COMMON DISCOMFORTS DURING PREGNANCY: FATIGUE
Fatigue is common during the first and last trimesters of pregnancy. However, proper rest is essential throughout the entire forty weeks. Because your body requires more rest, consider some of the strategies offered in this section.
Strategies for Reducing Fatigue
Napping
- Nap whenever you can throughout the day.
- If you're an at-home mom, nap while your child naps, plays at a friend's house, or attends school or playgroup.
- If you work outside the home, nap during breaks. Set an alarm so you don't oversleep. If your own workspace isn't quiet, nap in a lounge, empty office, or even a storage room - anyplace that's quiet, safe, and comfortable.
Sleeping at Night
- Go to bed as early as possible.
- Sleep in as late as possible.
- Make yourself as comfortable as possible at night to help you sleep well. If necessary, sleep alone, use extra pillows, add or subtract a blanket, or sleep on a couch or recliner - whatever works for you.
- Ask your partner to tend to a child who doesn't sleep through the night so your sleep won't be interrupted.
Plating and Drinking
- Eat a nutritious meal or snack at least every two to three hours.
- Drink water throughout the day.
- If recommended by your caregiver, take vitamin supplements to fill any gaps in your diet.
Prioritizing
- Limit nonessential activities (including housework) that prevent you from getting adequate rest.
- Get fresh air and exercise regularly, which will both rejuvenate you during the day and help you sleep better at night.
Adjusting Your Work Schedule
- Take a vacation day or sick day (or half-day) in the middle of the week every now and then.
- Negotiate a flexible work schedule with your boss so you can rest when you're feeling low and work efficiently when you're feeling well. For example, you might work at home sometimes or go to the office in the evening or on the weekend to catch up.
- Negotiate a job-share with a coworker.
- Work part-time instead of full-time.
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WOMENS HEALTH
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HOW FOODS CAN PREVENT BREAST CANCER: DECREASE ESTROGENS
Here's how to counter the ill effects of bad, recycled, chemical, and free estrogens.
Bad Estrogen
Even if you produce moderate to high amounts of estrogen, there is an emerging strategy to blunt its potency. You can actually channel your estrogen into good estrogen rather than bad estrogen by eating a diet high in cruciferous vegetables. Those include cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. Both exercise and low body fat also increase the production of good estrogen. Alcohol, polyunsaturated fats, and too much body fat all increase the production of bad estrogen.
Recycled Estrogen
When estrogen is transported from the bloodstream through the liver and into the bowel for disposal, it is assisted by large amounts of fiber in the bowel. That fiber binds to estrogen in the intestine so that the body cannot reabsorb it, ensuring that it is excreted with other waste products. However, when there is too little fiber in the diet, the estrogen remains free in the bowel and may be reabsorbed by the body into the bloodstream, raising the amount of estrogen in the bloodstream. A study at Tufts University showed that the more a woman's bowel movement weighed, the lower was her blood estrogen level. The assumption is that the increased weight of the bowel movement was due to the fiber.
Free Estrogen
The most effective way to decrease the amount of free estrogen in the blood is to build more of the carriers that bind estrogen in the blood and keep it from estrogen receptors. Lets look at the key strategies. The prime regulator of estrogen carriers is the hormone insulin, according to Banoo Parpia of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project. The lower you can drop your insulin, the more estrogen carriers your body manufactures. A low-fat diet also reduces the amount of free estrogen in healthy postmenopausal women. Soy also manufactures more carriers. A high-fiber diet helps to bind more free estrogen in your blood and keeps it at lower, safer levels. Many of these measures also decrease estrogen production, so you are cutting your cancer risk in at least two separate ways.
Chemical Estrogen
The most aggressive prevention includes avoiding animal and fish products with high fat contents that can pick up and concentrate large quantities of chemical estrogens and pesticides. The worst offenders and how to avoid them are found in the chapter "Step 8: Avoid Chemical Estrogens." Eating organic foods that have always been pesticide-free will help you to avoid contaminating breast fat. Washing all fruits and vegetables thoroughly will help remove pesticides. Since most women already have high stores of chemical estrogens in their breast fats there are two other strategies that have proved to be beneficial. First is breast-feeding, which flushes pesticides out of their storage site in breast fat. That does mean that your infant ingests milk with chemical estrogens, but pediatricians do not believe this is harmful. The most practical strategy of all is to consume large amounts of estrogen blockers such as soy, which block the effect of these chemicals at the estrogen receptors on breast cells.
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Womens health
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