Perimenopause Power: Navigating your hormones on the journey to menopause

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Sifting through all the advice is hard, especially because it can seem to change with every new headline. Even if you’re already in your 40s it’s still really important to start to protect against things like osteoporosis.

Perimenopause: What is it and what can you do? - BBC

Scientific literature refers to it as a time we can have lasting influence over our future, and HRT not only helps to manage symptoms in the here and now, but it can also help fend off everything from osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” she says.Deciding when to stop contraception is more difficult if your periods have stopped due to your current contraception. It feels like reading a very dry science text book with so many different but similar hormones to get your head round, I felt as if I needed a biochemistry degree or that I was actually studying for one.

Maisie Hill

It can be a hugely challenging time, but it is a window of opportunity to look at your health, life, and to make powerful decisions about what you want and need.

In this state, I noticed things I had missed before: bags spilling out of cupboards, stacks of receipts and change on a table, my son’s stuff everywhere. I think it’s helpful when we can name something, and say, “Maybe you’re in this phase, these are the common things that can happen, and this is what’s going on. She recognised that the perimenopausal hormonal fluctuations were making the problems seem incapable of being solved. But as I left Dr Newson’s clinic, I thought that if I, as a white, cis, rather privileged, well-informed journalist had made such an omnishambles of my own health, what was happening to those who couldn’t afford a private consultation?

11. Perimenopause — Maisie Hill 11. Perimenopause — Maisie Hill

And her GP actually cautioned her that her fertility could increase, so, to be careful and use contraception. Either side you are peri menopausal and post menopausal, just having an explanation of these terms that get thrown around by health professionals was very helpful. There were a few tips that were not useable by me, because I am allergic, such as that taking ibuprofen during your period can reduce bleeding by up to 40%. And oh my God, the sleep issues that become more prevalent as we age, let’s not forget about the impact of them on mental health too.

It’s a very readable, very big book, over 300 pages of information and advice (anchored in a hefty appendix of scientific citations), some of which will make you gasp at how ill-informed you are about your own body. There’s a lot of helpful information and strategies to equip you for your perimenopause and postmenopause, whether you’re already in it or just want to be prepared. And that has consequences in every other area of your life, whether we’re talking about relationships, romantic or friendships. Is it coincidental that that’s when oestrogen drops off a cliff, and you get cognitive and mood changes?

Perimenopause Power: Navigating your hormones on the jo…

Ideally it’s an ongoing conversation – as hormone levels change and you maybe go from having plenty of oestrogen to not much oestrogen, then your prescription will shift. Often, production of progesterone tapers down first so you get a shorter cycle and might have fertility issues, premature spotting and insomnia,” explains Hill.One of the things that was very bad about it was that no one was given advance notice this report was coming out. As Dr Kate Pickering, a GP on the frontline in Glasgow, tole me: “If you’re 10 floors up in council flat in Easterhouse and you’re a grandmother getting up to look after a baby because the mother is looking after the other kids and you’ve got night sweats – well HRT should be bog standard to help.