Discover how menopause affects your heart health and learn 3 simple lifestyle shifts that lower your cardiovascular risk and boost your energy in midlife.
Nourish your heart in midlife — fibre, movement, and mindful choices make all the difference.
Did you know that the #1 cause of death for women is cardiovascular disease and a subsequent stroke or heart attack...And the hormonal change of menopause creates a risk factor for poor heart and metabolic health in midlife women.
In order to prevent women from suffering, we need to talk about this!
I see meno/doc influencers online talking about HRT and how it can reduce your risk of heart disease by 40-60% depending on the study they picked without any context of our food system, the stressful lives we are living and the mountains of research we have on nutritional deficiencies that leave us over-fed but under-nourished in 2025!
I'm sorry but when our children have cardiovascular disease and there is a surge in millennials being diagnosed with insulin resistance and colon cancer, this is about more than our hormones.
It is time to blow this conversation open.
Let's look at what we know for sure...
The depletion of estrogen causes significant changes to your metabolic health in midlife;
Increased resistance as estrogen is not present to support insulin in managing blood sugar...can look like sugar cravings, anxiety, mood swings, weight gain around the middle and energy crashes at 2pm.
Cholesterol levels can increase as estrogen is at lower levels to support the liver in managing your lipid profile.
Increased insulin resistance, increased cholesterol levels, poor blood sugar management and weight gain, increase your risk of heart disease.
And your body is trying to tell you!
We have extensive research that links early onset, extensive and severe hot flashes with an increased rick of a cardiac event within the next 10 years. Your body speaks with one language and it is symptoms. Carson MY, Thurston RC. Vasomotor symptoms and their links to cardiovascular disease risk. Curr Opin Endocr Metab Res. 2023 Jun;30:100448. doi: 10.1016/j.coemr.2023.100448. Epub 2023 Apr 18. PMID: 37214424; PMCID: PMC10198127.
Here's what else we know about our risk factors for cardiovascular disease OUTSIDE of hormones and hormonal change.
Women aged 50 and older are the most sedentary cohort in society.
95% of women in North America are deficient in fibre that helps to clear excess hormone from the body, manages blood sugar, helps to lower cholesterol, helps you to maintain your ideal body weight and protects heart health
60% of the Standard American Diet is made up of processed foods, loaded with processed seed oils, sugar, salt and inflammation driving chemicals that help to drive heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Before you choose a patch or pill to slap a band aid on your hot flashes, you owe it to your body to step into your power and make changes that give your heart a fighting change in midlife.
Simple steps such as :
Adding more fibre to your daily food intake. (If you are hyper-focused on your protein intake, it's probably fibre you should have your eye on!)
reducing and eliminating sugar. (It's no secret that women report their hot flashes vanishing when they cut down on sugar and alcohol.)
Moving on a daily basis to get you body moving and breaking that stereotype of the aging stooped over sedentary woman.
What we know to be true is that changes in diet and lifestyle do not just cut your risk of heart disease...They REVERSE cardiovascular disease to guarantee you a long and active exciting next chapter in life!!!
Midlife hormonal change gives you a tremendous opportunity to get educated in the foods your body craves at this stage of life to stay healthy and energized and to find the support you need to build healthy lifestyle practices that boost your energy daily, increase your well-being as you age and extend your active years.
Strong hearts, strong women: midlife is the perfect time to rewrite your health story.
Scroll through the recipes on my website confident that your midlife heart health will be supported.