Menopause is a time to pause and reframe. What do you want to be for the next phase of your life and how can you achieve that? One way might be to make time for yourself and for relaxation. You deserve it!

Modern living can be very stressful, especially for women of menopausal age who may be juggling household chores, career, children and ageing parents. Chronically elevated cortisol levels significantly increase the likelihood of severe menopausal symptoms, so it is important to recharge yourself - you cannot serve from an empty vessel.

Regular reflexology treatments can help with stress management. Whilst there is more to reflexology than relaxation, it does play an important role in the therapy because reducing stress can have many benefits to health and wellbeing.

The Impact of Stress

Stress leads to the production of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol over the sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, which throws the balance and aggravates menopausal symptoms. 

For example, fluctuating levels of progesterone and oestrogen can affect brain health resulting in anxiety, mood swings and rage. The incidence of depression has been found to double in perimenopause.

Stress also impairs bone strength because cortisol competes with progesterone for the receptors on the osteoblasts (the cells that form new bones and grow and heal existing bones) - progesterone promotes bone growth, cortisol inhibits it.

Countering Stress

A daily relaxation practice is the best way to manage stress levels. I find the analogy of a stress bucket helpful to understand why that is so important. Imagine an empty bucket that gradually fills up with stress over the course of each day. You need to keep emptying the bucket to prevent it from overflowing with stress.

Yoga can be a good way of emptying the stress bucket, as can meditation. You don’t need to do the same relaxation practice every day, the important thing is to do at least one practice daily.

And of course doing more of what brings you joy is a great way to counter stress! What have you stopped doing that you used to enjoy? What makes you laugh or feel happy? How can you bring more of those things back into your life?

Minimising Stress

We can’t eliminate stress from our lives and that shouldn’t be the aim anyway because some stress can be beneficial, for example the stress of a cold shower or exercise. What we can do is to minimise the unhealthy stressors that are within our control.

Managing blood sugar levels is a very important part of that because if our sugar level spikes after eating the subsequent drop leads to the release of cortisol. I can recommend listening to this interview with French biochemist Dr Jessie Inschauspe on the Feel Better Live More podcast ‘How to Control Your Blood Sugar’  or reading and using her book The Glucose Goddess Method.

In terms of physical activity, our needs change over our lifetime, so what was beneficial for you when you were younger may not be now. Excessive exercise can act as a stressor and exacerbate menopausal symptoms, so it is important to find a healthy balance for you at this stage in life. Dr Stacey Sims explains how to do that in this interview on the Zoe podcast: Stay Strong Through Menopause.

Sleep is crucial for emotional control and coping with stress, so optimising your sleep can help minimise menopausal symptoms. In my blog series on sleep I cover all aspects of sleep, but the most relevant here are my tips for good sleep hygiene and what to avoid in order to promote sleep.

How Can Reflexology Help?

Reflexology stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which counters the stress response. The soothing touch of a treatment alone is pleasurable and calming, especially the effleurage techniques. In addition, the application of pressure to specific points or areas is used with the aim of balancing hormones and calming the nervous system. For example reflexology for menopause will incorporate work on the areas corresponding to the hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenals for hormonal balance and the vagus nerve, cervical spine and sacrum for the parasympathetic nervous system.

You can find out more about reflexology for menopause in this interview with reflexologist and tutor Sally Earlam on the Well Well Well podcast: Reflexology Support for Menopause.

To conclude, reflexology treatments can be a part of a healthy menopause along with a daily relaxation practice and minimising stress through healthy nutrition, appropriate physical activity and good sleep hygiene.

Burnout is defined in the International Classification of Diseases as “an occupational phenomenon,” caused by unmanaged stress at work. It is not classed as a medical condition. Unmanaged stress in other areas of life can lead to the same sense of physical and mental exhaustion, for example stressful life changes such as separation or bereavement. Trauma often plays a role too.

Whether you call it burnout, exhaustion or fatigue and whatever the setting, the root cause is long-term, high-level stress and the early warning signs are shared. If the underlying problem is not tackled, symptoms only worsen and can lead to a chronic exhaustive condition such as chronic fatigue syndrome, ME, fibromyalgia or post-viral fatigue syndrome.

Warning Signs

As with many health problems that come on gradually, the ill health of exhaustion from chronic stress can start to feel the norm. Sufferers often push on through regardless, thinking and hoping that things will improve. Unfortunately, the signs and symptoms won’t just go away. They are the body’s way of warning that something is wrong and needs to change. 

The warning signs include:

• Waking exhausted
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Palpitations
• Feeling stressed with a normal workload or duties
• Low mood/tearfulness
• Sleep disturbance
• Anxiety
• Bloating or IBS
• Reacting badly to caffeine
• Poor tolerance of alcohol
• Increasing headaches or migraines
• Dizziness
• Brain fog or difficulty concentrating
• Short-term memory problems
• Pins and needles in the face
• Cold hands and feet
• Jangling, juddering or buzzing sensations in body
• Noise intolerance
• Panic attacks
• Bouts of exhaustion
• Unexplained pain in muscles and joints.

If you experience one or two of these symptoms, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are heading for burnout, but the more you tick, the more likely you are to be going that way. Awareness precedes transformation.

Coping Strategies

Another clue is what coping strategies you are using to get through each day and make yourself feel a bit better for a short while. These might include:

• Caffeinated drinks to stay awake
• Energy drinks to keep going
• Comfort eating
• Supplements to boost energy or calm anxiety
• Alcohol to calm down or get to sleep
• Antidepressants
• Sleeping medication
• Going to bed very early every night
• Screening calls to avoid conversations
• Withdrawing from social events
• Putting on a brave face
• Pushing yourself to perform to hide exhaustion from others
• Using exercise to build stamina to combat exhaustion
• Blaming external factors
• Taking time off work to rest
• Trying lots of different therapies.

If you ignore the warnings, they will get louder until the body says no and you are forced to stop. Action is required to feel better and avoid crashing completely to the point of being bedridden.

What You Can Do About It

If you think that you are heading for burnout, a small change can make a big difference to how you feel. And lots of little changes really add up, so start by making a small, positive change in one of the key areas below that influence wellbeing:

• Nutrition - How healthy and balanced is your diet? How could you avoid or cut down on sugar and refined carbohydrates? How about avoiding or reducing your consumption of caffeine or alcohol? How else could you improve your nutrition?

• Finances - Money is often an overlooked part of the health and wellbeing equation, but it is a key component. See my blog post Financial Wellbeing for tips in this area.

• Emotions - Do more of what brings you joy and makes you feel good, perhaps start by listing five of those things and then schedule those activities into each week, ideally at least one a day, whether that is a soak in a hot bath, ten minutes of meditation, getting out in nature, listening to or playing music, catching up with friends, having a massage or reflexology treatment, etc. You choose.

• Environment - Just as we need to work on our internal energy through healthy lifestyle choices, our external environment and the energy that surrounds us is also important to our health and wellbeing. Find out more in my recent blog post The External Environment: A Harmonious Home for Health & Wellbeing.

• Pace of life - This is an area that is often out of balance in burnout and one that I cover in my blog post Finding the Balance Between Activity and Rest.

• Relationships - The quality of our relationships affects our health and wellbeing more than many of us realise. A dysfunctional relationship with a partner, friend, family member or colleague can harm not only our mental health, but our physical health too, so it pays to work on maintaining healthy relationships. A really helpful way to do that is to look at relationships as emotional bank accounts. Find out more in my post How to Pay Into Your Emotional Bank Accounts.

• Movement - Physical activity can help dissipate stress and boost energy levels, so you may find increasing your level of physical activity beneficial. Build up gradually and be patient - it can take up to six weeks to notice a difference. Or maybe you have the opposite problem and are over exercising, in which case you could benefit from cutting back - even Olympians burnout!

• Life purpose and meaning - Dr Rangan Chatterjee goes so far as to say that "the single best way of living a calmer, happier life is to do it with a strong sense of purpose.” For inspiration in this area, read my blog post What is Your Life Purpose?

Do bear in mind that making a change in one area of your life can have a positive impact on other elements too, so you don’t need to tackle them all head on straight away! Less is more, so start small to avoid adding to that sense of overwhelm.

Further Resources

Mental Health UK have lots of suggestions on the Burnout page of their website. And The Chrysalis Effect have an online programme that you can follow to avoid crashing completely or to aid recovery. The Stress Solution by Dr Rangan Chatterjee is also an excellent resource for stress management.

One way to achieve greater resilience to life’s challenges and to live more fully is to be mindful: bringing greater awareness to what you think, feel and do.

 “Mindfulness is sometimes seen as a form of ‘meta awareness’, which means awareness of awareness,” Kristin Neff. 

It can be a powerful antidote to stress, anxiety, unhappiness and exhaustion, but it is not a quick fix and needs to be practised daily over several weeks before the benefit can be felt. Ultimately, it is a lifetime’s work.

In this post I will focus on becoming aware of daily activities that we tend to do automatically without giving them much attention, such as eating, drinking, showering, dressing, driving – you get the picture. The habit of concentrating on doing the mundane things in life well and deriving pleasure from those activities can set us up for success in bigger, more important things if we apply the same care and attention. In the same way that a musician practices by playing scales or an athlete trains with drills to enhance overall performance.

The chocolate meditation is a good introduction to this idea. It also works well with a raisin if you prefer that, or it could be adapted for use with any other food that you enjoy.

The chocolate meditation:

• Put a small piece of the chocolate on a plate and really look at it: the colour, any pattern, its shape, the textures or anything else that you notice about it.

• Then smell the chocolate and take in all the aromas.

• Now put it in your mouth and let it just sit on your tongue, don’t chew or swallow it.

• Notice all the different tastes from that one piece of chocolate.

• Notice how it feels sitting on your tongue.

• Notice the automatic actions that you may be having to suppress to keep it there.

• You will no doubt be salivating and will need to swallow, but keep the chocolate in your mouth for as long as possible, noticing how the tastes and sensations change.

• Really listen as you swallow.

• Once the chocolate has dissolved away, reflect on how that experience differed from how you usually eat chocolate.

• Try it again with another piece…

How much richer would your life be if you approached more of it with that amount of attention? And how many unhelpful habits have you developed without realising it? Becoming aware of our thinking and doing can be liberating.

It can be helpful to choose a different activity to pay attention to each day or week, whether that is drinking your tea or coffee, cleaning your teeth, getting dressed, walking or whatever you like. 

If you would like to explore mindfulness further, I can highly recommend Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. Also, the Art of Mindful Living page of the Plum Village website provides plenty of mindfulness practices.

Just as we need to work on our internal energy through healthy lifestyle choices, our external environment and the energy that surrounds us is also important to our health and wellbeing. And if you have a chronic health problem, such as a chronic exhaustive condition, you can get so wrapped up in how your body feels that you can forget how important your surroundings are to feeling better. It is that outward look that I am going to focus on here.

By surroundings I mean the area where you live as well as your home, but it is the latter that we have most control over, so that is a good place to start.Three key aspects to a harmonious home environment are having a tidy space, addressing any tensions with the people who share it with you and appreciating what you have.

Tidy Space

This year I have been taking part in a quarterly decluttering exercise with the view to creating space for the new to manifest, whether that is a personal goal or a material object. It has been a really interesting exercise.

I have found that the trick is to declutter little and often. So start small, picking one area of your home that bugs you, say a drawer or a shelf, and set a time limit to work on it - that could be 10 minutes or up to an hour. The trick is not to over face yourself so that you don’t do it at all or that you can’t face doing it again. You can always come back to it to complete the task another time.

Enjoy the glow of satisfaction at having decluttered that space - even better if you donated some items to charity or made some money by selling your unwanted stuff! Then schedule a time to do some more, whether that is finishing that area or moving on to a different one. Weekly is probably a bit optimistic (as I have found out!) but monthly or quarterly is a more realistic goal.

Even if you consider yourself to be neat and tidy, you will be surprised at how much potential there is for a sort out. You could even do some digital decluttering, clearing out old emails or electronic files.

Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships play a significant role in wellbeing and healthy aging and none more so than those in the home environment. If there is a person in your home that makes you angry or upset, what impact is that having on your health? Is there a conversation that you are avoiding with that person? If so what? How can you address it?

I can recommend Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg for guidance on healthy ways to relate. And you may find some helpful coping strategies in my recent blog post How to Experience Anger in a Healthy Way.

Appreciating What You Have

The little things really do matter, so it is important not to overlook what you already have in your home that enhances your sense of wellbeing. What do you have in your home that you love? Is it where you can really appreciate it?

Equally, is there anything in your environment that you don't like and can get rid of to make space for something that you would enjoy?

Bringing to mind each day three things that you are grateful for in your home and life can engender a greater sense of contentment. First thing in the morning or bedtime can be a good time for that. To make it a regular practice, try hooking it onto another daily habit like when you have your morning cup of tea or coffee (or other hot drink of choice) or when you get into bed at night.

Your Local Environment

You can also have some influence over your local environment if there are elements of it that bug you or you think could be improved in some way.

If litter annoys you, is there a litter picking group that you can join or can you go out on your own? Where I live we have the Reading Adopt Your Street (RAYS) initiative through which the council provides litter picking equipment if you commit to tidying a street or footpath local to you on a monthly basis. Your local council may have something similar.

You can also report littering and fly tipping through the Love Clean Streets portal for your local area.

Or maybe, like me, you would like to see more wild flowers in your local area. Through the Rewilding Reading project run by the council, I have been able to ask for some verges near me to be mown just once a year so that the wild plants can flower and set seed to the benefit of residents and wildlife alike. There may be an initiative like that near you. Or you could join in with Plantlife's No Mow May and Let It Bloom June campaigns by allowing your lawn, if you have one, to flower in those months instead of cutting it. You could also grow wild flowers in pots or borders in whatever outdoor space you have.

Or if it is more street trees that you would like, you could contact your local tree wardens or become one yourself. See the Tree Council website for more details about that.

So whether it is tidying up a space in your home to improve the vibe, working on how you relate to those you may be living with, appreciating the good things in your home or improving your local environment, your health and wellbeing is set to benefit from your efforts. For more ideas for improving your home environment, have a look at my blog post How to Create a Healthy Home.

In the past, most women would not have lived long enough to go through the menopause, but now most women survive to the age when the menopause occurs. In the intervening centuries, attitudes towards the menopause have changed enormously, from it being associated with witchcraft in ancient civilisations and treated as a disease in more recent centuries, to it now being recognised as a natural part of the ageing process and a new phase in life. As reflexology tutor, Sally Earlam says “Menopause can be a new beginning: a time when our sense of purpose as women can change enormously.” Hear hear to that! Rather than seeing menopause as something to be feared, we can see it as an opportunity for transformation and growth.

To clarify, menopause is complete when menstruation is absent for 12 consecutive months, the median age of which is 51, but it can be anywhere between the ages of 45 and 55, and can develop before or after this age range. About 1% of women reach menopause before the age of 40, which is referred to as Premature Menopause. About 5% of women reach menopause between the ages of 40 and 45, which is referred to as Early Menopause. Perimenopause is the lead up to the menopause when symptoms may begin, but it is not medically an official condition and there are no 'clinical' ways to diagnose it. This can be the most challenging time when hormone levels are fluctuating most - like puberty in reverse!

Some women sail through the perimenopause and menopause with very few or no adverse effects, while others struggle with debilitating symptoms that can negatively impact relationships and careers. The most common symptoms are hot flushes and night sweats, other common ones include anxiety, fatigue, low mood, insomnia, difficulty concentrating, memory problems and low libido.

A healthy lifestyle and managing stress well can help protect against these symptoms, so if you want to prepare for a positive menopause, it pays to start early in adulthood. But it is never too late to make lifestyle changes, as they can help alleviate existing menopausal symptoms and support healthy ageing. The five areas to look at are: nutrition, exercise, relaxation, sleep and purpose, which I will explore in another post.

So how can reflexology play a role in a positive menopause? While reflexology itself may not directly treat or cure menopause, it can potentially help alleviate some of its symptoms and improve overall wellbeing during this transitional phase in a woman's life. By intentionally working with reflexes, acupressure and pleasurable touch, reflexology can help calm the nervous system with the aim of supporting key organs and balancing hormones to aid sleep, improve mood and enhance wellbeing.

Hormonal Balance

As the name suggests, reflexology uses reflex points. A reflex is when stimulation of one point on the body brings about a response in another point or area. Reflexology uses thumb, finger and knuckle pressure to stimulate specific points on the feet, hands or face and the corresponding part of the body. Certain reflex points correspond to the glands involved in hormonal regulation. The most relevant to the menopause are the hypothalamus, pituitary, pineal, thyroid and the ovaries. The aim of stimulating these reflex points is to promote hormonal balance, potentially easing menopausal symptoms.

Reflexology for the menopause also incorporates the application of pressure to specific points (known as acupressure) on the foot and leg that are linked to hormonal balance - the same ones used in acupuncture.

In a study into ‘The effect of foot reflexology applied to women aged between 40 and 60 on vasomotor complaints and quality of life,’ Gozuyesil and Baser concluded: “the results showed that reflexology might be effective in decreasing vasomotor problems and increasing quality of life in women in the menopausal period.”

Stress Reduction

Under chronic stress, the adrenal glands produce cortisol and adrenaline at the expense of oestrogen and progesterone, so chronically elevated cortisol levels can increase the likelihood of severe menopausal symptoms.

Reflexology has a calming effect on the nervous system through the soothing effect of touch and the stimulation of reflex points associated with the brain, spinal cord and nerve bundles, which all helps to counter the stress response, promoting a sense of calm and balance. Personally, I find reflexology to be the most profoundly relaxing of treatments! It gets me into that alpha brain wave state between sleep and wakefulness associated with meditation. 

As well as regular reflexology sessions, a daily relaxation practice can help counter chronic stress, whether that is meditation, a hot bath, being in nature or whatever soothes you. Guidance on such self care forms an important part of a treatment.

Sleep

Many women experience disrupted sleep patterns during menopause, which can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health. By promoting a state of relaxation conducive to restful sleep, reflexology can help with insomnia.

Indeed, in their research study, ‘The effects of Reflexology on sleep disorder in menopausal women,’ Maryam Asltoghiri and Zahra Ghodsi concluded that “reflexology is beneficial for improving sleep disorder in menopausal women.”

Enhanced Wellbeing

Menopause is a significant life transition that can impact a woman's physical and psychological wellbeing. Reflexology sessions provide an important opportunity for self care and a sense of agency at what can be a challenging time. I certainly always feel better in myself after a reflexology treatment - lighter, revitalised.

Reflexology has been shown to help with anxiety, fatigue and low mood associated with the menopause. For example, in a study into ‘The effects of foot reflexology on depression during menopause,’ Mahdavipour et al. concluded that “The findings indicated that the foot reflexology technique can be effective for reducing women's depression during menopause.”

To conclude, reflexology in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle can support a positive menopause by working on the key areas of: hormonal balance, stress reduction, improved sleep and an enhanced sense of wellbeing.

If you would like to explore reflexology for the menopause further, do get in touch for a chat about it or to schedule an appointment by emailing wendy@rookeholistic.co.uk or calling me on 07528 708650.

Sources

‘The effects of Reflexology on sleep disorder in menopausal women,’ Maryam Asltoghiri, Zahra Ghodsi, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012, 31, 242-6.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042811029788

‘The effect of foot reflexology applied to women aged between 40 and 60 on vasomotor complaints and quality of life,’ Ebru Gozuyesil, Muruvvet Baser. Complement Ther Clin Pract, 2016, 24, 78-85.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27502805/

‘The effects of foot reflexology on depression during menopause: A randomized controlled clinical trial,’ Fatemeh Mahdavipour, Zahra Rahemi, Zohreh Sadat, Neda Mirbagher Ajorpaz. Complement Ther Med, 2019, 47,102195. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31780002/