Sussex Life November 2015

women’s health

MENOPAUSE uncovered

T

Maryon Stewart is one of the world’s pioneers in the field of non-drug medicine. She talks to Alex Hopkins about how she’s transformed the lives of women living with the menopause

here are few things better than watching women get their lives back,” Maryon Stewart tells me.

Stewart is reflecting on her extraordinary career.

Much of her work has centred on treating the menopause naturally, and has transformed the lives of scores of women since she established the Women’s Nutritional Advisory Service back in 1984. Stewart has gone on to write 26 popular self-help books, co-author a series of medical papers, present her own radio show and act as a nutritionist on Channel Four’s Model Behaviour. Not bad for a woman who admits that this “incredible journey” began by accident.

“It all started in Sussex. I was on maternity leave and was sorting through 10,000 medical papers for my husband – one of three doctors who was setting up the British Society for Nutrition and Medicine – when I found 200 papers on PMT [pre-menstrual tension].”

Stewart admits that she was immediately fascinated by her find. These documents advocated a natural approach to treating PMT, which was revolutionary in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, little was available to women other than hormone treatment, and there was a six to twelve month waiting list. “Things were serious,” explains Stewart. “Some of these women were suicidal.”

At the time Stewart was working as a dental hygienist, but decided to start teaching the nurses in her husband’s practice how to carry out the advice in the medical papers. What was initially conceived as an 2 6 | S U S S E X S T Y L E . C O M | N OV E M BE R 2 0 1 5

additional service for the practice became very popular, and Stewart’s work captured the imagination of a local journalist, who wrote about it. The article then came to the attention of national magazines and was eventually taken up by The News of The World. Suddenly, Stewart was a household name.

“I got dragged kicking and screaming on to breakfast TV. On average I was getting 600 plus letters a day from women seeking help, but when the big features in the national dailies started, over 2,000 letters a day started coming in! It became huge. I didn’t really have time to think about what I was doing. Friends came over for coffee and had to help me open the post.”

In time, Stewart organised herself and got a system going. In the first instance she established a pre-menstrual tension advisory service and soon this was treating thousands of women. While all of this was happening, Stewart was immersing herself in research on PMT. She was amazed to see that so many people were getting better and started to look at the reasons for this. Research found that when women had low levels of nutrients, it had an impact on their brain chemistry and hormone function after they’d given birth.

“When we corrected that, 95 per cent of patients were coming out of hormone hell to having seriously happy hormones,” explains Stewart. “Before treatment they were feeling like Jekyll and Hyde.” She was then head-hunted by a publisher to write a book on PMT and countless appearances on TV and radio followed. She had the media transfixed. As her research continued she discovered

“It’s an holistic programme which helps with the short term symptoms of the menopause. Our mission is to show women how to keep themselves in better shape”

she could also help people suffering from a huge variety of symptoms which included IBS, constipation, fatigue, anxiety and acne. Stewart’s work also expanded into the fields of preconception and pregnancy.

Some of her findings were alarming: a number of women with PMT were eating up to 20 bars of chocolate a day. “We were giving women their lives back by providing them with a little knowledge which they probably couldn’t get elsewhere,” says Stewart, summing up her work. But what exactly is the science behind natural treatments of the menopause?

“All initial research with women of child-bearing age found that many had low magnesium stores, and that other nutrients such as zinc and calcium were in short supply too. We also discovered that things only got worse as a woman got older. Five years before menopause you are more likely to have low levels of nutrients, especially if you’ve had a child or two and breast fed them, or if your diet has generally been inadequate.

“These issues are coupled with the added problem that estrogen levels fall naturally at that time. Within any cell there is an estrogen receptor site is the space in the cell, like a space for a key in a lock.. When you have circulating estrogen, it pops into that space and helps keep everything ticking over normally, but when estrogen levels are low, these receptors remain empty.

“We aren’t really designed for the long-term. A hundred years ago we were only living to around 50, but now that age is young and the brain doesn’t understand that the estrogen receptor sites are meant to be empty, so it tries to kick start the ovaries into function by sending out thermal surges (what we call hot flushes and night sweats).”

Stewart’s specific approach to combating this is to teach women how to meet their needs nutritionally. This, in turn, normalises their hormone function. “We also show women how they can consume naturally occurring estrogen through food. This is combined with scientific supplements, meditation and exercise. It’s an holistic programme which helps with some of the short-term symptoms of menopause, which women desperately need.”

The results are impressive: Stewart’s research shows that 90-95 per cent of women are free from symptoms within five to six months. “But what most people don’t realise is that once you’ve gone through the menopause – a year after your last period – you’re more at risk from things like osteoporosis, heart disease and dementia, because you’re not protected by estrogen anymore. Interestingly, all research on these areas shows that the naturally occurring estrogen filling the receptor sites is one of the key things in combating these problems.

“Our mission is to show women how to keep themselves in better shape and protect against these types of changing illnesses and major discomforts throughout their lives, including during menopause. We have people coming to us who are literally clinging on by their finger nails, thinking this is the beginning of the end and not recognising themselves when they look in mirror, but who then start a whole new chapter of their lives with great enthusiasm and wellbeing.”

Stewart admits that she is frustrated that her approach has not been endorsed by a wider spectrum of the medical establishment.

“I really did have high hopes that it would, and I have given talks at The Royal College of Nursing and with GPs, but then budgets got cut back so it never became a part of orthodox medicine. Some more enlightened doctors are using it, but there’s still no formal training on nutrition for most under-graduates, and most post-graduate study is funded by the pharmaceutical industry, which obviously doesn’t have a vested interest in people not taking their products or helping themselves.”

But Stewart carries on undeterred. She is now planning to launch on online advisory service for women called Switch.

“We’ll be concentrating on the mid-life switch for women first. So many people lose themselves and don’t understand what’s happening with their body, or how they are now relating to their partners. Things just become a huge nightmare for them. But by providing these people with knowledge, they can see that others are suffering in a similar way and it becomes a whole different ball game.

They discover they do have options after all.

“There’s so much advice out there on the internet, but it’s not always good. When you’re lacking sleep and feeling awful, the last thing you want to do is trawl through huge amounts of online information. I want to open things up so that people can get help and enlightenment, that’s what my whole career has been about.

“None of my career has been planned though, I just seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Sometimes I look back and think: how on earth did all of this happen? Yet I am very grateful that it did.”

“We have women clinging on by their finger nails at first, but who then start a whole new chapter of their lives with enthusiasm”

LEGAL HIGHS Maryon Stewart has spearheaded a campaign to get legal highs banned in the UK. In 2009, Maryon’s daughter, Hester, an exceptional medical student at The University of Sussex, died after being given a dose of GBL by a former boyfriend. Maryon later discovered that what Hester had taken was actually paint stripper.

Maryon launched the Angelus Foundation to campaign for all legal highs to be banned, and to also raise the profile on these substances. There were over 100 new substances in Europe alone last year.

“There’s much work still to do. Most university students and teenagers at school don’t really understand what these substances are,” she says.

Her campaign is proving to be successful. Just this year, the bill on banning legal highs was the first item mentioned in this summer’s Queen’s speech.

“It’s been a really hard journey to be perfectly honest, but it’s not one I’m sorry I have embarked upon. It has been a long fight, but a necessary one.”

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