Link between bad perimenopause and contraception

[jackdawdawn]

Hi, this is just something I've been wondering about for the last few years and I would be interested in any responses.

It occurs to me that most women of our generation and younger will have used chemical contraception extensively in our teens, twenties and beyond.

It also seems clear that women are complaining more about menopause symptoms, and that these seem to be noticeable from our early forties in most cases. Suffering for eight or ten years is not uncommon.

I wonder if we are just more inclined to be vocal and open about meno symptoms, or if the years of disrupting and 'fooling' our endocrine system with synthetic hormones may actually have increased the severity of perimenopause?

My mother did not experience perimenopause at all, she had her menopause at 50/51, but she did not suffer the years of misery that I am enduring right now. She never used the Pill or anything - I was on the combined pill for nine years.

I started suffering from peri menopausal symptoms around the age of 40. Still suffering now (early 50’s). I didn’t use the pill much though - 18 months or so of the combined pill in my 20s and 6 months of the mini pill postnatally in my 30s.

My Mum said she didn’t have any troubling meno symptoms. She certainly didn’t have the flushes I get. But she was on the pill in her 30s, probably for longer than I was. However, she could never understand why I suffered with PMT, could tell when I was ovulating (mittelschmerz) etc. So I think my Mum and I are very different hormonally! (She always thought I was imagining it 🙄). Sorry that doesn’t back up your theory!

I doubt there is any link with hormonal contraception.
How could there be? Ideas?

My mum was menopausal around 50 (I was at 53.) She has had flushes ever since and they have never stopped. Maybe now in her 90s they are slightly less. My gynae says some women have them forever, and I know of women aged 90 on HRT.

I had very few peri symptoms but once periods stopped the hot flushes came every hour and I couldn't sleep and I just couldn't carry on working like that.

It’s more likely to be a link with being overweight and obese, which is much more common now. Hormones and fat are a very complex mix.

I used the combined pill in my 20s for about 12 months then after my dd was born I used Mirena for about 10 years.
Having an extremely rough perimenopause, worst for me is the health anxiety as I'm convinced I'm about to drop dead.

It's an interesting premise op.

I was on the pill for most of my 20s and 30s, tried for a baby at 37 only to find out I had POF. I had my last period at 42, no signs or peri or menopause whatsoever.

Many peri symptoms can be helped by losing weight, stopping drinking alcohol, and trying to reduce stress and sugary foods.

We tend to do all of the above in excess far more than in the 1950s and thereabouts. Looking at the newsreels for VE Day I noticed how slim all the women were.

No ones going to know OP

Mum never took the pill

Had appalling periods right up till menopause

She’s very thin, underweight now in old age.

I do take the pill for my appalling periods and if it makes anything worse, at least I’ll have had most of my life without crippling pain and heavy bleeding.

I had horrendous peri symptoms, and the consultant said to me that the people most likely to suffer the worst are the women who had years of awful period pains as well.

I was put on the pill in my teens precisely to help sort out my dreadful period pains, so if there is any link, then it might be because people have been prescribed contraceptives for that reason so it now appears as though it is the medication causing the peri symptoms, rather than being more prone to them anyway.

Yes, weight is definitely a factor. We have completely changed shape as a nation - watching old footage of groups and crowds of people even from the 80s makes it very obvious.

Also heard the premise that there is more synthetic' oestrogen in the environment and that this could be causing hormone imbalance in women, more reproductive cancers in both sexes etc.

One of the reasons I thought there might be a contraception link is that whenever I came off the pill, my skin broke out badly for the first time ever and caused such severe breakouts, particularly in the second half of my cycle, that I needed to take antibiotics for several years.

Weight might be a factor for some, but not all. My mother was very overweight (probably obese) and sailed through menopause. I’m not overweight and never have been but I’m having a horrible time.

I think the apparent increase in women reporting symptoms is probably because many women just used to suffer in silence. Now we have treatment options and it’s talked about, people open up about their struggles (especially since we can grumble about it anonymously online!).