You're
having hot flashes and periods. What gives?
These
strategies can help you handle peri menopause.
Just
after her 40th birthday, you may begin to experience painful
midcycle cramping. Then the ache in your belly seemed to shatter and
spread. And over the next years you may suffer intermittent heart palpitations,
weight gain, achy joints, sleep disturbances, increased premenstrual
jitteriness, short term memory loss, free floating anxiety ( anxiety
with no known trigger ) and frequent blushing -- all for no reason
you could fathom. The expert on menopause dismissed menopause as
improbable through these symptoms.
Actually
what doctors call menopause and what women experience as menopause are
not always one and the same. Rather
it is a single event that marks the end of woman's monthly
periods and reproductive life. It was what one menopause expert refers
to as the changes before the change or technical jargon, the
"Climacteric."
During
this stage, which is thought to commence at about the age of 35 your periods
may flow like clockwork and you may be 15 years from full fledged
menopause. But your ovaries begin to run out of the million or so eggs
you were born with and the levels of estrogen and progesterone
in your body start to drop. The first noticeable indication? Often,
it's infertility. There may be other signs as well.
More
Than just Hot Flashes
Given
that the climacteric has occurred since the dawn of time, it is surprising
how little is actually known about it. Indeed, we know more about
the natural history of AIDS than we do about a women transition to
menopause.
Consequently,
doctors may not associate achy joints, heart palpitations, free floating
anxiety and other ailments with menopause primarily because this clutch
of symptoms doesn't support the accepted medical model: that
menopause equals estrogen deprivation. "In fact, it is found that many doctors
are locked into the mindset that if a condition is not
alleviated by estrogen, it cannot have anything to do with
menopause," says a prominent expert on menopause.
Dr.
Prior ( Associate Professor of medicine , University of British Columbia
) concurs. When she lectures to doctors, she routinely asks them
how they would treat a woman in her mid forties who suffers from
frequent migraines, weight gain, breast swelling and night sweats, some
of these symptoms are the hallmark of high estrogen and some are associated
with low estrogen, all are reported by women approaching
menopause.
"The
responses I receive are pretty incredible", says Dr, Prior, whose
hypothetical patient suffers from some of the symptoms she herself
is now experiencing as part of the climacteric. Most physicians
say they would refer the patient to a counselor for emotional
support, offer her a sedative or check her thyroid. In other words, most
would assume that her problems are all imagined".
They
are
not. Symptoms commonly associated with the climacteric, such as
joint pain, sleep disturbances, memory loss, discomfort during
sex, stress incontinence and free floating anxiety,
have their basis in biology, not psychology and all of them
can be alleviated, often with simple measures.
See
next issue -- Simple
measures to alleviate the symptoms of peri menopause
