you may have these signs and symptoms:
Fatigue, from feeling run down to exhaustion;
Difficulty concentrating, brain fog;
Depression, anxiety, and/or difficulty sleeping;
Unexplained or excessive weight gain and appetite change;
Dry, coarse, and/or itchy skin;
Dry, coarse, and/or thinning hair;
Feeling cold, especially in the extremities;
Constipation;
Heart palpitations;
Muscle and joint pain;
Infertility and/or miscarriages;
Increased menstrual flow and more frequent periods.39
Like Graves' disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease that causes hypothyroidism, is also more common in women than in men; it affects roughly seven women for every one man.40Thyroidhormone-replacement drugs are used for treatment of hypothyroidism. Many women who have suffered from thyroid problems notice a huge difference in their symptoms when they've recovered from thyroid-hormone imbalance.
Estrogen and other hormones can interact with thyroid hormone, making women more susceptible to thyroid problems—especially hypothyroidism—during and after pregnancy and during menopause.41
Pregnant moms need to have enough thyroid during pregnancy, especially during the first ten to twelve weeks, to help the baby's brain development, says endocrinologist Dr. Gunjan Tykodi.42
Melatonin: You may have heard of melatonin if you have sleep problems, because this hormone maintains the body's circadian rhythm, and regulates sleepiness, wakefulness, and body temperature. But melatonin has other critical functions. This hormone, secreted by the pineal gland in the middle of your head, also helps regulate other hormones and determines when teen girls start to menstruate, the frequency and duration of menstrual cycles, and the timing of menopause.
It also has strong antioxidant effects and may strengthen the immune system. Some think melatonin levels may be associated with breast-cancer risk, since women with breast cancer tend to have lower levels of melatonin.
What do you get your melatonin from? Darkness. Your pineal gland pumps out more melatonin when it's dark and stops producing the hormone when it's light. If you turn on the bathroom light in the middle of the night, you prompt your pineal to produce less melatonin, which is why you could have a harder time falling back asleep when you return to bed. Exposure to bright lights in the evening (when you work on the computer or watch TV late at night) or too little light during the day (when you're doing shift work or have jet lag) can disrupt the body's normal melatonin cycles. You might try software programs such as Flux and color filters to make computer screens more night friendly.43
Researchers believe melatonin levels drop as we age, which could be why some older adults have sleep problems. This change in levels could be why older adults tend to go to bed and wake up early.44
To increase your nightly melatonin, start with a melatoninfriendly lifestyle: use dusk and dawn as reminders to go to bed and wake up, make sure the bedroom is dark, and keep a dim light in the bathroom at night.
Melatonin supplements—tablets, capsules, cream, and lozenges that dissolve under the tongue—may help with sleep problems associated with menopause. Check with your doctor, and keep the dose close to the amount that our bodies normally produce (less than 0.3 mg per day).45
Men, Women, and Illness
Women get sick more often than men. A survey of 3,000 people, conducted by Engage Mutual, a British insurance and financial company, found that women get sick an average of seven times a year and men an average of five times.46 There can be many reasons—stress, greater exposure to toxins, the vulnerability of pregnancy. But a key piece, especially in susceptibility to autoimmune illnesses, is sexual hormones.
“It's pretty difficult to find any single factor that's more predictive for [certain] diseases than gender,” said Thomas Insel, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health.47
While more men than women experience extreme aggression, autism spectrum disorders, Gulf War Syndrome, and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), women are more likely than men to suffer from the following health problems, which can add to stress on the brain.
Autoimmune Illnesses
About 75% of all autoimmune disorders happen in women.48 In autoimmune syndromes, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS), lupus, Hashimoto's in the thyroid, multiple chemical sensitivity, and rheumatoid arthritis.49 A patient's immune or infection-protecting defenses turn back against her and attack some of her own healthy functional cells and tissues.50
“Sex hormones influence the onset and severity of immune … conditions,” says an article in the American Journal of Pathology.51 That's partly because immune cells have receptors for estrogen and androgens (e.g., testosterone). While androgens and perhaps progestogens may protect from autoimmune disease, says the Oxford Journal of Rheumatology,52 estrogen mostly stimulates the immune system.53
Insomnia
Over 60% of insomnia sufferers are women. Women are susceptible to the common insomnia causes, such as stress, irregular sleep hours, certain foods, caffeine, smoking, lack of exercise, and too much light, often from computers and TV.
But insomnia is also affected by hormonal fluctuations. That means you may wake at night or struggle to fall asleep on premenstrual nights, during perimenopause, and after menopause.54The common tribulations of motherhood, such as being nine months pregnant, having a baby who wants to nurse, or having a young child who wants to sleep with you, certainly make sleeping a challenge.
To learn how to relax and sleep well at night, check out chapter 5.
Depression
Women who suffer from chronic anxiety
