To beg other women to stop putting everything down to perimenopause

What are your qualifications on the menopause? Having attended a meeting tonight with a qualified medical professional who specialises in menopause, the likelihood is that yes, it is peri or menopause.

I thought I was aware of some of the weirder symptoms, but after tonight's discussion, I clearly wasn't.

If symptoms start around your 40s and all the usual suspects (cancer, thyroid, vitamin deficiencies, anaemia etc) have been ruled out, it is likely your hormones.

I think it’s such a weird age-late 30’s , early 40’s where often I find women can be hit with peri symptoms. I am this age group and loads , in fact nearly all my uni friends have babies , ttc or very small kids , I’ve preteens and teens .
The absolute last thing they want to talk about or think about is peri menopause.. I totally get that. However I’ve had symptoms over the last year in particular that have been horrendous, that amazing relief from a period is gone completely, it’s like having pms all.the.time. Many women find a sudden onset of symptoms and think they are going mad and it’s just their hormones fluctuating. I think overall it’s better to be informed.

But this is the case for many women. For every woman struggling with peri there is another who isn't.

I agree.

The consultant at The NHS menopause clinic told me my symptoms were psychological.
And as my HRT was optimal, it was clearly my mental health that was the issue.

What was wrong was that I have Sjogrens Syndrome.
Years of being dismissed by the so called experts...

There's rather a difference between women TELLING you that they're suffering from perimenopausal symptoms and the rest of the world telling women that it's perimenopause each time she has any symptom of anything.

Which one are we talking about?

And I can't quite believe the dick above who actually said:

"It hasn’t affected me badly at all, certainly doesn’t impair my work. And it is very noticeable that successful female execs are not talking about this…"

Totally agree - improving awareness is one thing, basically "being alive" being described as peri menopause is another.

We are definitely swinging to the latter now.

Totally agree. It’s utterly patronising. As if we weren’t medicalised enough, now we get a whole extra decade of ‘pre’ issues. What’s next, pre-peri? It’s ridiculous.

If I'm symptomatic I will go to the doctor and I expect an investigation based on those symptoms alone, not an outdated patriarchal idea that female bodies are in a constant state of deficiency of one form or another. It’s a social stigma as old as time and I refuse to subscribe to it.

Fully agree - there’s a risk of misdiagnosis and also as someone who stayed in work full time and built a good career after having two girls it is infuriating that having got past the prejudice that surrounds maternity and motherhood I now risk facing stereotypes around menopause.

It hasn’t affected me badly at all, certainly doesn’t impair my work. And it is very noticeable that successful female execs are not talking about this…

Agree!

No different to every child’s poor behaviour being attributed to ( un diagnosed / self diagnosed ) adhd or autism or every worry being anxiety or mental health challenges.

That as well.

I think bascially I'd like some kind of medical system where you don't get dismissed immediatley and have to fight to get listen to and investigated.

No, it's not undermining! But your attitude is.
Since every cell in our body uses estrogen and there are over 50 symptoms of lack of estrogen, you are being unreasonable.
It's this attitude that made our mother's and grandmothers put up and shut up.
Society is different now so many women are not putting up with symptoms. Women need to stay longer in the workplace to provide for their families so need help to manage menopause symptoms.
HRT is a game changer, I got my life back on it and all sorts of symptoms went that I didn't even know were connected to low estrogen.
But since only 15% of women in the UK take HRT there are likely many that are suffering that don't need to.
Also, apparently about 25% have hardly any symptoms at all, lucky bunch, but don't minimise the suffering of others just because you're breezing through it.

Part of the problem is that we (men and women) no longer go to the doctor and say: "here are the symptoms, this is what is happening to me..." Instead we go in with our own armchair diagnoses: "I think it's peri..." Being the current go-to for women. Women might latch on to that a bit as there's a nice solution and it's not too scary, but this often clouds what's really going on. YY After a good Google, most people will add a few generic things to their symptom list to reinforce their diagnosis, making it harder for the doctor. For example, there's a huge difference between someone who has noticed they aren't sleeping well and someone who sees it on a list and thinks "maybe I'm not sleeping well, now I think about it."

We don't want to get to the point where it's another hurdle in women getting diagnosed with cancer, taking a peri menopause tangent down the road of different HRTs before coming back to what the actual symptoms are. It's definitely an issue for autoimmune diseases already, where there is often a minor hormonal link but that shouldn't be the focus, we're also terrible with thyroids, which has overlapping symptoms. Also, if you have brain fog straight after COVID, for god's sake give it a few weeks, it's normal to feel crappy sometimes.

I have a chronic autoimmune condition and when it's bad it messes with my cycle, like my body knows it's not in a fit state to be getting pregnant. We shouldn't be assuming cause and effect with hormones always the cause, sometimes they are just helping to tell us something is wrong.

But I was getting heart palpitations and forgetting stuff and instead of worrying I was losing my mind/ having a heart problem I was happy to discover I’m in peri

I am aware. However my issues ARE peri-menopause and I am being treated shockingly because so many Drs don’t believe me.
Sometimes it is.

I agree. Whilst, clearly, everyone's experience is difference, it's both reductive and anti-feminist to automatically blame every ailment and emotion on "peri". Women are more than just the impact of their hormones, and we are at risk of making the world of work so much more difficult for middle-aged women.

If those symptoms did turn out to be something else - something that if caught earlier could have been treated much better - I'm sure you'd be complainng really loud as well.

I don't think anyone denying some women do suffer badly - but some women sail through and many more need a bit of knowlegde easily avalaible these days and maybe HRT and some consideration are fine and need to have anything else properly investigated so it doesn't get chromic or serious as it's dismissed as peri or "women issue".

I've seen some many feamles dismissed for various reasons - often takes three or four GP vists where as men in family it's usually less to get anything properly looked at. Past menopause age it's been for Dmum and MIL oh well it's old age - and delayed treatemnet for treatable conditions leaving them in pain more so than the men in the family - then they get blamed for not being assertive enough which TBH doesn't ring true at all.

Peri is extremely rare in younger women but I see so many women on here saying they ‘think’ they’re perimenopausal at around 30. Only about 1% of women really are at that age. I’m not unsympathetic to symptoms (I am a post menopausal woman) but there seems to be a particularly large portion of young women on MN self diagnosing with it when it’s more likely to just be normal hormonal ups and downs. Unless your doctor has diagnosed (by a dr that actually understands it) in your 30s you probably aren’t peri.

You missed off itching skin. This barely makes it on to the symptom lists but for me it was the thing that drove me crazy.

it is a good thing that there is more openness and awareness about menopause and it’s lead up. But we now need to make sure that there is much more research undertaken, for menopause, peri-menopause and female health in general. So much is still focussed on male health experiences and the lack of female health experiences needs to be urgently addressed. Even drug dosages of new treatments are still routinely based on average males.

I wish people would not be so defensive about this. No one is saying that the menopause doesn't matter or that people should shut up about it. Of course it matters.

The point is that it's become a default answer to everything, in the same way that "nerves" were the default answer to every female affliction 60 or 70 years ago. People have stopped properly interrogating their symptoms and just write it off as menopause or "peri" (and I loathe the cutesiness of "peri" but that's by the by).

So many people will just dismiss physical or mental health symptoms "because peri" and won't go to the GP about it or won't push the GP when he or she dismisses concerns. It's potentially dangerous because other more serious and potentially life-threatening conditions are being missed "because peri". And poor behaviour, in the workplace or the home are dismissed as being "I'm peri". It's lazy and uninformed and it potentially leads to people ignoring things which are much more important.

Someone said upthread that its part of a wider pattern of misdiagnosis of women's health issues and that's true: women's health has been the poor cousin to men's health for decades and this is well-documented. Menopause has been a victim of this. But that doesn't mean that the discovery of menopause is the panacea to all women's health problems.

I don't disagree with you, but I agree with the OP that menopause/perimenopause/hormones are being used as an excuse for so many things now that it is becoming difficult for people to take us seriously. It's the same as people using being ND/having mental health issues being used as a free ticket for bad behaviour.

It minimises the genuine issues that people are going through.

For the record, I am out the other side.

I had exactly the same actually my now rhumatologist said on my first appointment it could be hormonal I was 44 but it was confirmed psoriatic arthritis I have axial spondyarthris as well aches and pains do increase in menopause thou so I can see why the GPS first thought is this x

By the way, if anyone replies to me, I'm off for a procedure this afternoon so not likely to be on here for a couple of days.

So no one can shout at me, LOL.

I've talked on here quite a lot about other medical conditions being missed because of the obsession

But guess what? I got the equivalent of being shouted at on MN. 🤷🏽‍♀️. The default should be proper investigation. Not just "throw some pills at it and hope that it works because the woman is age between 40 and 50."

100% agree OP - this is just a new way to ignore and dismiss women.