To beg other women to stop putting everything down to perimenopause

But everything was menopause in my case. And taking HRT resolved everything.

Lucky you not having to deal with so many issues, but kindly stop minimising other women's experiences.

All of this exactly, the idea women can act badly and just say people have to put up with it because of menopause is terrible

Where's your evidence for this? If you think this is a troll report it and get on with it.🙄
The advance search suggests a married middle aged woman. She was asking the other day about if HRT protects womens brains, which is not the same question as this thread although someone up thread disagrees.

I don't disagree tbf womens health is often put down to hormones or whatever but i don't think that is what the Op is concerned about.

Sounds like she needs different friends then rather than projecting it on the rest of us. This is not a wide issue.

A lot of health problems will be caused by or exacerbated by stress, cortisol, adrenal gland malfunction, lack of sleep, not eating a good diet, too much alcohol, not enough exercise, being overweight, not prioritising yourself enough. It can be hard to say whether hormones started it, but they sure as hell don't help at times.

It's quite hard to achieve Cinderella oestrogen, in particular. Too much is a problem. Too little is a problem.

Are you a bloke?

We’ve spent years fighting to have perimenopause and menopause recognised, understood and taken seriously, especially in the workplace. We’ve worked hard to break the stigma, challenge the taboo and make it easier for women to speak openly about their experiences without fear or embarrassment.

Are you now asking us to shut up again and go back to suffering in silence?

Disclaimer - Doctors should obviously not accredit every symptoms to peri

A lot is perimenopause BUT not everything is perimenopause.

I'm glad to be in an era when it's spoken about more openly and I'm more aware of what's to come but I do get frustrated if I comment on something and a woman makes an assumption "that's perimenopause for you" No Susan, it's not, I just had too much coffee and a spicy lunch so my guts are off and I'm sweating my tits off for the same reason my teenage son is and that's because it's bloody boiling.

A friend of mine (same age) a few years ago on a weekend away rolled her eyes and was like "this perimenopause girls hey, we're all going through it" and I was just thinking "maybe for you but looking around this room, two of us are pregnant and I'm not there yet.

For years there was little to no mention of peri/menopause and now it's become a useful catchall for every ailment or symptom. Neither scenarios are great.

In my opinion as a scientist, this whole debate shows why we need much better diagnostic tests in women's health.

My own personal experience - weird health shit happens to middle aged women - some if it definitely peri menopause, some of it not - but how do we know which is which?

Yes, I agree. My fatigue and feeling off was a combination of burnout and as yet undiagnosed cancer. I’m 45 and get about 3-4 periods a year now so well into perimenopause and other than the irregular periods, I can’t think of any symptoms I’d attribute to perimenopause. Other than the cancer, I generally feel great. But I also take good care of myself, don’t drink alcohol, and get sleep.

No but a lot is.

It's ridiculous and so undermining. I don't understand why so many women have grabbed onto it as an excuse to undermine the behaviour of other women. I suppose that would be looking for a different excuse without this one ? I don't know.

If people find it explains their own health problems that's fine, I'm glad if they have access to better information

I've actually had people ask me if I'm on it and if not, why not and I just think it's nobody's business - why would you ask me that?

I hate the way it's a topic of conversation for so many women now. There's 1 million more interesting things to talk about.

No it's not. And it undermines those of us who have had the most awful time with it all. There were times my mental health was so poor that I was planning my own funeral. Dark times. Much better now.

But if every woman aged 38 to 58 says that every little twinge or bad night's sleep is perimenopause, that means that those of us who are in a very bad place indeed are not taken seriously and just met with eye-rolling.

I can't comment on the history of this poster as I don't know them. Maybe you're right.

But I do think there's some truth in what they say about things being over-attributed to the menopause.

The orignal poster is a woman hating troll they can't even say "woman" as i said they post the same twaddle regularly, they are not posting about misdiagnosis of illnesses or swinging pendulums they think."females are weak" if they dare talk about "womens issues" as if they are a .failing

But I don't think anyone's saying women should not be aware of menopause. It's clearly a net positive that it's more talked about and known about than it was in the past.

What the OP is saying is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that almost anything that goes wrong with a woman's health, relationships or life during the relevant period is automatically attributed to the menopause or perimenopause.

Of course it's a likely factor, but the risk is that if you automatically default to "it's the menopause" you are likely missing out on a whole range of other triggers and causative factors.

Exactly @CurdinHenry . We don't all turn into soup-brained wrecks after 40. I negotiated menopause with some help from HRT, purely for hot flushes. My mother got through it without that, whilst running a successful business well into her seventies.

I acknowledge some women have it tougher than others, but a lot of us don't actually have that many problems with it.

on the one hand it’s great that women don’t feel isolated in their experience and fantastic that the medical profession is better geared towards understanding, but on the other hand I worry that all the conversations have also given weight to the long standing sexist view that women are ruled by their hormones and over a certain age are a write off.
I’m not sure how we get the balance right but I don’t want my male dominated workplace to start to think I’m any less just because of my age and sex.

Perimenopause was being whispered when I was going through it , my Gp.called it hormone depletion, I was 40.it took another 5 years for a nurse practitioner to prescribe me HRT it was a godsend really, Absolutely women should be aware of perimenopause,

Hear hear. My personal bugbear is the people who post about what is clearly outrageously poor behaviour from their husband or partner and then add: "or is it just that I'm peri?"

No, love, if he stays out for three days on a bender and flirts with your best friend it's out of order and you're right to lose your shit with him. Nothing to do with "peri". "Peri" is yet another thing to be added to a long list of hormone-related reasons to blame you for being unhinged or hormonal when you refuse to shove poor behaviour under the carpet or excuse it. Along with periods, pregnancy, every other hormonal symptom which affects women.

It's true that the lose of hormones when you go into the menopause can make women less tolerant of behaviour they would previously have waved off. But it's not "because peri", it's because you've finally grown a pair and have woken up to the fact that your "pre-peri" self had been sold a pup.

It's not peri, it's him being a dickhead.

Women who use puberty as the explanation for their children’s challenging behaviour and blame pregnancy for everything aren’t going to pass up the opportunity to use menopause and peri-menopause in the same way.

I think toleration is such a helpful position to learn. I had an easy time of it when I had periods, but I could understand that others did not. I had an easy peri - my hot flush experience was the relative equivelent of a sneeze birth, but I could see that others were struggling. Menopause has been wonderful for me, and I am grateful that it started when I was 50, so relatively early, but I can see that others have had a harder time. We're not all in the same boat, and it can be helpful to talk about things we're struggling with and to look for others with similar experiences.

Being able to track my now horrific anxiety and mood swings against my hormonal cycle would not have happened if perimenopause symptoms weren’t being more widely spoken about. My GP wasn’t even willing to consider it might be hormone related (too young!) until I presented a perfectly plotted graph…