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[Helen57]

Morning    Can any of you ladies please tell me if its normal for perimenopause symptoms to get worse around the time of our own cycle? I have never suffered with pmt before, but now my symptoms of peri are getting a lot worse from about 2 days before my period starts and lasting for over a week. Then i start to feel a little better but still not right, for the rest of the month. The bleeding is only light and lasting a day now, that's been the last few months, so they are very different to how they used to be. Is this normal for perimenopause to cause this arou d my cycle. My main symptoms that get worse are, anxiety, ocd , hot flushes, aches and pains, stomach issues etc. Thanks everyone. X

[Bindi]

Hi hun sry carnt explain it but yes..our cycles are exactly that its what our bodies are saying .and its a pain sometimes..but it eventually gets better

[bombsh3ll]

Yes it is normal as that's when estradiol levels are at their lowest.

I had my first and only perimenopause symptom, severe vertigo, with the onset of my period having lost access to my combined pill during the pandemic.

Once I got back on my pill it was gone!

There are multiple treatment options so you don't just have to put up with premenstrual/perimenopause symptoms.

[JS79]

I am having the same issue, this is why GP finally acknowledged perimenopause as my symptoms worse the week before. Ife recently started HRT and been feeling great but last couple of days my symptoms hit hard again but I am due period tomorrow.

[rferdi]

For me now I think they get way worse about a week before ovulation, but there was a time early on when I remember they seemed to ramp up wildly right before my period and then get much better once it started.

[Helen57]

Thanks for the replies ladies  . It's been a tough day today, anxiety and period pain, feeling low. It's a bit of a shock after never really suffering from pms before.
 I had an awful night with hot flushes and anxiety waking me up  .
 Just a question...does this mean when my eostrogen drops off for the last time, after my last period, that I'll be stuck with feeling like this? Because obviously eostrogen won't peak again. Sorry if I sound stupid, it's just this was never talked about in my family. Thanks x

[rferdi]

Hi Helen57, I'd never heard any woman in my family talk about this either, and there's plenty of women as my mom has 7 sisters, so I have seven aunts and I never heard any of them talk about this. Now recall most of them began to have lots of aches and pains and other health problems after about 45 or 50 but I never made a connection till now. It's incredible how this is a taboo subject in so many families. So of course I was completely ignorant and uneducated on the subject.

As for you question I wonder if you're on some form of HRT. As far as I know some women's bodies kind of adapt to the chronic lack of estrogen (and progesterone) and they sort of live more or less normal lives although from all the info I've been getting this can end up causing some important health issues in the future. Other women never really adapt and continue to have problems, some go the HRT route and others opt for other types of medications or natural therapies etc.  But I hope someone much more knowledgeable and experienced can reply.

[CrispyChick]

Hey

I've been struggling for years with my hormones, but things have definitely moved in for me this last year. I'm now 48.

I experience awful symptoms of dizziness and, sometimes, vertigo before and during my period (light).

But I believe the main issue is the fluctuations rather than low E for me. So yes, it drops for my period, as it needs to, but then ramps back up again - so I think it's the fluctuations causing the issues.

It's possible once it all goes south there will be more stability.

[AngelaH]

. As far as I know some women's bodies kind of adapt to the chronic lack of estrogen (and progesterone) and they sort of live more or less normal lives.

It is not about how low or high hormonal levels are, it is about right balance between the hormones. My hormonal balance never was right (apart from a couple of years in peri, when it was treated), so I started having meno symptoms from my 30s, much much earlier than actual menopause started at 50+. Most women go through menopause with no symptoms or very mild symptoms because their bodies manage to keep right balance even when hormones are falling down.

[rferdi]

Hey AngelaH that's so interesting because I've been having a horrible few years of perimenopause, but I've had hormonal imbalances my whole life (PCOS since I was 16). Maybe that has a lot to do with having such exaggerated symptoms in my case, at least compared to others.

I've been looking for a gynecologist who specialises in PCOs who also knows what happens to us women with that condition when we transition to menopause, and so far I've not found anyone, other than Dr.Felice Gersh who's American, but I can't access her consultations form outside the US unfortunately.

[AngelaH]

Hi rferdi,

To be honest I don’t think it is possible to find someone who is specialised in “hormonal imbalances” in the UK. Unfortunately HRT is not designed to provide that right balance, but just to fill the body with hormones. I was thinking about having PCO myself, but don’t think I really had it, I had some similar symptoms, but not exactly PCO. I had a lot of stress in my 30s and I started losing progesterone that time. It is well known fact that during stress period the body converts progesterone into cortisol to deal with stress. If stress goes for a long time it might cause significant changes to hormonal balance. I also was born as a very androgenic woman, so my hormones always were in a strange proportion. Of course in ideal world all that should be taking in account when it comes to deal with menopause, but in the real world nobody cares about that, GPs don’t have time to listen to a long stories of the past, as well as the meno specialists.

[rferdi]

Hi AngelaH,

Yes I know. A shame as there's so many women my age with lifelong PCOS going through peri or menopause and not really knowing how that condition affects this stage of life as far as hormones go.
However there are a couple of doctors out there who think it is possible to address the slight excess of androgens PCOS creates in a woman using hormones (estradiol and/or progesterone), in addition to some fundamental lifestyle changes. Unfortunately they're all American therefore not available to me, at least for now.
I'm just tired of taking antiandrogen medication as the only treatment that has really worked for me for all these years and have been looking for other options, and now that the perimenopause symptoms have become a new problem this is quite complicated.

[AngelaH]

I'm just tired of taking antiandrogen medication as the only treatment that has really worked for me for all these years and have been looking for other options, and now that the perimenopause symptoms have become a new problem this is quite complicated.

All sex hormones will go down eventually, including testosterone. I am in post meno now, E and P levels are lying on the floor and only T is in normal range. I have less hair over my body than I used to have and the skin on the face is looking good. But two main sex hormones E and P are responsible for meno symptoms in my body at the moment.

[rferdi]

T is in normal range. I have less hair over my body than I used to have and the skin on the face is looking good.

Looking forward to testosterone being in normal range without medication, but since I'm still in peri who knows when that'll be the case for me. But it's good to be reminded that it'll eventually happen!