Healthy grandmother from Torres Straits

Photo Caption: Photographed by Weston Price, this sturdy and self-reliant grandmother living in the Torres Straits went fishing every day to provide food for her beautiful daughters and healthy grandchildren. (From Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. By permission of NTC Publishers.)

Androgens may be given to counteract estrogen-induced mood swings, tender breasts, waning libido and softening bones (claims that estrogens prevent bone loss notwithstanding) but the real question is this: why bother emasculating ourselves with estrogens in the first place? Why second guess our glands by flooding the bloodstream with estrogens at a time when the body doesn't want them? Why not let our own bodies make the sex hormones they need, when they need them and in the quantities that work most efficiently. For the vast majority of women, production of sex hormones is best left to the body's exquisitely tuned endocrine system. Any woman will stay young for a long time if she eats properly and launches herself into a project worthy of her enthusiasm and love.

That means, of course, that women must make wise dietary choices so that the endocrine system is properly fed. It means avoiding processed foods and consuming only foods that are dense with nutrients. Modern women must forage just as their ancestors did—forage for nourishing foods in a forest of junk and forage for the truth about nutrition in a briar patch of lies. Like the brave heroines of the fairy tales, women who come to the age of menopause find happiness not by tending the hearth but by venturing into the world to outwit dragons and discover hidden treasures that can be shared with their offspring and their communities. Hormone Replacement Therapy is a tender trap that keeps potential heroines from enjoying the adventures that await them outside their castle walls.
Wise Choices, Healthy Bodies

In primitive societies, women's roles and women's diets were dictated by the tribal culture and did not require the individual woman to exercise her decision-making powers. By contrast, modern society gives us unlimited freedom. Every trip to the grocery store, every visit to the refrigerator presents the opportunity for wise or foolish choices about our diet.

So, too, with how we spend our time. The modern woman has been told that she can do everything—work full time, raise a family, provide meals, keep a household that runs smoothly and peacefully and remain appealing and young. Nature tells us something different. By conferring on women the gift of menopause, nature informs us that mothers of small children need help. They cannot do it all, not in primitive societies, much less in the modern age. The pressures for young women to be both wage-earner and mother can place enormous stress on our bodies at just the stage when our strength is needed for the production and care of healthy children. That stress often leads to disease.

Feminists need not cringe. This is not a summons for women to give over newly won political freedoms or withdraw from the workplace but rather a plea for common sense. The future of both ourselves and our children is best served when full-time careers are delayed until after the childbearing years. And when young mothers are obliged to work full-time, older female relatives—aunts, grandmothers, childless siblings—should be ready to pitch in and help with child-rearing duties. In every family unit, at least one person needs to have the time to prepare nutritious meals, whether mother, father, relative or housekeeper.

Likewise, when children are grown, the wise mother will step back from the mothering role and launch herself into a career or project that takes her out of the home. Then the advice and help she proffers to her daughters and daughters-in-law can be that of friend and sage rather than of interfering nag with too much time on her hands.

The choices women make determine the health of the entire nation. Wise choices in what a woman eats and how she spends her time sustain healthy bodies, healthy children, healthy spouses, healthy households and healthy careers.

See references below

Sidebar articles
Cholesterol: The Mother of All Hormones

All the steroid hormones (which help us deal with inflammation, injury and stress) and all the sex hormones (including estrogen and testosterone) derive from cholesterol. Lowfat and low-cholesterol diets often have the effect of depriving the body of the raw material from which to make these vital substances.

Figure which accompanied the hard copy is unavailable at this time.
Treating Low Thyroid

Many doctors believe that the best way to test low thyroid function is to take the underarm temperature immediately upon awakening in the morning. A reading below the normal range of 97.8 to 98.2 strongly suggests low thyroid function. For women during their childbearing years, this test is best performed on the second and third days of the period after flow starts. Treatment with natural thyroid hormone, such as Armor thyroid, is more effective and has fewer side effects than treatment with synthetic thyroid hormone (Synthroid). Physicians familiar with this protocol for thyroid treatment can be contacted through the Broda O. Barnes, MD Research Foundation at (203) 261-2101.
Carotenes and Vitamin A Are NOT the Same!

Check out the label on a can of tomatoes or a bottle of ketchup and it will tell you that the products contained therein contain vitamin A. Most popular writings on nutrition create the impression that the body's requirements for vitamin A can be met exclusively with plant foods like carrots, squash, green leafy vegetables and orange-colored fruits.

But true vitamin A is found only in animal foods, a fact confirmed by none other than the Merck Manual. The water-soluble nutrients called carotenes found in plant foods are not true vitamin A but are the precursors or pro-vitamin A. The best sources of true, or preformed, vitamin A is cod liver oil, liver and other organ meats, fish, shell fish and eggs, butter and cream from grass-fed animals.

Under optimal conditions, humans convert carotenes to vitamin A in the upper intestine by the action of bile salts and fat-splitting enzymes. But this conversion is rarely optimal. Diabetics and those with poor thyroid function—a very large group in the US—cannot make the conversion. Strenuous physical exercise, excessive consumption of alcohol, excessive consumption of iron, use of a number of popular drugs, excessive consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids, zinc deficiency and even cold weather can hinder the conversion of carotenes to vitamin A. Furthermore, carotenes cannot be converted with a lowfat diet because the conversion takes place in the presence of bile and bile is excreted only when fat is consumed.

Infants and children convert and store vitamin A very poorly, if at all. They need generoud amounts of true vitamin A from animal sources for normal growth and development.

Weston A. Price discovered that primitive diets contained at least ten times the amount of true vitamin A as the American diet of his day. Ample amounts of this fat-soluble nutrient are necessary for the utilization of protein and minerals. Vitamin A ensures good reproductive health, protects against birth defects, strengthens the immune system and contributes to healthy eyes, skin, bones and blood. Under optimal conditions, humans can make some vitamin A from carotenes and do store reserves in the liver, but for good health generation after generation, we are dependent on seafood and fats and organ meats from healthy animals. (See Vitamin A Saga.)
Recipe for Healthy Skin

Avoid polyunsaturated oils and eat plenty of saturated fats. Consumption of vegetable oils is associated with wrinkles while saturated animal fats and coconut oil help prevent wrinkles.

Expose your skin to moderate amounts of natural sunlight or UV-B radiation from a Sperti sunlamp.

Avoid stimulants such as coffee, tea and sugar.

Never wash your face with soap.

Avoid most face creams. Instead use a natural oil formulation based on olive oil or peanut oil, such as Aura-Glow by Heritage Products.
Estrogen Dangers

It is generally accepted that high levels of estrogen are associated with cancer of the breast, uterus and cervix; with cystic breast disease, uterine fibroids and endometriosis; with heavy bleeding and premenstrual syndrome; with depressed thyroid function; and with fluid retention and weight gain. Some lesser known associations are the following, as reported in the Nutri-Spec Letter of Guy R. Schenker, DC (1-800-736-4320):

Estrogen levels increase under the stress of injury, surgery, exposure to cold, infection and fasting. (Am J Vet Res, Feb 1998; Keio J Med, Sept 1989; Prog Clin Biol Res, 1989; J Clin Endocrine Metabl, 1974; Am J Clin Nutri, 1989)

Postmenopausal women with higher levels of circulating estrogen experience greater cognitive decline. (J Am Ger Soc 1998, Vol 46, Pages 816-21)

Alcoholism is associated with abnormally high levels of estrogen. (S Gastroienterol, Oct 1988 German)

Estrogen exacerbates symptoms of allergies and asthma. (Rev Pheumol Clin, Oct 1999, Vol 55, No 5, Pages 296-300; Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol, Sep 1998, Vol 81 No 3, Pages 243-6) One study presented evidence that the increasing incidence of asthma in children is due to the mother's oral contraceptive use prior to pregnancy. (Pediatr Allergy Immunol, Nov 1997, Vol 8, No 4, Pages 200-4.)
Tampon Alert

Three substances found in most commercial tampons give cause for alarm:

* Asbestos, an irritant that can cause excessive bleeding.
* Rayon, which is super absorbent and can lead to Toxic Shock Syndrome.
* Dioxins, used in the bleaching process, which are estrogen-like substances that can be absorbed by the skin. Excessive exposure to dioxins has been linked to cancer and problems with the immune and reproductive system.

Safe alternatives in the form of unbleached cotton tampons are available. They are made by Organic Essentials at 1-800-765-6491 and Terra Femme at 1-800-755-0212 and can be purchased at most natural products stores.