Health Hotline Magazine | May 2024

PERIMENOPAUSE WHAT EVERY WOMAN NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT

By Lindsay Wilson

Sometime in my early-ish to mid-forties things started to get weird. I developed severe anxiety, a full night’s sleep became elusive, I felt achy and old, was so fatigued, I gained weight (especially in my belly), I began having spells of vertigo, and overall, just generally didn’t feel at home in my body. None of this had happened before and it all happened without changing any lifestyle or dietary habits. I felt like I was falling apart. Was this the fabled midlife crisis I’d heard about my whole life? Turns out it was perimenopause. When it comes to perimenopause, the biggest hormonal change that anyone with ovaries will go through, we’re left in the dark, or worse, brushed off, symptoms dismissed (this is especially true for African American and Latina women, who, on average, go through menopause earlier than white women, and also experience worse symptoms). When I asked my gynecologist about my cluster of symptoms, she seemed to only hear my complaint of weight gain, told me to eat less, and welcomed me to middle age. I left the appointment so disheartened, but I can’t blame her: A 2023 survey published in the journal Menopause found that nearly 70 percent of OB/GYN residency pro grams in the U.S. lacked curriculums dedicated to menopause, and a 2019 Mayo Clinic survey of medical residents (specializing in family medicine and obstetrics and gynecology) found that only 6.8 percent reported feeling “ade quately prepared to manage women experiencing menopause.” Rather than being taken seriously, “the Change,” as it’s been coined, became a joke, a trope of women gone mad with rage and hot flashes, that no one really seemed to want to talk about. But the tide is changing. Women are talking about their symptoms, we’re connecting the dots, and we are seeking out ways to manage those symptoms.

What is perimenopause? I’d never given much thought to perimenopause, and only vaguely thought of menopause as something that was very far in my future. Little did I know that perimenopause would knock me off my feet, at a time when I still felt so young. So what is it exactly? Perimenopause is the transition period leading up to menopause (menopause is when the ovaries completely stop producing estrogen and you haven’t had a period for a full year; fun fact: menopause is exactly one day—the day you haven’t had a period for 12 months, after that, you are considered post-menopausal). Perimenopause starts in your early to mid-40s on average, but it can start as early as your 30s and it can last between four and 10 years. It is a time of wild hormonal fluctua tions, with extreme ups and downs, but with a general pattern of declining estrogen

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