Here is a simple recipe for delicious, organic yogurt with high quality protein.  And Stonyfield Yogurt has six different yogurt strains which makes for very healthy yogurt.

Mix the following:

• * 1 cup Stonyfield Organic Yogurt
• * 1 scoop Whey Protein Isolates, chocolate flavor (we use Gold  Standard 100% Whey Protein Isolates, Double Rich Chocolate)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whey protein is an excellent protein for women going through perimenopause, menopause and afterwards.

If you’re looking for a quick and healthy lunch, one with a complete protein, then rice and beans are great to have.  I had some left-over brown rice in the fridge.  I dumped it out in a skillet and made Spanish Rice using the following ingredients:

• * Brown rice, cooked (or white rice)
• * Salsa (from a jar)
• * Corn, I used a little frozen
• * Extra virgin olive oil

Heat the above four ingredients in a skillet, stirring occasionally.  Serve with refried beans.  By the way, the beans and brown rice are good for our hormones, girls!

This is the only kind of lunch meat I eat on a regular basis.  It is all natural and does not have nitrates, nitrites, or any of those bad additives that aren’t good for us.  Did you know that nitrates and nitrites can affect women’s hormones?  We have enough trouble with hormones without additives in foods making them worse!

Hormel Natural Choice comes in three types of turkey (which is what we always eat), ham, and beef.  The great thing is that it’s delicious on sandwiches and chef salads!  And if you’re interested, here’s a link for Hormel Natural Choice coupons.

Hormel Natural Choice is the only pre-packaged lunch meat that I usually buy.  It’s all natural and so I don’t have to worry about any unwanted nitrates, nitrates, or MSG that can mess up our hormones.   It’s gluten-free and doesn’t contain any artificial ingredients.  And the great thing is that it tastes good!  We usually get the Oven Roasted Deli Turkey, Honey Deli Turkey, or Smoked Deli Turkey.   The ham is good, too.  We haven’t tried the beef yet, but I imagine it’s just as good as the turkey or ham.  Here is their site where you can get Hormel Natural Choice coupons.

Natural is always best.  Natural, whole foods are healthier than processed ones.   Natural hormones are better and safer than synthetic ones from all that I’ve read and from what two of my doctors have told me.  I doubt my gynecologist would tell me that, though.  I think all he prescribes are the synthetic hormones.  My regular doctor prescribes natural, compounded from a pharmacy progesterone.  If your hormones are giving you a lot of trouble, if you gain weight and can’t seem to lose it, or you’re having any of the many symptoms that estrogen dominance can cause, you might want to check into natural progesterone.  Natural is the best way to go.

Oh, what women have to go through with their hormones! First, it starts at an early age around twelve or so when many experience cramps and that “yuchy” feeling once a month. That goes on for a while until they reach their thirties when many start experiencing the symptoms of premenopause which include PMS, weight gain, infertility, fibroids, endometriosis, etc. This goes on until perimenopause when symptoms such as greater weight gain, irregular periods, heavy bleeding, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, thinning skin, fatigue, memory loss, etc., begin to occur.

I wish I had known in my thirties and especially my forties what I do now. So many things affect our hormones such as diet, lack of exercise, stress, hormones in our toiletries and in the beef we eat, toxins, etc. These things affect our hormones to the extent that our hormones get out of balance and start causing the above mentioned symptoms. I am now using natural hormone supplements prescribed by my doctor. Let me stress the word…natural. They are not synthetic. They are compounded by the pharmacist, made especially for me, and are definitely making a huge difference in the above mentioned symptoms.

If you’d like to read more, then I recommend reading this chapter called“Hormone Balance Made Simple” by Dr. John R. Lee, who was “an international authority and pioneer in the use of natural progesterone cream and natural hormone balance.”

You may be asking what in the world do money and enzymes have in common. Let me see if I can explain. When you have a certain amount of money, it’s easy to understand that the faster you spend it, the sooner you will run out. It’s the same way with enzymes. The late Dr. Edward Howell said, “It seems that we inherit a certain enzyme potential at birth.” Whatever we get, that’s it. So it’s like spending money, and the faster you use up your enzymes, the sooner you run out. So why are enzymes so important? Enzymes are needed for every chemical reaction that occurs in your body. Without enzymes, vitamins and minerals and hormones can not work … at all. That’s how crucial enzymes are for your body.

Some of you may be wondering exactly who was this Dr. Howell. Well, he was a doctor from Illinois who was the first researcher to discover how very important enzymes from raw foods are to human health and nutrition. In fact, in 1946 he published his first book about enzymes and kept researching after that.

Soy has helped a lot of women with hot flashes, and it helped me for a while. I found that eating 1/8 – 1/4 cup of soy nuts a day greatly diminished my hot flashes. I continued this for five months or so until….I started breaking out in hives. I’m not talking about a few hives in one small area. I’m talking about hives in several areas, some small areas and some large areas. I had them on my arms, my elbows, my hips, my thighs, my waist. I was miserable and the itching would be intense at times, so much so that it would wake me up during the night. I never had a food allergy before, but I learned that the best thing to do is keep a food diary. So that’s what I did. There were several foods (soy, wheat, barley, especially) that I had reactions to, and the hives would itch more after eating them. These were foods I’ve eaten my whole life and never had a problem. I found the common denominator between them was phytic acid, and soy has the highest content of phytic acid of all. I decided, for a while anyway, to elliminate all the foods that made me itch. After a couple of months, the hives went away. When the time for my appointment with an allergist finally came around, the hives were gone. I told her I thought it was the soy. She didn’t think so. After two different allergy tests, she said that she thought it was the soy. So after paying all the out-of-pocket medical expenses (our insurance isn’t very good), I didn’t know anymore than I did before I went to the allergist. I have continued to stay away from soy nuts ever since, but I was able to start eating everything else without any problem.

I had told a friend of mine about the soy nuts when I first started eating them, and she started eating them to help her hot flashes. When I realized it was the soy nuts that were causing my hives, I told her about it. She said that she had been itching some since she started eating the nuts. Well, after she heard about my experience, she quit eating soy nuts immediately and the itching went away.

Everyone is different, but if you are eating soy nuts on a regular basis, watch for any signs of an allergy…especially itching or hives! I’ve read that there are quite a few people who are allergic to large amounts of soy.

A lot of doctors prescribe synthetic hormones for hormone related problems.  After researching various sources through the years, I decided I would never use synthetic hormones myself.  I do use a natural hormone cream, though, natural  compounded progesterone to be exact.  My doctor gave me a prescription for it last year to help correct estrogen dominance that was causing me a lot of problems.  She had been through a lot of the same things I was experiencing and so she prescribed for me what she used herself.  And it made a huge difference and really helped to alleviate my problems.

I wish I had known about natural progesterone cream back when I was having PMS for one week or longer every month during perimenopause.    There are a lot of problems caused by estrogen dominance and natural progesterone helps to correct that imbalance in hormones.

If you’ve ever had a problem with PMS, then you can relate to feeling miserable during that time.  Some people refer to it as “pretty mean syndrome,” but I prefer “pretty miserable syndrome.”  True, irritabilty is often a symptom of it.  But a girl can feel miserable from PMS and not be mean.   The symptoms include but are not limited to the following:  backache, headache, bloating and weight gain,  anxiety, depression, food cravings such as chocolate (yum), cramps, fatigue, insomnia, water retention, mood swings, and the already mentioned irritability…sometimes major irritability.  I’m sure our family members can attest to these!  LOL   But for the poor gal experiencing a multiplicity of these symptoms, relief is sometimes hard to find and it’s just a matter of enduring until the symptoms pass.  There are some natural helps out there, though.  I’ve received some natural PMS relief samples that I plan to use which I think will be very helpful from what I’ve read.