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?

I’m not suggesting people don’t experience symptoms and neither was she, she went on hrt when she was going through it. Just that it wasn’t referred to as “peri” at the time just “going through the menopause”. Don’t get me wrong it’s good that there is more knowledge about it nowadays and people are talking about it but as a woman approaching 40 I find all the peri this and peri that and peri being used as an explanation for absolutely everything quite irritating.

As so many people have mentioned marketing I have been thinking about what I have spent in the name of perimenopause.

The only certain thing is my HRT prepayment certificate but I guess other things that could count are the things I bought to try to improve my general health as I know my bones, muscles and heart are vulnerable at this stage. So my adjustable dumbbell set, resistance bands a couple of Aldi slam balls and a skipping rope as well as a creatine supplement, also protein focused wholefoods are a bit more expensive too.

What other things are being sold to us as perimenopausal women?

My mum is 80 and was saying if she could go back in time with what we have now she’d be crying happy tears. Back then it was all male doctors dismissing.

She said in her 30s she went to every health food shop begging for anything that could help and so many told her menopause was years away and she should go to a doctor as there must be something different wrong. She was having hot flushes and night sweats, horrible sleep, forgetting everyday words, heart palpitations, anxiety and she said she was so irritable it made her feel she was going insane. She said because they didn’t worry about money and had a nice house and a lovely husband and kids she felt she had no reason to be so all over the place. When I said about mentioning hrt but being worried about taking it she was so happy for me to have an actual choice.

I assumed peri just meant the fact you were actively going through the change and menopause was when it was complete. I call it perimenopause because I'm not menopausal yet.

My poor Grandma was given ECT at 47

My best friend took her own life at 46

I walked out on an amazing career at the age of 46 due to new anxiety that I have never experienced in my life, which resolved with oestrogen replacement.

I could go on. In the UK, the suicide rate for women is most common between 45-49. Not all women are affected but most are. Oestrogen plays such an important part in our biology. It’s in every cell.

Have you read that list at https://menopause.joinvoy.com/blog/menopause-symptoms-list then?

I find it a bit odd that you think discussions about perimenopause are "irritating" when the list if symptoms some women can experience because of it is so very long.

Surely it's better that other women raise these as a potential REASON for symptoms women between 35-55 are experiencing troubling concerns? It is so very, very hit and miss whether any given GP will be aware, or try to dismiss a woman entirely.

It feels very patriarchal to find the amount of discussion of the topic 'irritating'. I mean, only a tiny fraction of the male population age 20-35 plays professional football, but it takes up 10% of the newspapers every, single day.

Over 1 billion women are in perimenopause or postmenopause & it isn't treated correctly medically for the vast majority of them - so why shouldn't we be talking about it as a major page-filler?!

I am well aware there are symptoms you are completely misunderstanding what I am saying. I am in no way denying that women get symptoms I don’t know why you are sending me a list of symptoms, I’m not clicking that.
there are lots of people trying to cash in on it with stupid products and supplements my social media is full of adds for them because of my age. As well as that there are people who think that perimenopause is the cause of absolutely every health condition and mental health problem for women in this age group which is wrong in my opinion. Even threads about relationship issues “maybe it’s peri”. Just find it a bit irritating . Clearly this is a term you enjoy and a subject you feel very strongly about. More power to you.

I tend to agree with @TheIceBear as there are many other possible reasons for those symptoms which could be investigated rather than labelling it all 'peri'.

The phrase 'Peri-menopause' has only been in common usage for a couple of decades.

As in nursing, surgical patients are now 'peri-operative' and within that they can be pre-operative, intra-operative, post-operative.

Peri just means around the time of.

I know what you mean OP - you’re not saying it never existed, just that it’s a lot more prominent nowadays. And I hear it all the time from friends who will, for example, forget their wallet and say ‘oh it must be the perimenopause!’ - which I find quite tiresome. Can’t you just be forgetful? Does every . Single. Thing have to be down to hormones? Men forget things too, 25 year olds forget things too. I find it irritating.

I’m 57 and started with perimenopause in my late 30s….to be fair I hadn’t really heard about perimenopause….but that was because I thought I had years to go till I should be worried about it. Luckily the nice young, male, doctor I saw was more clued up about it than I was otherwise I’d have probably been on antidepressants rather than HRT. The ‘change’ has been around for ever …I’m glad it’s talked about more.

I agree with this about common usage. About twenty something years ago, when I was visiting my MIL, I remember seeing a section on the Oprah Winfrey Show about signs that menopause was on its way, but that it could be still be ten years down the line. They talked about still having regular periods, but yet there were other things happening such as dry skin, brain fog, painful joints etc. And they focused very much on this term 'perimenopause.' And gradually, over the years, I noticed it seeping into the vocabulary. Obviously I'm not saying it was invented by someone on the Oprah Winfrey Show😂

I had problems with my periods at 46, about 18 months after I had my second child. They were alarmingly close together, to the point that sometimes I barely went a week before the next one came along. I was referred urgently to gynaecology (in the days when you didn't have to wait for months or even years.) I was scanned and examined and all was well. I mentioned perimenopause to the doctor and she looked at me as if she didn't have a clue what I was banging on about. That was only 12 years ago. I find it hard to believe looking back, but she honestly did not show a flicker of recognition at my use of the word perimenopause. Come to think of it, neither did the GP who referred me. I'm glad I was referred and checked out though and that it wasn't put down to perimenopause, especially as my grandmother died of cancer of the uterus.

I’m a similar age to you and found the actual menopause “a walk in the park” compared to the peri-menopause. Actually if it had been talked about in my 30s I might have been more prepared and better able to fight with my GP of the time.

First time I heard it called perimenopause out in the wild was when the Oprah Winfrey show was on UK TV as well. Pretty sure that led into selling stuff/books as well - most things did on there.

I'd have been screwed had the narrative been so prevalent 15-20 years ago, though, as I'd have had the 'it's just your age, dear, take some antidepressants and you can start HRT in a few years' instead of being diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis/Coeliac and eventually starting biologics; seeing as untreated autoimmune disease carries a significant risk for cardiovascular events/cancer/ premature death (it killed my father in his 50s), the classic autoimmune symptoms of joint pain, tendon injuries and pain, incredibly low mood, tiredness, skin and digestive issues would all have been written off as down to my ovaries withering instead of being a potentially fatal disease.

This is what I thought too. I was peri for a long time, about 12 years from age 31. Was told after blood tests as I had been trying for another baby. It explained alot of symptoms I had been having. Now I am menopausal, having gone around 9 years with no periods.

Now you are postmenopausal, and for many women things become more stable (though loss of bone density is a silent symptom women need to be aware of) but not for everyone, many other suffer similar or new related symptoms in this stage too

Everyone who breezes through perimenopause says it's not real and the rest of us are making a big deal out of nothing. It's like the old people who say there was no autism or allergies when I was a kid and now everyone has a diagnosis.
We need to support one another not sneer at those we think are being dramatic.

I resent that statement. I have had manageable symptoms, but absolutely acknowledge (and have seen with my own eyes) how this is not the case for many women. I would never suggest they are making a big deal out of it.

However I do think there is some over-diagnosis of certain conditions now (often self-diagnosis) which does a great disservice to many.

To my personal knowledge at least since The Greatest Summer Ever of 1976.

Because my Auntie S. “was going through the change”. My great-gran was the knower of all thing cos she had been over on the other side of the change the longest. My gran was vice-knower of all things. There was a lot of muttering, mouthing and hissing behind hands, but small jugs have big ears and refused to believe that curiosity killed any cat.

Every woman in the house had an opinion. Included my mother, who’d had a hysterectomy, who told me that “some women just grieve not being able to have any more children, and some of us don’t”. She changed her mind when peri hit her later on and went on HRT. At this point the “some women grieve” became something she’d never said and I must have misunderstood it or heard it somewhere else.

I still didn’t realise I was going through the change when I got body slammed by peri. Could have done with gaggles of female relatives around then, to point out the bleeding obvious.

It has always been with us. It used to be via kitchen conversations and now we have the internet, so that’s probably why the medical name used by lay people in greater numbers.