More colds in the menopause?

[Otins]

Since turning 50 last summer, I have had 4 horrible colds, each lasting around 2-3 weeks from start to finish. A few days build up with a tickly throat/a week of feeling terrible/a week of feeling much better but full of snot.

Lying in bed feeling rubbish again, i am wondering if it is a peri/menopause thing, or just a coincidence.

I could do better but I take Vit D and a multivitamin every day. I have a fairly good diet and exercise a couple of times a week.

Yes I agree. I seem to pick up more bugs now.

I found it to be quite the opposite. I have fewer colds now and they tend to be shorter, too.

I don't think it's my hormones that have made the difference. I think it's that I stopped being a SAHM. In peri I went back to work, in a job that involved constant close exposure to many people, children and adults. I was constantly ill for several months, until my immune system caught up and I rarely got ill any more, and then only lightly. Covid knocked me back very badly and I had to 'retrain' my immune system. The effect colds have on my asthma is, however, vastly worse now, but that is since Covid rather than since menopause.

Has your lifestyle changed in the opposite direction? Are you perhaps less exposed to people so your immune system is under-exercised?

Personally I think it’s hormonal as, before peri, if I was ill it always seemed to coincide with a period.

There could be something about having less exposure so immune system is weaker, as I stopped work in July 2024. I went back in March 2025 til now though and the colds have been when I have been working and when I wasn’t. Have had horrible colds in June,
Sept, Dec, March, May.

I need to go back to GP about HRT issues and will mention it then. I was on Evorel Sequi for a year but put on over a stone so I came off about a year ago.