Perimenopause For Dummies (eBook)

Rebecca Levy-Gantt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-18689-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Get to know perimenopause and manage troublesome symptoms

Perimenopause For Dummies is a practical and comprehensive guide to the emotional, mental, and physical changes that begin to happen as you approach menopause. Demystify the connection between hormones and aging and make informed choices about how to deal with symptoms like weight gain, hot flashes, depression, mood swings, and insomnia. You'll learn about natural remedies and medical interventions that can ease the transition between fertility and menopause. Most importantly, you'll know what to expect, so the changes happening in your body won't take you by surprise. This Dummies guide is like a trusted friend who can guide you through your life's next chapter.

• Learn what perimenopause is and identify the most common symptoms
• Understand how perimenopause can affect your body, emotions, and libido
• Ease symptoms with hormonal solutions, diet, and exercise
• Discover ways of supporting yourself or your loved ones through perimenopause

Perimenopause For Dummies offers clear, compassionate answers for anyone who is currently experiencing perimenopause or who is ready to learn more about it.

Dr. Rebecca Levy-Gantt is an obste­trician and gynecologist with her own Ob/Gyn practice and over 30 years of experience. Dr. Levy-Gantt is a Nationally Certified Menopause Practitioner whose areas of expertise include menopause, perimenopause, and hormonal management. She is the author of Womb With A View.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Welcome to Perimenopause

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding what perimenopause is

Knowing the symptoms of perimenopause

Recognizing the difference between perimenopause and other conditions

Preparing for the physical changes

Consulting with a trusted medical professional

For women, it seems like life is all about stages. You have the childhood stage, which somehow ends around puberty, when things change and start to take a more serious turn. Then you have the reproductive stage, governed by hormonal cycles, during which the usual goals are to avoid pregnancies or to create pregnancies; also to feel well and stable emotionally. Jump over quite a few years, and you have a non-reproductive stage called menopause, when the ovaries completely shut down, all hormone levels are low, and keeping healthy and living a full life are the usual objectives.

But what about that huge gap of time between those reproductive years and the menopausal ones? You have a decade (or so) where you may still worry about a pregnancy (or you may still try to achieve one), where you experience symptoms that appear when your hormones vary widely from week to week, and even from day to day.

During these years, you may find yourself dealing with brain fog, vaginal dryness, insomnia, mood swings, and low energy at the same time that you find yourself with heavy and irregular vaginal bleeding. For these years, I’m guessing that no one ever sat you down and said, “This is what may happen between age 38 and 53.” That’s what this book is about. Welcome to perimenopause!

To get started, this chapter offers a brief overview of what causes various perimenopausal changes at this time of your life, as well as what symptoms you may have and why. You can dive deeper into all the topics mentioned here by looking into the chapters that deal specifically with each subject.

Understanding What Perimenopause Is

Perimenopause is a time, in years, of transition. It involves a move away from the regularity of hormonal release, monthly ovulation, and the menstrual cycle. Hormones cause physical and emotional changes in your body, and the more regularly your body releases these hormones, the more stable you feel. When both ovulation and hormone release start to become irregular, you’ve entered perimenopause. In general, perimenopause can start for a woman anywhere over the age of 35 and last until about age 53. (The average age of menopause is about 51.)

Between 35 and 53 years old is a very wide range, and I don’t mean everyone experiences perimenopause from the age of 35 to 53. When you start perimenopause sometimes depends on how regularly your body released hormones in your 20s and 30s. (See Chapter 6 for more on that topic.) For most women, irregularities in menstrual cycles are just one of the signs that perimenopause is approaching. Swings in moods, lack of concentration, poor energy, weight gain, and insomnia are some of the other hallmarks of aging out of your reproductive years and entering the perimenopausal transition.

PERIMENOPAUSE AND WOMEN OF COLOR

An August 23, 2023, article in the New York Times entitled “How Menopause Affects Women of Color” reviewed the ways in which the experience of perimenopause and menopause is different in various communities. The article notes that researchers who followed a group of more than 3,000 women during perimenopause and menopause have found a few key differences: Black and Hispanic women reach menopause earlier than white, Chinese, and Japanese women, and sometimes with more severe symptoms. Black women are more likely to experience more intense and frequent hot flashes, and endure them for more years, than women of other races. So Black women may generally start their transition earlier, and if a Black woman begins experiencing symptoms even in her 30s that sound like perimenopause, those symptoms certainly warrant a medical evaluation.

Because of racial disparities in the healthcare system, often when women of color seek care, they may encounter physicians who “aren’t fully equipped to help them navigate that transition,” according to the New York Times article.

Several studies have found that when women of color do find a menopause specialist, that specialist is less likely to provide them with a prescription for hormone therapy, as compared to white patients. This discrepancy in prescription writing may occur because of an unconscious racial bias that leads physicians to believe that a patient’s symptoms don’t warrant treatment. Untreated hot flashes can lead to an increase in cardiovascular disease; this potential for disease may mean that the undertreatment of women of color may lead to more severe long-term negative health outcomes while they go through their perimenopausal and menopausal years.

Common Perimenopausal Symptoms

You can potentially attribute a laundry list of symptoms to the sudden drop in estrogen levels in your body, along with other hormonal changes that occur in perimenopause. You may not experience all of these symptoms, but if you have just a few (or sometimes even just one), we usually can assume that the hormonal changes of perimenopause are responsible. Here are the common perimenopause symptoms to watch out for:

• Interrupted sleep: The hormones estrogen and neurotransmitter serotonin act as partners in assisting deep, restful sleep; if your body doesn’t produce one of these hormones, it also may not stimulate the other.
• Hot flashes: A sudden drop in estrogen levels triggers a hot flash, a temporary rise in body temperature, enough to cause sweating and flushing of the face and usually the upper body.
• Heart palpitations: A sudden change in estrogen levels can cause heart flutters because of the hormone adrenaline that your body can release in response to changing hormone levels.
• Changes in your menstrual cycle: Although you can’t blame all menstrual irregularities on perimenopause, women commonly start to see irregular bleeding, bleeding between periods, or changes in their bleeding pattern during perimenopause.
• Irritability, anxiety, and mood changes: Often, hormonal swings can result in changes to your mood; premenstrual mood changes can now seem to occur all month long or randomly throughout the cycle.
• Brain fog and lack of concentration: Estrogen plays a role in memory and mental clarity, and changes in estrogen levels (along with poor sleep) can cause changes in cognitive function.
• Vaginal and genital discomfort: Because the vagina has many estrogen receptors, the vagina stays healthy when the body has estrogen, especially in the genital area. Women often see the result of a decrease in their estrogen levels when intercourse becomes painful.
• Urinary changes: A decrease in estrogen levels may lead to increased frequency or irritability of the bladder; bladder issues may also relate to changes in vaginal health because the vagina and the urethra (the endpoint of the urinary system) are so close together.
• Skin changes: Lower estrogen levels cause your skin to lose firmness and elasticity. Without estrogen, skin often becomes thin, loose, and droopy. You may notice hair loss and other skin changes, as well.

Although medical science doesn’t yet have a way to definitively attribute these symptoms to perimenopause, knowing that almost every perimenopausal woman has these symptoms at one time or another during her transition to menopause may make you feel a little less disturbed by the ones happening to you.

While you make your way through this book and consult with your doctor about various signs and symptoms that are causing a decrease in the quality of your life, remember that just because women commonly experience these symptoms during perimenopause doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything about them.

NEVER HESITATE TO TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR!

It’s important when reading about perimenopause, in this book or elsewhere, to keep in mind that every woman experiences this stage — in terms of symptoms and their severity as well as age and other factors differently. Don’t wait until your timeline or symptoms exactly match a checklist in your head to talk to your doctor.

Here’s an example from my practice (I share more in Chapter 19): A 52-year-old lady came to see me for her annual exam. One year before, she had still been having monthly periods and no perimenopausal symptoms. Her diet was healthy, she was regularly exercising, and she felt emotionally well.

One year later, she reported to me that since that last visit, her periods had spaced out, appearing now once every four to five months. For the entire year since her last visit, she had been sleeping poorly, having mood swings, and feeling irritable a lot of the time. I asked why she waited all 12 months to come back to see me, and she said she thought I couldn’t do anything to help her because she hadn’t gone a full 12 months without a period!

After talking about all the ways that I possibly could help her, we chose a vaginal contraceptive ring. This is the lowest dose combination contraceptive, and she wouldn’t have to remember to take something every day; it would likely relieve her symptoms, regulate her bleeding, and improve her overall mood (if hot flashes,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.10.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
• ISBN-10: 1-394-18689-4 / 1394186894
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-18689-1 / 9781394186891