If we’re lucky, we’ll spend almost half of our lives in either peri- or postmenopause, but most of us haven’t got a clue what actually happens during that process – or when it happens.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have gathered most of your menopause knowledge from watching your mum navigate her way through ‘the change’. I remember it being a pretty traumatic few years, coinciding nicely with my mum starting a new, stressful job, dealing with the passing of close relatives and having two teenagers to contend with. In my mind, menopause is characterised by unavoidable physical changes, seriously low moods and familial angst. Fortunately for me, that’s not something I’ll have to tackle for another 20 or so years.
Except… it doesn’t always work out like that, and your menopause journey could begin much earlier.
In fact, according to the American Heart Association, women can now expect to spend 40% of their lives in perimenopause and postmenopause in countries such the US. That’s roughly the same amount of time that we have periods for; when you consider how much attention we pay to menstrual health, is it not unusual how little we know or prep for that second stage of life?
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It’s for that reason that Wild Nutrition has been busy conducting nationwide research into the subject, which has been published in a groundbreaking report called The Future Of Perimenopause: Reclaiming A Pivotal Life Stage For The Next Generation. It’s found that women have overwhelmingly negative attitudes towards menopause, with 23% feeling unsupported, 22% worried and 18% scared about the transition. Over a third of women don’t know what perimenopause is.
A 2021 study commissioned by the UK government found that of the 70% of us who experience perimenopause symptoms in their 30s and 40s, 90% aren’t able to recognise the link between the change in how they feel and the inevitable hormonal transition. Instead, they put their symptoms down to mid-life, work or domestic stress, anxiety or depression. In fact, a study by Newson Health Research and Education has found that a third of women wait at least three years for their symptoms to be correctly labelled as menopause-related by their GP.
What is perimenopause and how is it different from actual menopause?
First up, perimenopause isn’t the menopause. It’s the process that happens before we have our last period and it can last up to 12 years. 1% of women enter menopause in their 20s or 30s, but most of us go into perimenopause in our 40s.
It’s a hormonal transition. Progesterone is the first hormone to decline, and that’s important because it’s the chemical responsible for keeping us calm. That’s why anxiety, insomnia and memory changes (like brain fog) tend to be the first symptoms. If you’re in your 40s, working a high-stress job, have small children, elderly parents and are trying to maintain a regular fitness regime, you may well put sleeplessness and stress down to the strain of responsibilities rather than hormones.
How to have a positive perimenopause experience
The key really is to understand, prepare and accept perimenopause for what it is. Henrietta Norton, founder of Wild Nutrition, explains in the report: “This time in life is often regarded as a time of deficiency, but this story needs to change; perimenopause is a natural transition. Women are meant to have a decline in hormones – it’s a natural process and marks the next phase of our lives.”
We prepare for pivotal life events like pregnancy. Most women who plan on having children do think about making lifestyle tweaks as they move towards that becoming a more concrete prospect, whether it’s giving up smoking, reducing the amount of alcohol they drink or finally tackling their stress load. While we’re pregnant, we might undergo a complete lifestyle change (cutting coffee, for example). Why? Because we’re concerned with the wellbeing of our potential or unborn child.
Menopause is a massive life moment that also requires serious prep, so why don’t we do it? One theory is that women tend to be givers; we spend our lives doing things for other people. Unlike motherhood, menopause serves no one but ourselves. Preparing for something that doesn’t help anyone else, so may feel like a waste of time when, in fact, staying mentally and physically healthy can only be a good and valuable thing.
How to eat, supplement and move to prepare
Anyway, there are things we can do to prepare. Research suggests that eating phytoestrogen-rich foods (soy milk, tempeh, tofu, soy-linseed bread) may ease menopausal symptoms. Supplements can also help, including:
- flaxseed – for easing night sweats
- calcium – to prevent bone loss
- vitamin D –to compensate for low-oestrogen-related vitamin D deficiency
- ginseng – helps as a mood booster
- St John’s wort – to control mood swings
When it comes to exercise, strength training gets more important as we age. Irina Allport, a personal trainer and nutritional coach, previously told Stylist: “Strength training exercises will help to build bone and muscle strength and rev up your metabolism. At home, opt for dumbbells and resistance bands.”
In fact, Wild Nutrition’s report calls calcium, magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids “some of the most transformative natural ingredients for perimenopause”.
“Stress and busy lifestyles increase the body’s demand for nutrients like iron, magnesium and B vitamins,” explains Norton. “Because of this, many of us are living in a nutrient gap, which can be felt more acutely at physiologically demanding life stages like perimenopause.”
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Mental health and (peri) menopause
Once those changes do start to happen, it’s important to acknowledge them. Then you can decide how to tackle it. Perhaps hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is right for you; maybe dedicating a chunk of time to tackling the mental health impact of perimenopause will make the biggest difference to your quality of life.
As GP and perimenopause specialist Dr Shahzadi Harper says: “Without mental wellness, you can’t have physical wellness. It’s more important than anything else – vital from the point of view of energy, fatigue and your confidence… You may feel different, your size may change, but if you feel confident in yourself… you can manage it better. In fact, the physicality of our body is so dependent on our psychology – these symptoms (like anxiety and brain fog) may not present themselves as strongly at all.”
Understand that this isn’t the end but the start of a new chapter
OK, so it’s a bit scary to think that the menopause journey can begin when you’ve only just got to grips with menstrual cups and PMS but that’s only because we’re thinking about it all wrong. According to Wild Nutrition’s report, 90% of careers peak in perimenopause… but 95% of women believe that symptoms might negatively affect them at work.
Fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that menopause and the transition are things we should be discussing from the moment we start having periods. So much of women’s health is shrouded in secrecy and ignorance. That’s starting to change with menstruation – menopause has to be next.
Images: Getty
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