Im 40 and terrified of everything i hear about perimenopause.

[MyJadeStork]

Hey ladies,
I feel silly about this but it's really making me anxious so I thought id reach out. I just had a baby and turned 40, I don't know if I'm having a crisis but it's rocked me. I'm constantly targeted by perimenopause articles and memes and it sounds so awful it's making me feel so frightened to be in my 40s and like the best has gone. I've been scouring the Internet for positive stories but all I ever find are how you lose yourself, your body changes and you get really sad. I'm not sure if I'm in it but I was wondering if anyone had any good news stories? Is there anyone living in perimenopause who isn't totally miserable?

I honestly think id come back a bloke, at least they keep their bone density.

Thanks girls. Anything that I can cling on to lll take

X

I never had any symptoms of peri menopause and neither have my sisters, my mother, my sister in law or any other female relatives.

Not everyone has any problems.

I think it’s good that there is a lot more publicity about peri/menopause because it means women (and doctors) are better educated. Knowledge is power - you might never need it though!

I agree with that.tar

Op, I was fine and it doesn't last forever. Don't worry about it in advance, when it starts you may find it's nothing much. As WifeofMacbeth says, eat well and healthily. You'll be OK.

I'm 47 and just started on hrt patches.

Going to the doctor was a huge step and not one I wanted to take.

But... my eyesight has deteriorated and I need reading glasses. Itchy skin, lethargy, crap moods, haywire periods, constitution loss, and the big one - brain fog.

It's absolutely shiiiiiiiit. But I'm glad I can do something about it.

To early to say whether they're having an effect, I'm on my first month and my mum died last week, so my moods aren't great and I've not slept well.

It really is shit, but at least we can talk about it and do something about it.

I didn't have any peri. Or nothing that didn't seem very manageable or the same as normal aging (for biological males, too).
I am also sick of the scaremongering. OMG, if you do end up ill then you do need support, like anyone else with illness, esp. chronic illness. Whoever you are. I don't like the poor wee middle aged women being singled out for special special support with their health issues. I don't want to be typecast with issues or concerns I don't have.

It's very simple OP. If you get symptoms you can't manage - and not everyone does - you go to your GP and ask for HRT.

Within a couple of weeks you'll feel your old self again.

I've been on HRT for almost 10 years, life changing.

I'm 23 so probably have no right to wade into this discussion but I remember being about 10 and everyone going on about how terrible starting puberty was becoming stinky hairy moody etc only for puberty to start and not be anywhere near as bad as expected

I will say that the perimenopausal 'last chance' sex drive surge was a major event for me - though lots of other things were happening that intensified it. My sex drive is still pretty high but I'll probably never forget the year it was at its peak - a really happy and adventurous time.

I’m glad you sailed through it. But women’s health is different to men’s health, and I take issue with referring to 50% of the population as being ‘singled out’ for attention.

Something I learned recently is that the normal range of oestrogen levels in men is actually higher than that of post menopausal women. There is significant overlap but the ‘normal’ range for post menopausal women goes down to zero, absolutely no oestrogen/estradiol in the system, whereas for men ‘normal’ starts at 10. Oestrogen is an important hormone that has many different functions in the body, and a complete absence of it is going to have effects. We should be able to talk about it, research it, act on it, without the stigma of it being ‘poor wee middle aged women’ complaining about stuff that we should just deal with because it’s normal aging, when ‘normal’ usually just means the male default.

Oh yes- that is a good point. My DH was most surprised!

I've been perimenopausal for a couple of years, and although there are some symptoms (a bit of brain-fog and heavier bleeding during slightly irregular periods) it's not been much of a change for me. I know some women have more significant and severe symptoms, which seems unfair. I'm loving being older though -I feel good in my not-quite-so-elastic skin and enjoy my coursening, greying hair- so this aspect of ageing doesn't worry me. It's nice to drop off the radar of the male gaze after a lifetime of appraisal.

I spent my teens hearing about how terrible the menopause was, by a mother who seemed to suffer for about 10 years with lots of symptoms.

My sex drive went through the roof in my early 40s, which unfortunately coincided with dh's complete lack. It was quite a turbulent time.

5 years on, I'm keeping an eye on it because I don't know whether I'm at the loss of libido stage now and need hrt, or it's just stabilised.

Periods have got closer and very very short, but I don't know if that meansI'm going to get heavier ones later.

No other symptoms so far. In fact, dh agrees I'm calmer and less manic than I've ever been.

One third of women sail through it, no symptoms, one third have manageable symptoms and one third have a really tough time.
If you have a Mum to ask, what she experienced is fairly likely to be what you will.

I went on HRT as soon as I could, and I think that helped. Sorted out my insomnia. Sadly, it also dampened my super-high perimenopause’ sex drive, and I had been enjoying that.

For me. The worst thing about ageing is injuring more quickly and recovering more slowly. And if I have a break from exercise, my fitness just falls away and is much harder to rebuild. And my face ageing. It does change shape. It is a shock.

My top tip. Is do everything you can to get yourself in top physical shape as it’s so much harder to build it up once you are in peri.

Lots of people don't suffer during peri! I'm 50 and it's been perfectly manageable. My symptoms have always come and gone. It's not like years of hell, it's more different symptoms popping up at different times.
I think at 42 I started noticing changes to my cycle. A couple of years after that I started having symptoms like brain fog. I've also had periods of anxiety. My sleep isn't as good as it was but not terrible. Some nights I sleep brilliantly. I had a bad period of brain fog about a year ago. My boss noticed and asked if everything was OK. But really it only lasted a few months and now I'm on the ball again!
I've never felt that my symptoms were bad enough for HRT. Last summer I started taking Menopace supplements with very low expectations and honestly, my symptoms have been minimal since then.

I’m with you OP! I love that’s it’s being talked about more but all I hear are horror stories. I think it’s a bit like birth stories, you come across as a tw@t if you brag about how easy it was so all you hear is the bad stuff.

That’s what I’m hoping anyway as the menopause stories I’ve heard make it sound worst than puberty and pregnancy/ labour 😂

I had a baby at 40 and my periods stopped at 52. I never heard of the perimenopause until recently. I had a couple of years of hot flushes but after that - brilliant.
Life is no longer ruled by a 28 day cycle of ups and downs.

I was 47 when I experienced negative effects of peri, hrt patches prescribed... all sorted, jobs a good'un and life is good.

Lots of women sail through it or find it perfectly manageable with HRT.

A lot of businesses and individuals have realised there is money to be made from the menopause so we see more 'awareness' of it now, when I say awareness most of it is just trying to sell stuff you dont need or isnt helpful.

@AlbertCamusflage "The way menopause is talked about these days it feels like we are going back to the bad old days in which 'women of a certain age' were regarded as inevitably broken and damaged and strange."

this is so true and it's so damaging. It's just another way to label and write off women.

@MyJadeStork I'm not there yet but the women in my family haven't had issues and at 48, I get this horrible sense that people think I should be falling to bits. But no issues yet.

I think it's become one of those topics where IRL anyone who was fine doesn't feel they can say that. It's interesting that in my age group, no one was going about it years ago, my mum didn't even know what peri was, and I think statistically most women were fine till commerce machine got hold of it.

The comparison to puberty seems good.

Some women will have a dreadful time, others won't. My mum is the kind of woman who knew tons of people at this age. Of course it was talked about less but she knew one woman who had a really bad time with it. One! And I was having tea with both her and that lady and the lady what a shame it was that media are frightening younger women with it. I had a 30 something colleague who just had a baby telling me she thought she has peri health problems the other day, which is what prompted the discussion at mum's.

post anything on here and some MNers will jump to your age and say it must be peri. I've had insomnia since I was a teen - as did my mum and her brothers - and I no longer moan on here as it's always "ooh peri". Pretty sure my uncles didn't have female hormone issues!

I sailed through fairly unscathed. No night sweats. Hot flushes were far from unbearable, no mood swings, my periods just stopped. The only thing I experienced was a very sensitive bladder caused by hormonal changes. This came and went and eased off as I became post menopausal. The menopause isn't always a nightmare and is very liberating for lots of women.

I disagree that the increased public awareness is scaremongering to sell stuff.
It could worry people, and you don't want the balance to tip that way.
But, my late seventies mum thinks it is marvellous that I can chat to a colleague about which hrt treatment we're finding helpful as she and her pals all agree that they struggled like hell through various things that taking to others about would have helped ... many topics which were taboo or considered 'airing your dirty laundry in public' and they all suffered alone thinking they were the only ones having a hard time as everyone else seemed fine and were publicly doing just nicely thank you.

Everything from pnd, loneliness of being shp, floundering marriages, domestic abuse, and <whispers> The Change.

Forewarned is forearmed.

The difference between menopause and lots of other health conditions is that you really do need to be forearmed in a way which you don't with so many other issues. Just hang out on this board for a while and there isn't a day goes past without some poor woman posting about the battle she has had with the NHS to get HRT. I was fobbed off several times with antidepressants and folic acid (wtf?) because the three GPs I saw had no menopause training, no menopause understanding, no interest in joining the dots with my myriad of symptoms - and given that they could see in black and white on my records that I had had a hysterectomy, that is fucking appalling.

My story is far from unusual - women told they are too old, not old enough, not having hot flushes so it can't be menopause, just need to do a bit of yoga or mindfulness, prescribed SSRIs, sent for unnecessary blood tests, or just told to get on with it.

Obviously if you are one of the fortunate women who sail through with no symptoms then you are not going to be starting threads on MN saying that in the same way people in a happy marriage are not posting on the relationships board.

But all the eye rolling and comments about how women are talking about it too much and scaremongering - just no. I don't accept that at all. All that is happening is that women are trying to finally redress the balance of it not being spoken about for decades, and trying to provide other women with the information they are just not going to get from their GP unless they are very lucky and get one of the vanishingly few GPs with a special interest in menopause.

Hot sweats and two false ends (almost able to say it was over then a period happened) before I could call it a day. Really, it was nothing to be alarmed about in my case. It’s natural and nothing to fear.

Completely agree.
And even if you feel fine, the awareness means you might be aware of and able to protect yourself from the less self evident things that sneak up on you like vaginal atrophy or brittle bones.

I am 55 and have been going through periods menopause since I was 42. I’d be fibbing if I said it was effortless, there’s been swathes of time where it’s been pretty rough but I’ll say now you’ll get through it and you stronger than you think. What I would do if I had the benefit of hindsight is prepare for it. Resistance training, get my diet in shape, all that. It makes a difference. Also, oestrogen pessaries, and I’d have started HRT earlier. I’m still on a 28 day cycle, but the Mirena element of it has been a blessing. Good luck, you’ll be OK