September 2024
All BlogsI know I know - so many of us are sick to death of hearing all about the menopause.
Our mothers don’t understand why we can't just get on with it and our husbands feel like this might be yet another thing they need to navigate. Our kids don’t understand why we’ve become the resident teenagers in the house with our rollercoaster hormones and emotional outbursts, not to mention a myriad of other life changes. Oh what a cliche.
The truth is the Peri/Menopause is a fundamentally important moment in a woman's life. It will affect every single woman in the world, in one way or another and very probably have some impact on their partners, spouses and families around them. Many women feel unable to continue working due to physical symptoms such as hot flushes and cognitive changes - ineptly termed as ‘brain fog’.
However, until we start to feel any symptoms ourselves, we tend to think of it as ‘not our problem’ - if we think of it at all.
When I look back, I see my own journey started just after the birth of my fifth child. At the age of 34 I had been fortunate enough to never have suffered with my periods. I had had pretty straight forward pregnancies and births. Despite a young and busy family, a husband with a demanding job and all the other demands on an Orthodox Jewish family like Shabbat and Chagim, I kept fit, ate well and seemed to be managing as well as any young mum with 5 kids ranging from 8 years old down! However, after I had my sixth child in 2011, my symptoms progressed & became more intense.
The first change was a highly disregulated menstrual period. Always a good sleeper - I started to wake up drenched in sweat- no matter whether the temperature in the room was warm or cold. Over the years there were many more signs, some I didn’t realise until later were connected with the Menopause, but they crept up slowly and so it took me a long time to join the dots. I was young after all - Menopause? That was for women in their 50’s!
In 2017, my husband’s work required him to relocate to Gibraltar. It was then, with the physical and emotional upheaval that I realised something else must be going on. Always, slim - my body didn’t feel my own any more - ‘under my control’ as it were. I felt extremely tired and fatigued despite falling into bed at 9pm, and I experienced some hot flashes - which came on so suddenly in public and I thought I was going to faint! I was a Personal Trainer, looking after a large family which kept me busy but not the same as when they were all young - what was going on?
As I researched the symptoms it became clear I was probably going through the perimenopause. I have a very warm and close Jewish community, but in my mid 40’s, I was the oldest of my friends in Gibraltar and literally no one had suggested or seemed to know anything about it around me. Finally at the age of 45, I went to see a Women's Health Doctor. Even though the menopause is symptomatically diagnosed, she suggested we get some bloods done to rule out any other issues. They came back with such high FSH levels (Follicle Stimulating Hormone) that it was impossible to deny I was already Menopausal.
Was I in shock? Yes. But instead of being devastated or feeling old, I felt free and relieved. Now I knew what was ‘wrong’ with me and how I could do something to help myself. I felt that there was not much more I could do in terms of lifestyle, diet and exercise so I made the personal AND personalised choice to replace my flat lining estrogen and progesterone levels with Hormone Replacement Therapy. You can absolutely be healthy and age well without HRT but for many it is just much harder. Not everyone will chose it, not everyone can take it and they will need to see their own Women's Health Specialist to make that decision. But the option and information should be out there for everyone. There is no doubt that without taking care of your diet, exercise, stress reduction, sleep and social connection, replacing hormones will be minimally effective.
For me, taking HRT was a game changer. Within a week the physical symptoms improved dramatically. There is much to be said about HRT and other options, but that is for another article. Suffice to say, how sad I was that my mother in the 1980s didn’t have access to the body-identical HRT that is available to us now.
Looking around me, I saw how much this was affecting some of those nearest and dearest around me. The symptoms of menopause are so wide ranging that most of us women are going to experience them - to a more or lesser degree. Many don’t want to ‘admit’ they are in the PeriMenopause stage, as if it is something to be ashamed of or a sign of being old.
Despite popular noise about hot flushes and night sweats, the top 5 most reported symptoms are:-
As I started to talk to those around me I decided I was anyway coaching everyone, why not make it official? I qualified first with the Animas School of Transformative Coaching and then took a further qualification with Dr. Stacey Sims on Menopause.
Although there is an amazing community of women and Doctors out there all working hard to bring the information to women who need it, I felt there was a need within the Jewish community to make the knowledge available in a familiar space and to help women advocate for themselves. Here in Gibraltar, I work in the non Jewish sphere but as an Orthodox Jewish women I am often a more approachable person for some of my community - both here and abroad online.
There is nothing more rewarding than helping women feel in control of their lives again, making decisions that help them feel physically and emotionally stronger, improving their lives and relationships around them. Rather than the Menopause meaning our lives are over, a new chapter of our lives is just beginning. There is so much more to say and ground to cover but too much for a short article, so I will end with this.
With more knowledge we have better health and better lives!
