Women under 45 can we start a conversation to try and bring about change??

[Overthemenopause]

Wouldn't it be lovely if the first consideration when a woman of ANY age presents with symptoms of menopause they are treated as going through menopause? Some of the treatments for menopause are standard contraception offerings so why is it we are farmed off to strange teams or dismissed out of hand as "sometimes periods do just disappear" and "have a bit of therapy and some drugs it's just anxiety".

Surely if it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a bloody duck? How many other women had gone through menopause in its entirety before they were taken seriously? Can that not be prevented?

Good point. It took me six years of peri menopausal symptoms before I was referred to the gynaecologist. My female doctor told me that heavy periods were just part of being a woman 😞 .....it made me feel ignored and my problems were not worth bothering the doctors with.

I honestly feel like I’m being gaslighted now. ‘It’s all in your head, stress, diet, mental health’

my life is the best it’s ever fucking been and I can’t enjoy it. It’s horrible. No advice but solidarity

I've spoken to the nurse who did my smear , and a pharmacist about health issues and they have attributed them to peri-menopause with almost certainty , but I'm convinced an actual doctor would just dismiss me.

I’m 41 and was palmed off with the pill which has done nothing for me. I’m miserable feel so fatigued. Feel like I have thrush or cystitis all the time. My mood is terrible, i know I must be hard to live with right now. Right now I’m thinking of going private because I can’t be bothered being fobbed off by GP

This wasn't my experience at all. I had peri menopausal symptoms that started when I was around 42. I felt low in mood, I skipped a period and I had night sweats. I saw my GP and I explained my symptoms, wondered if I could be peri menopausal and asked for a blood test to check. My bloods showed I was indeed peri and my GP asked/recommended I start HRT. I've been on it ever since.
I wonder if we need to be more direct and give a clearer history when we discuss our peri menopausal symptoms and ask simply for blood tests and/or HRT.

Under 40 it's written off as mental health issues, other gynae issues leading to unnecessary surgeries, poor diet, need to exercise more because you're unfit and that's why your joints ache, you're having difficulties conceiving/multiple miscarriages because it's just the luck of the draw, it's normal to miss a period or two it's just stress...

Over 40 "oh you're just menopausal, have some HRT"

I've experienced the opposite, they keep trying to give me meds! The nurse practitioner all but begged me to make an appointment for hrt and seemed confused when I said i didn't need it.

What we don't want is diverse health issues dismissed as peri/menopause without investigation! Hrt wont fix you if that's not the problem

But equally if you've had thorough investigations and come back with nothing THEN menopause needs to be discussed.

Sore nipples .. not cracked just irritating I hot cortisone and anti fungal dactarin creams but has returned , I'm on spray and progesterone at night happy so far with it only on it 2 weeks . But the sore nipples are horrendous