Chicken Liver Pâté

The natural hormonal change of peri-menopause has been given 34 symptoms to it’s diagnosis by the conventional medical field.

This list can feel down right scary; and it is not in your head, you really can feel ‘out of control’ in your own body and ‘not yourself’ when you notice the discomfort of hormonal change. Hormones, like our health, are holistic and impact every aspect of our health and body. You may feel like you are falling apart.

One problem with taking a natural process in a womans life and attaching all her physical symptoms to that chapter is that any further examination of those symptoms as being related to our ongoing health issues is bypassed. Ongoing male bias in the medical profession means that we ALREADY do not understand how many major health issues show up in a womans body. Now we are attaching 34 distinct messages from the body to a natural process and we are OK with bypassing other causes.

Hands up if your doctor has told you that you are ‘normal’ when you feel fat, unhappy, under-slept, anxious, achey, exhausted or uncomfortable at midlife?

Perimenopause is a new normal for women and that new normal includes becoming a powerful advocate for your health and a guardian for your nutrition.

Exhibit A is this horror scenario: Recent research informs us that for midlife women, numerous and uncomfortable hot flashes, especially when experienced early in our perimenopausal journey are an indicator or a cardiac event later in life. Turns out that the first indicator for a woman of poor cardiovascular health is the vasomotor response of a hot flash. Cardiac arrest is the number one cause of death for women and according to The Lancet; “Cardiovascular disease in women remains understudied, under-recognised, underdiagnosed, and undertreated.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2821%2900684-X/fulltext
Herber-Gast G, Brown WJ, Mishra GD. Hot flushes and night sweats are associated with coronary heart disease risk in midlife: a longitudinal study. BJOG. 2015 Oct;122(11):1560-7. doi: 10.1111/1471-0528.13163. Epub 2014 Nov 7. PMID: 25377022.

(If you are worried about your heart health, try my Cherry and Hibiscus Smoothie here.)

If our medical provider is not asking you questions about our diet, exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress, gut health, and full medical history when prescribing hormone therapy at midlife, you are in danger of taking hormone therapy as a band aid for your cardiovascular disease.

Find yourself a care provider who takes your symptoms seriously, finds time to gather your entire medical history and is committed to finding the root cause of each of the symptoms you are experiencing

Another area of womens health where we see medical bias, bypassing the root cause of perimenopausal symptoms is the area of our health that results in symptoms of:
Fatigue
Thinning hair
Anxiety
Dry skin and
Muscle tension and aches
These five symptoms of perimenopause are widely experienced by midlife women and can be related to our thyroid function. They warrant a deep dive into our nutritional status.

Midlife and perimenopause is when your body is going to get most vocal with you about nutritional deficiencies that occur on the Standard American diet are for anyone who eats process foods, drinks alcohol and coffee or takes a medication that causes a drain on daily nutrition.

The language your body speaks is symptoms and all of the above perimenopausal symptoms can be ameliorated by switching to a diet of dense nutrition.

Symptom-free hormonal change is going to be supported by a diet rich in protein, fibre, healthy fats, magnesium, iron and other minerals. You need the foods your cave-women self would eat to fully support your body through the stress of hormonal change and to build health for a vibrant next chapter.

When we fall into the normal range of a thyroid hormone test, it does not mean that our diet contains enough of the minerals required as co-factors for the chemical reaction to change T4 into active T3 for us to be free of the symptoms of dry skin, hair loss, fatigue, muscle tension and anxiety.

Organ meats such as liver, load easily absorbed haem iron, the B group of vitamins and other minerals into our body so our thyroid gland, stressed out from managing an increasing erratic menstrual cycle and short on sleep, can get the nutritional support it needs.

I have worked with numerous exhausted and frazzled women, exhibiting symptoms of nutritional deficiency at midlife, who give me an UGH! when I mention liver but do not feel that same UGH! about the meat patty served under the golden arches or a chemical filled conventionally farmed pork hot dog.

We need to give our heads a shake and get real about which foods drive our very best midlife health and which foods tear our health down.

This recipe for Chicken Liver Pâté is delicious, super easy to make and absolutely packed with the dense nutrition your midlife body is craving.

When it comes to cooking with liver, always source organic as the liver is the filter to all of the chemicals and toxins that enter the body.

I make this dish on a monthly basis with the knowledge that I am going to feel a burst of energy as the B vitamins and mineral dense nutrition is absorbed into my body and that my hair, nails, skin, immune health and thyroid gland will thank me.

This is the place to start to eat your way out of your fatigue and feelings of being frazzled.

Ingredients

1 lb organic chicken livers

1 small onion, chopped

2 tbsp + ½ cup butter, divided

3 tbsp Madeira or sherry

2 large cloves garlic, 1 crushed, 1 finely sliced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

3 sprigs thyme, leaves only

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. In a large pan, saute the chicken liver and onions in 2 tablespoons of butter until the livers are browned and the onions are tender.  Add the madeira, garlic, mustard, thyme and lemon juice, and cook uncovered until most of the liquid is gone.

2. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, and blend until a smooth paste along with the rest of the butter, *adding 1 tbsp of butter at a time* until it has reached a smooth creamy consistency.  Add sea salt and black pepper to taste.

3. Transfer pate to a glass container and cover and refrigerate before serving.  Enjoy pate on celery, carrots, cucumbers, peppers or Mary's crackers.

Liver is dense nutrition. Rich in iron and B vitamins, liver is mineral dense and supports immunity with easily absorbed vitamin A. If your body is run down and depleted then you should include liver in your diet.

Midlife Symptoms Do Not Mean You Are Broken

It is easy to feel like you are broken when your peri-menopausal symptoms are out of control and your life is being wrecked by uncomfortable and embarrassing hot flashes and covers-on, covers-off night sweats.

If you gain weight around your middle and none of the strategies you used to drop pounds in the past are working for you, it feels like your metabolism is working against you and your midlife body hates you.

Symptoms such as hair loss, vaginal dryness and night time anxiety are just so personal and distressing, it is easy to feel like a victim and as if something has gone horribly wrong with your brain or body.

In reality, peri-menopause, the ten years leading up to menopause (defined as being one year without a period) is a natural period of hormonal change that your body is primed to manage.

Research tells us that our experience of menopause is influenced by how we think about this stage of life, our opinions and feelings about what is to come in the next chapter. If we have heard horror stories from our Mother or have a deep fear of aging then we are going to experience more and stronger symptoms than if we feel good about living a full and happy life and are comfortable with the thought of aging.

In truth, our body is talking to us all of the time and the language it uses is symptoms.

It helps when we know what these symptoms are telling us but unfortunately it is extremely hard to get this information in a conventional medical environment. Most doctors only have 1 day of their training allocated to the science of nutrition and 2.5 hours on the menopause. Your medical practitioner may not have the answers you need about what you are experiencing at midlife and will revert to the standard advice of “Eat less and Exercise more”. This is unhelpful for midlife women and can further imbalance hormones.

New research is telling us that a healthy microbiome helps us to metabolize estrogen and can be preventative of hot flashes and reduce our risk of breast cancer.
We now know from science that early and strong hot flashes are an indicator of poor cardiovascular health and are a predictor of a future heart incident.
We are learning from the dedication of female doctors such as Dr Lisa Mosconi, who want to expand the knowledge base of womens health, that the early indicators of dementia and Alzheimers disease in women come during menopause and we need to be eating to protect our brain health.

Medicine is a male dominated practice/industry and research is only now being initiated into many aspects of womens health, including menopause.

Our symptoms do not mean that our midlife bodies are broken but that our body is talking to us and telling us (some times in a very loud voice!) that we need to come home to ourselves at midlife and pay full attention to our health.

What is required from us at midlife when we hear these messages is not a band aid to cover them up, but a return to self-love and self-care and a health journey that sees us making changes to our nutrition and lifestyle, one baby step at a time. You need to be gentle and compassionate with yourself and at the same time form boundaries, delegate what exhausts you and start to fuel yourself right.

Menopause is a very unique female opportunity to return to our bodies, listen in and offer ourselves deep nourishment and self-care so that we cruise through this natural period of hormonal change with energy, flexibility and confidence to emerge in the best health of our lives at midlife.

Let’s get started!

Rewiring your Brain for Happiness

“Remember happiness does not depend on who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.
- Dale Carnegie -

As we raise a glass and pass through another New Years Eve and into our second year in a global pandemic there has been a dramatic change in the way we talk about our mental health and happiness.

We used to be all about aiming high, hustling and pushing through and now we talk about the importance of rest, self-care and connection for our mental health.

Positive mental health has a huge impact on our physical health. Our heart health, body weight and sleep all improve when our mental health is optimal. There are repeated studies that demonstrate that a womans experience of her own menopause depends on her attitude towards this natural hormonal change with women who view peri-menopause as a negative process experiencing more and stronger negative symptoms in the process.
Yanikkerem E, Koltan SO, Tamay AG, Dikayak Ş. Relationship between women's attitude towards menopause and quality of life. Climacteric. 2012 Dec;15(6):552-62. doi: 10.3109/13697137.2011.637651. Epub 2012 Feb 15. PMID: 22335298.

The truth is that neurons that fire together wire together. This means that thought pathways that we travel along daily become our outlook on life and our worldview or as neuropsychologist Rick Hanson states “lasting mental states become lasting mental traits.”

The care and curation of our personal mental health needs to be a daily priority for all of us BUT especially for empowered midlife women who are family matriarchs, cross generational carers and mothers.

We can begin the journey of caring for our mental health with baby steps starting with only only minutes each day and building into.

Here is my three step starter plan for bringing more joy and calm to your life.

1. Turn off the news. News media is in the business of click bait and managing your reality. Human brains are wired to respond when they sense danger or threat and so news media gravitates towards violence and negative bias in it’s reporting. All of the good news stories go under the radar. Screening this constant low of negative information out of your life will bring you peace on a daily basis.

2. Begin a Gratitude Practice. Spend five minutes each evening thinking about your day and everything you are grateful for from the last 24 hours. When we make a practice of focussing our appreciation on the good stuff in our lives we wire in the pathways for more appreciation and gratefulness. A regular gratitude practice helps to relieve stress and eases pain. Taking five minutes each day to feel grateful improves your physical health over time and can positively change the brain function of people experiencing depression.

3. Get outside and walk in the fresh air. Taking time everyday to walk outside even for just 15 minutes reduces stress in the body especially of we can get near nature and greenery, even if we live in a city. Walking boosts circulation and promotes oxygen supply to the brain, it reduces stress in the body and has a positive impact on the microbiome of our gut. Repeatedly studies have shown us that our microbiome loves for us to take a walk during the day. We now know that the majority of the serotonin, our happy hormone is found in our gut and that the health of our microbiome directly impact our happiness and mental health. Getting up and walking your microbiome daily is a fabulous way to build happiness and health in your body.

Taking a few minutes each day in a consistent routine that supports mental wellbeing during a time in life when you experience significant hormonal change or during periods of hardship, keeps you grounded and free of anxiety. Mental self-care will support you to build an empowered matriarchal mindset that will help you to prioritize yourself at midlife and make positive choices for yourself.