MyMT™ Blog

I’m so pleased that I untangled our menopause symptoms. When I focused on healthy ageing research, I began to discover the incredible physical changes that occur throughout our body as we go through menopause. Changes which are crucial to understand when it comes to turning around hot flushes, bloating and weight gain in menopause. These symptoms are all related to our changing liver, our gut and our blood vessels which are affected by lowering oestrogen levels too.

When I began to understand what happens to our various organs when we go into menopause, which is the time of our lives when we are biologically ageing, it made sense to look at liver and gall-bladder function, especially when it came to weight loss. I started to make this connection because my current fitness and diet routine was not working. But I remembered that over 35 years ago when I had ‘another life’ as a student nurse and was working on the surgical wards, these wards were full of women who fitted the ‘typical’ profile for gallbladder surgery – they were in their 50’s, had lots of belly fat and often described feelings of bloating and a hardish lump and pain under their diaphragm. Sound familiar? I couldn’t get this image out of my mind when I began to feel bloated as I went through peri-menopause too. When I developed the bulge and ‘hard lump’ under my diaphragm, I remembered a leading Surgical Consultant explain to young Doctors one morning on the ward round, that the typical profile of a woman who developed gallstones and required a cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal) was, in his words, which I remember to this day, “Fair, Fat and Fifty”!  My goodness, as I went into peri-menopause and put on belly fat and experienced more bloating, I was becoming that woman too! (And don’t worry yourself about the ‘fair-haired’ bit, it can affect any hair colour!).

The gall-bladder plays a greater role in fat metabolism than we think during menopause. This is why I don’t encourage women to go on a really high fat, high protein diet until they have had their gall-bladder and liver function checked by their Doctor, especially if they have pain or discomfort. Mid-life is a time of our lives when our risk of developing gall-stones increases too. But even if we don’t have gall-stones or changed liver function, then we need to spend some time (around 6 weeks) improving our liver function and this is a big focus on the MyMT Transfrom Me weight loss programme.  

One of the main changes that occurs as we transition through menopause is that our gallbladder produces less bile. Hence, with the increased loads on our liver and gallbladder over the decades (e.g. alcohol, saturated fats, exposure to toxins, chemicals, medicines, sugar, additives and preservatives), as Carla Brady states in her 2015 article on Liver Disease in Menopause:

“For women, issues regarding liver disease are unique in that both age and hormonal factors influence the development and progression of various liver diseases, and it has been demonstrated that this interplay of factors negatively affects the course of liver-related health in postmenopausal women.”

Our liver and gallbladder help us to metabolise and absorb fats in readiness for energy production in the body. Fats also carry important vitamins. When fats are processed and broken down in the liver and gall bladder, they move to your mitochondrial cells. Every single organ, including our muscles and heart muscle, have mitochondrial cells. So, we need these cells functioning well to help us lose weight, reduce our hot flushes and enable us to stay healthy and energetic as we age. Fats cross the mitochondrial membrane with help from two nutrients, CoQ10 (Ubiquinol) and L-Carnitine, however, as we transition through menopause, both of these nutrients decline, so again fat uptake into mitochondrial cells for fat-burning can be compromised in mid-life women.

Add this to changing bile production, then our gall-bladder doesn’t move the fats as readily, which affects fat utilisation for our energy availability and can also make us feel bloated.

When we focus on the research for all of the organs that change during menopause, then we are able to reduce our hot flushes too.  The link between weight gain, bloating and hot flushes is important.  When we are overweight our blood pressure tends to increase, especially when we aren’t sleeping. But it’s also to do with loss of oestrogen, because we we lose oestrogen our blood vessels become more constricted. This leads to increased blood pressure in post-menopause in millions of women around the world especially if they are overweight. New research suggests that our blood vessels are under the control of our night/ day circadian cycle and a disrupted circadian rhythm can cause blood pressure surges at certain times of the day and night.  [Thosar, Berman et al. 2019].