Perimenopause - funny?

[tobee]

Apropos of not very much, but has anyone noticed that people (women mostly?) are making jokes or comments about “perimenopause” but not “menopause”? I’m aware it might be because they’re different things and that one is a “thing to go through” and menopause is “the end” and also some words in comedy are funnier than others but it’s like menopause is “a step too far” to be funny. And then you really are “over the hill”.

Or am I just a paranoid post menopausal woman? 😄

I don't think there is any such thing as 'peri-menopause' except in the minds of pharmacy giants who want to sell 'cures' for it, and their advertisers.

@Grammarnut seriously???? Are you a man by any chance??? Peri menopause is very very real. Its the stage women go through before the actual menopause. Peri menopause can take up to ten years. Some women have no or light symptoms, others really suffer. How can you say its not real and just a marketing gimmick??? 😳🤬🤬🤬

You’re 100000% wrong
it is real
but like many health issues that affect women it’s not been taken seriously for many years
it can be a ten year process to reach menopause
your hormones etc start to decline and this affects you physically and mentally

I'm deep in perimenopause and it is definitely real. Wish it wasn't but there we are! Thank goodness the private clinics recognise it. One week of treatment and I'm a new person!

Perimenopause very much is a thing as you don't reach a state of menopause until your periods have completely stopped and it's incredibly rare that that happens overnight with no unpleasant symptoms whatsoever.

I think that for many women it's the case that you're stuck with it so might as well make the best of it and one aspect of that is a bit of light humour. I can't say that I have noticed more jokes about it than menopause. It's not like I've been looking for them or keeping a tally, though.

Ah.

Someone should just snap out of being depressed too.

DH has been told by his employer he can't discuss politics and beliefs at work. Which is fair enough. The trouble is, also on the list is autism because in the US autism is regarded as a belief akin to religion and not a disability.

Ignorance never fails to amaze me.

No, I am not a man. And peri-menopause has just been invented recently. The menopause is just the menopause, no peri about it - and it lasts about ten years, I guess, and its effects vary from women to women. I just feel 'peri-menopause' is just another way to get women to spend money on stuff that really will not work.

Perhaps, because 'menopause' is becoming part of DEI, some woke comedians feel that it's a taboo subject to joke about.

@Grammarnut as someone who has been through the menopause and peri its not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Sorry you are wrong about it being a recent thing. Women have been suffering for years, just no one believes them. Now there is greater awareness of women's problems, but its still not perfect.

I think this is semantics. Afaik the menopause starts with periods becoming either less regular or slighter (or heavier in some cases) and this process continues until periods stop and you are then post-menopause. So what is being called 'peri-menopause' here is the menopause, and the post-menopausal state is being called the menopause.

Menopause, just like menarche, is a moment in time, not a process. Menarche = first period. Menopause = last period (your don't know it was your last period until a year has gone by with no more periods).

But your hormones don't switch off overnight. You don't just go from regular-as-clockwork periods to nothing. Peri-menopause is the period during which your hormones start to run down, the supply of eggs in your ovaries dwindles and their quality reduces. It lasts a few years, and it can e absolutely awful. The consequences of reduced oestrogen are absolutely real and not invented by big pharma. They have been known about, if not understood, for many generations before big pharma ever existed.

I thought “menopause” was a specific date and “peri-menopause” was the process your body goes through in the build up to the menopause? Or have I got that wrong?

I think it's being used to describe the process of menstruation gradually stopping, which I have always called the menopause. That's where the confusion is, I think.

I ink there has been a shift in language about this. People used to talk about "the menopause" or going through menopause to mean the process or hormones changing and changes in cycle etc. This is in common parlance, not medically.

More recently you see the two differentiated, and people talk about peri-menopause, I think they are still talking about the same thing.

There is a sense in which I suppose it's all a continuum, You have hormonal fluctuations through puberty, maybe into the early 20s even, then a somewhat stable 15 years, except if you have pregnancies in which case it isn't stable, and somewhere after about 35 most women can see changes even if they are not bothersome ones, and that carries on till the end to a greater or lesser degree. Then things are stable until you kick off.

I can see an argument for saying it's a little arbitrary to separate out certain parts of the hormonally active period as a "condition" or whatever you want to call it.

It's where your confusion lies.

This from the NHS: Perimenopause is when you have symptoms of menopause but your periods have not stopped. Perimenopause ends and you reach menopause when you have not had a period for 12 months.

What a ridiculous thing to say to, what is probably, a bunch of perimenopausal women.

🙄

I can't wait for menopause as I'm hoping it will mean an end to the awful perimenopause! It definitely exists whatever you want to call it.

And some of us firmly post-menopausal.

Wtf, I’m glad I don’t live in the US, or is this a red-state thing?

Hmm. Yes. And women used to get sent to the asylum at a certain age now didn't they? Even though the 'perimenopause didn't exist'.

I've been through a divorce and close bereavement in the past two years. I've also suffered from diagnosed depression and anxiety for many years and am now going through the peri menopause. I make light hearted jokes about all these things because it's a coping mechanism and I also use it as deflection when the topics are discussed and I don't want to become upset or emotional in company. Humour is an important coping mechanism for a lot of people but it's different if the person is going through/has gone through it rather than if they haven't and are mocking other's suffering.

You're just making stuff up.

The irony of this post with your username! That is where your confusion has come from, you've just been using the wrong terms for the different stages.
I'm in it, I suspect pretty close to menopause now, it's definitely a thing. And I laugh about it with my mates because we are fabulous women in our mid 40s who refuse to lie down and let the overnight beard growth defeat us.

I rather regret the loss of the phrase “the change” which seemed to sum it up pretty well. It was accepted that some women found it more difficult than others. I remember having a conversation with my then MIL and some of her aunts and cousins, all born in the 1920s and 30s. It’s not true that it wasn’t known or talked about - it was, just rather more discreetly than now (like most things).

@Grammarnut Perimenopause hasn’t been invented 🙄 You can’t invent a physical process in the way you can invent a product.