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?

Begging is a bit extreme but I do agree.

Dh had symptoms a couple of years back and had he been female these would have likely been put down to the menopause.

ODFOD, you don’t speak for the rest of us. My perimenopause began as soon as I gave birth to my last DC. Doctors kept putting my symptoms down to postpartum depression- I’d gone into peri and it’s taken years to get me back to functioning again and I’m still struggling. Add in my STBEx thinking I was making up how much I was struggling and it’s a wonder how I’ve survived this long. HRT has saved my sanity.

Hard agree. Perimenopause is suddenly in the zeitgeist...

I agree. I have a relative whose behaviour has always been horrific. Nasty and cruel. But all of a sudden it’s because she’s perimenopausal and can’t control what she says. So have you been perimeno since you were a teenager?? No you haven’t.

In my case a couple of things happened - I started to also develop a rash across my chest, stomach and back, and my sister (who already had a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis) pestered me to keep going back to the doctors until they stopped fobbing me off. I don’t think there is one single blood test that can confirm or deny psoriatic arthritis and a rheumatologist makes the diagnosis based on how you present.

i should say as well though that I still take HRT and it has helped me in other ways - just not with this specifically!

Hmm, I’m happy and relieved that it’s recognised and more awareness is a good thing. What didn’t please me is when for example I legitimately lose my mind because the adults I live with (dh and two adult DD’s who routinely leave the house in a tip or ask me what’s for dinner when I’ve just got home from work and they have been home all day) and they tell me it’s because I’m peri menopausal. It seems to be giving them some sort of green light to behave like this with no consequences. And that’s not on.

I was literally at an event where a woman was shouting - her volume seems to be permanently set to the loudest - about how much she hates men and it's all because of peri menopause

This is not the first time I've heard her say this. It was bad enough in front of the barman, but this time she did it with her husband right next to her.

Honestly, I felt like I needed him to signal to me - you know in a "blink twice if you need help" kind of way. She carried on her rant to say that all women hate their husbands during this period.

Honestly, it just makes women look really bad. And that's just a personal thing. Don't get me started on the workplace! I really didn't want people looking at me thinking that because I'm a certain age I might have certain issues

I suspect the shouty woman was shouting at birth, though

She's actually a really decent kind individual by the way. She loves to shout about ADHD as well. It's like she got hold of some health information and she's not afraid to use it!

💯 agree.

Medical issues could be missed because its assumed everything is due to menopsuse

Women who are really struggling may find it hard to make themselves heard.

For those who are perfectly fine (the majority of my 50+ friends) they have to deal with the world thinking their perfectly valid concerns about all manner in of things can be ignored because women are clearly deranged by the menopause.

Employers start to believe that while they will support the women they already employ, they sure as hell don’t want anymore.

Stop waving the menopause flag. Lobby the medical profession for understanding and treatment like we do for other conditions.

The point is perimenopausal symptoms are caused by perimenopause, but not every single problem women have, whether physical, mental, emotional, social, financial or other, is caused by perimenopause.

100% agree OP - this is just a new way to ignore and dismiss women.

I've talked on here quite a lot about other medical conditions being missed because of the obsession

But guess what? I got the equivalent of being shouted at on MN. 🤷🏽‍♀️. The default should be proper investigation. Not just "throw some pills at it and hope that it works because the woman is age between 40 and 50."

By the way, if anyone replies to me, I'm off for a procedure this afternoon so not likely to be on here for a couple of days.

So no one can shout at me, LOL.

I had exactly the same actually my now rhumatologist said on my first appointment it could be hormonal I was 44 but it was confirmed psoriatic arthritis I have axial spondyarthris as well aches and pains do increase in menopause thou so I can see why the GPS first thought is this x

I don't disagree with you, but I agree with the OP that menopause/perimenopause/hormones are being used as an excuse for so many things now that it is becoming difficult for people to take us seriously. It's the same as people using being ND/having mental health issues being used as a free ticket for bad behaviour.

It minimises the genuine issues that people are going through.

For the record, I am out the other side.

I wish people would not be so defensive about this. No one is saying that the menopause doesn't matter or that people should shut up about it. Of course it matters.

The point is that it's become a default answer to everything, in the same way that "nerves" were the default answer to every female affliction 60 or 70 years ago. People have stopped properly interrogating their symptoms and just write it off as menopause or "peri" (and I loathe the cutesiness of "peri" but that's by the by).

So many people will just dismiss physical or mental health symptoms "because peri" and won't go to the GP about it or won't push the GP when he or she dismisses concerns. It's potentially dangerous because other more serious and potentially life-threatening conditions are being missed "because peri". And poor behaviour, in the workplace or the home are dismissed as being "I'm peri". It's lazy and uninformed and it potentially leads to people ignoring things which are much more important.

Someone said upthread that its part of a wider pattern of misdiagnosis of women's health issues and that's true: women's health has been the poor cousin to men's health for decades and this is well-documented. Menopause has been a victim of this. But that doesn't mean that the discovery of menopause is the panacea to all women's health problems.

You missed off itching skin. This barely makes it on to the symptom lists but for me it was the thing that drove me crazy.

it is a good thing that there is more openness and awareness about menopause and it’s lead up. But we now need to make sure that there is much more research undertaken, for menopause, peri-menopause and female health in general. So much is still focussed on male health experiences and the lack of female health experiences needs to be urgently addressed. Even drug dosages of new treatments are still routinely based on average males.

Peri is extremely rare in younger women but I see so many women on here saying they ‘think’ they’re perimenopausal at around 30. Only about 1% of women really are at that age. I’m not unsympathetic to symptoms (I am a post menopausal woman) but there seems to be a particularly large portion of young women on MN self diagnosing with it when it’s more likely to just be normal hormonal ups and downs. Unless your doctor has diagnosed (by a dr that actually understands it) in your 30s you probably aren’t peri.

If those symptoms did turn out to be something else - something that if caught earlier could have been treated much better - I'm sure you'd be complainng really loud as well.

I don't think anyone denying some women do suffer badly - but some women sail through and many more need a bit of knowlegde easily avalaible these days and maybe HRT and some consideration are fine and need to have anything else properly investigated so it doesn't get chromic or serious as it's dismissed as peri or "women issue".

I've seen some many feamles dismissed for various reasons - often takes three or four GP vists where as men in family it's usually less to get anything properly looked at. Past menopause age it's been for Dmum and MIL oh well it's old age - and delayed treatemnet for treatable conditions leaving them in pain more so than the men in the family - then they get blamed for not being assertive enough which TBH doesn't ring true at all.

I agree. Whilst, clearly, everyone's experience is difference, it's both reductive and anti-feminist to automatically blame every ailment and emotion on "peri". Women are more than just the impact of their hormones, and we are at risk of making the world of work so much more difficult for middle-aged women.

I am aware. However my issues ARE peri-menopause and I am being treated shockingly because so many Drs don’t believe me.
Sometimes it is.

But I was getting heart palpitations and forgetting stuff and instead of worrying I was losing my mind/ having a heart problem I was happy to discover I’m in peri

Part of the problem is that we (men and women) no longer go to the doctor and say: "here are the symptoms, this is what is happening to me..." Instead we go in with our own armchair diagnoses: "I think it's peri..." Being the current go-to for women. Women might latch on to that a bit as there's a nice solution and it's not too scary, but this often clouds what's really going on. YY After a good Google, most people will add a few generic things to their symptom list to reinforce their diagnosis, making it harder for the doctor. For example, there's a huge difference between someone who has noticed they aren't sleeping well and someone who sees it on a list and thinks "maybe I'm not sleeping well, now I think about it."

We don't want to get to the point where it's another hurdle in women getting diagnosed with cancer, taking a peri menopause tangent down the road of different HRTs before coming back to what the actual symptoms are. It's definitely an issue for autoimmune diseases already, where there is often a minor hormonal link but that shouldn't be the focus, we're also terrible with thyroids, which has overlapping symptoms. Also, if you have brain fog straight after COVID, for god's sake give it a few weeks, it's normal to feel crappy sometimes.

I have a chronic autoimmune condition and when it's bad it messes with my cycle, like my body knows it's not in a fit state to be getting pregnant. We shouldn't be assuming cause and effect with hormones always the cause, sometimes they are just helping to tell us something is wrong.

No, it's not undermining! But your attitude is.
Since every cell in our body uses estrogen and there are over 50 symptoms of lack of estrogen, you are being unreasonable.
It's this attitude that made our mother's and grandmothers put up and shut up.
Society is different now so many women are not putting up with symptoms. Women need to stay longer in the workplace to provide for their families so need help to manage menopause symptoms.
HRT is a game changer, I got my life back on it and all sorts of symptoms went that I didn't even know were connected to low estrogen.
But since only 15% of women in the UK take HRT there are likely many that are suffering that don't need to.
Also, apparently about 25% have hardly any symptoms at all, lucky bunch, but don't minimise the suffering of others just because you're breezing through it.

That as well.

I think bascially I'd like some kind of medical system where you don't get dismissed immediatley and have to fight to get listen to and investigated.

No different to every child’s poor behaviour being attributed to ( un diagnosed / self diagnosed ) adhd or autism or every worry being anxiety or mental health challenges.