Dr. Simone’s Mind Space

Perimenopause

Introducing a new and for more than 50% of the global population a lifetime incidence being affected by. Natural menopause does not occur suddenly. A period called perimenopause usually begins a few years before the last menstrual cycle. There are two stages in the transition.

 

Perimenopausal Symptoms

During perimenopause, women may have various symptoms. Symptoms differ among women and may range from mild to severe. Hot flashes, an intense sudden build-up of body heat, are the most common symptom. Some women have no symptoms.

 

Symptoms

Mood changes. Mood changes and irritability are usually due to a combination of sleeplessness and hormonal swings. Some women find the menopausal transition to be psychologically stressful; some develop clinical depression. Women may be more at risk if they have experienced severe PMS mood swings or have a history of clinical depression. Perimenopausal depression usually goes away within a few years after menopause. In general, depression is less common during the postmenopausal years than in the premenopausal ones.

 

Treatment

Menopause is a natural condition. It is not a disease that needs medical treatment. However, some women seek treatment for the relief of perimenopausal symptoms.

 

@drschwank

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@optimalperformancezurich

 

References

https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/report/menopause#:~:text=Early%20Stage.,be%20sudden%20surges%20in%20estrogen.

Lifestyle factors and endometriosis

Many aspects play a role in our body-mind health balance and may contribute to the trajectory of medical conditions. Women’s health issues frequently, remain undetected or mistakenly diagnosed. One of these issues, which affects an estimated of 10% women globally, endometriosis. It has enormous implications on the quality of a woman's life. This severe inflammatory condition occurs  globally in 190 million women of reproductive age (1). Endometriosis can cause constant and intense pelvic pain, especially during periods, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and infertility. Endometriosis is the cause of 70% of all chronic pelvic pain cases in women in the United States (2). The cost of illness burden is significant in women with chronic pelvic pain, particularly the productivity costs (3). They are the greatest contributor to overall costs. Given pain is the most significant contributor, priority should be given to improving pain control in women with pelvic pain (4).

 

• It is a chronic disease associated with severe, life-impacting pain during periods, sexual intercourse, bowel movements and/or urination, chronic pelvic pain, abdominal bloating, nausea, fatigue, and sometimes depression, anxiety, and infertility.
• There is currently no known cure for endometriosis and treatment is usually aimed at controlling symptoms.
• Access to early diagnosis and effective treatment of endometriosis is important, but is limited in many settings, including in low- and middle-income countries (5).

Treatment

Treatments to manage endometriosis can vary based on the severity of symptoms and whether pregnancy is desired. No treatments cure the disease.

A range of medications can help manage endometriosis and its symptoms.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and analgesics (painkillers) like ibuprofen and naproxen are often used to treat pain.

Hormonal medicines like GnRH-analogues and contraceptive (birth control) methods can also help control pain.

These methods include:

• pills
• hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs)
• vaginal rings
• implants
• injections
• patches

References

 

 

References

1. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-03-14-global-study-shows-experience-endometriosis-rooted-genetics#:~:text=Endometriosis%20has%20enormous%20implications%20on,depression%2C%20anxiety%2C%20and%20infertility.
2. Payne JA. Acupuncture for Endometriosis: A Case Study. Med Acupunct. 2019 Dec 1;31(6):392-394. doi: 10.1089/acu.2019.1379. Epub 2019 Dec 13. PMID: 31871528; PMCID: PMC6918512.
3. Armour M, Lawson K, Wood A, Smith CA, Abbott J. The cost of illness and economic burden of endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain in Australia: A national online survey. PLoS One. 2019 Oct 10;14(10):e0223316. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223316. PMID: 31600241; PMCID: PMC6786587.
4. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/endometriosis
5. https://www.endometriosis-uk.org/endometriosis-facts-and-figures

@drschwank

@unesurcent

@optimalperformancezurich

Lost in translation

LHave you experienced such a situation yourself, where just completely foreign to all around?

Staying in Shanghai for my research after a quick stop over in Hong Kong, which I’ve visited early 2020 and early 2024. Yes, it’s different too, but by no means as much as the city I so love and lived in 10 years ago. The feeling of being all so foreign and seen as a stranger, is quite a unique encounter in today’s globalized world. It’s interesting to face this situation as a white woman. It’s such a rare encounter and I guess a large majority in the west hadn’t encountered it, on any of their global trips. It’s in a way a good thing for the white majority to experience, makes one more humble, but also at the same time more entitled, a strange combination.

How do we cope with the loneliness, such an experience brings?

How to deal with the frustration of being lost in translation?

How to avoid abusing the privileged status and lack of social control?

 

@drschwank

@unesurcent

@optimalperformancezurich

Regaining your balance

Currently on a global research trip in Hong Kong and Shanghai, combining research and clinical work in Europe at the same time is a stretch, considering the 7 hours time difference. On top being in a place that’s become very foreign and without Madarin Chinese proficiency hardly possible to navigate without a local support. Luckily, I do speak Mandarin Chinese and used to live in a very different, way more international Shanghai. Getting around is therefore possible for me, without getting lost.

This daily challenging bridging of obligations in all directions and feeling it’s never enough. That’s the hardest feeling of all. So what can we do to keep up with the best personal balance?

Reflections over regaining and reshaping balance in body and mind:

Rebalancing nutrition and healthy eating habits, sleep, exercise, family obligations, work, and other social activities. Wow, it’s a lot!

Take one step at a time! Seek help to mediate, if it’s too difficult to cope with all the tasks and people involved. Be humble to what you know and seek help from experts, that’s very important!

@drschwank

@unesurcent

@optimalperformancezurich

@omni.vitality

Global female networking

Global female networking

 

Travelling globally for research, takes a creative mind to figure out the options available to make it happen. I love to combine exercising and meeting people, a walk and even just a quick coffee in between meetings, lectures, running errands, and heading to the airport.

Flexibility and creativity are queen.

 

The more we take care and accommodate to the external situation of time zones, season, weather, and our personal rhythm, the smoother the transitions. Female bodies are complex, the hormones, and cycle being impacted by change of time zones, mixing up the circadian rhythm. Be mindful and balance your daily obligations well.

Personally, yoga and running are a very helpful tool to adjust to Jetlag. Yet, I do notice myself to be more hyper vigilant, potentially the circadian rhythm that’s out of balance, the digestive system, and the hormonal balance in the body.

 

Note from a frequent global traveler:

I did understand to slow down, planning less meetings, and being more go with the flow, attuned to my body and mind’s needs!!

 

@drschwank

@unesurcent

@optimalperformancezurich

Lifespan development of a modern woman

In today’s society, women’s roles have shifted. They’re no longer out of reach when it comes to power. They’re in power over the most relevant subject of all societies. To decide over their fertility, their trajectory in terms of when and if and how many children they envision to have. Birth rates have dropped drastically over the past decades and are continuing on a downward spiral.

It is about time to inquire what factors mainly play into, why women choose to postpone their family planning, have very few children, children by themselves, children at a late stage or decide to be childless.

Governments around the world would like to know the answer to these questions.

In our global research project, analysing women’s fertility planning, we want to find the root of this global trend.

As women we need to put ourselves out there and explore the world, connect and exchange with other women from different social backgrounds. These exchanges provoke reflection and potential change of old norms.

That’s exactly what I’m doing right now; flying to Hong Kong to connect with global women at an event at Upper House on understanding female health.

@drschwank

@omni.vitality

@optimalperformancezurich

@unesurcent

 

 

Lifestyle, nutrition, and healthy habits

Today’s conversation, live from Hong Kong with Katia, Nutritional Therapist, NLP coach, and the founder of Omni Vitality. I offer solutions for menstrual problems and women’s hormonal conditions such as PMS, endometriosis and PCOS, and help women regain control of their bodies and emotions. This is the first of many more episodes to come. Stay tuned.

 

@drschwank

@omni.vitality

@optimalperformancezurich

@unesurcent

Fertility plans

How do women decide over their bodies and their reproductive health choices?

A globally extremely relevant question many governments wrap their heads around. In globalized societies fewer and fewer women decide to have kids and if they do, postpone it too much later than in the past. A situation that follows with its consequences, women naturally deciding to have fewer kids, but in addition having lower rates of success to conceive, due to a drop in fertility related to older age. 

 

The global multi-center study on women’s fertility plans in China, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, asks  women about their reproductive decision-making and potential options:

 

• The Swedish welfare state assumes that it is easy to have children, despite that the birthrate dropped significantly.
• How do government incentives and child policies for (i.e. parental leave, financial support) impact family planning of young people in childbearing age?
• Todays women choose to get pregnant later in life, in order to invest in themselves first through education and career.
• Difference in attitude to freezing eggs between women and men?
• If it is not possible to get pregnant, what do women / men think?
• What are these couples willing to invest for having a child?
• Why don't women today want to have children?
• Why do young men not want any children?
• How do young women and men define family?
• How do young people in childbearing age describe what expectations there are of being a family?

Results of the study aim to inform public health officials, governments, companies, and families, and individual women and men themselves. We aim to improve women’s reproductive health care experience and reduce a constrain on either side of their family planning choices.

@drschwank

@optimalperformancezurich

@unesurcent

Fertility anxiety

Living with the stress of not being able to convince is a huge problem. It affects both partners and can impact the individual, the couple’s relationship, and cause mental and physical problems. The more we focus on individual, as well as couple health care, the more preventative measures can be put in place. Think carefully if you’d like to reach out to a specialist to get support. Whom that could be? A personal or couple’s therapist or both? 

Reach out early to have someone by your side to follow your journey and whom you’ll feel familiar with in some of your likely most vulnerable moments in life.

Acknowledge yours and your parent’s feelings, the IVF life’s a rollercoaster. Nothing is more challenging in life, than an unpredictable, stressful period with no clear ending, no matter how desired one of them is. It’s also random, how hard you even try. The randomness and unpredictability, the mind game that causes you to pay attention to only that one outcome, to hold a healthy baby in your arms. Something you may think so many achieved parenthood effortless and at times even unwanted. That can trigger even more emotions and feelings of why me?

 

 

How to cope?

Try to maintain a healthy daily routine of both physical and social activities. Routines rock, especially when so much uncertainty is all around you. 

 

@drschwank

@optimalperformancezurich

@unesurcent

Social norms Fertility choices in urban Chinese women part two

Today’s episode is live from Shanghai during an Asian research trip in reproductive health. The current global research project focusses on the declining birth rate in China. A global trend that China is following with declining birthrates and women’s alternative choices of family planning. Despite initiating a three-child policy and governmental incentives, including monetary benefits of having multiple children, the birthrate in 2022 has dropped in China to a record low of 1.2 children. Even if financial reasons have been discussed widely, it’s the social norms, as well as the individuals in reproductive age themselves, who grew up without siblings, surrounded only by other only children. A further topic is the lack of access to professional information and education surrounding childbirth and the perinatal period, leading to child-birth and parenthood related anxiety.

The research project investigates urban Chinese women’s own reproductive choices and their causes. Dive in and stay tuned for more.

 

@drschwank

@unesurcent