It was New Years Day 2022, I was 42 years old.

I woke up hungover, feeling a bit shit and I got a very clear message from my body that said:

 

'I don't want to do this anymore'

 

This was the start of my peri-menopause journey.

 

Over the next few years I would go on a path that would lead to me learning more about this phenomenon that every woman's body goes through, how the symptoms showed up for me, the research, the myths, the highs, the lows and the HRT. 

 

This is not the kind of thing I usually write about, I’m an Executive Somatic Coach. And yet lots of women I coach are going through this phase of life and because every woman's experience is different, I'm writing this so that you or someone else you know may read it, perhaps identify with parts of it and then do your own research, take your own path through this time.

 

That New Year's day was the last day that I drank alcohol. I firmly believe looking back that on that morning, my body knew the year that was to come in relation to symptoms on this peri-menopause journey and it was telling me in no uncertain terms that I didn't need alcohol muddying the waters. I wasn't a massive drinker since having kids, more of a binge drinker on a good night out, maybe once or twice a month. But that once or twice a month was followed by three days of feeling shit and tired and overall rubbish (so roughly 9 days a month feeling crap). So I stopped and haven't drunk since. I found it easy, which is different to a lot of the stories you hear and I will write a blog about this!

 

That same year I started a somatic (body wisdom) coaching course that saw me tuning into more of what my physiology needs and wants by slowing down, observing what I needed, cultivating safety from a physiological sense and regulating of my nervous system.  So I was in a really good place when everything started, I had loads of support, loads of tools and strategies and was working on myself in big way. I felt like I knew a lot about myself.

 

But when the symptoms started, there was a definite sense after a few months of ‘what in that I-don’t-feel-like-myself is going on here?’

 

On 'The Balance App', designed by Dr Elizabeth Newson, a leading menopause specialist, there are SIXTY FIVE symptoms of peri-menopause that you can track daily to see how they are affecting you. They are:  

Abdominal pain | Acne | Altered sense of smell | Anxiety | Bloating | Brain fog | Breast pain or tenderness | Cramps | Crying spells | Diarrhoea | Difficulty concentrating | Difficulty sleeping | Dizziness or feeling faint | Dry eyes | Dry hair | Dry skin | Facial hair | Feeling nervous | Frequent urination | Hair loss or thinning | Headaches | Hot flushes | Incontinence | Irritability | Irritable legs | Itching | Joint pain | Lack of interest in things | Low libido | Low mood or depression | Low motivation | Memory problems | Migraine | Mood swings | Mouth and gum problems | Muscle pain | Nausea or sickness | Night sweats | Panic attacks | Pressure in head | Tingling hands and feet | Tinnitus | Tired or low energy | Weight gain | Wind | Allergies | Brittle nails | Burning mouth | Cold sweats | Constipation | Difficulty breathing | Excitable |  Feeling tense | Heart Palpitations | Heartburn | Numbness in body | Numbness in hands or feet | Pain passing urine | Painful sex | Sagging breasts | Skin crawling | Vaginal bleeding | Vaginal dryness | Wrinkles

 

What an awesome list eh??

 

Some of the symptoms are not ones that you even want to admit because of how society views them as a woman. And of these 65 symptoms, I was experiencing 45 of them! Soooo many times I tested myself for covid because I thought that's why I must be so tired. The tests were always negative.

 

And yes, it's fair to say that when you read the list above, it can be like 'well that's just getting older', which it is....but I found that what I was experiencing were symptoms that hadn't EVER been a thing in my life that  were now impacting me on a daily or weekly basis and making my life a lot more challenging from within myself.

 

So here are the symptoms of peri-menopause as I experienced them. Some were everyday, sometimes a couple of times a week, sometimes more would occur all at once. A lot of the time there was no rhyme or reason.

 

• I was bone tired. A lot. I could wake up from a 10 hour sleep (not even waking in the middle of the night to go for a wee) and then in the afternoon, I'd be falling asleep at my computer and simply have to have a 30 minute nap where I was 'dead to the world'.
  

• I had a lot of anxiousness for seemingly no reason. It would start in the morning a bit but by the time I’d drop my kids off at school I’d have this feeling in my stomach on the drive home and it would last all morning, sometimes all day. No matter what strategies I had learned to try and be more mindful, present, calm, the anxiousness would come straight back once I finished the exercise. And then suddenly it would go when I hadn't been trying anything.
  

• The only other time in my life I had experienced the same type of anxiousness was after my daughter had been born and they related it to hormones - this was a key for me in identifying that it was peri-menopause. Before I realised this, I had been examining lots of areas of my life and trying to come up with 'stories that made sense' for why I was feeling anxious. The only story there needed to be was that what I was experiencing was scientific and it was my hormones causing this anxiety.

• I had diarrhoea most mornings even though I wasn't ill. (this is one of those ones I found hard to talk about because who wants an image of someone on the shitter each day - I now realise no-one actually cares 🤣)

• I started getting hair on my chin (this is also one of those ones that I found hard to talk about because of the stigma, but I'm over that now. My kids help me pluck my chinny-chin-chin sometimes cos their eyesight is better 😆)

   

• I was never sure that I was smelling stuff 'right'. If my kid would fart, I couldn't always smell it (this was a benefit but also one of the ones that made me think it was covid). If I was cooking food, I couldn't smell it so if I was cooking people might say 'it smells yum in here', but I couldn't smell it.

• I was never sure I was tasting stuff 'right'. I could add salt to a meal and not really notice the difference. People would say 'this is so delicious' and I would think they were just being nice. (this is one of the ones that made me think I had covid)

• I would get stomach cramps for no reason. I tried relating this to food I ate, but the timings never made sense and no one else would get a sore tummy.

• Terrible acne on my chin every month. Like pimples the size of Mt Fuji. Awesome.

• I never really knew what brain fog was. People talked about it and I just thought I was lucky that I didn't get it cos it wasn't a fog for me. Then I realised for me it was 1,000 bunnies jumping around in my head flitting from one thing to the next, making me forget what I was doing mid 'doing or putting the milk carton in the dishwasher or the dirty dishes in the fridge without a second thought.

• The breast pain....ooooh the breast pain. I remembered having breasts this tender not long after giving birth (which had been 10 years prior). The thought of someone touching them would make me wince. This time it was things like my daughter running in to give me a hug and her head bashing against them and I would cry out in agony. Or accidentally bumping my nipple. Or my daughter rolling over in bed and knocking my chest.....yeoooowwww!!!

• I'd get cramps in different parts of my body that I'd never been susceptible to before.

• I'd cry and cry for no reason, for like a whole day. I couldn't pinpoint any reason for being unhappy, but it was a deep sadness that would come for a day and then go the next and it wasn't linked to a particular part of my menstrual cycle.

• Because of the bunnies in the head, I found it really hard to concentrate on anything and flit from thing to thing - so much so I started looking into whether I had ADHD (still a possibility but I was directed down the route of peri-menopause after a consultation with an ADHD screener).

• I'd wake up at between 2am - 4pm many mornings. Many times it was 3.43am exactly.and for no apparent reason e.g. I didn't need to go to the loo.  Getting back to sleep was impossible until about 6am and then I'd be woken up from a really deep sleep to start the day.

• My eyes sometimes felt like they were on FIRE....so dry and no amount of weeping seemed to stop the burning feeling.

• My hair went dry as hell and started breaking off at the ends so has never really grown longer than just past shoulder length. It definitely thinned out.

• I'd feel nervous about stuff, but not sure why - it was a fine line between nervousness and anxiety. They say that nervousness is excitement without the deeper breath, but this was definitely not excitement.

• Hot flushes - I had two - more about them later, they were awesome.

• I started not being able to hold in my wee. Bearing in mind my kids were 10 and 12 at the time of all this going on, the only time I'd had trouble with leakage was when I was jumping on a trampoline, but now I was getting to the point of almost full on wetting myself if I needed to go to the loo - it was like I couldn't hold it in anymore.

• The RAGE - there were times when my husband just had to drink a glass of water and the sound of him drinking I wanted to rip his head off. Or chewing. Some days I could wake up and feel so much RAGE it was unreal - I'd never experienced this kind of thing in my life and have always been quite a calm person. I think I kept most of it controlled using lots of breathing or leaving-the-damn-room strategies, but it was sooooo hard. I remember listening to story of a woman in peri-menopause saying she was so angry she threw the vaccum cleaner through a closed window so it smashed it and landed out on the lawn and at the time my thought was 'that sounds like completely understandable behaviour' 🤣😂

• My legs and torso would itch so bad. I would end up red raw from scratching even though there were no 'bites' or anything.

• Many mornings I would wake up and get out of bed like a 100-year old woman. My joints and muscles would be so stiff, I would walk to the toilet hunched over at the waist because it was hard to straighten up.

• I had a big lack of interest in things - it had to be something really freakin enticing to keep my attention otherwise my mind would wander. This included talking to my kids about their day - so hard to concentrate.

• I put on about a stone (7kgs) in weight out of nowhere. I had been the same weight for 12 years and was still eating in exactly the same way and then all of a sudden was about a stone heavier over the course of a couple of months. It didn't matter what I did, the scales just kept going up and up and stuff that had worked in the past to 'lose a couple' did nothing to change the situation and still havent!

• Low libido - yep - had no interest.

• Out of nowhere I started having migraines - I've had headaches in the past from drinking but with these I couldn't even lift my head and just had to go and lie my head on a pillow in a darkened room and sleep it off. These would be around once every 1-2 months.

• I had problems with my gums - they'd ache or be really sensitive.

• I thought I was getting dementia - my husband would talk about things we'd discussed to do with logistics and I would have no recollection of the conversation. Sometimes I thought he was making things up. Mid sentence I would not be able to think of a word. This is the only symptom I remember my mum having (she didn't know it as peri-menopause) because my sister and I used to think she was getting Alzheimer's when we were teenagers.

• In the morning my daughter used to jump into bed and I remember her saying 'Mummy, why are you always so sticky now'. Night sweats happened really frequently, waking up dripping with sweat, even when it was a cold night. Night sweats were not enough to diagnose peri-menopause - more about that later.

• I had a few panic attacks - I've never had these in my life and haven't had them since being on HRT.

• The pressure in my head some days, it felt like my head was going to explode.

• But the best part - the wind! There were some rippers out both ends!

 

So as you can see, life was pretty fun! When it all started, I had written a blog '10 things I believe help me create more joy in my life' a few months previously and then all of a sudden, even though I was doing all those things and I had been in a super joyful place, they didn't feel like they were working as well at all. I felt like a fraud even having that blog up. I didn't feel like myself and nothing was helping change that for good.

 

So I finally decided to do something about it from a medical perspective and I'd heard about the menopause documentaries done by Davina McCall and thought 'I'll start there' and watched them - there are two. I can't remember the story exactly (go memory ha ha), but I remember being moved to tears by a woman saying something like 'she wouldn't', but she felt like it would be easier if she was just no longer here on this earth. I don't remember feeling EXACTLY like that, but I remember thinking 'holy shit, what if I got to that, I can see how I could get to that if this goes on' and I sobbed and sobbed for this woman.

 

Then there were the female scientists in the second documentary (that's more about peri-menopause) who had been studying the brains of women going through peri-menopause and menopause and found that the decrease in oestrogen directly correlated to the decrease in brain activity in peri-menopausal brains they scanned. They said that once someone has been through menopause, the decrease in brain activity could be PERMANENT. Their message was 'don't wait' to get started on HRT.

 

These two things were what made me take action. I think before then it was a classic woman thing of not putting myself first to get this sorted out, putting up with feeling a bit shit and also 'just getting on with it' and 'sucking it up'.

 

But fuk me, permanently decreased brain activity? No thanks bruv.

 

So I rang my local GP, asked who was the menopause specialist and made an appointment (I was living in the UK at the time).

 

By this stage I hadn't heard of the Balance app, but I had done a bit of research and had a page of about 20 symptoms on a piece of paper with some notes and went armed with this to the appointment. I'd heard through the documentary and from joining a facebook group that doctors at the time didn't know a huge amount about menopause and would palm you off or that it was common for you to know more than them so I was kinda prepared for this. Plus, I was still accessing a lot of good stuff with coaching, nervous system regulation, knowing myself inside out etc. But not to worry, I was going to see a menopause specialist, so surely they would just see it straight away for what it is, no?

 

At the appointment the doctor listened to my experience and looked at my page of notes and said that they would suggest testing thyroid and doing blood tests to check that there wasn't anything else going on. She asked if I was having hot flushes (at the time I wasn't) and that because I wasn't having hot flushes, I was too young to be going through peri-menopause (I was 42 and still having regular periods).

 

When I asked her how all these other symptoms could be explained she said she thought I was depressed. Having just finished my somatic coaching training, I was so bloody well resourced it was untrue. I had been having 1-2 coaching sessions a week with my peers so talking about stuff all the time. We had no financial worries. My business wasn't overly stressful, I had a nice life. Sure I had kids that pushed my buttons, but could kids really be the source of all these symptoms (hmmmm…maybe ha ha).

 

The reality was that I was feeling unhappy at times because of all the symptoms that were being caused by the hormones, which felt similar to the hormones post natal....I was not fucking depressed. I knew that, but even I felt a bit of a waiver of certainty about this.

In far less colourful language and very calmly (because I was so regulated combined with classic good girl conditioning) I relayed this to her. And what of the night sweats, how do they relate to depression? This held no sway apparently they are not the holy grail of peri-menopause - hot flushes you have during the day are. Disappointed but resolved to 'do what was needed', it was arranged that I would have the blood tests and meet with her in a month to see what the results were and decide a way forward given the evidence.

 

During that month I had a trip away to Wales with my husband and some family. I was in the hotel sitting down to breakfast and all of a sudden I noticed my calves were sweating. Like I could actually feel the beads of sweat on my calves through my leggings, it was bizarre, and when I touched my calves they were damp. This sweatiness and heat moved all the way up my body to my face, to the point that I just HAD to take my jumper off (it was November in the UK - cold!) and I asked everyone 'is it just me or is it really hot in this room', to which they confirmed it was not hot at all, cold if anything because it was only about 3 degrees outside!

 

The only way that I can describe my first hot flush....was that the sweatiness and heat rose up my body, it felt a bit like what I imagine a re-birth might feel like. Like an uncloaking....I got a real sense of me stepping out of one phase of my life and into the next phase - and I felt like I was a fucking powerful, wise, regal goddess ready to take on the world. It was UNREAL and I LOVED IT. I know not everyone experiences it this way and I looked into it a bit.....however in some cultures, they see the menopause as a huge time of celebration as you move into the wise woman era of your life - you become a wise elder and I LOVE this idea. This is exactly how it felt for me.

 

(and there was also a part of me that was like 'take that doctor', because I knew armed with the holy grail of the hot flush, she would start listening to me about peri-menopause)

 

I walked into that next appointment having had two hot flushes. My blood results were all normal (I don't actually know what she was testing for, but I have since learned that testing for hormones are pointless as they fluctuate so much in the day - which is why some of my symptoms would just disappear!). My thyroid was operating as expected. And I'm not gonna lie, I sat up a little straighter and didn't quite give her the eyebrows when I said 'I've had two hot flushes baby!'. (ok I didn't say baby, but in my head I did)

 

Well that was it, she put me straight on the HRT, not another question asked. Who knew hot flushes are the be all and end all of the peri-menopause. It didn't matter that by that stage I'd found out through research that I had another 25 symptoms to add to my original count of 20 symptoms. The two hot flushes trumped them all.

 

In January 2023 almost a year to when my body told me to quit alcohol, I went onto a Everol 50 patch - a patch that releases oestrogen and progesterone over the course of the day - I would change mine Tuesday (after hockey training) and Saturday (after a hockey match) otherwise they would fall off from sweating so much. Much like a smoker you stick the patch to your butt or hip (not scientific, but I found it better when mine was on my hip so have a play around with this).

 

After about three weeks, I started to feel better. My symptoms lessened. And then some of them went. I didn't experience anymore hot flushes. Diaorrhea mostly gone, no night sweats, anxiety almost non-existent. Started to feel more myself. Still tired, but not so fatigued I'd need so many naps in the day.

 

This lasted for six months before some of the symptoms started to increase again. I went to a different doctor who specialised in menopause and straight away when I told her my symptoms she said 'we'll up your dose of oestrogen and you'll feel better within a week'. And she was right.

I moved on 75mg of oestrogen (patch) combined with progesterone tablets that are used to stop the lining of the womb getting too thick. Every 28 days or so, I have what they call a withdrawal bleed that is aligned with the HRT but isn't necessarily aligned with the 'cycle' of how I feel or experience energy and creativity. I found with this higher dose that one day of my withdrawal bleed I had pretty bad stomach pain, that's something I'm experiencing less now that I've been on it a while, but I did get fibroids and adenomoyosis checked out and I was all clear, so still not entirely sure what that is.

 

I'm learning more about my cycle - there's lots of people out there who can teach you about the different seasons of your cycle (winter, spring, summer, autumn) and how that can map with your energy levels, how creative you are, how you might feel more self doubt at a certain time of month or feel like you just want to be on your own and slow vs times where you feel really social and crave connection. And also how this can also align with the moon phases. It's fascinating and something that I wish was taught to girls in schools, maybe it will in time.

The period between noticing symptoms, doctors appointments, getting a diagnosis, trialling estrogen to me feeling better was probably about six months. During that time, something that helped me massively was playing hockey. Every Tuesday I did NOT want to go to training and every Tuesday I went so that I didn’t let my team down and I felt better. Every Saturday felt hard to get up the energy to play in a match, but going because of my team helped me feel better and I feel a lot of emotion when I think about how that helped me through that period of my life, those young players, those players my age would not even know the impact they had on my wellbeing because I’m not sure I even knew then. Even the days when I was so dog tired I could barely run around on the pitch, it helped. Having other women who were going through the same thing and talking about it with them helped. Getting up and going for a walk helped. It would have been so easy to stay in bed all of those times and there were definitely days where doing that helped too. Tune into your body.

 

Because I talk about this with most people my age that I meet (from all genders), I’ve heard and learned a few things that stuck out to me too:

 

• A senior leader taking a new recruit around the office to introduce people and not being able to remember any of their names despite working with some of them for 20+ years.

• A woman reporting to her CEO and the board and in that meeting going completely blank about what she was talking about and having to let her team take over because she couldn't remember.

• A woman who got her HRT sorted that for six months she was as randy as hell and jumping her husband any chance she could get - it's not all low libido!

• That 7/10 divorces occur because of peri-menopause and the menopause (see experience of RAGE above to give an insight into why that might be 🤣)

• Testosterone can help with energy.

• This shit can last for 7-14 years.

 

RESOURCES

If you only do one thing today, download this research into women’s brains so that more research can be commissioned….

20th June 2024 a ground-breaking new study was published by neuroscientist Dr Lisa Mosconi @dr_mosconi and others in Nature, one of the top scientific journals in the world.

For the first time ever, they have been able to put tracers in the brain that tracks estrogen activity in women’s brains. The brain as well as ovaries can produce estrogen. The results show how estrogen receptor density changes in women’s brains during the menopause journey.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-62820-7

Clicking and downloading this paper shows the major science/medicine journals that studies relating to menopause are important and more should be published.

Here’s Dr Mosconi’s take: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8cSVQzMXyw/...

Dr Mosconi talks about it more here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8cdDMLu6TF/?igsh=MXhxZHhkdm55dXB5dw==

1/5 women will leave their career due to symptoms of peri-menopause / menopause and so far most of the research has only been done on mice’s brains not actual human women’s brains 😲 Funny story (sarcasm ) this research shows mice’s brains are different to a woman’s as they found estrogen receptors in parts of women’s brains that were not present in mice.

There is evidence that the higher your total lifetime of estrogen exposure means less risk of developing Alzheimer’s so this study shows that during peri-menopause and menopause, rather than declining, the estrogen receptors are lighting up as they are hungry for estrogen! But unfortunately estrogen production declines during this phase..

So many more studies are needed…

The DOAC podcast with Dr Lisa Mosconi:

My takeaways from this were:

• Peri-menopause is a brain condition, but the professionals that prescribe and diagnose are not trained in the brain (e.g. Gynaecologist)

• Black and brown people suffer more greatly with peri-menopause and professionals don't know why because…..it's never been studied (this was like wow WTF and I hope that more is done asap). 

• Menopause that is surgically induced (e.g. Cancer patients) also affects trans people who have had a hysterectomy to transition, which can be as a teen in some cases.

• When the media originally reported that HRT was dangerous and increased risk of breast cancer, they didn't tell the whole story in that the group of people being given HRT in this study were 70-80 year olds, which yes, HRT is not beneficial then. Now the research shows the risk is minimal.

• Get rid of as much plastic in your kitchen and toxins from your home, skin, beauty.

• Eat legumes.

• What women have been saying for YEARS is now backed up by science. Trust women.

 
The Davina McCall documentaries:

• Sex, Myths and The Menopause

• Sex, Mind and The Menopause

 

The Balance App - download this to track your symptoms - you can then present this information to your doctor.

Follow Dr Lisa Mosconi, Dr Elizabeth Newson, Dr Naomi Potter on socials.

 

Find a Facebook group in your area so that you keep in the loop about what works with the doctors, products and you hear how it affects others and their solutions.

 

It's now June 2024 and I'm currently noticing after a year of being on the higher dose that a few symptoms have increased. During the writing of the blog where I went through the symptoms (which had mostly all gone away) it's made me realise it could be that my HRT needs a tweak. It's an an ever changing beast unfortunately, not just one pill and solved. I also looked into testosterone for increasing energy as I know people who swear by this, but for me, a few stories of women losing their hair on the top of their head freaked me out too much to delve too much further - that may change, who knows.

 

At the time of writing there is a national shortage of oestrogen patches in NZ (I moved here last year) and they don't expect it to be resolved in the next six months so I'll be moving to the oestrogen tablets and will have to see how they go as some people don't get on with them. It's a bit daunting that something you rely for your wellbeing can be unavailable so this has prompted me to start looking into alternative methods of reducing the symptoms (but as it stands, because of the decrease in brain activity thing you may have to prise the HRT from my dead lifeless hands before I give that up).

 

My story is not to say that you or someone you know experiencing symptoms need to go onto HRT. Maybe what you read you can relate to and it and it will help you on your own journey. I know people who have gone onto HRT, then done lots of changes to lifestyle, diet and detoxes and come off the HRT because that is what they felt was best for their body. It's a completely individual thing.

 

I talk about my experience most chances I can get because I don't want others to suffer thinking it's just them, that perhaps they're losing it, that they're no longer good enough and would encourage all women to do the same to raise awareness.

 

Letting my family in on what's going on has helped their understanding of what I sometimes go through and made them more empathetic.

 

Clients going through this phase talk to me about losing confidence and wanting to get back to 'how they used to be'. A big part of the work I do with women is helping them remember themselves so that they can live life more easefully, more confidently and calmly. We work on tapping back into the self belief, increasing self worth and regulating your nervous system so that you come out of survival mode.

 

If this is you and you'd like to learn more, drop me an email on hey@jennischanschieff.com.

 

Otherwise, best of luck on your journey - feel free to drop me a line on socials if you have any questions.