The Moment of Truth
Ever wish that time could go backwards?
Want the physical strength, mental clarity and emotional resilience you had in your 20s and 30s?
With advances in the science of genetics, epigenetics, genomics, and precision medicine, we now know how to age backwards biologically and prevent chronic disease.
The first step in the process is taking an honest look at where you are physically, mentally and emotionally.
If your health is less than optimal on any front, know that you can turn it around, making you’re a truly transformative time. The key to health, happiness, and fulfillment during this phase of your life and beyond is in your hands.
Recognizing the Signs of Midlife
One day things were fine, and you were juggling several balls in the air effortlessly.
The next, everything fell apart.
Demands of career, relationships, children, home, friends, aging parents, community… suddenly it all seems too much to cope with. On top of it, your body seems to be changing, your energy is sagging, you can’t focus, you are irritable and impatient… classical signs of burn out. It’s not you, its midlife!
Or perhaps none of that has happened, and you want to sidestep all that physical pain and heart ache.
Fortunately, there is a lot that can be done. But the first thing is to recognize that changes are afoot in your mind and body and that you want to get your energy and life back.
Common Health Challenges at Midlife
1. Fatigue, low energy, burnout: You have so much on your plate that you feel it justifies your fatigue and low energy. Not necessarily! These symptoms can come from low thyroid hormone, being anemic, having previous infections become chronic, male/female hormone imbalance or deficiency, having a high toxic burden, or having sleep apnea, just to name a few.
2. Brain fog and poor concentration: If you are stressed to the max, you can have trouble concentrating. But if you find yourself struggling to remember things, there may be something more insidious going on. Midlife is the right time to start considering your risk for serious conditions like dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.
3. Hormone deficiencies: The ovaries stop producing estrogen and progesterone making the deficient hormone state acutely problematic for many women. More and more men are diagnosed with hypogonadism because their testosterone levels drop significantly.
4. Inadequate or poor-quality sleep: Work, relationships, children, parents, so many demands on your time and energy. You may be able to find “me-time” only at night once the house is quiet and everyone is in bed. The downside with this is that the sleep deficit builds up and can lead to low energy, reduced attention span at work and elsewhere, irritability and increased appetite.
5. Prediabetes: Due to the many demands on you and not enough time for yourself, you may find your blood sugar and insulin creeping higher and becoming metabolically unhealthy leading to prediabetes and diabetes. High insulin has a globally negative impact on health from cancer to dementia.
6. High Cholesterol: If you are a woman, you will likely see a jump in your cholesterol levels as you get deeper into perimenopause and your estrogen levels continue to decline. If you are a man, you may start to see your cholesterol rise around age 35. The risk of heart disease due to high cholesterol is a big enough risk that the American Heart Association now recommends everyone age 20 and above to have their levels checked every few years.
7. Cancer concerns: More and more younger people are getting diagnosed with various forms of cancer. Most common are colorectal and breast cancers. Have you or someone you know, or love, been diagnosed? This can make you wonder about your own risk and rightfully so.
8. Stress: This is a defining feature of modern life. It exacerbates every other issue, and in turn, is intensified by them, creating a vicious cycle of suffering. If we could lean to manage and reduce our stress, our overall health and the state of the world might significantly improve.
What Can You Do To Improve Your Health?
Fatigue, low energy, burnout:
There are numerous reasons for low energy ranging from a simple deficiency of nutrients like vitamin B12 or iron or hormones like estrogen or testosterone, your thyroid could be struggling, you might have a chronic infection smoldering under the surface, or you might be carrying a high toxic burden.
Mood changes during midlife, depression and anxiety can also lead to fatigue. A skilled functional medicine doctor can help you do a deep dive into your symptoms and get to the root cause of your fatigue.
Brain fog, poor concentration and memory loss:
Common midlife states like being over worked and over scheduled can lead to symptoms of brain fog, poor concentration and memory loss. Other common causes are loss of hormones due to menopause and andropause or inability to detox from environmental toxins.
Symptoms of memory loss and brain fog can be an indicator of more serious diseases like dementia. Among the many factors that can lead to these symptoms are genetics, diet and lifestyle, dysregulated blood sugar, high blood pressure, toxins, chronic infections etc.
A functional medicine doctor can help you understand your symptoms and help you get tested for the various risk factors and create a strategic plan to prevent dementia.
Hormone deficiencies:
The ovaries stop producing estrogen and progesterone at midlife. Men and women both may notice a decline in their testosterone levels.
A reduction in hormone levels can create problems like poor mentation, weight gain, muscle and joint pains, heart disease, brain fog, osteoporosis among others. Hormone levels can be easily checked and addressed. A well trained doctor can help you test your levels and prescribe the right hormones and work with you to optimize your levels.
Inadequate or poor-quality sleep:
With the help of a good sleep tracker like the Oura ring or Fitbit or the like, you can understand how much sleep you are getting as well as the components of deep, light and REM sleep.
The most important indicator is how you feel when you wake up. If you feel tired, you are either not getting enough sleep, or not enough deep sleep or you have sleep apnea.
Undiagnosed sleep apnea is the epidemic no one talks about. This condition can have a negative impact on all parts of our health including heart, brain and metabolism. It is important to work with a provider that is trained in sleep medicine and can not only diagnose if you have sleep apnea but also help you address it via a dental device, myofascial therapy or CPAP.
Prediabetes:
Since our metabolism slows down as we age, it becomes imperative that we eat nutrient dense food. Ensuring physical activity, especially right after meals, can help to bring blood sugar down into “normal” ranges faster.
Insulin is released into the blood stream after we eat. The more efficiently and quickly the glucose can be transported from the blood to tissues, the better our metabolic health.
It is a good idea to get your fasting insulin checked every time you get blood labs done. If you want to do a deeper dive into your metabolic health, you may want to get a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, so you can see how your body responds to various foods in real time.
Your functional medicine doctor will be able to advise you on the best CGM for you as well as how to get one.
High Cholesterol:
If you are a menopausal woman and your cholesterol is high, the first line defense is estrogen and not a statin. For both men and women, it is important to evaluate all your hormones including testosterone, thyroid and cortisol.
There are new markers for heart health that give you more insight into your overall cardiovascular health. If your doctor orders the most basic lipid panel, you are not getting the most important information about heart health.
Your functional medicine doctor will order markers like ApoB, lp(a), lp-pla2 which tell us a more nuanced picture of various risks. For instance, a high lp-pla2 is associated with high arterial plaque in general and dental plaque.
High amounts of dental plaque can lead to periodontal disease which is risk factor for dementia.
Cancer concerns:
We always have cancer cells in our body. Most often, our immune system does a fantastic job at keeping the number of cancer cells in check. We can help our immune system by eating well, managing stress, getting enough sleep and movement, being well connected with ourselves and our communities.
Ensuring we are metabolically healthy (ie, we do not have prediabetes or diabetes or high cholesterol), we don’t smoke or drink more than one drink a day (if that), our hormones are optimal (insulin, vitamin D, thyroid, cortisol etc) and we feel a sense of purpose goes a long way in keeping our bodies in homeostasis.
Stress:
One of the most effective tools for managing stress is increasing your heart rate variability or HRV. This metric measures the variability in successive heartbeats. When our doctor tells us our pulse is 72 beats per minute, it doesn’t mean that it beats 72 times a minute.
The pulse oximeter measures your heart rate for a few seconds and then projects a per minute number.
HRV is a valuable tool that measures the variability in time between heartbeats. It provides insights into your body’s resilience and ability to handle stress.
Higher HRV indicates better health, flexibility, and adaptability, while lower HRV suggests the need for rest and recovery. By monitoring HRV, you can make informed decisions to enhance your overall well-being, fitness, and performance.
But just monitoring HRV isn’t enough. There are ways to use technology to train yourself to increase your HRV. Your functional medicine doctor will be able to provide more insight into available tools and discuss ones most suitable for you.
Let ARUNA Be Your Guide
At Aruna Personalized Medicine, the Aruna Method™ is your Ultimate Wellness Guide to take you on a journey that encompasses the following:
- Comprehensive Health Assessment and Personalized Goals – Combining the best of Precision & Functional Medicine with compassion and expertise to tailor the reboot to your individual needs.
- Nutrition and Supplementation – Recommendations that immediately boost your physical energy and mental clarity.
- Functional Labs – Results to guide creation of an individualized PLAN using your genetic, epigenetic, and genomic data.
- Expert Guidance – To help you follow the plan, recalibrate as needed, in a Done-With-You manner that takes the stress out of the process and ensures that help is always at hand.
- Stress Management and Mental Wellness – Incorporate strategies for managing stress and enhancing mental health, such as mindfulness, meditation, and journaling.
- Sleep and Recovery – Prioritize sleep and recovery by understanding the role of sleep for physical health and cognitive function and recommendations for improving sleep quality.
- Connection and Support – Once you are part of the Aruna family, you are family! We stay connected, making sure all your health needs are met during your journey with us and beyond.
Your Catalyst for Change
- Recognize that this is a time for reflection, transformation, renewal, and great personal growth.
- Committing yourself to your Ultimate Wellness Guide and The Aruna Method™ will rejuvenate and revitalize you. Done right, you will rekindle your passions and rediscover your purpose.
- Let this Ultimate Wellness Guide for Midlife be your catalyst for change.
- The best years are not behind you—they are right here, waiting to be lived with vitality, purpose, and joy.
Schedule a discovery call here:
To Your Health,
Manna Semby, ND, IFMCP