Chaotic Mood Of Liver In Menopause: The Midlife Plot Twist

Are you beginning to notice small changes in your usual health? Hot flashes that suddenly appear, nights that feel like never-ending, or a mood that changes quickly – every woman goes through this in her life. This phase of life is known as Menopause. Menopause is as common as a night’s sleep in women’s life but is often ignored. But inside one’s body, it brings about a complex change in how hormones work after years of working in one similar way. Bringing a new balance to your life, where major parts of the body, namely the heart, bones, and even the mind, experience changes in how the whole female body functions. Menopause generally makes you feel unsettled, serving as an alarm that your body is not in your control. But it is a phase you need to experience.

Not only is experiencing menopause important, but understanding it is vital too, as it influences far outreach only reproductive health. Hormonal changes due to menopause are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, and sleep disorders, and lead to an unsettling metabolism. Being aware that menopause influences every vital organ, it helps in managing, preventing, and making lifestyle adjustments. An individual quickly coming to terms that menopause is a whole body change encourages maintenance of long-term health and quality of life.

The changes in levels of hormones during the menopause phase greatly influence liver function, impacting metabolism and escalating the chances of fatty liver and other liver conditions. Acknowledging this connection encourages women to take up proactive changes in lifestyle and health strategies.

Recently, there has been a growing perception that a healthy liver is a mirror of a healthy female body, especially during the menopause phase, midlife, and old age. Health experts are now recommending periodic liver tests for women who are above 40 years of age. This increased acknowledgement helps women take steps to protect their liver, instead of treating issues or conditions after symptoms appear.

1) The M-Word – Menopause with Whole Body Reboot

Menopause is a natural phase in a woman’s life, where her menstrual cycle stops completely, marking the end of her reproductive period. It is a period of 12 months after the final menstrual cycle. This change is due to the decrease in hormones produced by the body, after which is a journey that gradually develops, with every part of it causing its own changes in the body. Menopause begins with perimenopause, its initial starting point in early to mid-40s, where levels of hormones experience constant disturbances and the menstrual cycles start becoming irregular.

Once a woman does not have a menstrual cycle for up to 12 months, that’s her official entry into the phase called Menopause. After these 12 months comes postmenopause, where hormone levels drop significantly and remain constantly low, and the body settles into this long-term baseline.

The most important sign of menopause is a steady and sharp reduction in levels of two hormones, namely, estrogen and progesterone, whose responsibility is to take care of metabolism.

Estrogen fluctuation mainly leads to wide-reaching effects on how the body takes care of breaking down fats and glucose. Also, a drop in levels of estrogen has an impact on how insulin is utilised by the body, leading to an increase in blood sugar levels and a high amount of fat being stored instead of being broken down.

Fluctuations in levels of the other hormone, progesterone, impact fluid balance and digestion, causing disturbances in the body’s processing of nutrients in an effective manner.

Menopause also has a knock-on effect on how the body uses its fats and produces energy. Before menopause comes into effect, estrogen is used to help fat be stored around the hips and thighs. Whereas after menopause, this pattern becomes affected, and the fat starts to be stored around the abdominal region, leading to metabolic diseases.

In this phase, women start noticing that the exercise that was found to be effective in their 30s is not effective after menopause sets in, causing a dip in energy levels, leading to fatigue and more fat storage.

Not only does menopause influence hormone levels that control metabolism, but it also affects one of the major organs in the body, like the liver. Menopause leads to lower levels of estrogen being produced, stores more fat, and leads to the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Other factors, like increased levels of resistance to insulin, increased inflammation, and fluctuations in levels of cholesterol, further lead to liver stress. Add to this mid-life and old age changes in gut-mass and function, the liver ends up handling abnormal levels of workload than before menopause.

2) Hormones and Hepatic: Understanding the liver-wellness connection

The liver is known to carry out over 500 important functions in the body of both men and women. But detoxification, hormone regulation, and metabolism are its major functions.

The liver is the body’s main detoxifying organ, which clears out harmful toxins from food that is eaten, medicines that are ingested.

It supports breaking down complex substances like fats, sugars, and proteins and using them as energy sources.
The liver also controls and handles hormone production and its function, especially estrogen, thus establishing a connection between menopause that influences levels, and the general health of the liver in women.

The liver plays a vital role in breaking down the estrogen hormone (after it finishes its role) into simpler proteins, so that it can be easily excreted. If estrogen levels are maintained, it indicates that the liver is usually working fine. If there is a problem in liver function, it leads to a rise in levels of estrogen. These uneven levels of estrogen contribute to increased bloating, mood shifts, and midlife changes.

During perimenopause and menopause, the fluctuations in levels of estrogen are generally unpredictable. So the liver needs to work harder than normal. Add to these factors like stress, poor sleep, and fatty liver, and these changes hugely impact how the liver functions.

A healthy liver usually helps in the maintenance of the digestive process and better energy levels, maintains hormone stability in mid-life, reduces the chances of hormone-related discomforts, and helps the body stay balanced, especially during major hormonal changes.

3) Do not let Menopause Mask Liver Disease: The Midlife Alert From Liver

Menopause hugely affects the health of the liver by increasing the risk of liver disease, especially metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), which was known before as Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Post-menopausal women have a 2.4 times higher odds of developing metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), when compared to women before menopause. A reduction in levels of estrogen generally leads to an accumulation of more fat.

Redistribution of Fat increases in menopause women with subcutaneous fat in the hips and thighs, moving to visceral fat around abdominal organs like the liver. This increased level of fat around the liver increases the risk of developing metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and resistance to insulin hormone.

Estrogen deficiency increases stress on the liver by influencing insulin levels, increasing type 2 diabetes risk, a key contributor to developing metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD)

Changes in lipid profile during menopause lead to high levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides, and low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL). The decreased oxidation rate of fats leads to excessive fat storage, as the liver’s ability to break down fatty acids decreases.

Estrogen has both anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects on liver cells, which makes it more susceptible to inflammation (MASH, or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis) and scarring. These diseases can eventually worsen to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Increased age with menopause, combined with fluctuating levels of hormones, leads to a reduction of blood flow to the liver, its volume, and the regenerative capacity of blood cells.

Menopause increases and hastens the risks and progression of alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) by causing changes in how alcohol is broken down, leading to alcohol being in the bloodstream for a longer time, thus increasing its ill effects and increasing the risk of liver damage.

Menopause causes bile to become more concentrated, slow digestion, and decreased gallbladder motility, which leads to bile stasis. Menopause also increases the risk of cholesterol crystals being formed, which are building blocks of gallstones and other problems related to the gallbladder.

Management of viral infections such as Hepatitis C is greatly affected by menopause due to the immune system being left compromised.

4) The Metabolic Storm That Can Damage the Liver: Warning Signs

Liver diseases are commonly misdiagnosed as menopause, because they both show several unusual and duplicating symptoms. These duplicated signs of liver disease are very subtle and can be very easily misinterpreted as perimenopause and menopause.

Liver in stress mode shows many signs of distress due to a possible increase in workload and inflammation, but these symptoms are mostly ignored. Avoiding this ignorance and identifying these signs before they cause additional damage to the liver in women is vital in providing medical care. These key symptoms of liver distress in menopause actually indicate what’s exactly happening inside the body.

Right upper abdominal discomfort or heaviness in the liver. Inflammation, an increase in levels of fat, leads to additional stretching of the liver, leading to mild aches and pressure. Pain usually worsens after a heavy meal.

Nausea, bloating, and feeling less hungry are the result of a sluggish liver that finds it tough to break down complex substances of food into simpler ones, making one feel full quickly.

Dark urine due to increased bilirubin levels, pale stools due to reduced bile flow, indicate blocked pathways, and issues with the gall bladder.

Continuous Itching of the skin due to bile in its salt form, assembling below the skin due to an overloaded liver. This leads to easy bruising due to reduced production of bruising. Unexplained itching or bruising is a very important red flag that something is very wrong with the liver.

Poor liver means fluid piles up in the legs, ankles, and abdominal region. A low amount of protein produced decreases blood pressure inside the blood vessels, causing leakages.

Yellowing of skin or jaundice occurs when the liver is unable to process bilirubin, which is often accompanied by dark urine and itching. Jaundice is one of the most serious signs of a liver being in a huge problem and thus requiring immediate care without delay.

5) Be Responsible For Your Own Liver Health Post-Menopause: Essential Screenings

The identification of liver problems in menopausal women involves the use of different blood tests, imaging techniques, and, in some cases, a liver biopsy.

Blood tests that are important in both screening and monitoring of liver health are Liver enzyme tests (LFTs) – Alanine transaminase (ALT), Aspartate transaminase (AST), Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and Gamma-Glutamyl transferase tests (GGT).

Bilirubin tests, albumin and total protein tests, prothrombin time/ international normalized ratio, complete blood count, metabolic and lipid profile, viral hepatitis serology, Iron studies, auto-antibody tests, and alpha-fetoprotein tests are utilised to evaluate liver functions.

Imaging tests provide visual information about liver performance and include abdominal ultrasound, transient electrography, or magnetic resonance elastography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging. Other than blood and imaging techniques, utilised are liver biopsy and upper endoscopy.

Immediate medical help involves contacting a gynecologist, hepatologist, or gastroenterologist for the treatment of red flag symptoms that involve the sudden onset of jaundice, vomiting blood, severe pain in the upper right abdomen, confusion, disorientation, hepatic encephalopathy, shortness of breath, or rapid heartbeat.

6) How to be strong in Midlife? By Changing The Way Of Living After Menopause

Lifestyle changes include a mediterranean-style diet that focuses on whole foods and decreases the rate of inflammation.

Reduce sugar and refined foods to build less fat in the liver, along with limiting alcohol, which decreases liver strain in midlife. On the contrary, include balanced meals that have lots of protein and fiber that support metabolism and digestion.

Regular cardio and strength training also improve liver function after the onset of menopause. Hydration and gut-friendly foods help in shaping the digestive and detox pathways.

Medical support involves the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a treatment that replaces hormones estrogen and progesterone to reduce the symptoms of menopause in humans. Benefits of HRT include providing relief from symptoms, maintaining bone and heart health.

Routine liver evaluations, managing sugar and cholesterol, doctor medicines, and supplements are other forms of medical support provided.

Mind-body care involves women receiving emotional support from family and friends to deal with menopause, along with effective stress management, and getting better sleep.

7) When Menopause Speaks, The Liver Translates

Menopause reshapes the woman’s body in quite a few surprising ways that are often quite unexpected. At the center of this quiet shift is the liver, which works harder than most other vital organs to keep balance, maintain energy, and steady metabolism. When women understand these hidden signs, this midlife change in body turns into an evolution that can be very easily managed.

Nurture liver, honour the change, and midlife becomes your strongest chapter.

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