Is it perimenopause or menopause? How to tell the difference...
Irregular period? Hot flashes? Short-fused? Trouble sleeping?
These are just a few of the myriad symptoms that could be a sign you are dealing with peri or menopause issues.
I hear a lot confusion around the 'pauses' so I thought I would break down just what each of these are and how to tell the difference.
just what IS the difference between perimenopause and menopause?
Menopause is actually just one single day. It is the day that marks your 12-month consecutive time without a menstrual cycle. After that ONE day, you are considered post-menopausal. Crazy, right?
Lifestyle factors may influence your age of menopause: smoking, chemotherapy, and major surgeries. Smoking creates free radicals that damage the ovaries and can cause a woman to enter early menopause. Chemotherapy, used in the treatment of certain cancers, is also toxic to the ovaries and may cause early menopause onset.
Perimenopause refers to the time during which your body makes the natural transition to menopause, marking the end of the reproductive years. It lasts, on average, for 4 years before this final period, but it varies depending on the woman. The average age for menopause in the U.S is 51 yrs old, but it typically happens between 40 and 58 years old.
The age at which your mother experienced menopause may actually be the biggest predictor for your menopausal age.
During perimenopause, the first hormone to drop is progesterone. Progesterone plays a major role in stress management and the reduction of anxiety and it promotes GABA receptor production in the brain, which is the calming neurotransmitter. The lower your progesterone levels are, the more you are prone to irritability and anxiety. These lower levels may also cause sleep disturbances.
Typically during perimenopause your progesterone is the first hormone to lower, which can lead to what is called estrogen dominance.
Here are just a handful of symptoms this might be causing you:
breast swelling and tenderness
mood swings
brain fog
irritability
trouble sleeping
water retention
PMS
weight gain
Note: If you feel you may have estrogen dominance, getting your estrogen levels checked can be incredibly helpful because it enables you to identify which of your three estrogens may be out of balance. The good news is there are lifestyle, nutrition, and targeted supplements/herbs you can use to help manage (and change) this.
Your hormone levels will continue to fluctuate during peri and menopause and when estrogen levels drop you may begin to have some of these symptoms:
irregular periods
hot flashes
night sweats
mood swings, anxiety, and irritability
disrupted sleep or insomnia
weight gain
vaginal dryness
decreased libido
thinning hair
headaches
All of this sounds pretty depressing, but there are so many things you can do to mitigate and optimize your health during this time. Here are a few things to get you going on bettering your levels so you can feel your best:
1. Manage your stress. I can't "stress" this enough. :) This is imperative because the precursor (pregnenolone) to cortisol is the same precursor for estrogen and progesterone. When chronically stressed, this will be shunted to make more cortisol, making it less available for your sex hormones. In my work with women, we uncover many things both externally and internally that may be impacting cortisol levels and then laser target it with food, lifestyle factors and supplementation to be sure get this is under control.
2. Get good gut! This really shouldn’t be #2 (haha), because the reality is it’s as important as managing your stress. If your gut microbiome isn't optimal, it can't do its job with the cross-talk needed to optimize estrogen and progesterone. And without good bowel movements you won't be able to excrete excess estrogen, which circles right back to that dominance. Without a healthy gut, you truly can’t get to the root of your hormonal issues.
3. Optimize sleep, food, and take targeted supplements and herbs that help stress management, progesterone/estrogen levels, and that improve vitality, libido, and energy. Some of my favorites are black cohosh, maca, ashwaganda, and rhodiola (just to name a few!).
Side note: you can have the cleanest, healthiest diet and your body still may not be able to utilize it if things mentioned above aren’t optimized.
All three of these are important, and all three can be bio-individualized to your exact fit. When I first started down my own health journey many years ago, I started with these but really kind of just threw darts at the wall, hoping something would work. It wasn’t until I dug deeper and got some testing done that I discovered exactly where my body needed more support. That’s when I turned the corner.
Grab my free primer, Make Sense of Peri & Menoapause, on this to get more information on different nutrition, lifestyle and supplement hacks you can do to move the needle on your symptoms and make the journey in this transtion smoother!