Step 1: Gather information.
As the mix of hormones in your blood changes during your premenopausal years, you may notice the effects on your GI tract, both directly and indirectly. Estrogen is a GI stimulant, and its levels can change from making you have loose stools to dry ones. Indirectly, the hormonal load puts more and more stress on your liver.
Hormones have a big effect on how the digestive tract moves. When your levels of estrogen and progesterone change, like they do during menopause, pregnancy, menstruation, and before giving birth, so do your bowel habits.
Your liver is a recycling center, among other things. When hormones in the blood are no longer needed, it breaks them down so that their "parts" can be used to make more hormones. During menopause, your body makes a lot of hormones, like LH and FSH, in such large amounts that your liver may have trouble recycling them all and not have much energy left over for digestion. Use these tips from a wise woman to help yourself.
Step 2: Get the energy going.
Before you eat, bless your food out loud, say grace, thank the plants and animals that feed you, take a deep breath, and feel thankful. My mom's favorite way to avoid stomach pain and make sure she goes to the bathroom regularly is to eat and go to the bathroom at the same time every day. You might be surprised at how well this works.
Get yourself a cup of hot water (or herbal tea) first thing in the morning and bring it back to bed. Slowly sip it and chew on the bottom of your lip. Then lay on your back with your knees up and your feet flat on the bed. Put your palms on your stomach and take deep breaths. Start rubbing your belly gently in a spiraling motion: up on the right, across the middle, and down on the left. Soon, you'll start to feel the movement picking up speed. Slowly get up and go to the bathroom.
Step 3: Feed and skin tone.
Yellow dock root vinegar or tincture is a great help for women going through menopause who are having trouble with their stomachs. Constipation, indigestion, and gas are all gone when you take 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of vinegar or 5–10 drops of tincture every day. Yellow dock is recommended for women who are going through menopause and whose periods are getting heavier.
Dandelion is the best friend of everyone who wants a healthy liver and digestive system. It helps with heartburn, constipation, gas, and even the pain of gallstones. How does it work? Have a glass of wine made from dandelion flowers. Eat salad leaves that are high in omega-3s. The phytoestrogenic roots can be taken as a vinegar, tincture, or coffee substitute. A dose is 1-2 teaspoons/5-10 ml vinegar or 10-20 drops tincture with a meal.
Any kind of rhythmic exercise, especially walking, helps relieve gas and improves the way the intestines move (the movement of feces). According to Eastern wisdom, the liver likes to move around.
If you take tinctures of motherwort, fenugreek, vitex, or black cohosh every day, they improve digestion and help with the digestive problems that come with menopause. Or you could try some garden sage tea.
If you have trouble going to the bathroom because there aren't enough moisturizing and lubricating cells in your colon, slippery foods like slippery elm bark powder, oats, seaweed, flax seed, and seeds from wild Plantago (or cultivated psyllium) can help. This remedy can be made by adding a teaspoon (5 ml) of any of them, or better yet, all of them, to a cup (250 ml) of rolled oats and cooking them until thick in 3 cups (750 ml) of water.
Plain yogurt is my favorite way to ease stomach and gas pain. Sometimes even a small mouthful will make you feel better right away. Acidophilus pills also work. When I have long-term constipation or severe diarrhea, I use both.
Step 4: Stimulate/Sedate
White flour and too much grain-fed meat both slow down the digestive tract. Whole-grain foods, beans that are well-cooked, wild meats, and cooked greens all help it go faster.
To get rid of constipation, eat more liquids and soft foods like applesauce, yogurt, nourishing soups, and herbal infusions. Chew slowly and enjoy your food. Between meals, drink a lot.
Women who are going through menopause should not use bran as a laxative because it makes it harder for their bodies to absorb calcium. Instead, try figs, rhubarb with maple syrup, prunes, or prune juice.
Ginger tea with honey is a soothing drink that will warm you up and calm your stomach when it's upset. Ahhh. Try grating the fresh root and steeping it in boiling water, or put a tablespoon of the powdered stuff from your spice cabinet in a cup of hot water and enjoy.
Crushed hemp seed (Cannabis sativa) tea, which is high in essential fatty acids, helps women who are having trouble going to the bathroom because of menopause.
Herbal laxatives like aloes, cascara sagrada, rhubarb root, and senna are harmful to normal peristalsis and can make you dependent on them. I don't think they should be used except in very rare situations, like when a bedridden 90-year-old woman with constipation needs them to help her go to the bathroom.
Step 5: Use supplements.
When people take iron supplements, they often have constipation and stomach problems. A better way to get more iron and get rid of waste is to mix a teaspoon of molasses with 10 to 25 drops of yellow dock root tincture in a glass of warm water.
Step 6: Break & Enter
Enemas and colonics are last-resort techniques. They are not good for your health and may get rid of important gut flora. When you use enemas often, it's easy to get used to them. Stay away from them if you care about your health.
