Perimenopause & Menopause
Perimenopause & Menopause
The perimenopause and menopause can be a challenging time. Symptoms can affect your mind, body and spirit and have an impact on your personal and professional lives.
If you’re struggling in any way, it can be a relief to know that making mindful and targeted changes to your nutrition and lifestyle can support your health and make this transition much smoother so that you can regain your spark!
Whether you are taking HRT, intending to take it, or not planning to take it, it’s important to work on the foundations of your health. By optimising hormone balance, correcting nutritional imbalances and generally supporting how your body works, you can feel and look better, manage your symptoms, and support healthy ageing. Then if you do choose to take HRT, you can be confident that you have done the groundwork.
How Do You Know If You’re Perimenopausal Or Menopausal?
The perimenopause is defined as the time leading up to the menopause. The menopause itself is literally the one day that is a year after your last period. Hormone shifts generally start in the late 30’s, early 40’s. After this day, you are officially postmenopausal. We do tend to use the words menopause and perimenopause interchangeably.
Some people start experiencing symptoms in their late 30’s, some in their late 40’s or 50’s, but others are fortunate to sail through this transition with few, if any symptoms.
Your experience of perimenopause, as well as the duration, will depend on a host of different factors including your genetics, diet, existing health conditions, underlying imbalances, medications, lifestyle factors such as smoking and exercise, your sleep quality and stress levels.
Common Symptoms
You may be surprised to hear that you can be perimenopausal from your late 30’s, early 40’s even if you don’t have symptoms, as the changes can start to happen without us noticing.
The most common symptoms include hot flushes, brain fog, sleep disturbances, mood swings and anxiety. But there are so many symptoms that can be associated with hormone shifts including stubborn and unexpected weight gain, especially around the middle, fatigue, headaches and migraines, acne, digestive bloating, low libido to name but a few.
We believe it’s important to consider that some of these symptoms could be related to other imbalances happening in the body, so we’ll always consider this as part of your review. It can also be a time when other health issues can occur such as insulin resistance, Type 2 Diabetes, underactive thyroid, autoimmune conditions and IBS.
How We Can Help You
At The Prior Clinic we carry out a 360-degree review of your health and wellbeing, so we are helping you as a whole, and not just your ovaries! We zoom out to consider how your health history, genetics, diet and lifestyle, and any lurking imbalances might be making your perimenopausal symptoms worse. There is never a better time to get your health in order.
We then work with you to create a personalised plan that addresses your symptoms and optimises your health. Your customised care plan will include nutrition and lifestyle changes, and nutritional supplements where appropriate. If we feel that testing could help us pinpoint underlying imbalances and root causes, we’ll recommend those too. We also have a team of Expert Partners to help in areas of mental and physical health.