Perimenopause Power: Navigating your hormones on the journey to menopause

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Perimenopause may last months or years; it may be more or less drastic; but one day it will be over. On the other side, we’ll be different – perhaps more focused on what’s most important to us and almost certainly calmer. Psychotherapist Amy Jordan Jones told me: “This is the time of life when we learn we don’t have to be pleasing; the work now is just to become more ourselves.” I liked her descriptions of the physiology and changes with perimenopause. There is also plenty of good advice for living a healthier lifestyle generally. However, there is inherent bias. The author is an alternative therapist and places a lot of claim on a variety of homeopathic measures and ‘functional medical practitioners’ and ‘nutritional therapists’ (which is not a protected title by the way, meaning anyone can call themselves this). There is pseudoscience aplenty and unnecessary doctor-bashing. I feel the author could have delivered the useful information and have it better received if she cut the crap and subsequently length of the book.

Perimenopause Power: Navigating your hormones on the journey

I’ve had my own battles with my cycle - from debilitating period pain that meant I couldn’t walk let alone work, to extreme mood swings and intrusive thoughts - and I spent years trying out every treatment strategy possible in a bid to sort my cycle out. Menopause can happen naturally, or for reasons such as surgery to remove the ovaries (oophorectomy) or the uterus (hysterectomy), cancer treatments like chemotherapy, or a genetic reason. Sometimes the reason is unknown. I saw her recently,” Dr Pinkerton continued, “and she said her marriage could not be better. She recognised that the perimenopausal hormonal fluctuations were making the problems seem incapable of being solved. I guess what I would just say is if you’re in perimenopause, recognise that hormonal fluctuations may make the problems at work or at home seem larger.” Aside from the embarrassment, we are getting less help than we should from our doctors. A 2013 Johns Hopkins survey found that only one in five American obstetrics and gynaecology residents had received formal training in menopause medicine. That’s 20% of gynaecologists. Forget about general practitioners.

Changing hormones

Many women find they wake up several times each night drenched with sweat and need to change their bed clothes and bed linen. This is known as night sweats. Mood changes Women need to recognise that it’s a time of vulnerability, and there are some things that they can do to help.”

Perimenopause is a window of opportunity for Maisie Hill: ‘Perimenopause is a window of opportunity for

As for the last question: according to a 2017 survey by Dr Louise Newson – the Menopause Doctor – only 52 per cent of GPs had any training in menopause management, a fact that saddens Hill: ‘Some people have a very positive experience of perimenopause and menopause, but some lose their self-confidence and identity. There can be really rapid changes – and if you have no idea why, that’s going to cause damage. The early 50s is when women are at greatest risk of suicide. Is it coincidental that that’s when oestrogen drops off a cliff, and you get cognitive and mood changes? Treating hot flushes can help alleviate some of the sleep disturbances. Having a slightly cooler room to sleep in often helps. Turn the radiator setting lower, or let in some cooler air through the window before bedtime. Otherwise following good sleep hygiene advice is sensible. Use a lubricant And I just found that so ironic because over the years I’ve had a lot of clients with low progesterone, struggled to get it prescribed when they were trying to conceive in their 30s. And that’s a rant for another day. I feel like I’m storing up a lot of rants at the moment. I feel like maybe there’s an episode of Maisie’s rants coming up where we’ll just get them all out at once.Another reason for having it in book format is that the beginning is full of science. I'm creative, not scientific and I found that hard to follow and it nearly put me off reading the rest. However, if you love science and have a better grip on it than me, it's full of information and knowledge.

perimenopause: ‘I was overwhelmed and full of rage Surviving perimenopause: ‘I was overwhelmed and full of rage

When you have a normal period, the levels of oestrogen and progesterone hormones rise and fall in a regular pattern throughout the menstrual cycle. But during perimenopause, hormone levels are all over the place. The hormones don’t just stop, so neither do your periods. As a result, there may be irregular bleeding or spotting. Perimenopause Power" is a women's health book focused on the changes that come with perimenopause. The author started by repeating some of the basics about the menstrual cycle found in her book "Period Power." It has some useful information about the changes that happen hormonally and how that causes changes in our bodies and emotions. She talked a lot about each and every thing that can go wrong (mild to serious) and things that you can do about them. This included advice on exercise, nutrition, herbs, and supplements as well as medication. While I agree with a lot of what she recommended, some of the nutritional advice seemed skewed in favor of eating massive amounts of eggs...like 3 eggs per meal. And she seemed to believe the only vegetable source of protein is tofu. Hardly. She tried to be gender-neutral (referring to "people with a womb" rather than "women," for example). While she provided useful information, I felt like this book would be most useful for women who are having problems since she spent a frighteningly long time on that. When I open the book How to Face the Change of Life with Confidence, published in 1955, I see a question from a woman, 37, who has wild mood swings before she gets her period. The expert male gynaecologist author tells her: “Man reaches physical maturity at 25, and emotional maturity at 35. Unfortunately, you seem to have missed the boat somewhere along the line, and you are still in your childish stage of emotional reactions.” Low levels of oestrogen can lead to many joints feeling stiff and aching. Vaginal dryness and changes in sexual function

It’s often misunderstood – even by healthcare professionals

In her 2019 memoir, Deep Creek, Pam Houston gives a younger woman this advice: “I’m just saying, I guess, there’s another version, after this version, to look forward to. Because of wisdom or hormones or just enough years going by. If you live long enough you quit chasing the things that hurt you; you eventually learn to hear the sound of your own voice.” So – to those questions. Menopause does not refer to the years when your cycle goes haywire or the years after your period stops. It is a single day: the one-year anniversary of your last ever period, and happens on average at the age of 50 or 51. Postmenopause is the third of your life that follows and perimenopause is the decade or so leading up to it. But oestrogen doesn’t simply gradually fade away, taking with it your periods. In fact, they may initially get more frequent, owing in part to a reduction in the progesterone that regulates the second half of your cycle. Hill describes this stage as ‘very early menopause’ (not to be confused with ‘early’ or ‘premature’ menopause, when periods stop before the age of 40). This then segues into ‘early perimenopause’. It’s in ‘late perimenopause’ that your cycle may lengthen, as oestrogen falls. Perimenopause means 'around the time of menopause' and refers to the time during which the body makes the natural transition to menopause. In this book, the author goes through the different symptoms offering insights into different ways of dealing with them - from food, to vitamins, exercise etc - and I really appreciated the straightforwardness of the way it was written. It didn't go over your head or get too technical, it just gave it to you bluntly and was full of some really wonderful practical and useful advice,alongside diagrams and graphics to help illustrate the points. It's also full of positivity and different coping mechanisms to ease you along!

Perimenopause Power by Maisie Hill | Waterstones

I have yet to read to the end, but I am in no doubt that this book will have such a positive effect on my life. Maisie in my eyes is a bloody brilliant woman, who has enabled those of us who menstruate to gain knowledge about ourselves that quite frankly has been in the shadows! Inequality is coupled with medical sexism, which fails to take account of the latest science, and leaves women to keep calm and carry on. While researching my book, I discovered the grim toll of oestrogen deficiency in the second half of every woman’s life, and the latest research on HRT’s extraordinary long-term health benefits for osteoporosis, diabetes and dementia, which women are twice as likely to get as men.

And you might be surprised to hear that I plan on taking it when it becomes appropriate for me to. My mum had osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease runs in both family lines. And hormones have a huge influence on conditions like these. So I’m up for taking it in addition to other nutrition and lifestyle measures. I also find that the research that’s been done around brain function and conditions like Alzheimer’s to be very convincing. So I’m up for taking it. I'm a big fan of Maisies' work. This book is insightful & helpful with a humourous twist that is her personality shining through. It's not a book to read cover to cover, as I did, but in doing so I found myself increasingly bothered by inconsistencies in the writing style and the incursion of personal biases on the author's part. Much of the content is presented factually and clearly in a popular science style, but these sections are interspersed with profanities (f**king is liberally used, quite unnecessarily - there are far more effective ways of creating emphasis), infantilised language (e.g. wee and poo instead of urine/urinate and faeces/defecate - seriously, what are we, 5 years old?) and little feminist diatribes against the patriarchy. While the last may be justified as a sentiment, it's not what I wanted from the book, which is subtitled 'Navigating your hormones on the journey to menopause'. I found it detracted from the strength of the book for me. The author is vastly in favour of going with a natural cycle and I found it odd that someone so pro MHT/HRT is so anti hormonal contraception - I didn't really see a good reason for this, other than an unreferenced statement that 'having a menstrual cycle is good for the heart, bone and breast health, and has many other benefits too'. So this woman read the guidelines and when her GP suggested more blood tests she was able to say, “Look, I think I meet the criteria, this is what the NICE guidelines say.” And because of that she was just referred to a menopause clinic. And I will link to the NICE guidelines in the show notes so that you can read them too and perhaps take them into your appointments if you’re having any discussions with GPs or other healthcare professionals.