Public debate about the menopause-anyone else feel ambivalent?

[CurlewKate]

Obviously it's an important issue and it's good that it's being talked about. However women spent years fighting against the perception that we are "slaves to their hormones". Employers would be reluctant to employ women because, they claimed, their menstrual cycle made them unreliable. We had just more or less knocked that on the head and now the media is full of accounts of menopausal symptoms and how difficult some women find this time of their lives. I can't help feeling that this is not going to be good for women in general.

If employers now have menopause policies in place (whether they’ve jumped on the bandwagon just for the optics, is another discussion) thanks to all the awareness raising, it can only be a good thing if it helps support women in the workplace in any way.

Where it’s gone too far is with the face creams and make up branded ‘for the menopause’. That’s just marketing nonsense.

I disagree.

I would never have gone to the GP about being bone tired, having night sweats and a bit of brain fog. I'd have just coped with it (or not), like women have for years, and got on with feeling quite crap every day, like women have for years. I wouldn't have joined the dots between the symptoms.

Instead all the hormones that my body is losing are being replaced and I don't feel crap.

I feel it's been normalised enough to make jokes about it with my male boss and make him more aware of what myself and his colleagues are going through. And what some of his colleagues will go through in the future.

And I'm being very open talking with my teenage children about what's happening to me so that they can be prepared in 30 years time.

I'm taking that as a win.

I sent this picture to a friend yesterday as a "WTAF is this crap?" annoyance. Why was I stupid enough to not expect companies to cash in?

I don't care whether employers know about it or not.

What I do feel strongly about is that it's about bloody time that doctors took menopausal symptoms seriously. Most of them know far too little about it and are apt to dismiss your symptoms with a shrug, or tell you that you're depressed so here's some pills to cure that.

I'm so pleased that more people are talking about it. I come from a line of women that aren't open about things like this and last year I had so many symptoms that I would have pushed through. Unfortunately one of them was pretty bad depression.

Knowing more about peri-menopausal symptoms through here and in the press meant I didn't think I was going bat shut crazy.

Yes, it's the cashing in and trendiness of it all that I find annoying.

I'm very cynical about the pharmaceuticals industry creating and disseminating messaging in order to sell products, yes.
Insidious.
Feel the same about the weight loss products too.

They're all just trying to sell you something. Insidious.

I'd welcome the discussion if it meant an improvement in understanding and , more importantly, treatment but it's always women talking about 'messy women's business' so men feel free to disregard it as a woman's problem and nothing they need to get involved with.

The misery of hot flushes (just generally massively overheating) - night sweats, insomnia and memory fog. Just crap. I'm on HRT and it's not working. I can't bear for my husband to touch me in bed because I'm so fucking hot all the time, I'm snappy and tired - I don't want to just be written off as a menopausal women I want some bloody help.

What I want is:

HRT that works

Fast appointments so I can get back to my normal self

Not waiting weeks and weeks to be seen and then be given a treatment which can take an age to work, if it works at all

NOT to find out that our health insurance (through work) excludes the menopause because apparently it's not anything which needs treatment

NOT being patronisingly told that I need to take time for some self care - I haven't got time for mindfully observing the wrinkles on f*cking raisins, I've got a job, kids, a home, friends, hobbies and countless other things that are being negatively impacted by me feeling like shit all the time. I just want something to fix it.

Oh and finally not to have a female (very senior) Doctor friend confide that she is afraid she'll make a mistake because her brain fog is so bad. I mean TAKE IT SERIOUSLY employers.

This is year 2 for me and I just want to cry. A lot. Discussion is great but I want action and solutions which means pouring money into research and recognising the impact it has on some women's health and well being. I don't for one second think that all this talk will actually result in funding being redirected but I live in hope.

Only good thing is that by the morning I'll have bloody forgotten I wrote this so I won't need to look back at this rant and the other responses from women feeling helpless.

Woman up? Why should I put up with shitty menopause symptoms just because women before me did. I’m defo starting to experience peri. Not on HRT currently but I will absolutely try it if I need it. I don’t believe it’s a magic cure. I look after myself and take minimal medication for anything however if thaw lifestyle doesn’t work it’s an option. That’s how I see it.

We need education not just shhh woman’s problems. Just deal with it. It’s 2023. We need doctors to take women medically more seriously and also be educated more comprehensively. Women need to know the choices and options they can have to get them through this stage of life.

Same OP. It's like I was already aware of discrimination in case I might have a baby, now i'm past that, they find another reason to doubt me, when I might have no issues at all.

Generally I dislike the trend of talking about personal stuff at work. If the media raise awareness, that's one thing, but why should employers bang on about it?

I wonder if it's deliberate, to keep women down in the workplace, constantly labelling them as a potential liabilty.

Another post-menopause woman agreeing here. It's not work who need to be menopause-aware, it's our HCPs. Timely, woman-centred, menopause-informed healthcare would mean there would be no need for our employers to be 'menopause-aware', or to consider us an employment risk because we might burst into tears (insert whatever patronising stereotypes).

I agree OP. I'm appalled that employers may be having consultations, training courses etc. that basically conclude that middle aged women are tearful, hormonal messes with no concentration span who want the heating turned down and that would like extra time off.

It makes me furious that now women over 40 may be even more discriminated against if those are employer's expectations of women that age.

I take HRT because of my anxiety and insomnia, but am otherwise as capable as I've always been.

It's just another industry and another reason to dismiss and discriminate against older women

And me.

I'm 49 and like talking about it with my friends. It's useful to share experiences. It wouldn't be such an issue ( such as the proposed menopause leave) if women were treated properly at the GP level. I'd like to try a stronger HRT and it took best part of 30 minutes to arrange a telephone appt for 22nd May🙄

Me too.

You sound pretty angry! You could try focusing that energy on helping yourself, rather than childishly demanding that someone else "fix" you, immediately. Your understanding of private health insurance is pretty poor - it's really only for acute problems (elective surgery, cancers etc) and never includes drugs, so what on earth were you expecting? I imagine someone will suggest you try a different type of HRT but you sound like the sort of person who will say "it's not working!" if you don't see an improvement within days. Again, you have a poor understanding of how drugs work.

You could try many proven non-drug approaches: lose weight, exercise more, cut out alcohol, cut out caffeine, eat more whole foods, vegetables and fruit, get outside more, improve your sleep hygiene. You can mock mindfulness all you like but many people get benefit from relaxing the brain - definitely sounds like something you need.

I'd welcome a debate as long as it's a balanced one. At the moment the only discussions around the menopause have been negative ones. Whilst I get that, for countless numbers of women, the menopause is absolutely awful, for many others it's not as bad. Just recently a family member in her early 30's has been told that she will "most likely be peri in the next 5 years" and she was terrified as all she had heard about recently was how bad it is. It was only after I spoke to her about my experience did she realise that what the media was portraying was just 1 side of the coin.
I am in no way trying to minimalize other women's experiences (my sister went through Hell with hers), it's just that I rarely talk about mine as I'm either made to feel guilty or branded a liar when I say that , for me anyway, it really wasn't so bad.

issues impacting half of the entire population are important. For far too long women were patronised and told to deal with their physiology in silence. It is quire scary that a lot of HCPs still know very little about menopause and dismiss woman, oh just another one, just deal with it, and let us concentrate on real issue, i.e erectile dysfunction.

I'm 10 years past the menopause now, but certainly not 'throught it' and magically OK again.

Looking back over those years - plus, with hindsight, the three or four leading up to it (I had never heard of the perimenopause, and it was never mentioned by any gps I saw), I feel very let down,as it is obvious that the various (mostly but not exclusively female) gps I saw were not as clued up as they should have been either.

It's only now, after seeing a younger GP that im realising this, and have also realized how different both my physical and my mental health could have been now and in the future if both those other GPs and I had been more clued up.

I think that a large part of the problem was that previous generations of women very much suffered in silence, and would only have gone to their gp about 'women's matters' if they were absolutely desperate, at which point it would often have been too late to prevent or reverse a lot of the worst effects anyway, as well as it giving the misleading impression that relatively few women suffered badly and long-term.

I can accept that perhaps the pendulum is perhaps now swinging a little too far in the opposite direction, but this was necessary to bring about a real, beneficial change for women, and will probably drop back to a more sustainable level before too long.

The adverts for cosmetics etc aimed at menopausal women certainly make me roll my eyes , but if people are daft enough to fall for it ...

How incredibly rude of you to say that! This post should be an example as to why talking about meno is needed. Would you say the same to someone with cancer or depression? Oh just pull yourself together.

Apologies, I did not use quote. This was to Sorrynotathome.

So basically you think women should shut the fuck up and just get on with it? Just like throughout history women have had to shut the fuck up and get on with things being shit for them?

One third of women find menopause absolutely debilitating. Until the campaign many women and gps had no idea what the cause of these symptoms were. Suicide rates for women peak during the menopause.

Even now, with the awareness, my GP did not recognize my symptoms as menopause and I had to puss about for a year, until she finally referred me to the ‘women’ clinic at the hospital where the specialist as soon as I entered the door said, ‘I know just from your notes this is peri menopause and you just need HRT’

The awareness is not as great as you think it is.

Well @Josephi your comment is quite rude too! I was just saying that getting angry and demanding quick fixes without any thinking or attempting to help yourself is self-defeating.

It's not employers who need to be menopause educated; it's our health-care providers.

I had one GP whose knowledge of perimenopause was, frankly, shocking. She recommended hysterectomy for my newly-heavy and erratic periods, antidepressants for my anxiety, and a thinner quilt for my night sweats. I quit my job due to brain fog and being unable to concentrate. I had vaginal atrophy, dry eyes, dry skin. I had insomnia. I had no patience and felt furious a lot of the time and suggested divorce to my poor husband. And I had zero sex drive.

Personally I'm glad awareness is being raised. Hopefully the next generation will have access to good menopause information from their health-care providers. Then we can make our own informed and personal decisions on how to manage our menopause, whether that be with HRT or not. It should never reach the stage where our employers have to worry about hormonal employees or that we're quitting our jobs because we don't have access to the right information or healthcare.

The beauty industry can get to fuck though with their patronising menopause products.