Let's be honest. Anything any woman learns about menopause, which is now subdivided into perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause, is very individual. Why we can't just call it menopause is ridiculous. Perimenopause is ALL the time before you get to menopause. For an average woman, this can start as early as late 30s and as late as early 50s. (Nevermind, the odd women that starts as early as late 20s or as late as early 60s.) Menopause is after a woman hasn't had a period for more than 12 months, which not to confuse, but it lasts as long as your symptoms last. Post-menopause is everything after symptoms supposedly subside, well, basically subside, sort of, mostly.
Plenty of women talk about it online, and there's a couple of female doctors that have some great information out there on how to deal with it.
Problem?
It's all mostly conjecture. While the doctors sharing info are great, nothing and everything they put out there might affect a woman and it might not. There's just not enough data, because patriarchy. Male doctors didn't give a shit a hundred years ago. The few female doctors were relegated to not talking about it, because no one wanted to feed the false science of "hysteria". So what we know is based on their patients and their patients are limited to the people who have insurance, AND who are willing to go to doctors regularly. Most of us are not regulars. Gynecologists see women about every 3 years, even ones in perimenopause. General practitioners are seeing men too. If the woman is a minority, the data is even more limited. How many white female doctors? How many black female doctors? How many serve a mixed bag of women? Hell, even for what in the USA is "white" women this ranges from northern Europe, pale pinkish "white" to light olives and light yellows of eastern Europe to the darker olives and creams of southern Europe to the dark olives of western Europe. Let's not forget that "black" Irish is a thing and many of the darker Irish usually have both the northern European and unknown African origins. That's just "white" female America. Native American women's health has been totally neglected, particularly that even into the 1980s, the Federal government was illegally making so Native women couldn't give birth and thereby creating abnormal menopausal reactions. Black and Hispanic certainly have been ignored just as much, if not more. So yeah, it's all conjecture.
Trying to listen or read to learn gives some relief, and some unwanted extra symptoms. Each of us trying to navigate the process individually. Millennials are the first generation of women that might get feedback from their mothers to go by. Which honestly might be the best way to know. It has to be hereditary for the most part, but there's always environmental issues that would have to be considered also. Even if you have your grandmothers, mother, and aunts from both sides, the information you collect for yourself might be extremely helpful, but could vary based on their individual diets or on your diet, stress levels, prescriptions they take, etc, etc, etc. The books are about as accurate. Moving targets of suggestions that you could try and maybe they will work. Maybe they won't.
One of my favorite things to read about right now is HRT or Hormone Replacement Therapy. All the data is still technically in preliminary stages. They have to "dial in" HRT for each woman separately. They really don't know if it helps. They are basing almost all their data points on subjective inputs whether the HRT is working and reducing symptoms or not. I've had a couple acquaintances try it. One got it dialed in after over a year of "dialing it in". Her mix isn't going to work for anyone else, or at least there's zero correlation that it will work for anyone but her. I've had many more I know that gave up. The HRT "dialing in" process was worse than what they already were living with. Again, that's all subjective. Was it really worse or were they just so disappointed that it seemed worse? I have personally opted not to try it.
Most doctors will say extreme stress will cause more extreme perimenopausal symptoms. I went from excessive stress for decades to almost none. My body has begun feeling better, but my perimenopausal symptoms didn't change. Of course, I'm that odd duck. Not aging very quickly, in spite of the excessive stress. My symptoms were mostly relegated to becoming more easily aggravated, more paranoid, and cold flashes.
Oh right, I've never had a hot flash. But I have had cold flashes so bad that I woke up convinced I was naked in the North Pole chasing a polar bear. (Seriously that was a weird dream, which is why I haven't forgotten it.) I have sat in 102 degree F (39 degree C) in the hot southern sun, air completely stagnate, with a hoodie and sweatpants on, freezing as if I was waiting for the university shuttle bus in a blizzard in January 1986. Considering even in a blizzard, I could run around in a miniskirt and a light jacket back then and be warm, perhaps that explains the cold flashes better than any doctor could currently. The cold flashes were hard, not on the joints as you might think. No, the problem is that it would take hours to feel "warm" again. I joke that you can always put clothes on when you are cold, but there's only so much you can take off. But women who have hot flashes can take cold showers, supposedly. (I really wouldn't know.) When you are that cold from the core out, it's not warm no matter how much you put on. When I finally asked a couple doctors, most had no idea what I was talking about. Instead, an online doctor's blog said that about 5% of women experience "cold flashes". Of course! That would be me!
There's no one to ask. The rest of my family all had "normal" hot flashes. So it is safe to guess whatever causes these changes to me versus even my own family might be extremely rare.
So I started experimenting. Read a suggestion. Research it, side effects, and what relief it provided others. See if other women agreed that it helped or didn't. Then test it. One thing at a time, stop it for a while before trying the next thing, keep track of each thing I tried. Most stuff if it helped it was short lived. Meaning it most likely was a placebo effect. Of course, in all honesty, I feel like my symptoms are so minimal from some of the horror stories that I began to feel like it was unnecessary, except a friend reminded me that most women grossly exaggerate child birth. Seriously. Be honest. Almost none of us remember most of it a few hours later or we would NEVER have more than one. You meet a woman with only one? She MIGHT be the odd duck that really remembers. So...
Coffee helps with digestive issues. Doesn't seem to matter if it's a 600 calorie latte or a 5 calorie shot of espresso. More seems to be better, sugar or not.
Ginger helps too, but it was easier to take a pill at night than try to eat ginger every day.
Caffeine helps with the exhaustion when it kicks in, and that seems to be the one that we all suffer from. So will a quick 20 minute walk, but caffeine lasts longer than the 20 minute walk. Sometimes the walk just delayed it a couple hours.
Joint pain only was helped by enough sleep for me (5 hours). Over 7 hours became counterproductive. I've always slept less than most people. (Yeah, I'm the odd duck. We have covered that, right?)
Aminos. OH MY GOD. The proper aminos, proteins that our bodies need for all kinds of health issues and body needs, is probably the most important thing I discovered helped, AND almost no one talks about them. I recommend On Nutrition's Amino Energy (NOT the ones with hydration or extras, just the regular one). If you are tired a lot and/or excessive joint pain, this worked wonders to address both. I'm not sure everyone needs all of them, but Amino Energy was the only OTC that I found from a long term trusted company and that had the majority of all the aminos our bodies need. (It probably would help older men also to be frank.) I have found that at least one bottle (16 oz water, two scoops) a day works wonders. But, like everything else related to menopause, it might work for me and not for you. But it's worth a try if you are having joint pain.
Omega Fish Oil seems to help with brain fog and overall mental health. It also could be the brain games and the Duolingo and reading a lot. Keep your brain active to fight brain fog. There's more and more research to support this for all of us as we get older, so it might not be just about menopause.
Oh, and a microfiber blanket for the cold flashes. They are supposedly good to wick away heat also for those of you with hot flashes, but a microfiber blanket reduced the cold flashes by about half.
Not that any of this might help anyone. Seriously. There's no data out there that I can analyze and tell you absolutely. I'm honestly not convinced that doctors that are doing HRT are actually using any real scientific method to help them determine and track what women get how much and what mixture works better. For a data sample to be statistically significant, they would have to have solid parameters to the control group and very few women know their actual background to make the data sets useful. A team of doctors would have to be comparing global datasets including hundreds of parameters and having a stat team doing the analysis. The margin of error would still be pretty significant, and the costs to coordinate? Well, with NIH and other medical research for cancers cancelled, do you think they give a shit about our collective issues with menopause?
Ah well, I hope that whatever your symptoms you're able to find relief, a good doctor who is listening to you and give a little thought to the fact no one seems to know enough to have a statistically sound reason to tell you to try anything. Even what helped me and me sharing it isn't statistically sound. It's anecdotal. My experience only. At least, I'm upfront about that. A lot of the people I have read make a lot of blanket assumptions what helped them will help you. And no one is truly funded real research to find the causes, just ways to mask it. Tax money would normally, but...
Ah well, as usual, Think About It. Peace.
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