Menopause, and perimenopause, is a huge change in a woman’s life. Some women are lucky enough to go through it without experiencing any symptoms at all, and some women will experience many symptoms.
So what do we mean by menopause? Menopause is something that we classify a woman as being in when she has had no menstrual periods for 12 months, without any hormonal intervention (such as a mirena). We can also do a blood test 6 weeks apart to see if you’re menopausal, though this is rarely needed. Perimenopause is really just talking about the time around menopause, so really, when the symptoms begin, up until menopause. Medically, we call a period menses, and you might have heard it called menstation. They both come from the word mensis, Latin for month, and apparently mene in Greek refers to moon and perhaps month. You can see what I’m getting out. Menses comes from a month, which is usually how often a woman has her periods. SO, meno-pause is sort of saying pausing of the menses. Should be called menostop, in my opinion, and peri-menopause means around the time of the period stopping. Oh my. A bit of a divergence there but you get that!
When does it occur?
In reality, Menopause can happen at any age, however, if it happens before the age of 40, it’s called premature menopause, and if it occurs between 40-45, we call it early menopause. One of the largest factors regarding when menopause will happen is when your firs t degree relatives had it. You can be put into menopause with treatments like chemotherapy, though this does not always occur.
What Symptoms occur around menopause?
There are SO many symptoms, almost too many to list, but they can range from physical, emotional, sleep disturbance to vaginal symptoms.
To be honest, the most common ones I see are hot flushes, weight gain / issues, fatigue and vaginal dryness.
To see a full list, or more comprehensive, have a look at this Jean Hailes website.
They are a fantastic resource.
How do you rate the symptoms?
How an individual experiences menopause and the symptoms around this, vary dramatically from person to person.
One person who has hot flushes might not be fussed, whereas another person might find them completely debilitating. This variation in experiences is true of all of the symptoms experienced. Some people might only get one, and someone else might get a lot of symptoms. Some people are not even aware that what they are experiencing (eg mood changes, such a short temper) could in fact be related to menopause.
I often given patients a scoring sheet, so that we can find out where their symptoms lie, so we have something to compare them against if we try some treatment. It also allows people to see what symptoms people get. I often get a comment of ‘wow, I had not idea that was a symptom of menopause; I’ve definitely been experiencing this.’
*Menopause Symptom score sheet
Menopause Depression Score Sheet (MENO-D)
How do you treat the symptoms?
How you treat the symptoms surrounding menopause, really depends on what the symptoms are, an individuals risk factors and also their preference for treatment type.
It’s something that I highly recommend chatting with your friendly GP about.
It’s not always a hormonal treatment, there are non hormonal treatment, lifestyle changes and so much more, and there’s no rule saying once you decide the type of treatment, you can’t change. I like to think that as a team, we can come up with a plan to try. We can and a plan A, a plan B, a plan C and so on.
Useful links
Below are some useful links. The first two have a lot of different fact sheets, covering different aspects of menopause, and the third one talks a bit about hormonal treatments, which had a pretty bad wrap a few years ago, but has mostly been proven to be much safer than people were led to believe. Overall, before starting a treatment, see your GP for a more in depth chat.
*Jean Hailes – Menopause – includes a lot of fact sheets
*Australian Menopause Society Fact sheets
*What is menopause hormone treatment, and is it safe?
RISKS OF BREAST CANCER – UK BASED
The below photos is based off Oestrogel Website
Dr Rosie Gentle 
