The wine o’clock effect
My period tummy this month is out of control. I feel like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
blowing up like a blueberry, fit to burst. I’m cranky as hell, too. I wish I wasn’t. I don’t want to be cranky.
But damn it I’m as irritable as my bowel. Homeschooling nearly sent me over the edge earlier when the boys started squabbling over a borrowed pen, running around the table after each other screaming and fighting. Not able.
Is it wine o’clock yet? Anybody else being driven to drink by trying and failing to teach their children things they don’t want to learn? I mean I don’t drink that much, one or two glasses of wine a day to take the edge off. There’s always something in need of having the edge taken off.
Thing is, I got a stern dressing down from Dr Claudia Welch, who seemed to be ‘Anyone else being driven to drink by failing to teach the children?’
talking directly to me from her book, Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life.
The good doc is basically warning her female readers to cut alcohol intake to one a week (sips and ponders), to get off the pill if you can, and to start taking their health seriously by living a mega clean life.
‘Control what is in your control,’ she says, in order to lower the risk of disease and ease yourself into perimenopause. Dr Welch is not a proponent of synthetic hormones, which I’ve been taking in an attempt to counteract my outrageous bloat, not what your dirty little minds may be thinking. I wish.
They worked so well in my 20s, cleared up my skin which made me feel so much better. After a decade of dependence my doctor in Dublin told me I should give the pill a break. The consequences of long term use were too risky. I did and welcomed Patrick, Louis and Joseph in quick succession which sounds like I was having way more fun in my 20s than was the case. Anyway I was back on it again until Dr Welch’s book, packed with solid research, convinced me the pill could have some serious repercussions down the line.
Who moves to Provence to drink one glass of alcohol a week? Me apparently. Let’s give this a try (after this glass). I’m already quasi healthy with my fruit and veg intake. Here’s a top tip from someone ill-equipped to dole out top tips: Grape juice. It’s a good one if you’ve got the thirst. Sometimes you just want a sugar hit. Apparently it’s good for you too. If I keep saying it, I just might follow my own advice on that one. Sure isn’t wine just a form of grape juice after all? (Sobs silently into glass.) And there was I dreaming of growing older disgracefully like Eddy and Patsy from Ab Fab. ‘I haven’t got any real hormones left, darling. I’m just held together with gel, pills and suppositories,’ one of Eddy’s classic lines. We’ll see how it goes on the squeaky clean road out of bloat. If it’s only one glass a week, might as well make it a Bolly, darling.
Santé to that.