Most women experience a variety of perimenopause symptoms such as irregular periods, hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and mood swings for several years before menopause. Fluctuating hormone levels can drive you and everyone around you crazy. Some few lucky women sail through perimenopause without any symptoms at all until one day their periods just stop. But the rest of us have to cope with pre menopause symptoms from two to ten years before we graduate into the relative calm of menopause.
When Do Perimenopause Symptoms Start?
Most women’s hormones actually start changing in their thirties. However the signs and symptoms of perimenopause usually don’t become pronounced until the forties.
Perimenopause Varies Greatly Among Women
In the early stages of perimenopause, the erratic symptoms can make it particularly difficult to understand what is happening with your body, mind, and emotions. Your periods might be irregular for a few months and then become regular again. You might have weeks of horrible night sweats and then weeks with nothing unusual.
The weight of other burdens you may have placed on your body over the years can aggravate your symptoms. Poor nutrition, chronic stress, and a lack of daily exercise play a significant role in the body’s ability to detoxify and maintain balance. Lifestyle choices such as smoking or drinking to excess are also compounding factors.
Common Signs and Symptoms of Perimenopause
- Menstrual irregularity: As ovulation becomes more erratic, the intervals between periods may be longer or shorter, your flow may be scanty to profuse, and you may skip some periods.
- Hot Flashes or Flushes/Night Sweats/Cold Flashes: Hot flashes can range from feeling a strong blush to profuse sweating with intense heat. Their intensity, duration and frequency vary. Night sweats can wake you up in the middle of the night, soaking wet. Hot flashes can be followed by chills as the body’s temperature readjusts and the sweat evaporates.
- Emotional Turmoil: Many women find themselves feeling more irritable, teary and anxious than usual. Hormonal shifts can also cause mood swings, similar to what some women experience during a menstrual cycle, only less predictable.
- Sleep Disturbances: Many women start having difficulties going to sleep, or waking in the middle of the night or early morning and not being able to go back to sleep. Night sweats can also disturb your sleep.
- Lower Libido: Some women experience a decrease in sexual desire and change in arousal during perimenopause. The decrease in estrogen levels causes the vaginal lining to become thin and dry which can cause pain and bleeding during intercourse.
- Fatigue: Dealing with perimenopause symptoms such as changing periods, hot flashes, night sweats, lack of sleep, mood swings is exhausting. In addition, some fatigue can be caused by a decrease in testosterone which is the hormone that keeps women feeling energized. Thyroid imbalances can also cause fatigue.
- Weight Gain/Food Cravings: Most women gain weight during perimenopause. You may notice that maintaining your usual weight becomes more difficult and that the inches tend to accumulate around your abdomen, rather than your hips and thighs. Food cravings may intensify, especially for chocolate and other carbohydrates.
Keeping a Perimenopausal Diary
Keeping track of your cycles and your experiences on a daily basis is an interesting and helpful thing to do. You can’t always tell if physical or emotional changes are related to menopause, the normal aging process, or something else. But by monitoring your menstrual cycle and recording your signs and symptoms for several months, you’ll gain a better understanding of the changes occurring during this time. You will also have valuable information to discuss with your doctor should you have a concern.
The good news is that perimenopause ends!
Perimenopause symptoms subside when your hormones calm down and stop fluctuating. The joys of life after menopause are many and great — you just have to learn how to manage the perimenopause symptoms!
When Do Perimenopause Symptoms Start?
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It’s shown that perimenopause there is too little natural progesterone and as a result symptoms such as anxiety, breast tenderness, headahces, sleeplessness, weight gain and much more. Weight gain seems to be a large factor; this is caused when you prevent your thyroid from functioning due to your improper levels of progesterone.
I know this mentions that perimenopause starts in your 30s but I acually am still in my 20s and have started to develope some of these symptoms, I have done a lot of resaerch because I want to be able to have kids, bioidentical hormones were my key to helping with my symptoms, this site helped me to realize what I was going through too: http://www.bodylogicmd.com/for-women/perimenopause
I want women to know that you dont just suffer from these symptoms if you are suffering from perimenopause. I am only 23 and I suffere from a hormonal imbalance i have low progesterone levels and suffered from insomonia and weight gain. I started seeing Dr.Thackrey of BodyLogicMD of Ft.Lauderdale and he prescribed me progesterone i ahve been on it for 10 months and have never felt better.To find a BodyLogicMD doctor near you check out this site below.
Amanda, Elizabeth, Lauren,
Thanks for your comments. You’re right. I think these symptoms of hormonal imbalances which are occurring in younger women are caused by the artificial chemicals and toxins in our environment … especially the pesticides and hormones in our food that often have estrogenic properties leading to estrogen excess. And a resulting lack of progesterone. As you said, high estrogen and low progesterone interfere with thyroid and other endocrine system functioning.
I’m so glad you found a doctor that is helping you.
Best,
Catherine
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