In this New York Times piece, “Why Is Perimenopause Still Such a Mystery?” author Jessica Grose hits on one of the biggest problems about this time in our lives, the “undiscussability” of this normal —but sometimes disruptive — life phase.
But looking at the medical and cultural understanding of perimenopause through history reveals how this rite of passage, sometimes compared to a second puberty, has been overlooked and under-discussed.
More articles like this one will help perimenopause go mainstream. It’s what needed for women to better understand what is happening to them as hormonal patterns change and for these changes to be discussable with partners, friends, and at work.
Here are our other two favorite quotes related to testing and the need for more research:
Because hormones fluctuate wildly during perimenopause, it can be difficult to test for.
This is something we convey repeatedly, the fact that testing during this phase isn’t relevant or helpful. We so badly want to know what is going on and testing seems like a way to reign in the chaos, but it just doesn’t tell you much since hormone levels change hour to hour in the perimenopausal woman.
And here is the other quote we love as it underscores something we found hard to believe when we started this project. The research hasn’t been done to verify all of the things that arise as our hormonal patterns change. More research is being done all the time to determine how symptoms are linked to changes in hormonal levels and patterns. The tricky thing is that there are symptoms caused by ovarian aging and others that arise just from aging itself.
But the full panoply of symptoms related to the perimenopause transition “is not yet known with any great degree of certainty,” said Dr. Nanette Santoro, the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
