When did peri menopause become a thing?

[gerispringer]

I’m over 60 so didn’t go through the menopause a million years ago, but I swear peri menopause wasn’t a thing then. Now it seems every woman over 35 is supposedly using it as an excuse for forgetting something, getting a grey hair or loosing their temper. Just when did peri menopause become become a thing?

My Mum would have been 79 this year and I remember her and her friends talking about the difficulties of ‘the change’ and getting HRT. I don’t think it’s anything new.

Better education is not a bad thing.

Just because you lived through the dark ages doesn't mean we have to.

It didn't used to have a name. Women just got sectioned or got ECT or put on sedatives.

Homo sapiens have been around for 300,000 years so I’d imagine for that long roughly, give or take 10,000 years or so.

It was invented the same day as ‘my anxiety’ 🙄

I have known about perimenopase since my 40s. Am now 62.

Your post comes across as being very dismissive OP.

Perimenopause is no walk in the park. Women aren't "using it as an excuse"

Thank god things have moved on then, and women's health issues aren't dismissed as easily as in the past. Not having suffered something yourself OP doesn't meant it doesn't exist.

Its existed forever, in the past women were put on valium for their 'nerves' or put on antidepressants, or had there aches, pains, lack of libido put down to normal aging. Put on sleeping pills for their insomnia and told they were too young for HRT despite hot flushes.

It was always there but you were expected to just cope with it. Medicine has been about men for 100s of years. If men had periods science would have come up with something to stop them. HRT, Oestrogen, Testosterone cream are all relatively new. Once it can be monetised then the game changes but GPs etc are the gatekeepers. Also it's hit and miss in terms of this is needed and less of that. Shortage of HRT? They'll manage. No football on Sky? Calamity.
As posted above, it is/was easier to give anti depressants etc. Peri and menopause isn't a 1 size fits all thing. Affects different women in different ways and requires an individual solution that may need to be changed as the user ages and the condition changes

You are being deliberately goady. Just because Peri was never discussed or spoken about does not mean it did not exist. Many women suffered in silence for years and went through hell with symptoms that could have been easily controlled.

How marvellous it is that women are finally being listened to and taken seriously. Shame you have to sneer at it.

It was all called the menopause then afaik. The whole process was ‘the change’ then ‘the menopause’. Once your periods had stopped you been ‘through’ the menopause. When really the menopause is when periods have stopped, not the whole thing.

It's always existed but had different terms 'hysteria', 'decline', 'climacteric insanity', and there have also always been lucky women like you OP who have not suffered or have barely suffered.

My early menopause pushed me into a pseudo Cushing's state and then into sick euthyroid syndrome, it destroyed my physical and mental health as well as my career and life in general, but thanks to modern medicine I'm starting to get my life back on track.

In a different era i would have probably ended up in a lunatic asylum!!

I think we just called it menopause rather than distinguishing between peri and menopause. The symptoms associated with peri were called menopause symptoms except we understood them less, particularly the emotional and mental health side of things

I’m in my 60s too and went through perimenopause relatively early. It was definitely a thing even back then.
I get fed up with how older people are treated on MN, then read an OP like this one and can understand a bit better why. Please don’t think we are all the same.

Peri menopause has always been a thing. But, until recently, it hasn't been 'a thing' for the purposes of flogging every fucking product under the sun, or promoting every fucking content creator on the internet, or explaining every single facet of being a woman between the ages of forty and fifty-something.

It used to be a meaningful healthcare-related term. Now it is just yet another explain-all label that people use to protect themselves from all the uncertainties of being human.

It was all just called The Menopause then. I think perhaps people felt less comfortable talking about it widely and certainly you didn't read so much about it in the press......it still happened though. Better information and free discussion is a good thing isn't it?

It's only in the last 20(?) years that the chemistry has been really studied. The whole thing requires different disciplines of medicine. Endocrinology, biology/chemistry, gynaecology to work together. Sorry if I missed out a specialization.

Menopause, forever. I've only heard of peri menopause in the like 3 years personally.

The term first appeared in the writing of J. K. Frost in 1962 - hope that helps in case you actually wanted to know. And presumably you were around in the 60s. So it's been a thing for 50+ years.

If you're just being goady, then the fact there's an increased use of the term now is because finally women's health is starting to gain the same significance as men's health. The horror!!!!!!! So of course you will hear it talked about more.

It's only recently that periods were spoken about. Remember that shit advert where you had a secret and luckily could now do cartwheels? Menopause was the change and not openly discussed and still remains a mystery to half of the population (male) and seemingly some on MN.

People started to study it more and realised the data showed that the menopause didn't start on X day and finish a year later. There was a gradual ramping up as the body changed with age. And that change was different for everyone who was going through it. Menopause is a catch all term for a huge coming together of the female body systems.

I’m 61 and my sister is 69 and we have talked about it for a good 20 years, so I’m not sure why you hadn’t heard of it. As others have said though, it’s always existed.

I love how there seem to be certain people who are so dismissive of others' experiences, and have a considerable lack of empathy with things they haven't experienced. 🙄😕

I agree with PP who say that it has more media prominence over the past decade and that is a brilliant thing, and hopefully it will get people who are less empathetic like the OP to perhaps realise some women have terrible symptoms, just like not every woman has wonderful periods or pregnancies.

I remember when I tried getting a friend at work to understand how debilitating period pains were as she'd never had them and couldn't understand how awful they were to keep me off work. My experience of them was dreadful, she was lucky to never have any.

Most people know there's a spectrum of experience, although some don't seem to realise how it might affect others differently.

My mother is 64 and spoke of the perimenopause when she was 40. Perhaps some women were just more informed/educated than you OP.