To think perimenopause is an overused buzzword?

[Furning]

My friends and I are mid to late 30s. A lot of them are now claiming they’re perimenopausal, and if I mention I’m hot, or I've forgot something, or cant concentrate, they rush to tell me it’ll be perimenopause.

If they are struggling to lose weight, or forget what they’re saying, or anything at all negative happens, it’s because they’re perimenopausal.

I know some women might be in their 30s, but surely not most? Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with it?

NO! Some perimenopausal women may behave in this way, but to conclude that a woman in perimenopause will act this way because she is peri is exactly what OP is talking about.

I may well tell my boss to go f*ck himself because I am just plain livid and out of control.

I obviously know that the menopause affects some women badly but I do think that some women make an unnecessarily big deal about it. In my family I could have predicted who that would be whilst in my twenties.

How do you judge which ones are making the uncecessarily big deal, and which ones are making a necessary big deal?

What this thread has illustrated, yet again, that despite the years of hard work by some women trying to claw us up out of the fucking patriarchal mire, we are still, some of us, our own worst enemies and fully paid up members.

Why are you so sure that they aren't in peri? Yes, yes because they're in their 30s but that's the younger end of the normal range for it to start. 'Normal' for menopause starts at 45, with the average age being 51. Peri can last for a decade before meno, meaning the 'normal' range starts from 35.
I hit menopause last year at 45. I had peri symptoms from around 38. All normal.
The only thing that wasn't right was that I didn't know what peri was until I was 40 and experiencing biblical levels of flooding. I thought all of the madness was something that occurred 'when you hit the menopause ', so later, not that it's the prelude. Once I educated myself a lot of weird stuff I'd experienced over the last couple of years made much more sense.
You might not be experiencing symptoms yet and that's great for you, lots of my peers still aren't either. That doesn't mean it didn't happen for me though and it doesn't mean it's not happening for your friends.
Can't you just be pleased about the huge amount of information that is now out there, about something you will experience on the next decade or so?!

1 in 100 women will go through menopause before 40 and 1 in 20 before 45, that's before even considering the 4-15 years of perimenopause beforehand. So assuming OP has 20 friends (unlikely from her attitude to other women) then statistically at least one of them will be going through perimenopause in their 30s.

See this is the thing, I think it’s a bit dangerous the message out there that for women of a certain age everything is “probably peri” . When there are all sorts of other things the symptoms could be .

I think more women start perimenopause in their late 30s than you might think, but obviously everyone is different and some won’t be until mid/ late 40s. I wish people wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss things just because it isn’t their personal experience

I agree and I think in 15/20 years we will see data that backs that up.

my doctor looked at everything, I had multiple blood and stool tests to rule out everything before begrudgingly admitting it was peri. I then had another fight for hrt.
the other thing is you can be in peri menopause and have other issues, they aren’t exclusive to each other

It’s so funny- my peri hit when I was about 45, and I felt like I’d never heard of peri at all. Took me a year to work out what it was, despite feeling it intensely. I’ve often wondered whether it’s become more ‘popular’ in that time, as I see mention of it everywhere, or if you just don’t notice it until it happens to you!

Yeah, I am sick of hearing about it.

A bloody receptionist started going on at me about it as we are the same age and she said she was suffering from it. But it was 'oh us at this age in peri' assuming I am.

I am 38 and I am not.

This.

As irritating as it is when perimenopause is used to explain everything I think the fact the subject is out there is ultimately a good thing, even if the flip side is hearing about it too much and perhaps too soon.

When I started to get symptoms about 17 years ago I didn’t get hot flushes or irregular periods and those seemed to be the only symptoms GPs would entertain as a sign of perimenopause. I started to become increasingly unable to cope with stress and became highly anxious, volatile and very depressed to the point of some very dark thoughts. I lost the ability to sleep. I would say I lost a good three years to the psychological symptoms and it affected my employment and relationships. I didn’t know what had happened to me and nor did anyone else including my GP. Had the conversation been out there I might have pushed for help sooner. When I got HRT it very quickly had a positive effect.

I think perimenopause is the hardest part for those that struggle. Menopause is the time when periods have stopped for 12 months or more but that isn’t the most challenging part for most, it’s what comes before so it’s understandable the right word for the time leading up to menopause is now being used.

Pretty much this. I have an end a crime condition and am under the care of a consultant endocrinologist at a top teaching hospital.

She told me at my age of 45.I was far too young for menopause symptoms

She told me about the current trend of women diagnosing themselves with"peri" in their thirties, and she said it was ridiculous.

She said the average age of menopause is 50s. She said, if you don't have hot flushes and a changing your period you are not perimenopausal or menopausal.

If you have those symptoms, then you have it.But women diagnosing themselves with it.When they only have fatigue, weight gain and anxiety.Well, these symptoms could be anything, and she said women are running the risk of not seeking out care for other things.And immediately assuming it is "peri" it could be almost anything else at that age.

Sorry dyslexia and speech recognition.

End a crime should read endocrine

Scroll on by my friends endlessly diagnosing me as perimenopausal?

It’s because it is incredibly annoying.

I wish I was a man. I could complain I’d had a bad night’s sleep without being told I’m perimenopausal.

I tell you what really is incredibly annoying... Being in perimenopause at 33!

Frustratingy it works both ways. Something might be dimissed as 'probably peri' but peri itself also gets dismissed. In my early 40s with erratic periods, night sweats, a fucking beard, migraines etc I was told I was 'too young for that' when I suggested that I thought I was in perimenopause. Even when I said that my mum was menopausal at 44.
Luckily it was just for a repeat perscription of the pill and so it didn't matter that they didn't believe me but I did feel like sending a 'told you so!' message as I counted off the 12th month of no periods.

I never said perimenopause wasn’t real. Just that women in their mid 30s are unlikely to be suffering from it.

YABU to suggest that perimenopause couldn’t possibly happen to women in their 30s

I never suggested this.

Nice bit of misogyny from you.

Because I don’t think it’s likely that my friends, in their mid-late 30s, are likely to be all suffering from perimenopause? It isn’t likely.