To beg other women to stop putting everything down to perimenopause

[CurdinHenry]

It's so undermining for female interests at every level

Everything is not menopause, ok?

Agree with this!! My GP told me repeatedly the pain I had in my hands and feet was perimenopause and kept increasing my estrogen patch. Turns out I have psoriatic arthritis that needed very different treatment. GP didn’t take me seriously and put the whole thing down to perimenopause. I’ve had 12 months of pain - some days so bad that I cannot walk.

You’re not peri or menopausal then?

A whole heap of symptoms that I hadn’t previously associated with menopause manifested themselves on me. It was a relief to know that I wasn’t going mad/getting dementia/about to die when I learned what was likely triggering them.

Not every woman experiences every symptom, and some lucky women don’t experience any of them. But awareness and sharing of experiences can be helpful for those who do.

You posted this last week did you not get the responses you were after ?

Since many dr arnt taking menopuase seriously yabu

Had stomach problems for years! Put down to post partum then stress then menopause... it was Crohn's

Being older generation I didn't even know perimenopause existed when I was going through it. It amazes me how now it's routinely used to explain what's going on in womens lives.

Having. said that I very much welcome the openess and understanding that exists now about going through the menopause. I found it a very lonely and unsupported experience.

It works both ways doesn’t it 🤷‍♀️

Some women sail through it with zero symptoms or symptoms that aren’t due to perimenopause and are due to other conditions

But equally there are plenty of women who get symptoms that are attributed to something else but are in fact down to perimenopause.

Recently it does feel like everything is perimenopause related on social media, but I think there’s a whole new level of awareness and recognition that has previously been missing - and has meant thousands of women have unnecessarily struggled with symptoms and incorrect diagnosis.

Oh just stop it. You don’t know anything about “female interests” and you don’t speak for the collective. I appreciate the light being shone on peri menopause, as I found it a confusing time in my life.

Thanks for the announcement, Doctor.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 but a lot is.

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.

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?

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.