Perimenopause: the symptoms and what to do about it

Anxious? Low? Angry? Exhausted? It might just be the perimenopause. A decade before your body goes through the menopause, you can already feel its impact. But despite the 13 million women in the UK experiencing perimenopause, we’re still not talking about it says Brigid Moss. ‘I can feel the hormonal shifts happening – the sweating, the moods. You’re just like all of a sudden furious for no reason,’ revealed Gwyneth Paltrow recently, instantly volunteering herself as the new face of the perimenopause. I for one, want to thank her for that, not only because it’s happening for so many of us in our 40s and even late 30s (the average age for the perimenopause to start is 45, Gwyneth is 46), but it’s good to hear that even she, insanely privileged and with doctors on tap, can be felled by hormones, too. ‘I think when you get into perimenopause, you notice a lot of changes,’ she announced on a video she filmed for her wellness company Goop . Forever, the menopause has been seen as the beginning of the end, embarrassing, unsexy, a horrible experience. But there’s a sense this is are changing. Menopause is now prime time: Mariella Frostrup has shared her experiences in The Truth About Menopause on the BBC. The previous year, it was Kirsty Wark and Jennifer Saunders. Let’s not pretend, perimenopause needs attention. It currently affects 13 million women in the UK – women maybe like you, or you will become. Symptoms can be way worse than Paltrow’s experience; Meg Mathews tells how she was plunged into anxiety, other women feel flat, depressed, hopeless. According to research from Nuffield Health, up to one in ten women consider quitting their jobs because the symptoms are so debilitating. We need good information: before you get to […]

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