Your Forties - Your Health

Top Health Tips to be aware of In Your Forties

Pretty much any way you look at it, you need more energy in your forties. If you were a late family starter, you’ll struggle when your kids wake you up through the night because they’ve had a nightmare. You then attempt to function like a normal human being the next day and fail miserably.

If you didn’t do the family thing for whatever reason, chances are you’ve propelled your career to the highest limits meaning you are more or less married to your job and need just as much energy to cope with all of those demands. If you are one of the lucky ones who has managed to get that work-life, parent-life balance right then you’re well on your way to a happy transition into the next phase of womanhood.

An Important Time for Women

Your forties herald the beginning of the end of your menarche. For many this may come as a blessing but for others it will be a time of mourning. Everyone is different. Many women experience symptoms around this time such as hot flushes, vaginal dryness, dry skin and fluctuating moods. Ideally it should be a time for rest and relaxation to allow for that natural change to take place. Ideally there should be no uncomfortable symptoms. If there is, this is your body telling you it has become imbalanced and it needs some help to get back on track.

Traditional Chinese medicine

Chinese medicine can be an effective and natural way of tackling this problem with dignity and finesse. It works in harmony with nature and your body and mind to help your body to heal itself. After all, our body’s have an incredible ability for self-healing, they just get lost sometimes, fall into bad habits and can’t find their way out so-to-speak.

Food as Medicine

Following the principals of Chinese medicine means that during your forties, eating foods that will increase your Yin levels will help. Yin is synonymous with female energy; dark, deep, rich, earthy type energy. Foods that fall into this category include nuts and seeds, soups and stews made from organic, free-range animal bones, dark leafy greens and eggs.

Nourishing Exercise

Exercises that are beneficial for your body during this time are slower moving ones that get all the synovial fluid moving in your joints, move the blood around your body with a gentleness that encourages all your cells to work together. Some examples include Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong. These exercises work your whole body and train the mind to make gentle, slow precise movements, which are essential and quite meditative for this stage of life.

Every Breath Counts

The breath is something that is often forgotten about however is very easily at your disposal whenever you choose to consciously engage it. Breathing deeply into your abdomen and slowly letting it waft out of your lungs is an excellent way to benefit your Yin levels. Watching how you breathe by noticing how deep or shallow it is, is a good start. Then once you have mastered checking in with yourself to see what is happening, you can then start to manipulate it. Start by counting how long it takes you to breathe out and then start to increase it every couple of breaths by a count. Place your hands on your abdomen to ensure you are using your diaphragm. You never want to strain the breath but over time you will be able to train it to go for longer and to become deeper.

Breathing is a type of meditation but also has very powerful physiological benefits. It is calming to your nervous system, helping to decrease stress and anxiety. It serves to improve your lung capacity, which means you will take in more oxygen, which means your cells will be more energised. It focuses your mind enabling you to focus on tasks with precision, getting things done more easily. The breath can be utilized anytime, anywhere without any equipment, so it really is a useful tool.

Try Acupuncture

Research suggests acupuncture helpful for hot flushes. As far as treatment goes, you may wish to consider acupuncture if the home remedies are not sufficient. Recent research published late last year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology points to the effectiveness of acupuncture for reducing hot flushes. A group of women who were receiving therapy for breast cancer were experiencing hot flushes as a side effect of their treatment. Breast cancer treatment typically uses up a lot of Yin energy, which is why these women get hot flushes as a side effect, a similar mechanism to what naturally happens to women in their forties.

They went for treatment twice a week for four weeks and then once a week for eight weeks. 50 women were in the trial and they were randomly assigned into a drug therapy group and an acupuncture group. They were followed up a year later and the women were fairing similarly after this time. Not only did the acupuncture help to reduce the hot flushes but it also helped to boost libido, improve mental clarity and improve the women’s overall sense of wellbeing. The drug group however experienced some side effects such as headaches, nausea, and flushes getting worse before getting better. The doctor involved in the study is encouraging physicians to embrace this therapy as an adjunct for their clients as she says the results are highly unlikely to be as a result of the placebo effect.

Written by Rebecca Mar Young, Springday Chinese Medicine Expert.

Back to Health

Related Content
Top 3 Things to Think about in your Twenties
Female Health for over 30s: 5 Things to watch
Managing Menopause with Food
Eastern vs Western Medicine

What do you want to do now?

Take FREE 2 Week Trial or sign up for our email newsletter

Join Springday Today.

Follow us on Twitter