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hormones, hot flashes, cancer, osteoperosis
So, I wondered if anyone here has comments on Suzanne Somers and vitamin A.
I know lots of you read Grant's breast cancer book and liked it. Suzanne had breast cancer. She skipped some of her doctors' recommendations on what to do about it. They are saying the cancer eventually spread to her brain over the long term. (Certainly not quickly though.)
She used so-called "bio-identical" hormones for anti-aging, and wrote a book about them. According to some, she took loads of these daily.
She had some unique ideas about diet, if I'm remember properly some were about food combining. (Like eating just fruit for breakfast and not combining fruit with other foods).
In her last years she broke *many* bones in several falls (neck, spine, hip...etc). I worry that the hormones might have backfired to cause worse osteoporosis than if she didn't take them. I worry that the hormones might have led to more cancer too.
Brain issues can lead to falls, but in turn , she had some brain issues due to hitting her head in the falls. It is said she had swelling in the brain. Double whammy there. In my life I've seen how falls are a vicious cycle for my oldies. Her latest video blog posts show that she was having trouble with short term memory.
Hard to find a picture of her face without loads of makeup. Her face did look puffy. And she was dyeing her hair to the very end.
One of my first inclinations is to say that some (smart) people might have a suspicion that they need to swerve away from the mainstream...
But sometimes the idea to DO NOTHING is much better than to do an alternative complex SOMETHING.
What you *don't do* is often extremely important.
I'm sad she had a lot of pain at the end with all those broken bones!
She did make it to her mid-seventies and a good number of people will never reach that age, especially cancer sufferers.
None of us are getting out of this alive, or without aging. Sometimes I think we all just need to realize that we are just going to wear out and no amount of tinkering is really going to stop it.
She appeared to live with a sunny attitude and high energy.
One of my favorite tenets is that all toxins matter, and don't really understand why a health nut would slather on makeup and hair dye, and double true in retirement.
Didn't know who she was. She earned her living by looking good, so it is no wonder that she paid particular attention to her appearance right up to her old age. For any actor, their looks are their greatest asset. Sounds terrible for not-famous people like me. Then age is your greatest enemy.
I am not sure how much we can trust people who try to capitalise on their health advice. Health and money don't go well together. That's why I'm rather sceptical about anyone who makes a living from 'selling health'. Health should be a birthright, but today we're so far from health being a widely available resource. Partly because of the healthcare system.
Her upbringing, judging by the wikipedia article I read, was abusive, lots of friction in the nueclear family. Her father was despicable, unhelpful in guiding her through the turbulence of adolescence. There is a widespread lack of good fathers in our society. It's an endemic of western society.
Quote from Hermes on October 31, 2023, 11:40 am...
I am not sure how much we can trust people who try to capitalise on their health advice. Health and money don't go well together. That's why I'm rather sceptical about anyone who makes a living from 'selling health'. Health should be a birthright, but today we're so far from health being a widely available resource. Partly because of the healthcare system.
...
Sigh, so true. I wish this body came with an owners manual. The closest we get to "a manual" is traditional knowledge, tastes and preferences, and intuition.
In my own life I know a person who was given hormones and he has had parallel problems to Suzanne Somers. I really am starting to suspect that taking hormones might lead to osteoperosis, cancer. Strangely, (or not, given our upside down world) those are things that they are prescribed to help. I think it affects personality and mood too (anyone who has had PMS knows what I'm talking about). And of course, now he has hot flashes.
We know that osteoporosis can come with menopause. Instead of trying to put off meno with hormones, maybe we should instead delve into the interaction between VA and meno. I'd say that there is a ton of interaction based on my experience.
You know where I'd start? Hot flashes are so similar to what you experience when breaking a fever. In my opinion, your body sends out VA's to fight germs. Are VA's being sent out of the liver during meno, perhaps because it is trying to balance changing hormones? Are the VA's floating around causing trouble with the bones? Of course by that age, most of us have a pretty good store of them. Perhaps the occasional woman that I meet who sails through meno is a person who has managed her VA better (for whatever reason).
Whenever something is as mysterious, un-understood and hard to fix as hot flashes, I can't help but wonder if VA is involved.
https://themessenger.com/health/fecal-transplant-menopause-symptoms-crohns-disease
I found this ^ anecdote so interesting, because it said that a small amount of (purposeful) fecal transfer between menopausal mother and adult son was enough to create menopausal symptoms in the son.
Then, at the very end of the article it mentions another anecdote in which a small amount of fecal transfer between a mother and an obese daughter was enough to create obesity in the mother.
Gosh. I link this to Suzanne Somers because I think hormones are very interesting and very sticky and go down similar pathways to vitamin A. I can't help but wonder if Suzanne actually went down the exactly wrong path with all of her hormone replacement.
I also, in my mind, I think about the male pattern baldness and all of this "sticky" hormone problem..
Perhaps we're talking here about sluggish body functions and inability to get rid of things. I always experienced more VA headaches during hormones and getting MOVING helped more than anything. Laying there, miserable, did nothing.
(as I've stated on other threads lately I've been looking into skin brushing for moving lymph along). Perhaps VA toxicity results in more sluggish lymph movement.
I would never do hormone replacement. It feels just so wrong. There are so many ways naturally to balance hormones, like relaxation, sunshine, good food choices, going early to bed, good sleep, reducing artificial light etc. Our hormones are out of whack because of a reason. That reason needs to be changed, not hormones taken. Our body is so intelligent it always does the right thing. We are stupid and mess it up.
Cross post from white bean thread.
There are some interesting menopausal examples in my female line (all sharing lots of DNA). All had a few cups of caffeine and moderate amount of sweets a day. None were the type to binge on sweets. None were overweight (obese women are more likely to flash, google says).
#1. I think she has often been vitamin-A overloaded, has had lupus diagnosis (when young, which went into remission), never took birth control pills, facing the end game now (kidney failure) and has had a horrible time with meno. Bed-soaking flashes and osteoporosis until finally she tried the horse estrogen for a decade. Decided it made her and her doctor too nervous about cancer. So they took her off and she went right back to flashes etc. Then she got did get cancer anyways. Also higher tobacco and alcohol than the other two.
#2. The other is my grandmother who I don't think was vitamin-A overloaded. She also had some sort of cancer but not as serious as the other. No flashes, no osteoperosis. Smoked until middle age, moderate drinker.
#3. And of course there is my case: seriously vitamin-A overloaded, birth control pills for ten years when young. My guess is that I was heading down the path of #1 above but Grant showed up just in time, literally the year I hit meno at 55 and I'm 62 now. The first years were pretty rough with the flashing. I still have a few mild flashes a day. I actually do think I already see better sleep with the soluble fiber after one month, and fewer and shorter flashes. I don't think I have osteoporosis, I posted about a fall I took last month in which I was OK. Avoiding sweets isn't that hard for me, and it never helped me with hormones. (aside: I eat sweets in the morning if at all. Never after dinner. In fact, I never eat anything after dinner, a lifelong habit of mine due to my chronic vomiting history. I like to go to bed with an empty gut). Non-smoker, moderate drinker.
Could menopausal problems also be about kidney issues that are not really detectable yet? (the damage of long-term VA overload). I often wonder about my itching problems with sweat, are my kidneys damaged? Yet another thing that can keep one up at night. I would guess that as the soluble fiber helps the body detox then the burden on the kidneys becomes less. But healing probably takes time.
Are both VA overload and hormone overload due to "soluble fiber deficiency"? Hmm... MAYBE! But only on a "normal" diet. Probably no amount of soluble fiber would have helped me when I was eating sticks of butter slathered on liver and eel with a side of butternut and washing it down with cream and cod-liver oil.