A short course, in six questions
The molecule almost nobody told you about.
Six questions about why energy falls in midlife, and about a molecule most women have never heard of. By the end you will know where you sit on a real clinical measure of blood vessel function, and how to read your own level at home in ten seconds.
No email. About three minutes.
Which of these have you noticed in the last year?
Select all that apply.
You are describing the most common experience there is.
- Low energy 79%
- Weight change 75%
- Fatigue 71%
- Brain fog 70%
- Sleep changes 69%
- Hot flashes 44%
Across more than 100,000 menopause intake assessments, losing energy was the thing women reported most. Hot flashes, which is what most people think this whole subject is, came sixth. The average woman named nine of these at once.
Low energy, fatigue and brain fog are all ways of saying the same thing. Not enough is getting where it needs to go.
Estrogen does more than run your cycle. Which of these is also its job?
Have a guess. Most people get this one wrong.
Estrogen switches on an enzyme in the lining of your blood vessels.
The lining of every blood vessel you have carries an enzyme called eNOS. Estrogen turns it up. eNOS makes a gas called nitric oxide, and nitric oxide is the signal that tells the vessel to relax and let more blood through.
That is the part almost nobody is told. When estrogen falls, the signal falls with it, and every tissue that was relying on the flow gets less than it used to.
Working out what nitric oxide does won a Nobel Prize. When?
Closest guess.
1998, and the surprise was that a gas could do the job at all.
Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing that the body makes nitric oxide in the lining of its own blood vessels and uses it as a signal.
Nobody had thought a gas could do that. It was the first one ever found carrying a message inside a human being, and it is why this molecule turns up in so much research published since.
Estrogen is one road to nitric oxide. The other one starts with food. Which food?
One of these is right.
Dietary nitrate, and it does not need estrogen at all.
Beets, spinach, rocket and celery are high in nitrate. Your body runs it down a second road into nitric oxide, and that road stays open whatever your hormones are doing.
The catch is the quantity. It is about seven ounces of beetroot every single day, prepared the right way. And the nitrate in any given bunch of spinach varies enormously with the soil it grew in, so eating well is not the same as knowing what you got.
Can you find out your own nitric oxide level?
Last guess of the six.
A strip on your tongue, and ten seconds.
- Very low
- Target
- High
Saliva carries nitrate and nitrite, which is what your body has to work with. A test strip reads it and develops from pale pink to deep magenta depending on the level. Ten seconds, on your own tongue, in your own bathroom.
So the protocol is short. Read a baseline first thing. Take the dose. Read it again once the dose has had time to work, and see whether the colour moved.
Which of these describes your cycle right now?
This is the one that places you on the chart. Choose the closest.
Here is where you sit on the curve.
What you now know
- Estrogen switches on eNOS in your vessel lining, and eNOS makes nitric oxide.
- That work won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998.
- Dietary nitrate is a second road to the same molecule, and it takes about 7oz of beetroot a day.
- A saliva strip reads your own level in ten seconds.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.