Lipid shifts at midlife, interesting articles, and books worth a read
January roundup [2024]
Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and end to the year. I’m more than ready to say goodbye to 2023. Not that it was bad, but I’m just ready for a fresh start.
I have a lot planned for 2024, including doing some 4-week “fine-tuning” challenges. So before getting into all the goodies, I got a quick poll for you.
Topics for challenges
My book contains six lifestyle factor sections. Within each lifestyle section, there are fine-tuning chapters helping women master micro topics.
So, to get feedback and create accountability, I want to try doing these challenges together. And since nutrition is the first section, I thought we could start there.
Let me know which nutrition topic you’re most interested in. I’ve already written about micronutrients, but have my quiz ready to help you understand how to meet needs. But it might also be fun to do something else.
The first challenge is complimentary, while we will reserve subsequent ones for paid subscribers.
Study highlight: lipid shifts at midlife
The creeping (or shooting) up of lipids can catch many midlife women off guard. These include cholesterol, triglycerides, Apo B, and HDL. This can be incredibly frustrating for women who have made health a priority in their entire lives.
Research has been inconsistent linking lipid changes directly to the menopause transition (MT), although a majority show a relationship. A study in the November edition of the Journal of the American Heart Association, asked the central question of whether alterations in lipids during MT are primarily age-related or menopause-related.
The cohort of 2582 subjects from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) underwent an examination. Researchers noted two trajectories for lipid changes.
The first was referred to as the "inverse U shape" while the second was an increasing or low-stable "U shape."
Women with higher FSH levels and more vasomotor symptoms were more likely to see sharp rises in blood lipids with declines in HDL.
Upon further digging, I found a growing body of research linking FSH levels to lipid markers more so than estrogen. In short, women who have higher levels of FSH as they transition through menopause may be at higher risk. But we need more research.
“The observations of this study suggest that lipid parameters may increase at an accelerated rate during the MT and emphasize the importance of aggressive surveillance of blood lipids and MT‐related factors in women over the MT.”
- Wu et al , JAHA, 2023
Even in the U-shaped group, lipids showed a gradual rise 5 years before the last period. Because estrogen doesn’t decline until 2 years before, FSH could also cause this.
In one study, FSH rose about 6 years before menopause but rapidly increased 2 years before and stabilized two years after. I hope researchers continue to investigate the role of FSH because this is the first I’ve heard of it and it piqued my interest.
The assumption always seems to be “its menopauses' fault.” But I wonder why some women experience more dramatic lipid shifts around the MT than others. What is going on behind the scenes that could trigger this in women?
This is what we need to figure out. And as I see it, the aging factor is influencing it, so we need to be careful picking one over the other.
I’m working on a very important post that will get at what I think it is, so stay tuned.
Articles of interest
Oldster Magazine interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert as she dishes on being 54. Gilbert shares how she feels about aging, which is mostly positive and inspiring. She’s had amazing role models for aging in her family.
"When I hear people describe 60, 70, 80, or even 90 years of age as “old” that doesn’t track with what I watched growing up,” she says. “So I can keep deluding myself, I think, that I’m far younger than I am.”
She also describes the freedom she is experiencing in the second half of life “The first half was bound; the second half is free.”
In other news, Oprah announced she has been taking a weight loss drug. I’ve been wanting to write about this but found this article by cardiologist Dr Paddy Barrett that summarizes the research.
One key issue for midlife women is the loss of lean body mass. For typical calorie restriction (without high protein and resistance training) weight loss results in a 25% lean mass reduction, but the average in these weight loss drug studies is 38%.
Taking the drugs long-term is necessary, as weight regain occurs when they are stopped. And the expense and potential side effects are biggies, too.
Any thoughts?
Speaking of muscle, Stacy Simms wrote about how resistance training is finally getting the respect it deserves for health and longevity. She discusses the array of benefits, including functional capacity, the cardiovascular system, metabolic health, bone density, and longevity.
But also, she hits on a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association:
Now, finally, the new American Heart Association (AHA) scientific statement in Circulation makes the argument that, “Resistance training not only can improve or maintain muscle mass and strength, but also has favorable physiological and clinical effects on cardiovascular disease and risk factors.”
For resistance training, I do better with a class. It’s hard for me to motivate myself, but with structure and everyone doing the same thing, I push myself.
How about you? Have you achieved consistent success with resistance training?
Books worth a read
There’s nothing I love more than a thought-provoking book that gives me a new way of thinking about or doing something.
Recently on vacation I read Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organizations and Life. The author Aidan McCullen effectively describes the dramatic changes in the modern world and how those who embrace continuous reinvention are successful.
The book asks and answers two central questions:
How do we navigate a world that is changing at breakneck speed, as business leaders, and as individuals?
What can we do to minimize the impact of disruption on our careers, in our organizations, and on our lives?
Embracing change is so important at this stage of life. McCullen puts it this way:
At an individual level, each of us must reframe our relationship with change, seeing it as an opportunity rather than a threat. We must infuse perpetual learning into our lives at work and at home.
I also have a couple of books on memory that I haven’t finished yet. As I talk about exercise in 2024, and in my book, it’s not just about aerobic and strength training. We also benefit from exercising our mind. This is often overlooked, but a vital component of brain health.
The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind by Richard Restak, MD, explains what memory is, how to decipher normal age-related cognitive changes from dementia, and tips for keeping your mind sharp.
“At the present time there is no way of guaranteeing anyone that they may not eventually develop Alzheimer’s,” he writes. “But I have never encountered in my many years of neurological practice a patient with highly tuned memory skills who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or any other degenerative brain disease.”
One of my goals this year is to practice his suggestions daily for a few minutes. Another popular book is Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive.
The last book is The Breathing Cure, an update to Oxygen Advantage book by Patrick McKeown. One thing I love about this book is that there's an entire chapter on how women breathe differently from men. He also talks about how breathing can help women with menopause symptoms.
There are lots of simple exercises in this book to practice throughout the year.
I also found Dr. Louise Oliver on Instagram, a functional breathing practitioner helping midlife women improve their breathing efficiency for improved health and well-being.
Visit her website for more about the services she offers. There will be much more about breathing here in 2024!
Well, that's it for now. Thanks so much for being here in 2024. I appreciate your support and look forward to building this community.