Menopause begins after you haven’t had a period for at least 12 consecutive months. While you may think that menopause symptoms don’t begin until then, they can start years — or even a decade — earlier.
Most women hit menopause at about age 51. However, those years before menopause — known as perimenopause — are when your hormone levels start to drop, and your list of troubling or annoying symptoms starts to accumulate.
October is World Menopause Awareness Month. At Florida Woman Care of Jacksonville, our OB/GYNs, Daniel McDyer, MD, FACOG, and Julian Stephen Suhrer, MD, help you adjust to perimenopause and menopause to reduce your chances of symptoms.
Have you noticed changes you haven’t been able to explain? Menopause may be the answer.
Your waistline has slowly expanded in the last several years. You amp up your gym routine, and the bulge doesn’t budge still. You may even try a diet out of desperation but feel frustrated with your results.
When estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone shift into the lower gears during perimenopause and menopause, they affect how easily you can attain and retain muscle mass. Hormonal imbalances also make it too easy to gain fat tissue — especially around your middle.
Unfortunately, fat gain triggers a vicious cycle. The more fat you have in your body, the slower your metabolism is. It’s also harder to work out and build muscle mass. Without sufficient muscle mass, your metabolic rate decreases, leading to even more fat gain.
Every time you brush or comb your hair, you get strands that leave your hairline thin. Strands clog up the drain when you wash your hair in a shower.
You don’t have to change your hair brush or lighten up on your brushstrokes. Hair loss is a menopause-related symptom caused by a lack of estrogen.
Without estrogen, your hair follicles don’t repair themselves efficiently. Eventually, more and more of them become incapable of growing or holding hair. Compare photos of your hair now to your hair ten years ago. If your locks look considerably less lush, you may be able to blame perimenopause or menopause.
While it may be empirically apparent that everyone you encounter is dealing with serious deficiencies that make your life extra hard, chances are you have less patience than you once did. Hormones often drive mood and behavior changes.
Hormones are chemicals that direct virtually every process in your body, including your heart rate (speeds up when you deal with customer service calls), respiratory rate (including when you’re so angry you forget to breathe), and your oh-so-rocky emotions.
Loss of estrogen affects your skin, including the skin on your vulva and in your vagina. Your vaginal walls grow thinner and are less able to secrete the lubricant that makes sex juicy, exciting, and pleasurable.
Sex may become excruciating. Your orgasms get less intense or even fade away altogether.
To top it off, you may not ever be in the mood for sex anyway. You feel as squeamish about physical intimacy as you did when you were a kid — before your hormones kicked in.
If you feel like you’re walking around in a haze and have trouble figuring out simple problems or remembering significant moments in your life, you could have menopause-related brain fog.
Estrogen helps you process information quickly. Once your estrogen levels drop, you may experience difficulties:
Low estrogen raises your risk for cognitive decline, including associated diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
If a burst of laughter leaves you leaking, or if a cough wets your panties, you may have a type of incontinence known as stress incontinence. As your body’s tissues weaken and thin due to the loss of hormones, your muscles — including those in your bladder and urethra — falter.
Your pelvic organs may also sink as your pelvic sling (i.e., the muscular band that supports them) loses its tightness. That puts extra pressure on your weak bladder, which leads to increased urgency, pee breaks, and leakage.
You can begin to shorten your list of annoying and troubling symptoms once you make changes that restore your hormonal balance. In addition to getting the correct types and amounts of exercise and eating a whole food diet, you may also benefit from replacing your hormones with HRT.
Are your symptoms related to menopause? Acknowledge Menopause Awareness Month with an HRT consultation and contact our helpful team in the Jacksonville, Florida, office nearest you by phone or online.
