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Dance Teacher, Nov 2008 by Mu�oz, Tatiana

Steps to surviving the symptoms of menopause in and outside the dance studio

You are in the midst of teaching when an intense heat spreads through your upper body. Your heart races, your skin turns red and blotchy and perspiration begins to trickle down your face and onto your neck. Before you even realize what’s happening, the warmness fades and a chill moves in.

Hot flashes, the most common menopausal symptom, can come on anytime-in the middle of the night, while driving or even midway through dance class. And while you can’t control when they will hit, you can learn how to best manage the situation when they do.

To help you prepare for this pivotal period of your life, and the symptoms that come along with it, Dance Teacher reached out to medical professionals. Read on to learn more about “the change,” and the treatment options available to you.

Defining Menopause

The only constant with this milestone is that all women will face it at some point in their lives. Menopause occurs around age 51, but this is just an average. At this time, women experience a loss of normal hormonal functions of the ovaries, or more simply, undergo 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. “Until you get to that point, you can’t say you are menopausal,” explains Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Instead, perimenopause is the proper term used to describe the time from when a woman starts experiencing symptoms until the full year after the last menstrual cycle, adds Minkin.

Symptoms

There are a handful of telltale physical signs that menopause is underway, including vaginal dryness, urinary tract infections and weight gain, specifically in the midsection.

“Insomnia is another classic complaint,” notes Minkin. “Patients often complain about being woken up with night sweats and then not being able to fall back to sleep. Before long, that lack of sleep leads to chronic fatigue, making the woman irritable.”

But the most widespread symptom is hot flashes, or sudden but temporary sensations of heat that come over the body. How often they occur or how severe they are varies greatly from woman to woman. “We don’t really know why some lucky women-about 15 percent-don’t experience a single symptom, while others have moderate to severe hot flashes years after they reach menopause,” says Minkin.

When hot Flashes Creep Up

While the thought of getting hit with a hot flash in the studio is unpleasant, there are simple steps you can take to help lessen the discomfort.

For example, when dressing for class, make sure to wear layers. Doing so will allow you to remove and add pieces as you experience the hot flash and subsequent chill. If the studio gets warm or muggy during class, consider investing in some loose, breathable cotton clothing.

When you start to feel the onset of a hot flash, take deep breaths and stay calm. Keep a towel and some cold water within reach and use them to cool your face and neck. It’s also important to come to class prepared with some simple movements or stretches that you can ask dancers to practice while you take a moment to relax. Chances are you’ll ride out the heat before your students even notice something is bothering you.

Another way to reduce the severity of symptoms is to stay in shape and maintain a normal weight. “The body really begins to transition into the pear shape for a lot of women around 50 or 60 years of age,” says Dr. Pamela Berens, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University Texas Medical School at Houston. She explains that a healthy lifestyle and healthy weight can help offset not only the physical side effects, but the emotional ones as well.

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