Hormonal changes during Perimenopause

So, what exactly is causing all these physical and emotional changes in your 40’s?

During perimenopause, the years leading up to Menopause, you may experience any number of changes in mood as well as physical changes, maybe some of the symptoms listed in my What is Perimenopause blog article will ring true for you.

And why is this happening? Well, it’s your hormones. And not just your sex hormones, known as progesterone, oestrogen and testosterone, there’s others involved, stress hormones in particular, but our sex hormones are the main instigators so that’s what were going to fucus on.

During perimenopause the first thing that happens is that progesterone levels lower, and when that happens you may experience some of the following.

Symptoms of low progesterone:

• Feeling of anxiety

• Your periods may become irregular

• Your cycle length may shorten

• You may get spotting in the luteal phase of your cycle, although you should always get this investigated if you're worried. Note, The Luteal phase of your cycle is the days or weeks after you have ovulated, before your period comes or pregnancy occurs.

• Depression

• Water retention

• Migraines

  Secondly oestrogen peters out, but not without some major ups and downs. And when that happens you may experience:

  High Oestrogen:

• Breast pain

• Heavy periods

• Fibroids (non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb (uterus) and vary in size. They can cause heavy periods, pain, infertility and other complications, and are linked to the hormone oestrogen.)

• Fluid retention

• Irritability

• Anxiety

  Low Oestrogen:

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Weight gain

• Hot flushes/night sweats

• Insomnia

• Hair loss

• Vaginal atrophy

• Vaginal dryness

• Inflammation

• Muscle aches and pains

Now you may be reading this thinking but I have symptoms of both high and low Oestrogen, and low progesterone, what's going on?

Well, our hormone levels change throughout the day and throughout the weeks of our cycle (which is what makes blood testing for perimenopause so inaccurate) so it would make sense that you have a range of symptoms and some that might cross over.

What I would recommend you do, is take 5 minutes now to write down the symptoms you’ve experienced, and do this every few days from now on (or daily if life allows) and over time you may seem a pattern forming that helps you to work out which stage of perimenopause you are in. Or maybe it just reassures you that you are perimenopausal, which I certainly found a relief to know.

Please let me know if you have any questions from the blog above or if anything isn’t quite clear heather@deavilleyoga.com I’d love to hear from you!

I’s also highly recommend this blog post from Lara Briden, which includes a great graph of what goes on with your hormones throughout your life.

What is Perimenopause?

On a clinical level perimenopause is the years leading up to you having had no period for 12 months. Then for one day you are in menopause, day 366 since your last period started. And then after that you are post menopausal, although you may have another period or bleed.

Perimenopause can be felt in the body and mind, showing up in an array of different symptoms. Some women will experience none of these, for some they’ll have a few and for other they can be debilitating.

It’s difficult to have a blood test to determine weather you are in perimenopause or not, because our hormone levels change from hour to hour. So in my opinion, the best way we can discover if we are in perimenopause by looking at our symptoms.

So what do perimenopause symptoms include?

Lets break them down into the body, physiological and the mind or emotions, psychological.

Possible psychological emotional/mind symptoms of perimenopause

• low mood

• anxiety

• depression

• rage

• anger

• brain fog (this falls into both physical and emotional symptoms)

• low libido (as does this)

  Possible bodily symptoms of perimenopause

• Abdominal pain

• bloating

• constipation

• diarrhea

• altered sense of smell/taste

• heavy or light bleeding

• brown discharge

• spotting

• breast tenderness

• brittle nails

• dizziness

• difficulty breathing

• dry eyes

• dry/ itchy skin

• oral health problems

• hearing issues

• heart palpitations

• heartburn

• hot flushes

• night sweats

• joint pain

• muscle pain

• migraines

• pelvic floor problems

• overactive bladder

• vaginal prolapse

• urinary tract

• Infections

• vaginal dryness

And this is by no means exhaustive.

You can also see how the two could very much interact with one another. If your bleeding heavily and in terrible pain with vaginal dryness, its quite likely that would affect your mood.

And likewise, if your mood is low and you lack the motivation to leave the house, its highly like that you could end up suffering with joint and muscular pains from a lack of gentle movement. Note the word gentle here. Perimenopause is not the time for extreme exercise in my opinion, but gentle to moderate exercise with weight and resistance training could be just what you need, to support you physically and emotionally through this time of transition and change.

So now you know what PERIMENOPAUSE is. How it may look, feel and show up in your body. Next week in my blog we’ll be exploring the why. Why are these symptoms occurring, what is going on?

Thanks for reading, Heather*

Perimenopause and me

To start the story of my perimenopause journey in many ways I need to travel back into my early teens when my periods started and the role of hormones in my day to day life became more obvious.

As a child of the 80’s periods weren’t really talked about that much and the emotional changes that can occur were never mentioned, but I had all the practical info and like most girls cracked on with it.

In some ways I was lucky, I had light, irregular periods (no 28 day cycle for me) and I didn’t feel that they had a huge impact on my day to day life. Although I knew I was never going to wear white and go rollerblading when I had my period, who remembers those adds!

I was lucky, pregnancy came easily in my 30’s and it was only really towards my late 30’s that I started to experience any symptoms in relation to my periods.

It started with heavy bleeding and periods coming quicker and faster. My periods were so heavy I had to spend the day in bed. These hormonal changes, which I know now were the early signs of perimenopause, soon developed into low moods, anxiety, achy joints, crying uncontrollably, headaches, exhaustion and memory problems. I found it terrifying not to be able to explain how I felt, or equally remember the word windowsill (bit of wood under the window anyone?)

It’s hard to think back to how awful I felt some days, I’ve almost forgotten how bad it was now that I’ve educated myself, made pretty small but dramatic life changes (slowly and one at a time.)

I’ve now grasped this life change with both hands. But it was awful, it really was. And if you’re going through something similar my heart reaches out to you. You will be okay. With time and support, you will.

In some ways I’m now thankful for this journey, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I feel present and alive and I have a much stronger sense of who I am and what it is I care about than every before.

But the roads been a bumpy one and a long one and I’m by no means at its end. But over the next few weeks, months and years I’m going to share my story here on my blog and everything I have learnt with you. In the hope that it will help. I really hope it does.

Please reach out to me if you’re struggling through this time.

Heather*

email heather@deavilleyoga.com