Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to the women's mental health podcast.
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I'm Randi and I'm Jess, and we're two licensed psychotherapists.
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This is a safe place where we talk about mental health, wellbeing, and strategies for coping with life's challenges and how all of this is normal and you are not alone.
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Today, we're delving into an important topic, understanding perimenopause.
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Yes.
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You can find us and more resources on our website, womensmentalhealthpodcast.
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com.
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Okay, so have you ever had these thoughts?
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What exactly is perimenopause and when does it typically start?
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What are common signs that I might be entering into perimenopause?
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Can perimenopause affect my mental health?
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Yes.
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Hell yes.
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Absolutely yes.
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Yes, yes, yes.
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How long does perimenopause last?
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Are there treatments that can help ease the perimenopausal symptoms?
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How does perimenopause impact sexuality and intimacy?
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Is it normal for me to feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster during perimenopause?
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I'm laughing.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Totally.
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Does perimenopause mean I'm at a higher risk for certain health issues?
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Can I still get pregnant during perimenopause?
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God, that would be awful.
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I'm so sorry.
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Starting all over during perimenopause at this stage.
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Okay.
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What lifestyle changes can support me through perimenopause?
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why is it called perimenopause?
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You might wonder.
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Well, perimenopause refers to the transitional phase leading up to menopause.
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This is The time period during which women experience hormonal fluctuations and many physical changes.
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The thing about perimenopause, I'm gonna sidetrack for a second, menopause is when life gets easier.
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Yes,
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after all of this.
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After all of this.
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You think that it's pre menopause, so it should be easier, but it's actually all the crap that is happening leading up to menopause, which is the end of it.
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So, this can happen from age 25 to 50.
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It's a really Or later.
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Or later, yeah, depending, but a lot of women have it happening earlier nowadays, and And I wonder
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if that's because Our girls are starting their periods earlier.
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It's probably environmental, I would think, and how that affects our hormones.
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So really when we seek mental health.
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and self care for this.
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It can really help us overall in our well being journey because this really impacts all aspects of our life,
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all aspects, all aspects.
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And so from a mental health perspective, though, perimenopause, it really contributes to so much.
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everything like anxiety, depression, irritability, mood swings.
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and there's like 40 different signs plus some of what this is.
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It can
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be irregular periods or it can be like heavier periods.
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Heavy
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periods or
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two in a month or a really long one.
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Hot flashes, night sweats.
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having a decrease in your libido or in your sexual drive.
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Maybe you're like, why do I all of a sudden feel like I don't want to have sex anymore and am I broken?
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I thought that for a while.
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I previously had a really high sex drive and then all of a sudden nothing.
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And I was like, what's wrong with me?
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Mood swings, really bad mood swings.
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Really bad.
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Yeah.
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So, one time I was cleaning, I was like, there's some smell in, in our bedroom.
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And so I'm cleaning our bedroom, and I first said, like, let me just change the sheets.
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I'm changing the sheets.
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I'm like, no, that's not it.
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Okay, I'm gonna go wash all the blankets and the comforter.
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No, okay, maybe it's the pillows.
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I'm gonna wash the pillows.
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Okay, let me wash the pillows now.
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And then, right before I was getting ready to actually scrub my carpets, in walked my husband.
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And I was like, Oh my God, it's him.
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He's the smell.
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And normally I'm very attracted to his chemistry.
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Yeah.
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The
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smell is
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different.
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I was like, Oh God, I didn't tell him that.
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Yeah.
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that's how I knew something was wrong with me.
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So something had changed in your olfactory smelling.
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It was like, what's off?
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Yes.
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And I was like,
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Oh, it is me.
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Because normally I'm like, I like it, but Nope.
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Nope.
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It was totally him.
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Yeah.
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Totally.
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Just he was the smell in our bedroom that I was not liking.
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I know you're laughing,
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but yeah, but this, these are things that come on kind of out of nowhere.
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For me, it was like, I all of a sudden gotten really bad insomnia.
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Like I could not sleep at all, no matter what I did.
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What medicine I took nothing was knocking me out, and I was like, what is going on here, why can I not sleep no matter, sleeping pills or magnesium or whatever I was taking, being exhausted, and I still couldn't quiet my body, and so I was started looking into this and was like, oh, I'm going through perimenopause.
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Yay, me.
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Yay, you.
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I was picking up my meds once and the pharmacist there had asked, I don't know, we were talking about something.
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I said, Oh yeah, this is for my, for perimenopause symptoms.
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And she looked at me, she goes, does it help you sleep?
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I'm having a hard time sleeping right now.
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And I was like, it helps.
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It doesn't make it perfect, but it helps.
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She goes, Oh, yeah.
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Okay, I'm probably gonna have to start these two then because yeah, she apparently was going through it too.
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She was, because I'm, I was like moody irritable.
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She's like, oh, yeah.
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Yeah, my mood swings were like off the charts and I was like, what is wrong?
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Because all my other symptoms normally are managed and then all of a sudden it was just like these super high highs and super low lows like out of nowhere and I couldn't really explain.
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Explain what was triggering it.
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Yeah.
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Nothing is triggering it.
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Yeah.
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Your hormones are triggering
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it.
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And so it's really, really important that we start to educate ourselves as women and educate other women about perimenopause because we don't have enough.
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I remember one time I had a male doctor and after him, I will never see a male doctor again.
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Sorry if there's some great ones, but I won't do it.
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Yeah.
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He said, no, you're not in menopause until you, you stop having your period for a year.
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Yeah.
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They don't.
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And I was like, Oh, okay.
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So, but he didn't say anything about perimenopause.
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He didn't say anything about hormone fluctuations.
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I didn't until
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I started researching it.
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I didn't even know it was a thing.
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All I kept thinking was like menopause, like eventually I'm going to hit menopause, like when I'm, older.
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And now that it's coming on sooner and sooner for a lot of women and not even knowing this was a thing.
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And eventually I found out.
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found a specialist that specialized in women's sexual and hormonal health.
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The thing was, too, I thought I needed to get all this testing done.
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Well, a lot of time you don't even need testing.
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It's based off of symptoms because your hormones fluctuate so much.
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There's no way to get a baseline based off of blood work.
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So really you need to be tracking like these symptoms that you can go to your doctor or, nurse practitioner with and talk to them about that so that they can.
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And once I started, I tried every natural, Supplement out there.
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And for some people, will they help for me?
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It didn't.
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And so I just started hormone replacement therapy and I am back to sleeping again, which is amazing, because I felt like I was losing my mind.
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Yeah, I'm not getting any
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more 3 a.
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m.
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texts from you.
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Yeah, no.
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I'm not getting those anymore.
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I was like, huh.
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I'm not sending them either, because I'm sleeping pretty good, too.
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Yeah, but with the education, like you were saying we can really then normalize this.
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Yes.
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Support each other.
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for women that are navigating this, or, like you said, once we educate ourselves, then we can be prepared for it when it does happen if, you're younger.
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And it really
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helps us not
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feel
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so isolated or alone when you're like, Oh, we're all going through this.
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And when I have women that come to me, and first thing I do when they start talking about this, I look at their age.
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Okay, are you over 40?
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And the next thing I say is, is your mom still around?
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Okay, great.
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Can you ask her when she went through menopause or when she started to go through it?
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Because our older generation, they also didn't know about perimenopause either.
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Yeah.
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And it's worse for us with ADHD.
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Oh, really?
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That's interesting.
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Yes.
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It also makes our ADHD worse, just like puberty and pregnancy.
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Which we've talked about.
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Mm hmm.
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Perimenopause, your hormones are off and so it makes your, ADHD symptoms worse.
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That makes sense.
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Yeah.
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That's why a lot of women don't get diagnosed until later because of all the hormones being off and then their ADHD going off and your brain isn't working anyway during this time of the, time of year, time of your life.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So when we encourage this open communication and this honest conversation about perimenopause, when we talk about our symptoms, when we talk about coping strategies, when we talk about resources.
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Yeah.
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It creates a supportive community and it empowers women who are going through this transition.
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So we don't feel alone.
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And I hope when my daughter gets to this age that The world recognizes it a lot better, that generation is already better about talking about their periods Oh, yeah way better than my generation was and so I'm hoping that we can easily go Oh, you must be going through perimenopause and it is hard because there's no test I mean, we'll run through the 40 things here in a minute, but there's like 40 different signs that you could be going through perimenopause and you don't have to have all of them either.
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There's no real criteria,
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It's different for each woman because our hormones and our bodies are all different and our genetics are all different.
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So it's not a one size fits all.
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Exactly.
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So let's go over our have you ever questions.
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So Exactly, let's define perimenopause and when it starts.
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Okay, so perimenopause
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is the stage right before menopause.
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Menopause is when your periods have stopped for one year, solid.
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That's considered perimenopause.
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And what that does is it's signaling the end of your reproductive years, which means that Once your period has stopped for a year, you are no longer able to have a baby, which, by the way, is a really weird thing to, like, kind of grieve, even though I don't want another kid.
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I remember thinking I was sad that I didn't have that choice anymore, which is weird, Because I've been in menopause.
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I'm past that stage, thank God.
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But usually it starts with women in their 40s, but sometimes women start in their 30s.
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It really depends.
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It's this time when your hormones fluctuate.
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And everyone is
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different.
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So an interesting thing that my doctor was talking to me about is that she is seeing a lot of research come up currently about women who have been on birth control.
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For a long period of time or early, like I know, like when I used to have, period issues, they'd just be like, go on birth control.
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They're finding that women who have been on birth control, it has impacted our sex hormone binding globulin.
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Globulin.
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I can see it in my head.
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Yeah, say that.
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It's almost changing the way that your sex hormone has been bound, and so it's impacting your hormones, creating almost like this earlier perimenopause that women are having, and so it's interesting to see like those of us who were put on birth control, for a long period of time, how it might have impacted it.
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Okay.
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The way our body reacts,
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Younger women are not going on birth control the way we did.
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And I don't think it has anything to do with like having less sex.
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No, I think there's more of an education and they're not wanting that in their bodies.
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Exactly.
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And I'm seeing that there's an increase in men getting vasectomies because it's easier.
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as a partnership goes it shouldn't be I think before I was like, oh no, I would never do that where it should be like why not?
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That's so much less Invasive than what a woman has to go through.
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Exactly.
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And why is it always on the women?
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Mm hmm.
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Oh, that's another soapbox I'll get off my box here.
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Okay.
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what are common signs that you might be entering perimenopause?
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Well, if your husband smells weird,
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that is definitely one sign.
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You may notice changes in your menstrual cycle, it can get longer, shorter, heavier, heavier, regular murder scene heavy.
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It really just depends.
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Some of the ones that are really easy to detect are hot flashes.
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A hot flash is when Your chest feels like it's all of a sudden on fire.
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Yeah, it's like flush and it yeah It gets red and it raises up into your face and all of a sudden you're sweating And this is almost like when you get embarrassed, it feels like that to me The other one is night sweats and that's how you wake up and you are just drenched and you're just like this is so gross sleep disturbances like Randy was talking about not being able to sleep or waking up or insomnia.
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Mood swings.
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that's when you're like up and down almost like you're PMSing all the time.
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A big one too is hair loss.
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Like a lot of hair loss.
