Do you ever feel desperate to turn down the volume on hot flashes?
Do you wonder if the day will come that you’re no longer flat-out exhausted?
Struggling to zip your jeans that fit fine just last month?
You’re not PMS and you’re getting worried.
If you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s, you’re not alone.
You’re experiencing common symptoms of menopause: hot flashes, night sweats, difficulty sleeping, exhaustion, weight gain, belly fat, brain fog, forgetfulness, and aches and pains.
What’s more: half of women over 50 break a bone in their lifetime due to osteoporosis. Half of us will have hair loss.
But it’s the mirror that really trips most of us up – fine lines, wrinkles, dark spots, and dull skin. Age, it stares at us, catches us off guard in even the most unsuspecting glimpse.
If you’re feeling helpless about getting a handle on menopause symptoms and looking for a natural solution, do continue reading. We want to introduce you to FLOURISH, a daily multi-strain synbiotic formulated to quiet troublesome menopause symptoms and support healthy aging.
The [Little-Known] Primary Culprit of Most Menopause Symptoms
A growing body of research shows that the symptoms most common to menopause can be traced back to unchecked inflammation. Follow us on this for a moment.
Five of the most common and troublesome sets of symptoms of menopause have been linked to systemic inflammation.
- Hot flashes and night sweats (which are bedtime hot flashes)
- Mood swings and depression
- Brain fog and exhaustion
- Aches and pains
- Skin and hair changes
Systemic inflammation has many sources, but research keeps pointing to one, in particular, that should capture all of our attention: the gut.
Trouble in the gut stems from many insults often happening in tandem. The most common sources are:
- Microbiome changes in midlife
- “Dead” food (processed and fast food)
- Gluten and dairy (for many people)
- Antibiotics
- Pesticides on produce
- Chlorinated water
All these can lead to inflammation of the inner lining of the gut wall. When that happens, the microbiome doesn’t function optimally. Tiny gaps also open along the intestinal wall. You can’t see these openings with the naked eye usually, but they create a cascade of problems.
Microscopic amounts of gut contents spill out into surrounding tissues, creating a leaky gut. That signals trouble to the immune system. The body mounts a protective inflammatory response.
If the insult goes away, the inflammation usually does, too. But, too often, what caused the leaky gut is an ongoing problem.
Restoring your gut microbiome can help.
What Is the Microbiome?
The gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem of trillions of friendly microbes, mostly beneficial bacteria. It primes and regulates the immune system, turns inflammation up and down, stimulates hormone pathways, and forms a direct line of communication all the way up to the brain and out to the skin.
The microbes in your gastrointestinal tract work together like cells of a single organ to support the whole body.
When that “organ” is in good health, it functions well to nurture your good health. And you tend to feel well. When the microbiome isn’t well, you may notice symptoms, some of them related to inflammation.
Inflammation is the immune system’s response to any threat or trouble. It is intended to be short-lived: the body’s survival response aimed at restoring balance.
Survival is what inflammation is all about. And so, it disrupts “normal” pathways in favor of momentary “survival” pathways.
When systemic inflammation becomes chronic, healthy functioning pathways become dysregulated. They undergo wear and tear.
This wear and tear includes pathways that regulate body temperature. For many middle-aged and older women, hot flashes and night sweats are the result.
Unchecked inflammation also links to problems with metabolism, contributing to weight gain and shifts in fat distribution, often to the belly.
Women with systemic inflammation are more prone to difficulty sleeping, too, as well as brain fog, depression and mood swings, aches and pains, hair and skin changes, and even osteoporosis.
What is a Synbiotic?
You’ve no doubt heard of probiotics. Probiotics are a type of live microorganism in the digestive tract. They contain beneficial bacteria that nourish and protect your gut microbiome. Especially in midlife and later, we benefit from feeding the gut microbiome a daily dose of beneficial bacteria through a probiotic supplement. In fact, studies have shown that probiotic supplementation can improve several aspects of digestive health and may aid in the treatment of diarrhea as well as conditions like ulcerative colitis or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Once in the gut, friendly bacteria need food in the form of prebiotics. That’s where a synbiotic comes into play.
Synbiotic supplements combine a probiotic and a prebiotic, allowing them to work together to improve the gut microbiome.
Prebiotics are food for friendly microbes. They consist of plant fibers that we can’t digest, but the bacteria in our guts can. Without fiber, these resident bacteria begin to die off.
Whereas probiotics often contain one or more types of beneficial bacteria, synbiotics almost always consist of multiple strains along with the prebiotics that feed them.
Synbiotics add beneficial bacteria to the gut. Both abundance and diversity are vital for a flourishing microbiome.
The latest research suggests that synbiotics are the key to a healthy digestive tract. These supplements promote gut health by increasing beneficial bacteria in your system while at the same time providing these microscopic life forms with what they need for their own functions and survival!
What should I look for in a Synbiotic supplement?
Choose a probiotic that contains multiple species of Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus strains, as well as prebiotics. The label should include the following:
Genus name
This is the first word you see to identify a probiotic strain. It is italicized, typically, and most commonly reads as Lactobacillus, Lactoplantibacillus, or Bifidobacteria, but you might also see Bacillus, among others. The first letter in the genus name is capitalized. You might see several Lactobacillus strains in a single probiotic. The same is true for other genus names on the label. Don’t be concerned if the genus name is abbreviated as “L.” or “B” and so on.
Species name
This is the second word, following the genus name, and is also italicized, typically. The species name is not capitalized. You might see species such as plantarum, reuteri, gasseri, rhamnosus, longum, infantis, and so on. Occasionally, you may see two of the same species in a list of probiotics. What differentiates those two species is the strain.
Strain name
Strain names are not in italics. They may be a group of letters, numbers, or both, and occasionally a trademark sign. Strain names indicate the specific lab-produced variants of each species.
For the prebiotics, you might find the letters FOS (fructooligosaccharides); GOS (galactooligosaccharides), and so on. Or you might see inulin or the names of plant fibers, such as chicory, asparagus, or garlic. Others might be listed as well.
A good synbiotic product also contains multiple types of probiotic bacteria, prebiotics, and an acid-resistant capsule that can get past the stomach into the intestines. On the label, you want to see
The types of microbes: Genus species (strain). For instance, Bifidobacteria animalis (PTA6750) or B. animalis (PTA 6750). Strains worth noting include lactobacillus plantarum and bifidobacterium longum.
Also, look for type(s) of prebiotics and their source – for instance, organic powdered chicory root.
If the synbiotic is stearate-free, all the better.
FLOURISH is a synbiotic that encourages your microbiome to flourish. A flourishing microbiome is key to not only quieting troublesome menopause symptoms. A flourishing microbiome is necessary for a flourishing you – now and for many tomorrows to come.
How does FLOURISH work?
The simplest way of saying it is that the composition of FLOURISH bacteria types mimics the microbiome of healthy young adults.
Their microbiomes tend to be the healthiest because they are most diverse and abundant. FLOURISH diversifies your microbiome to approximate a time that it was healthiest and happiest. That makes for a healthier, happier you today, tomorrow, and every day.
But what we have just shared doesn’t tell you everything. We could write a book about all that your microbiome does and still not cover everything. Partially because it does that much.
Partially because we’re still learning about the magic and mysteries of the microbiome and body and co-evolution of you.
Your gut microbiome is a friendly partner that activates your health and wellbeing moment-by-moment. It’s easy to think of it as an unintelligent mass of single-celled microbes. That would be a mistake.
Your microbiome shapes your body’s immune system and hormone responses as routinely as the beating of your heart. It constantly “talks” to your brain, and your brain talks back. It also communicates minute by minute to your skin, hair follicles, blood vessels, fat tissue, and on and on.
What does that mean for you as you journey through menopause?
Nurturing a healthy microbiome may be the single most crucial step you can take to ease menopause symptoms and begin the journey toward healthy aging.
That’s what we believe, anyway. Not because we just decided one day to believe this, mind you. It’s because every day, more research points to how interconnected a healthy gut microbiome is to your health and my health.
Which brings us back to FLOURISH.
We formulated this broad-spectrum synbiotic to feed your microbiome (and mine, too) a diverse array of beneficial bacteria and the nutrients they need. And in doing so, you can enjoy vibrant wellbeing through menopause and all the stages of the second half of your life.
We chose a composition of bacteria strains that studies have shown to dial back inflammation. And more.
The types of probiotics and the prebiotics in FLOURISH have been shown to reduce hot flashes and night sweats, help nurture healthy weight, support restful sleep, balance moods, improve digestive health, foster a healthy brain, extract and deliver minerals necessary for strong bones, and nourish radiant skin and hair.
That’s the short story. You may have questions. We invite you to ask any questions you may have about nurturing your gut microbiome and FLOURISH in the comments section.
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