Perimenopause: Where Every Expert Disagrees and I'm Losing My Mind
Fibroids, HRT, Blue Zones, and a body that bleeds on its own schedule. My brainspill on the hormonal chaos nobody warned me about.
For the past ten years I’ve been trying to make sense of what’s happening to me. It all started at the age of 42 when my body and mind turned upside down with the onset of severe panic attacks, gushing periods and explosive diarrhea. It’s a phenomenon I like to call, and I’ll spell it out for you, F-U-C-K-Y-O-U-U-N-I-V-E-R-S-E. Or you may know this hellscape by its common name: perimenopause.
This blog is my attempt to untangle my psyche with the word vomit of my contradictory, opposing, and downright confusing beliefs, views and opinions rattling around inside my brain. My aim is to outwardly express myself, so that I can make sense of this wild journey. In doing so, perhaps you’ll take comfort in our common struggle. Also, I believe that two heads are better than one in terms of sharing and brainstorming what can be done to ease our angst and suffering.
If this resonates, I invite you to read my brainspill, a comprehensive anxiety-activating list of politically incorrect, weird, and controversial beliefs, ponderings and musings. In my case, I’m attempting to answer this question:
WHAT SHOULD I DO ABOUT MY HIGH CHOLESTEROL, LOW MOOD, RANDOM HIVES, CONTINUED BLEEDING AND CRAMPS AT 52, LISTLESSNESS, FATIGUE, AND ONGOING DIGESTIVE AND THYROID COMPLICATIONS?
Your question might be totally different or almost a carbon copy.
Please note these internalized opinions and random findings change on a weekly or daily basis. So, depending on the day, I can argue vehemently against or for any one of these.
Perimenopause has always existed, but only now has a scientific name for a set of symptoms and hormonal changes women experience as they march towards the end of their menstrual periods (postmenopause).
Perimenopause is a made-up construct by the medical system to scare you about a natural process and push hormone replacement therapy onto you, keeping you stuck in a prison of pharmaceutical drugs for the rest of your life.
The symptoms known as perimenopause are, in fact, not perimenopause, they are the result of the patriarchy pushing you to the people-pleasing and overgiving brink in midlife when your body and mind can no longer push through and you’ve collapsed.
Because women live longer now from modern conveniences and technology (plus the knowledge to prevent previously common causes of death), we don’t have a template for female old age (in North America). The decline of estrogen and other hormones eventually leads to the decline of our body, as was meant to happen “naturally.” In other words, we are pushing evolution to live longer without the quality of life, when women are not equipped to do that without medicines and life-long pharmaceuticals.
How do we explain Blue Zones where women live remarkably healthy, long lives without relying on hormone replacement therapy, such as in Okinawa, Japan?
It’s best to let my body naturally adjust and eventually I will be balanced again with plenty of rest, nourishing nutrition and nutrients, sleep, journaling, supportive relationships and nervous system support.
It’s best to try hormones and use my body as a guinea pig, allowing six months at a time to adjust, even if it takes years and years (it’s already been 3 years) and gird my loins against mood swings, heavy bleeding, cramps, pains, muscle aches, low libido, or wildly fluctuating experiences of these symptoms…so that I can eventually get to a “living my best life” level. Then keep taking that combination of medications forever.
Estrogen protects you from bone loss, declining cognitive function, cardiovascular issues (aka heart attacks), certain cancers, drying up like an old catcher’s mitt, muscle loss, digestive problems, mood swings, and also, EVERYTHING. Yet, we “naturally” lose the positive effects of this miracle x factor elixir after menopause? Why???!!! This one really gets me, so let’s add another, BUT WHY????!!!!
According to one school of thought, if you get the correct amount of fibre, protein and fat (and the right kind of fat), your hormones naturally balance themselves and you’re all good.
According to another school of thought, if you cut out meat and eat a plant-based diet you won’t have the problems that women in North America have with their hormones and accompanying symptoms of perimenopause.
Yet another school of thought says that you need to eat meat in order to accomplish the mecca of balanced hormones, eternal optimism, and glowing skin.
We are told that you don’t need pharmaceuticals. Supplements like DIM, Black Cohosh, and Chasteberry will help you out of hot flashes and the like.
My favourite has to be when I was told by a practitioner that I’d been working with for many years to naturally heal my extreme periods (I had anemia and all the things), “maybe your body wants to bleed like this.”
Body parts can be cut out of you with no consequences and will solve the problem of heavy periods, fibroids, or any hormonal issue.
Keep all body parts for as long as you can.
Fibroids cause bleeding.
Fibroids don’t cause bleeding.
We don’t know what causes excessive menstrual bleeding.
After menopause your fibroids will shrink and the bleeding will stop.
Fibroids continue bleeding after menopause.
Which one(s) do you feel in your perimenopausal bones (OMG, I forgot to talk about the bone density issues!)?
OML the things about this, I tell ya. This is just burnout never given relief to me !
The line about a practitioner telling you 'maybe your body wants to bleed like this' after years of anemia hit me harder than the whole list of twenty contradictions combined, it read less like uncertainty to me and more like a shrug being handed to you and called care. Reading all twenty side by side, none of them canceling the others out, landed for me as exactly what that kind of search for an answer feels like, even from the outside.