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Summary:
Today I’m going to write about perimenopause, focusing on its symptoms, stages, and the challenges women face. Perimenopause begins in the 30s, with symptoms like sleep issues, fatigue, anxiety, mood swings, irregular periods, and weight gain. It can last up to 15 years, with most symptoms appearing in the 40s. Unfortunately getting a diagnosing for perimenopause due to fluctuating hormones and the lack of definitive tests. Other less common symptoms like hair loss, joint pain, and brain fog. It’s importance to be proactive in our health measures and ask your doctor about Hormone Rescue, to help manage these symptoms.
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I want to help you understand what’s going on in your body. Motivate you to be proactive about your health, empower you to self-advocate and make you laugh along the way, because you deserve to feel and look your best in your peri-years and beyond.
So what is perimenopause? It’s the phase of life before menopause, it’s the process of losing hormones or ovarian depletion, which starts from your 30s, so that is years before the end of your menstrual cycles. That means that you could start perimenopause as early as your mid 30s, it can last from one up to even 15 years, depending on the woman. However, most women start to experience symptoms somewhere in their 40s. So what happens is progesterone is often the first hormone to decline, then estrogen fluctuates quite erratically before it starts to decline about a year or two before menopause. But every woman is different. I knew this based on my symptoms of low estrogen and testing multiple times.
The average age of menopause is 51 but that is certainly not the rule. And quite frankly, menopause is one day. It’s kind of an arbitrary number, but it’s essentially 12 consecutive months without a period.
Testing sex hormones is very tricky in the stage of life, because they fluctuate so much. If you are 35 or over with symptoms of high or low hormones, you are more than likely in Peri that said, you can certainly test things like estradiol or estrogen, FSH, which is follicle stimulating hormone, and LH, which is gluttonizing hormone on day three of your cycle. But I would do that test. I would do those tests several months in a row to get a general overview. Keep in mind if you’re testing while you’re on hormonal birth control or while taking hormone replacement therapy that’s going to interfere with your hormone levels and will affect the results.
The stages of perimenopause. There’s early Peri, and then there’s late Peri. So early Peri is like I said, could happen in your mid 30s to mid 40s, and that’s when your periods may still be regular. Maybe you’ve even got some mid cycle spotting anxiety, or you’re noticing that weight is a little harder to come off, and then late Peri is typically in your late 40s to up to your mid 50s, where maybe you’re starting to notice longer cycles or skip cycles, like you’re getting them every a period, every 60 days, maybe you’re starting to experience hot flashes or night sweats.
Lets understand the symptoms a bit deeper
- Sleep issues, why you can’t fall asleep at night, or you have trouble staying asleep right? And you may wake up in the middle of the night. A lot of women wake up around two to three o’clock, sometimes a little bit later, and they can’t fall asleep.
- Fatigue, and that’s because you’re not sleeping well, right? You wake up feeling really unrested. You may need naps throughout the day.
- Debilitating is anxiety and or heart palpitations. A lot of women just get anxious. It’s like, ruminating thoughts and some women even think that they’re having a heart attack.
- Irritability, or mood swings, especially before your period. Women explain it to me, as you know, they fly off the handle. They are impatient with their kids or their husband. They often say that they feel like a monster or just a completely different person.
- Irregular periods, or you start to notice a change in your periods. They could be heavier. They could last longer.
- Low mood, or depression. A lot of women in this stage of life are experiencing depression, and many doctors will put them on antidepressants, which we’re going to really dive deep into in another episode or two. Now, a lot of women say that they’re more emotional, like they just cry for no reason, or they think of something and they just start welling up. That’s really common to feel more weepy in this stage of life. And then, of course, we have the weight gain, which is never fun.
- The worse one, and key on my journey; hair loss is a little bit more complex, and it can be due to some autoimmune things going on, thyroid issues. But you may just notice overall, like, a change in your hair, okay, joint pain is another one. So this is something that I experienced quite a bit.
- Brain fog, memory loss or lack of focus and productivity. You may notice that you used to be able to complete tasks without any issue, but now you’re having a hard time concentrating. You feel like you’re really easily distracted. You can’t finish things, and that is because you’re losing hormones. Okay? You’re not going crazy. A lot of women think they have ADD or ADHD
- Some other symptoms are dry eyes, dry skin, dried vagina. And of course, as a result of that, you may deal with painful intercourse, which is never fun, not for anybody. And then, of course, you may have low libido.
At the end, I’m sharing to simply to educate you, because there is simply not enough education for women in this stage of life, and it’s important to be informed, to feel empowered and to be able to take a proactive approach to your health in order to age well.
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