When it comes to peri-menopause, each womans experience is unique.
It is very difficult to come to a conclusion about what is normal. We are in a period of hormonal change and our hormones impact every aspect of our health and every area of our body. The body is holistic (its all joined up!) and not compartmentalized as has been decided by, male dominated, Western medicine. When we feel our hormones changing, it crashes both our energy and sleep, we find our brains futzing and our bodies changing shape, our menstrual cycle is all over the place, we are hot and we just do not feel like ourselves anymore. Hormones do not recognize the boundaries of medical specialists. Peri-menopause is a whole body experience!
It is hard to maintain equanimity. We go into this process with very little information about exactly what is happening inside our bodies, the topic has been taboo for the last few generations and there are horror stories of vaginal atrophy, 30 day long periods and osteopenia…ALL of which are true!
It is horrifying; and yet we struggle through; often feeling quite alone, as the patriarchal specter of womens hysteria and the judgements of women being unstable and overly emotional are still with us.
One way to manage this challenging transition is to fall into helplessness. You are the victim and your body is against you. It is a legitimate place to be. This was the place I found myself aged 46, exhausted and depressed. I did not know what was happening to my body - no clue! I was told I should expect to feel this way at my age and I was given no information or advice to help me feel empowered or which I could implement to make positive change.
Eat less and exercise more - the worst advice for a woman in hormonal change.
In reality we need to zoom our lens out big time and start questioning our whole situation, its history and the science of what works for woman at midlife.
Is it right that the body is compartmentalized? Hormones travel around the body and impact our psychology, our sexuality and our metabolic, bone and cardiovascular health.
Is it right that we live in a world where the majority of clinical studies have been carried out on men and it is assumed this knowledge will apply to women? Midlife womens health is only now getting the attention that it deserves when it comes to research; we are living in a void of information.
Is it normal that we are living with polluted air, polluted water, and so many chemicals in our homes and in our foods? We know that plastics disrupt our female hormones and that estrogen mimicking chemicals in our food, cleaning and personal care items can worsen our symptoms of peri-menopause.
Is it right that we are medicalizing what is a natural hormonal transition for women instead of changing the nutrition and environment for a woman?
”When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment the flower grows in and not the flower” Alexander Den Heijer
When start to question and turn normalized beliefs on their head, we realize that the 34 symptoms of peri-menopause are actually our bodies crying out to be heard.
Your body is talking to you all of the time and the language it uses is symptoms.
We are not victims of our bodies at midlife. We are in relationship with our bodies through the process of hormonal change that is midlife. Our symptoms are a call for change in the way that we care for our bodies and a call to action to get informed, become empowered around our personal health and start putting our health and wellbeing first. Are you ready to step up for yourself?