Perimenopause? - Not Ready For This!

For so many of the women that I work with, perimenopause, menopause and post menopause, play a part in their health crash. 

And whether it's the primary part of the health crash so often, people can feel okay, and then they go into perimenopause. And suddenly, things go a little bit haywire. And then comes the investigation of what's actually happening and what do we need, especially if the only solution we've been given medically is HRT and HRT. 

You might be too young for HRT. The perimenopause might not be showing up in your blood test yet, they might not run blood tests, or you get prescribed HRT and HRT doesn't work or it creates unwanted side effects, like weight gain, affects your digestion, or it causes other undesirable problems, even though it might pacify or fix some original issues.

Perimenopause and menopause is that time of life where, as women were winding down on our ability to be fertile, so we no longer need to ovulate, prepare the womb and get ready to potentially get pregnant. Our time for doing that is past. And so we don't need the same hormone cycle and the same preparation for pregnancy that we had before. 

The wind down of this function is very erratic. I think that's the best way of explaining why it seems to be such a difficult transition. For some people, some people sail through it. Other people will have a really difficult time. And with any spectrum, there's varying degrees in the middle. 

Well, one of the reasons why some of us struggle with it, is because it's, it's not a case of; we were having regular periods, and then they're slowly winding down, and then they gradually stop. And then that's it. We just move into a phase of life where we don't have ovulation and we don't have periods anymore. 

What happens is your brain is trying to regulate a level of hormones. We're not cycling in quite the same regular rhythmic way that we were doing before. Our hormone levels become like sometimes we've got higher oestrogen, and then sometimes we want lower oestrogen. And it's not necessarily at the same predictable times that we had them before.  

Early on in perimenopause, it's our progesterone that tends to decline. And that then has to balance with whatever oestrogen is present. All our hormones are in a relationship with each other. So depending on how much progesterone you've got, and how much oestrogen you've got at that particular time, the recipe will then give you a set of symptoms or provide you with a state of how you feel. So you could have the same level of progesterone but a higher or lower level of oestrogen, you're going to feel different. 

You could have the same level of oestrogen but a higher or lower level of progesterone (usually lower) and you're going to feel different. 

And it's the erratic nature of this that's so scary when it starts to happen, especially because it can start to happen in our 30s. And people are really surprised at that. 

That say being 35 you start to notice that your hormones are shifting now. 

One of the detrimental messages or associations that goes along with perimenopause and menopause, is that you're old. And because of that, as a woman going through your life, it's really unappealing to be told that you're going into perimenopause. 

It’s like “oh, this is it, This is the downward slope. Now this is the beginning of the end.” 

And it is so unhelpful and is completely untrue. In many ways, it is the beginning of something marvellous. But the idea of, oh, well, things are gonna start to change now. And there's all these really unpleasant things that happen when you go through perimenopause and menopause. And so you better get prepared for that. Because you know, You're old now. 

So that's going to happen and you like, hang on, I'm 35 or 40, or I'm 45. Or I'm 50. At what age? Do you go? “Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I feel old enough now to embrace being old.” 

Ha! That doesn't happen. I'm still 18 at heart, you know, and I'm going to stay that way. 

Having said that, I'm really interested in the process of seeing my body change and seeing grey hairs appear and seeing lines come in. And noticing the level of……  I think there's a self confidence that can come as you start to let go of what people think about you as you get older. 

For me, I always joke because now that I'm older, (so I'm, I'm 50, next year) and now that I'm older, then I feel like I've got a right to tell people information, and to speak out and become an expert of sorts, because at least I'm old enough now. So I can kind of justify it. 

Whereas there was a lot of bits of information, a lot of guidance that I've been able to give when I was younger, I just never really felt like I could own it. 

And so again, that's why I say I quite like aging. I quite like this new chapter of moving into the ‘sage years’, where we can care a lot less about what other people think and be a lot more ourselves. So I think part of the rattle that comes in, when we're going into perimenopause, around;

“oh God, you know, I'm not ready for this, my body's changing, I don't want it to change, I'm not ready.”

At the same time that comes along with the universe grabbing you by the shoulders and saying, “it's now whatever, what are the things that you wanted to do? Who is the person that you thought you'd be? Have you achieved that yet?”

So there's this kind of like running out of time feeling that can run alongside, which is pretty scary. 

So as people are moving through, it's so different for everybody, everybody's timeline is completely different.  Everybody's symptoms are completely different. It's so individual to you. And I think whilst you can find commonalities with other people who are similar age, nobody is having the exact same experience that you are. And that's really important, because the same solution, or the same things that will help you regulate are also very individual to you. 

You need a way of ‘self calibrating’, you need a way of learning what your body's trying to tell you, what your needs are, how you manage the deck of cards that you've been dealt with your particular constitution, and your particular body and mind and the things that you need to. 

And as you're coming into this idea that your hormones are changing, accept, take a deep breath and go, “Okay, I accept that I'm getting into my 40s and or into my 50s and that hormonal changes are happening.” 

When do you start to do something about that? 

If you're in a say, in denial, but if you're kind of like, “No! oh, hell, no, I'm not ready for that. I'm going to ignore it.” 

It puts you at a huge disadvantage, because what you're doing in that case, is prioritising what your mind wants from what your body needs. 

So your body's saying, “Oh, I'm having a few hormonal shifts might need to change the amount of protein to fat carbohydrate that you eat in your diet.” 

Obviously, you won't know that information yet, that's the kind of thing that I teach. 

So your body shifts, it starts giving you subtle signs that you need to attend a little bit more closely to maybe what you eat, or maybe the habits that you have. And you think “no, no, that's okay. I'm tough. I can push through and I'm just going to ignore that that's happening. I can hold my breath. I can tighten my fists and I can crash on regardless.” And this is where I think that this fear around ageing, or that is, you know, I'm not ready for that. It puts you at a disadvantage to actually having a much more smooth and managed experience.

 There's also been a history of not talking about menopause. Now, I'm sure you'll have noticed that is definitely not the case at the moment because everybody seems to be talking about perimenopause and menopause. And there's an enormous amount of noise about it. In some ways, that's great, because we should be telling each other that we're having emotional fluctuations, or weird changes or weird symptoms, because empathy and sharing and that connection is so supportive and helpful. Equally, you can feel completely bombarded with all the information.

E.g. If you want to have a good menopause, you need to be vegan, or you need to be ketogenic, or you need to do more exercise or you need to do less exercise or you need to watch your cortisol, you need to de-stress. 

You need to take these supplements, many, many, many supplements. You need to go on HRT, you shouldn't go on HRT, there's bioidentical HRT, there's not bioidentical HRT what's right for you? What's wrong for you? 

So the noise that's around menopause, which changes at the moment, is just really confusing. You know, there's a million products that you could buy.  

What do you do? Just go out and try all of them and hope one works. So I really think there needs to be some simplicity, and some grassroots understanding of your body and how it functions, how it responds to basic things, like how well you sleep, and what you're eating regularly throughout the day, and what you're demanding of yourself. 

I deal a lot with stress with people, because stress makes everything worse. 

But there's, there's a huge difference between saying, ‘manage your stress, stop being stressed, do some deep breathing.’ And REALLY changing what it is that is driving the choices that you make in the day. 

E.g. How busy do you feel that you have to be? Guilt about not doing certain things, or about doing the wrong thing or about not being good enough. 

These are the real things that drive our stress, and drivers to drive ourselves very hard. And being able to address that and have new conversations about how to get stable in I say stable, not as in you're crazy when you're not doing this. But I think of us as having a boat. And our boat is our vessel that we take through life.

I remember reading Ellen MacArthur's autobiography, and she's talking about doing this solo transatlantic crossing. 

Before the transatlantic crossing, she is doing every single check and preparation, run through stress-test for her boat. Because there's all these unpredictable things that happen at sea, things are inevitably going to go wrong possibly break.

There's going to be weather conditions, there's going to be trials and tribulations. So why not make sure that her boats and her ability, her relationship with her boat, (she actually talks about it like it's a person) and that she can hear every noise and feel every movement of it. And she knows if something's right or something's wrong, she knows how to respond to it. 

So she does all this preparation, before she even sets out on the crossing, so that she has the most successful crossing that she can possibly have. That doesn't mean that nothing bad happens or that she doesn't have to deal with something that's happening. But when it does happen, she's in tune with about she's able to respond quickly. Things that are likely to go wrong and much less because before she even set out on the rocky seas. She'd made sure things were as functional as possible. And I love, love, love this analogy. 

Think of perimenopause and menopause as an ocean crossing, transitioning from one state of being in a position to have babies to another state where we're not transitioning anymore. We've arrived at the state where our bodies are in a new balance. The crossing in the middle is the bit that causes lots of problems. Because it's like being in a sea where unpredictable stuff happens. The journey and the quality of our journey really depends on, not just the boat, but our relationship with the boats, how we respond to it, how well we know it, how well we're taking care of and attending to it. And that's what I think is amazing about working holistically on yourself. 

So that you're working with you, the choices that you make and the schedule of your day and the choices that you're making for your food, like what ratios of protein, fat and carbohydrates eat you. How often should you eat? And I'd say how are you drinking enough water? (And everyone says, not enough lol)  So there's one to attend to immediately? How much caffeine and sugar do you feel you need to have to make it through your day at the moment, because as I said before, that's an indication of you trying to manage something else. 

And is there another way of learning to manage that thing and giving yourself permission to take your foot off the driving yourself accelerator. There's this beautiful expression of healthy striving, which helped me so much when I was changing how I take care of myself. 

So I went through burnout. Many times, I didn't even wait till perimenopause, so many things going on from such a young age, that I've amassed quite a lot of experience in quite a lot of knowledge about all kinds of different things by just having to have learned for myself. And healthy striving is one of the expressions that really helped me because I did not want to overcome my burnout, by giving up by not doing the things that excited me all the things that I felt driven to do. I like being successful, I like to challenge and the idea of not striving for these things was what I thought I had to do in order not to be burned out. And everyone kept saying to me do too much you work too hard, you put too much pressure on yourself. And I was thinking, but isn't that something about what life is, is good because we're trying to achieve things and that kind of things. That's my personality. Healthy striving helped me overcome overdriving. 

And the biggest component to that was like Ellen MacArthur, I started to hear my body and work with my body and see it as something that needed to be taken care of, so that it could carry me through life. 

Whereas before, I was so determined, I was like, Yeah, we don't need to take care of the body, but it's just going to be wasting time, it's going to be wasting energy and effort. And say let's just get out there and do the journey and then just push hard. And if it can't keep up, well, then it should just keep up.

Inevitably burned out many times, as I'm sure you can appreciate. 

So maybe you can resonate with some of the things that I've talked about with this. The takeaway from this podcast today is that it's never too early to start to look after your boat. And in doing so you will have a much smoother transition through the inevitable transatlantic crossing of going through perimenopause and menopause. 

The beauty of doing that is that you also get to enjoy much better health post menopause. And the reason for that is that you're attending to all of the different systems which help you to function well. 

By ‘systems' what I mean is your digestion, your adrenals which are your stress response system, your nervous system, your liver and gallbladder, your ability to detox your tissues, your muscles, your bones, your kidneys.  All of these are the different components that make up your working systems and all those systems are also interlinked. 

We're a massively integrated organic being and all the systems also have a correlation with all our emotions and tensions and stresses. So no matter what age you are, if you're 30, 40, 50, 60, 70…..it's never too late to start to work on making those systems work better and just take care of your boat better. 

But it's also a huge benefit the earlier you start. So rather than being in denial, that perimenopause will appear at some stage and think well I'm not ready for that. I don't really want to address it and kind of stick your head in the sand like an ostrich.

Embrace this challenging crossing.  It means that you have a head and really start to make your boat and its function, its integrity, a huge priority;

You deserve nothing more than the very best of the care that you have to offer yourself!!

I hope you have enjoyed my little unpacking of this transatlantic crossing. And I would love to tailor these blogs to the kinds of questions that you would like answered. As I said, I have an enormous amount of varied knowledge and experience and I just want to help you in any way that I can. So please ask me questions, send me messages. And I will do my best to help you through whatever it is that you're dealing with.

Listen to the full Podcast Here Health Crash Radio Podcast S3 E1