You Are Not Crazy….Just Perimenopausal
If lifestyle changes and herbal remedies do not alleviate symptoms, then many women benefit from hormone replacement therapy. The idea is to replace the hormones that your body is no longer making. The difficulty with perimenopause is that your body is still making the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, just at sporadic times and at sporadic levels. You cannot take a test by blood or saliva to match up what your body is supposed to make because this will vary from day to day until you go through menopause completely.
Many women in this time find birth control pills are of great benefit as they even out the hormones. They are strong enough to control the bleeding problems while taking care of the hot flashes as well as preventing pregnancy. Women still can get pregnant at this time. Many women who thought they were in menopause when their period stopped had quite the surprise when told they were pregnant.
What about bioidentical hormones?
Bioidentical is a term that means matching what your body makes. You can get bioidentical hormones from a drug company as well as from compounding pharmacies. I prefer to use the drug company form, as they must be made in FDA regulated laboratory and have rigorous testing.
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What a great article! I've been in the throes of perimenopause for probably 5 or 6 years now -- it just took me a while to figure it out. About two years ago I started on Yaz and am so grateful that I did. It has made a huge positive impact on my life in many ways. I would encourage any women in their 30's or 40's who are suffering from PMS, heavy bleeding, hot flashes, etc., to talk to their doctor about supplements that are mentioned in the above article. There are a lot of options to make perimenopause much easier.
I'd like to know how POST-menopause can be made easier, lol! This is pure angst for me.
I feel for you..... if perimenopause is this challenging, I don't even want to think about the beyond.....
What I find funny is that my mom, who turns 80 in a couple of weeks, claims she never went through all the weird stuff I've been going through. To listen to her, it sounds like menopause hit one day, lasted a little while, then was over. She's in pretty good shape, so, who knows!
I wish I would have known about perimenopause before I entered into it! I suffered needlessly for several years.... had bouts of rage and palpitations, got sick every 2 or 3 months, slept horribly.... when just a little bit of over-the-counter progesterone cream could have helped! When I finally figured out what was going on and started using progesterone, it was like a little miracle. Later on when I reached menopause, I started supplementing estradiol and had a similar miraculous effect. I'm angry that information about perimenopause is not disseminated to young women, and I'm angry that most doctors view perimenopause and menopause as a "natural" part of life to be ignored and suffered through. Perimenopause is the beginning of ovarian failure and menopause is the actual failure. Doctors would not dismiss the failure of any other organ.
Kristin, you might want to consider getting off of YAZ and onto bioidential hormones. If you are still perimenopausal, progesterone might give you just the relief you need. Pro-Gest is a good brand, it's very inexpensive, only cost me about $8/month. Do your research and consider supplementing estradiol when you are near or at the point of menopause. Estradiol is not only excellent at mitigating the vasomotor symptoms (e.g., hot flashes), it also can provide a great mood boost.
alysiak, I think that women who are well past menopause don't recall correctly their symptoms. I remember my mother having bad sweating hot flashes and horrible insomnia in her early 40's, but if you ask her about it today at age 79 she'll tell you she hardly had any symptoms at all. Not sure if these women are choosing to have selective memories or their memory is just unintentionally faulty. I doubt I will ever forget the 13 days of multi-times-per-hour sweating hot flashes that I went through before I begged my doctor for a prescription for EstroGel!