forages beyond his familiar surroundings. As he does so, he discovers new things. “Gee,” he says, “If it hadn’t been for the disappearance of the cheese, I never would have learned about any of these other things. I would have kept doing the same old thing for the rest of my life, oblivious to the fact that there are so many other options available.”
And, as Haw continues his search, he becomes more comfortable, more knowledgeable, and more excited about his future. Because he finally decided to do something productive to make the best of his new-found situation, he saved his life and actually made it better.
“Hem,” the other human stayed and stewed. He refused to budge. He had his head stuck in the sand and his feet rooted right where he stood. No one and nothing was going to force him to change. And, because of his stubborn attitude, he suffered from starvation and died.
As I said, the story is about change. And the question is, “Which of these four creatures most resembles you?” How do you adapt to change?
Menopause is change. You’re going to wake up one day and wonder, “Who moved my estrogen?” So which scenario will depict you?
Will you be pragmatic and proactive by planning ahead for the inevitable? If so, you’ll educate yourself about menopause before your estrogen disappears. That way, you’ll recognize that it’s dwindling in advance, and you’ll be able to prevent the shock of its sudden disappearance.
Alternatively, will you be instamatic like Scurry, and adapt immediately? Will you spring into action as soon as you realize that the change has occurred?
Or will you be dramatic like Haw, balking at the fact that you have no choice but to adapt, dragging your feet, dragging out the process, but figuring it out as you go along?
Or, will you be like Hem, and meet a traumatic end?
There’s no avoiding it. Your estrogen will not last forever. One day, you’ll wake up and wonder, “Who moved my estrogen?”
Which Relatives are Relative to Your Breast?
Think about your relatives. Which are “immediate” relatives? And which are “distant” relatives? Which ones “matter” most?
Of course, they all matter! But, face it: You hold some more closely to your breast than others.
Speaking of your breast, do you know which relatives are relative to your breast? I mean, in the sense of breast cancer? Read more
Mama Comes Unglued
Mama! Good ole’ mamma. She’s everybody’s favorite. She takes care of us, pampers us, spoils us, and understands us. Mama is selfless. Never does she place her needs above ours. Her schedule yields to our wishes and desires. In essence, there’s nothing Mama won’t do for the ones she loves.
Mama! What would we do without good ole’ Mama? Read more
Generally Beneficial or Specifically Detrimental?
How many times have you heard that something is “good for you”? Do you ever wonder if it’s good in general? Is it good for everybody? Is there really anything that’s all good, no matter what? Is there anything that’s actually good for everybody, regardless of your situation?
The fact is that most things have both benefits and detriments, advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons. Hardly anything is completely risk-free.
Much of what you hear about health matters boil down to what’s generally beneficial: “Carbs are bad for you,” “Estrogen is dangerous,” “Red wine is good for you.”
So, is that it? Do any of these beneficial things have any detriments? And do any of these detrimental things have any benefits? Read more
Menopause Isn’t About Hot Flashes; It’s About Heart Attacks!
Mention the word “menopause” to a woman, and her response will have something to do with hot flashes.
Go ahead. Try it.
Menopause is All About Compensation
What does the word “compensation” mean to you?
As with most things, it probably depends on context.
