By Seema Bhandri
Following on from Felicity’s post on the perimenopause she asked me to share my own experience of the perimenopause and how it affected me, what I discovered when I researched it and what helped and worked for me, as well as resources I used or have found along the way.
My Story
I went into an early menopause in my early 40’s and only realised when I stopped a hormonal contraceptive pill. I’d had no periods on the pill, which was a normal occurrence on that type of pill, and they never returned, and it was all a bit of a shock when a blood test (FSH) showed I was post menopausal. On reflection my periods had been dwindling in my late 30’s with occasional gaps of 2months here and there. As Felicity eloquently put it you have either stress hormones or oestrogen hormones, and at that time in my life I was busy starting a new career as a GP, and working and adapting was a stressful time. In hindsight I do feel stress played a role in my perimenopause journey.
On writing this I notice a couple of things, firstly, I talk of ‘my’ periods. I see how we relate to our menstrual cycle is very personal. How bothered we are by them, how much we take notice of them, how much we like them or dislike them. The same is true in my clinical experience of the menopause. Everyone is different in how they are with the changes and that can change over time too.
Secondly the shock I felt. I hadn’t anticipated the arrival of the menopause so swiftly. Looking into it I found that 5% of women in the UK experience an early menopause (see below). An early menopause is defined as it occurring between the ages of 40 and 45. Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a menopause that occurs before 40 years old. This is much less common. The shock is and was for me like a grief. At that time and even now I don’t feel we really are that open about that aspect of it.
All that said the symptoms that really triggered me to find out what was going on was not the lack of periods (I had thought the lack was just related to the pill working it’s way out of my system) but forgetting names of people, word finding difficulties and quite overwhelming anxiety. I was also seeing an acupuncturist for sleeplessness. But I hadn’t pieced all together! This is not an unusual feature…. the symptoms being a bewildering array that often we don’t connect together! Thankfully there is much more information out there in the public domain following celebrity publicity (eg Davina McCall) and good sources of information exist now like https://www.balance-menopause.com.
After the penny dropped I found acupuncture helpful for the hot flushes that were keeping me awake! And within 3 sessions things were improving. And that was partly because acupuncture brought back my periods briefly. And worked well to control my symptoms for several months.
I remember a friend telling me about a book called Natural solutions to menopause by Marilyn Grenville because at that time there wasn’t as much information available online. I used the book to direct me to herbs especially sage tincture initially then I did seek help with a medical herbalist. I tried yoga breathes that were like a dog panting (sitali pranayama) for the hot flashes! I used magnesium for the night cramps and reduce the anxiety/help sleep. I did try over the counter herbal mixtures and they didn’t work as well as a concoction that was directed at my symptoms.
I did some training in functional medicine in 2017 and in the process of doing a gut reset diet I went sugar free and found all my peri menopausal joint pain went and my sleep improved considerably allowing for more tolerance of the remaining hot flushing/night sweats symptoms.
Over time I recognised the more active and stress free I was the symptoms were hardly noticeable. An example was a sabbatical I took where I walked 4-8hours each day. And spent a lot of time outdoors, away from work in the NHS the symptoms were unsurprisingly absent!
I met patients in the NHS managing the symptoms so differently, as I realised what was affecting me I got more interested how patients were managing the thing that I too was trying to get my head around. I met patients who knew, for example, if they did 3 classes of aerobics a week they coped well. Some changed their diet too to great benefit.
Fortunately more and more has been written/spoken about the perimenopause and menopause, and GPs are better equipped (https://thebms.org.uk/education/rcog-bms-menopause-advanced-training-skills-module/ ) to answer questions, sometimes, and maybe more workplaces/society are aware of the profound changes that can occur.
I noticed a big change when the pandemic came along, my symptoms significantly deteriorated and all the usual places I would have gone weren’t available so I briefly for a time went on to HRT from the doctor. Somehow it helped but never really felt like it was what my body wanted….I used to forget to take it and find myself not using it regularly.
As time passed the symptoms have come and gone. I’ve found the strategies that worked for me: changing my diet, managing stress, and most importantly being active, have been the most helpful and loops back to Felicity’s blogpost. I feel it was an opportunity to know my body better, and it was a real reckoning of the toll stress takes. And was part of the unfolding impetus to change careers.
One other book I read was Passage to Power by Leslie Kenton. It was about the menopause being a time for women to come into their own sense of themselves. And around the same time I listened to a radio 4 programme about the whale menopause (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mxv62) which was curious and consolidating somehow.
As much as learning strategies to cope, the menopause changed my perspective of what it was to live with a sense of wellness and integrity of purpose.
Reference
Other Resources
https://www.daisynetwork.org for women affected by Premature ovarian Insufficiency
https://www.menopausematters.co.uk
https://www.womens-health-concern.org/help-and-advice/menopause-wellness-hub/
Registered Osteopath 