“This is not me,” and “When do I get my self back,” are two things Dr. Jerilynn Prior heard many women say as they dealt with the effects of changing hormonal patterns.
In this video, Dr. Prior confirms that symptoms begin before periods are irregular. And she talks about the very broad range of symptoms that women can experience. (Full Transcript Below)
Transcript
Symptoms Can Begin While Periods are Regular
Women should know that their experiences change and their hormones change before their periods are obviously different.
Women Experience A Broad Range of Symptoms
It could be nausea that wasn’t explainable by any liver problem, or any tummy or intestinal problem; it could be migraines that came for weeks at a time and didn’t respond to the standard anti-migraine therapies; it could be increasing cramps to the point where women were beside themselves with pain; it could be trouble sleeping; it could be instant anger, it could be a really pervasive sense of depression even though women would say, I know I don’t have any reason to feel depressed, but I do. This is not me. And women would say to me, when do I get myself back? The combination of things together makes a very strange, I call it the chameleon of midlife. It can present in so many ways, it can present with chest pain and arrhythmias or palpitations like your heart is doing funny jumps in your chest, it can present with premenstrual PMS.
Anxiety is often related to the palpitations and also related to one which I haven’t mentioned before which is sleep. Women will say, I’ve typically been such a good sleeper, I fall asleep right away. I sleep through the night. That has been a good thing in my life. And now they wake up. Wee hours of the morning after a couple of hours of deep sleep and then all of the sudden wide awake. And usually, when they are wide awake they are feeling anxious.
How Women Often Explain the New Anxious Feelings that Arise During the Menopause Transition
The way that I would describe it is a failure to cope or I used to be able to deal with multiple things, hassles and my ability to cope is just out the window.
Dr. Prior is a medical doctor and a professor of endocrinology at the University of British Columbia. She is also the founder of CeMCOR: The Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research.
Other videos with Dr. Prior: “Then You Don’t Think You are Going Crazy“, “The Only Conclusion I Could Make was that Medicine had it Wrong” and “Perimenopause is Long, it’s Irregular, it’s Unpredictable but it Ends.”
