Peri, every woman I socialise with is peri, all difficult!

[CreationNat1on]

Is the answer, we are ALL menopausal???

I m just wondering, is it a stage of life thing, combined with post pandemic and culture wars, all the women I know, just seem so cranky. Where are the light hearted laughs? Why is it all comparisons and blame and passive aggressive itchiness?

Dud anyone else find mid 40s a difficult time with "friends".

It's only over the past few years that women have really started talking about menopause and perimenopause openly.

There's also much confusion between perimenopause and menopause. Many conflate the two as being the same thing, when they are actually different things -

Perimenopause is when hormones levels start to decline and can trigger any of these symptoms, and before your periods have stopped*. This can last anywhere between a few months to a decade.

You reach menopause when you have not had a period for 12 months (if you're over 50) and 24 months (if you're under 50).

I'm sorry you're still having a terrible time.

If you're still feeling not yourself, you need to return to the doctor and have your HRT dosage looked at and changed.

Thank you. It was increased back in Jan and did improve for a time. But it’s just as bad as it was before now.
I had a blood test a couple of weeks ago as I was convinced there must be something else wrong with me. When it came back negative for anything else I cried! I have a Drs follow up call next week so hopefully will
be able to find something to help. Am at my wits end so I bloody hope so.

I'm so sorry to hear you are having such a horrible time. It truly can be a horrible time. I echo the previous poster, please go see your gp to see if your hrt needs adjusting.

It does help to know you are not alone. There are other threads which are much more supportive than this one. Just ignore the posters who seem to take great delight in saying peri and menopause are not real. It is real and your feeling are absolutely valid.

During perimenopause, our hormones are constantly changing. An HRT dosage that worked at one point might not at another time. I've changed my dosage several times, and the current one took a while to get right.

Unfortunately, many GPs have little interest or knowledge in women's health and menopause. You need to be firm and insistent with your doctor, and if they won't help, find one who will and knows how to work with HRT. If you have health insurance or are happy to pay to go see a private specialist, do, life is too short to put up with the issues you're dealing with. (And I say this as someone who was in a similar position at one point).

Will be rooting for you to come through this, which you will.

I do not see how going around blaming the issues we have with women of middle age or above are due to them being difficult as part of the menopause can possibly help any of us to deal with it.
Better medical treatment, more women clinics, those will help.
Maybe we just take less shit when we get older? We know better what we want and believe and stand up for it?
And we have lots to deal with, lots on our plate.

Thank you, that’s very kind. I’ll get off this thread, I didn’t want to hijack it. Just really pissed me off to see other women talking such bollocks!!

As a 40 year old woman reading about peri (mostly on mn) is scary. Until a few years ago I'd never heard of it- maybe the term wasn't recognised. However I'm glad it's being highlighted. I think so many women are told they have anxiety/ depression/ are overweight and other things when it's actually a symptom of peri and it can be treated.

Having not researched it, does anybody know if women who have been lucky enough to not suffer from pmt, or have bad period symptoms get through the whole menopause process easier? Trying to prepare myself, as I do feel fortunate. Though I'm also infertile and needed ivf so that might impact it? I think more research needs to happen overall.

For me, it was knowing the symptoms I was, and to some extent am still, experiencing were normal. Other women experienced them too. And something could be done to help. It's not about blame - it's about understanding what's happening to your body. And the fact it's now openly talked about helps. To know you are not alone makes such a difference. That it's slowly stopping this dirty little secret that we cannot discuss.

My biggest worry was the brain fog. I was terrified that I had early onset dementia. And when I went to the doctor she said so many women have said exactly that to her. To be able to openly discuss it with friends and even my bosses has been a huge help. Why on earth would we not encourage women to be open about it?

It's exactly that openness that was missing in my mums day. It was a dirty little secret. Women who were suffering were just expected to get on with it. That's not good.

Stop looking at it like blame and instead look at it as empowerment. Because being open about it is exactly that - empowering. Realising you are not alone with how you are feeling and the symptoms you are experiencing is empowering. Being able to openly talk about it has finally meant that womens health is being taken seriously. All good things. No, not all symptoms are experienced by all women, and some are lucky and don't experience any, but why would anyone want to shut down the discussion for these who do.

Women aged 45 to 54 have the highest female suicide rate, more than double the rate of those aged 15 to 19 - Suicides in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Perimenopause and menopause are a natural part of a woman's life course and usually occur between the ages 45 and 55 years of age (although it can start earlier) - What Is Menopause? | National Institute on Aging (nih.gov

It's real.

To echo tigger, some lucky women sail through perimenopause without a single issue. They're often the ones who refuse to believe it's a thing.

I think back to when I was still menstruating. I had light, short periods. I struggled to understand or even relate to my poor friends who had troublesome periods. Even so, I was always sympathetic and would never negate what they were going through.

I actually despair of women who belittle other women for something that only the female sex go through. We all have different experiences, but we are all united by our biology. It's shocking how some women don't support each other.

It's not a matter of blaming things on the menopause. It’s a matter of identifying the cause of some women’s problems correctly. You, and many so-called feminists, have major problems accepting the biological fact that menopause and its symptoms can absolutely screw up some women’s mental states, because that doesn’t fit the narrative. The truth helps everyone. When women understand that truth, they can potentially get appropriate help. They won’t get better medical treatment when many medical professionals are just like you, refuse to accept that menopause can do this, and instead will dress it up as ‘taking less shit’ and having lots on our plates.

Plenty of us had more on our plates when we were younger actually. Plenty of us had terrible childhoods, or teenage years, or whatever. You have a caricature in your mind of women of your own social class climbing the career ladder. It’s absolutely not the case that the royal we all have most on our plates during menopause years. This is all just mental gymnastics aimed at avoiding an ideologically inconvenient truth.

You most certainly are conflating natural with beneficial. You ascribe purpose to evolution, which explains your confusion. You didn't answer why it being natural is relevant. And you didn't back up your claim that it's beneficial with any evidence. You just repeated it again. You really are extremely lazy aren't you?

Where is the support in this?
Failing to see it, but I doubt it is due to fog.

I thought ‘peri’ was a load of whining until I was hot with it at 45. I went a bit batshit and felt like I was dying. That’s not an exaggeration. My whole body hurt, I felt like I had developed bipolar disorder and Alzheimer’s. I swear to God! It was horrific.

A few months into HRT and I’m my old self again. It IS a thing for a lot of us.

hit with it

hot made total sense, I thought you meant hot flushes!

take me seriously or not, as you want, but I am speaking the truth

thus is rubbish, it has all been recycled from decades and decades ago, after which we thankfully made progress away from all this BS, and now are recycling it all again - it has set sexual equality back decades.

30 years ago, I was in my 20s, and myself and a 50 year old female colleague suffered criminal damage to our possessions at work.

The police response to me at the time-

"it is almost certainly your colleague doing it for attention, women that age get very emotional and needy"

When I told my grandmother about this comment, she was upset and angry, because this was a battle HER generation had already fought and won.

No, there is nothing new or modern about calling middle aged women "menopausal" in such a derogatory way, it is just the old old old old prejudice and invention from men as a way of putting women down, which women are bizarrely keen on perpetuating, presumably because they think they can get something out of it personally

Again, if you are ill, see a doctor, but dont try and say it is a general experience for women, when it isn't. Most women are fine. We do not get sickly or irrational or needy or emotional because of our age.

Nor do we get "brain fog" - if you do, see a doctor.

fine, if it is a thing for you, see a doctor, and I'm glad you got help, and feel better

But it isnt a thing for most woman

This sounds like peri. To be post menopausal you have to have had no period at all for one year.

I never had PMT and I’m starting HRT soon. Wish I’d started earlier.

I can highly recommend the book The Menopause Manifesto.

I honestly think this is it. I had some serious patches of ill health in my 20s , requiring months off work. It was awful and really distancd me from friends at the time. I felt I was losing precious years while they cracked on with amazing things. Funnily enough it was a post viral episode that we'd now call long Covid, but nobody gave a shit back then.

I'm peri now but feel on top of the world in comparison. I think if you've had a v easy ride physically up til the maybe the hormonal changes can be more of a shock

Why exactly do you think this it it? Why did you decide to imagine that women with menopause problems have never had health challenges in their lives prior to that? Because you do have the self awareness to realize you decided to make that up, right? There’s not a single shred of evidence anywhere that women suffering from menopause are simply overreacting to ‘hormonal changes’ (what a lovely choice of phrase). But it makes you feel terribly superior of course, which is the point.