World Menopause Day – Join our Menopause café

I believe passionately that menopause should no longer be a taboo subject, and I think that in recent months there has been some great publicity and encouragement from public figures on sharing their stories and speaking out, encouraging women to ask for help.

As an Acupuncturist, and Mindfulness Coach, I feel it’s my duty to share my story with anyone who asks, and when I was asked to talk about my journey for Mid Counties, I accepted happily. Some women sail through it, and that’s amazing!  Some of us have a horrible time, and I can honestly say, having enjoyed good mental and physical health my whole life, it’s been a hell of a journey.

This isn’t just for ‘women of a certain age’, it affects EVERYONE.  Please don’t stop reading because you think it doesn’t affect you.  Family members, friends, partners – regardless of gender, some knowledge and understanding is incredibly powerful.  I never thought I’d be one of those middle-aged woman, sat with a fan that I used to watch with a certain amount of disbelief as an uneducated twenty-something.

So, here’s what happened to me.  I was 42 years old and exhausted.  It went on for weeks.  Eventually I went to the GP and he sent me for some blood tests,  he didn’t say what he was looking for.  A week later, the doctors receptionist rang me and said ‘yeh, just to say we have your blood test results back and you are perimenopausal’  Like wow.  Sorry?  I’m 42… It hit me really hard, I just wasn’t expecting it.  I tried conventional HRT and it was MAGICAL.  Energy levels returned to normal.

There’s so much I could bore you with!  I got bullied out of a corporate finance role.  Bullied.  As an adult.  Looking back, I can see it was because my mental health was through the floor, and I just didn’t cope with the situation at all well.  I had no resilience.  I had been blessed all my life with strong mental health, and even now I would say that these are the worst of my symptoms.  Anxiety, overthinking, irrational thoughts that I’d never had before.  I hadn’t realised that the tiredness and emotional symptoms had appeared at the same time, alongside the odd hot flush and awful joint pain. 

The NHS has a long way to go in supporting women through menopause, and although my GP was initially great, he eventually said ‘I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge, I don’t know what to do now’.  Eventually, I found my way to Newson Health in Stratford, and I now use body identical hormones.  I found a regime that works for me, and I can honestly say they gave me my life back. What I also got from them was utter validation that everything I was experiencing, from anxiety to awful joint pain was normal.  I was also referred to a charity who support women going through early menopause.

In my acupuncture clinic I support women’s’ hormonal issues every day.  Some take HRT some don’t. It’s a very personal choice, but for me taking the body identical hormones (no chemicals) was totally transformative.

I’m 50 now, and it’s not over yet.  You must go 12 months without a period before you’re considered menopausal.  Until then, it’s perimenopause.  I still struggle with irrational thoughts, and dramatic mood swings.  There have been times when I’ve been utterly vile. Said some awful, horrible things, or something completely irrational.  At that time, it doesn’t feel irrational.  That’s what the hormonal imbalance does to our brains.  At that moment in time, it feels perfectly valid and ok to say.  It’s only afterwards that you realise how awful, or outlandish it was. Cue some heartfelt apologies..

This for me, is the number one reason why we need to educate everyone on what happens during perimenopause.  The hot flushes I can cope with, the sleepless nights aren’t great, but the mood swings are hateful, and shameful, and fill you with remorse. Luckily I have an understanding partner, who takes cover and waits for me to realise I’m being irrational.  Not that many decades ago, women were institutionalised for being insane, when realistically it was a simple hormone imbalance.

My message is a simple one, don’t suffer in silence.  Get help, take HRT if it’s helpful to you, talk to people, share your experience, and remember it’s temporary…