Looking for alternatives to using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to manage your menopause symptoms? You may want to explore menopause management through nutrition. Sound too good to be true?

In her ‘Nutrition Guide to Menopause’ Leslie Beck RD examines the links between what we eat and how our bodies react. Her work focuses on the reality that during menopause and at any time during our lives we really are what we eat.

This method is not a quick promise but an overall evaluation of your lifestyle and eating habits. Beck has used her knowledge to help women use proper diet, along with suggested vitamins and herbs, to tackle some of the most common and annoying menopause symptoms. Plus the overall improvement to health and well-being make menopause easier to deal with. A healthy body provides numerous daily benefits from looking and feeling better, decreasing risks of developing health issues, and possible longevity with a greater quality of life.

As with any change in your lifestyle, you should consult with your personal healthcare professional to make sure that this plan is right for you.

Beck’s approach in her book breaks menopause management into three parts: understanding menopause, examining common menopause symptoms, and using nutrition to prevent health conditions related to menopause and aging. Each section is further broken into easy to read chapters with straightforward advice in user-friendly language that helps readers learn about why knowing what we eat is so important.

Understanding menopause
In this first section, Beck looks at what happens to women during menopause and the effects on future years. She also discusses traditional approaches to menopause management using HRT. Her advice deals with a nutritional overhaul that will appeal to women who would prefer to avoid HRT medications. But readers should note that just adding a carrot here and there to the daily diet is not enough as Beck stresses how eating vigilantly and smartly are important. Women need to be ready to admit to their poor eating habits and be willing to adapt new strategies.

Menopause symptoms
Beck makes it easy to understand how by making dietary changes, menopause does not have to be a terrible time in life. She warns against typical fad diets and get-thin-quick schemes and advocates a diet high in fiber, fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and low in sugars, fats, and salty foods. Beck never resorts to confusing jargon or medical terms but presents readers with practical information designed to make lifestyle changes easy and enjoyable.

Prevention
Beck tackles issues such as osteoporosis, heart disease, breast cancer, and weight gain. Her tips help women improve their odds of having healthier lives and decreasing the risks of developing health issues during menopause and in later life. Beck recognizes women want to eat real food, not just nuts and twigs, and still manages to introduce new ways of looking at nutrition by incorporating new foods into the daily routine.

The book also features suggested eating plans, menus, and includes some recipes to get readers started on their new health quest. Additional information tends to be heavily Canadian sources (Beck is based in Toronto, Canada) but still lists resources for women living elsewhere. Her goal is to make sure women have access to some of the best advice for menopause and women’s health.

I purchased this book for review purposes.

Learn more about Leslie Beck at https://www.lesliebeck.com/index.php