How Maca Can Help Menopause Symptoms

Menopause in women is a very difficult stage to go through. The most common of these symptoms are hot flashes. It affects about 75% of all menopausal women. Typically, they occur at night when the woman feels a sudden increase in her body temperature.

It can disrupt sleep, and causes dizziness, irritability, lethargy and weakness. Mental symptoms of menopause include depression, anxiety, loss of concentration and loss of interest in sex. At this stage, a woman’s body is undergoing a transformation which results in a conflict between her brain and her ovaries. This causes a lot of confusion in her system when the brain sends signals to the ovaries to produce eggs, but her ovaries has lost the capacity to do so.

Her confused system brings about estrogen deficiency which is another meaning of hormonal imbalance. Estrogen is a collective name for several hormones in women. Maca can help in balancing these hormone levels and prevent or stop the inconvenient symptoms that menopausal women are suffering. There are powerful substances in maca that can bring this about. But basically, maca’s adaptogenic ability is the one that brings about hormonal balance in women who are suffering from PMS symptoms.

Maca Is An Adaptogen
Maca’s benefit for menopausal women is its ability to act as an adaptogen. As an adaptogen, it balances the hormone levels of women who are on their menopausal stage. If the woman’s hormone levels are balanced, all her systemic functions will be brought to normal and all her PMS symptoms will be alleviated and eventually stopped. As an adaptogen, maca does not exactly produce the hormones that women lack at this stage. This herb fuels the endocrine system and induces the woman’s body to produce the hormones that she lacks. Maca contains important nutrients that help our glands to produce the depleted hormones.

Maca Is A Better Alternative To HRT
Hormonal Replacement Therapy or HRT is the usual method by which women tries to treat their hormonal imbalance. But this method of treatment has a lot of adverse effects. The foreign hormones are interpreted by the pituitary and hypothalamus glands that there are sufficient hormones circulating in the body. The glands will not produce these hormones and will later weaken. If this condition persists, there will be no natural hormones produced resulting in more dependency on unnatural hormones.

With maca, the glands that produce the hormones are induced to get more active in their hormone production. The potent substances in maca are the ones responsible for this. Maca encourages the pituitary glands to produce the precursor hormones which in turn raise up the progesterone, oestrogen and testosterone levels. It also helps to balance the actions of the adrenal glands, the pancreas and the thyroid glands. All of these are done naturally, with no danger of any harmful side effects. In this regard, many doctors and health practitioners prefer maca over HRT.

What Is Really In Maca That Makes It More Effective Than HRT?
If you are now having these PMS symptoms, you need to know what’s inside maca that makes it more effective than HRT treatments. Here is a sampling of maca’s nutrients that will help balance your hormone levels.

• Proteins – as polypeptides, 11% of maca root contains this vital nutrient.
• Calcium – maca contains about 10% of this mineral.
• Magnesium
• Potassium
• Mineral contents – copper, iron, zinc, sodium, silica and traces of iodine.
• Vitamin contents – riboflavin, thiamine and ascorbic acid.
• Protein contents – glutamic acid, aspartic acid, histidine, threolline, serine, sarcosine, tyrosins, alanine, valine, arginines, hoproline, methionine, lysine and isoleucine.

Availability of Maca
Many health food companies are now selling maca. You can buy them in pills, capsules, gelatinized and in powder form. You can also prepare maca by cooking it in the traditional way. Its fruit can be roasted, cooked and mashed like a potato. It can also be juiced and dried and used as porridge or ground into a flour-type powder and baked. Its leaves can be chopped for mixing in a salad or cooked and eaten just like cabbage. The easiest way to get maca supplements is through health food stores.

How Much Should You Take
According to some experts, the recommended dosage of maca is 900 mg per day. If you are taking maca powder, start with ¼ teaspoon daily and increase it gradually until you reach 1 teaspoon per day. You can mix it with water, juices, teas, etc. If you are taking maca capsules, start with 3 capsules three times a day. Maca is a food not a medicine so there is no danger of taking too much amount. But if you have thyroid and goiter problems, better consult your doctor first.