Overworked? Exhausted? Powering between career, family and friends and frazzled and libido-less as a result? No wonder you’re moody! But as New York psychiatrist Julie Holland explains in her radical and eye-opening new book, the first step to overcoming the lows is to accept that being testy is in our nature – we were made to be Moody Bitches.

Being a successful modern woman is hard, and for so many of us the constant flux in our hormones and the dip and dives our mood swings take makes it that much harder. For over 17 years, women have visited celebrated psychopharmacologist Dr Julie Holland looking for the miracle cure to eradicate these feelings. Now, in her illuminating and honest Moody Bitches, she details the invaluable advice she shares with her patients, revealing how suppressing our natural emotions is actually damaging. Instead she offers tried and tested alternatives to help keep the moods under control, making exhaustion and low sex-drive a thing of the past.

From the meds you can trust to those you can’t; from the foods you should be eating, the healthy behaviours you should be practising and the herbal remedies that actually work, Dr Julie imparts wisdom from years of not only professional but personal experience too. Simple yet revolutionary, Moody Bitches is the life-changing self-help book for women and those who love them.

Millions of healthy women take a powerful medication every day from their mid-teens to menopause – the Pill – but few know how this drug works or the potential side effects. Contrary to cultural myth, the birth-control pill impacts on every organ and function of the body, and yet most women do not even think of it as a drug. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, rage, panic attacks – just a few of the effects of the Pill on half of the over 80% of women who pop these tablets during their lifetimes.

When the Pill was released, it was thought that women would not submit to taking a medication each day when they were not sick. Now the Pill is making women sick. However, there are a growing number of women looking for non-hormonal alternatives for preventing pregnancy.

In a bid to spark the backlash against hormonal contraceptives, this book asks: Why can’t we criticize the Pill?

‘They are not mentally ill, antidepressants are not appropriate. Once they have the label, it doesn’t help them,’ says expert.

Hot flushes and night sweats are the most well-known symptoms in peri/menopause, but the most common ones are anxiety, depression and brain fog. So many women who are looking for help get prescribed anti-depressants, despite the fact that:

“Menopause guidelines are very clear that antidepressants should not be given first-line for low mood associated with the menopause because there is no evidence that they will help.”

Editor’s note:

The reason why anti-depressants don’t help is that these medications target neurotransmitters like serotonin. But the loss of brain function that is associated with peri/menopause is not a neurotransmitter problem, it’s an energy problem.

During peri/menopause the brain becomes less and less able to use carbohydrates for energy and switches to mainly using fat for energy. This means that unless a low carb/high-fat diet is being followed, the brain will become starved of energy, leading to anxiety, depression and brain fog.

Switching to a low carb/high-fat diet can resolve brain issues in just a few weeks.

It was once thought that hearing loss in older women might be linked to loss of estrogen and progesterone following menopause and that hormone therapy might reduce that risk. Recent results from the Nurses’ Health Study II indicate just the opposite — that late natural menopause and the use of oral hormone therapy are linked to a higher risk of hearing loss.

…Further studies are needed to determine whether hormone use causes hearing loss. As of now, the results, published online May 10, 2017, by the journal Menopause, indicate that hormone therapy doesn’t help to preserve a woman’s hearing.

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Connecting women, science and spirit, the Gynelogic Sunday Supplement delivers a bi-monthly dose of  news, views and reviews, as seen through my lady lens.