Hormone positive
bounce | lift | fuel | chill
Introducing my plan for self-care for everyone affected by cancer and menopause. It's how I am trying to take care of myself, and those in the community, as I navigate though the biggest transformation in my adult life.
I'm writing it as a series of posts published on Substack and shown here. In time it will become, I hope, a helpful guide on how we can navigate our way through.
This isn't just for those with cancer in the breast, and not only for those with hormone-positive cancer or genes. It's my description of what I've learned along the way since my diagnosis and consequent onset of menopause symptoms in the summer of 2020.
My substack
I post information where I trace out what I’m doing, what I’ve learned and then how I’m distilling all of the information I can get my hands on into a specific way of approaching self-care for this time of transition.
For me, and for anyone else in a similar situation. It’s how I’m putting building blocks in place for the rest of my life.
Hormone positive
I chose the name Hormone Positive as I wanted to find a way to react positively to the hormonal changes that had hit me, as they have so many of us, as part of the double whammy that is cancer and menopause.
It’s intended for every woman who is going through, or has experienced, both cancer and menopause regardless of cancer type, grade or stage - not just those with hormone positive cancers.
It’s how I’m putting building blocks in place for the rest of my life.
Some posts from Hormone positive
How it started
It was a random day when the penny dropped. It wasn’t a particularly significant event, and not a time of reflection like new year can be, but shortly after my 55th birthday I decided to sketch out what I’d do to look after myself in the months until my next birthday.
Bounce
By ‘bounce’ I mean weight bearing exercise, and weight bearing exercise that is as bouncy as is possible, for you, for now. It’s important for the health of our hearts, lungs, bones and for our mood because it’s one way to generate endorphins (our happy hormones). Weight bearing exercise is important throughout our lives but is worth revising how we approach it after a cancer diagnosis, so that we get the most from it.
Cancer + Menopause + Nordic walking. How I suddenly saw the link
I’ve been teaching Nordic walking, and loving doing it, for all of the time I’ve been a cancer exercise specialist. In 2013 I went to a conference about exercise and got chatting to the trailblazing Gill Stewart1 and I’ll never forgot the thing she said when I told her my plans for oomph: ‘You do realise that Nordic walking is perfect for your client group, don’t you?’. I hadn’t, but I have been an avid Nordic walker ever since that conversation.
Self-care: A pot of tea and an early bath
I’m writing this now because two of my counterparts are currently having a difficult time. Fellow cancer exercise specialists who have said they’re having a hard time at the moment. It’s a bit off piste, and not what I’d planned to put together for this month’s edition, but isn’t that just how life goes?
So, today I’m writing about self-care. We know thanks to Maggie Chapman[1] that menopause on its own can call for what she describes as ‘extreme self-care’, let alone the double whammy of cancer and menopause. We need to be able to relax (yeah, not that easy tho, I know…).
Oxytocin: ‘losing your Moxy is down to oxy’
When we think about menopause, and our sex hormones, we tend to focus on oestrogen, and to a lesser extent progesterone and testosterone. They’re not the only players here though. Oxytocin, nicknamed the love hormone, is what enables us to feel a sense of connection with others. It’s what we experience when we get a warm glow when we hug someone, snuggle with a pet, or hold an infant. It is, in some sense, one of the ways in which we feel love. Oestrogen stimulates the production of oxytocin[2].