Thriving Through Perimenopause: 3 Essential Tips

Welcome to the Dear Menopause podcast, where we discuss the menopause transition to help make everyday life a little easier for women. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Dear Menopause. Today, I want to talk about three things that you can start doing straight away when you find that perimenopause is seriously kicking your butt. Perimenopause usually starts around the age of 45, but it's really important to remember that it can actually begin in women as young as 35, and that can even be when you're still having regular menstrual cycles. So when you are experiencing this mishmash of symptoms and not feeling yourself kind of confused and frustrated as to what the hell is going on, it's really a good time to start putting yourself at the top of your own to-do list. It's time for you to start tuning into your body, getting curious about what's going on, so that you can start taking care of yourself. So I'm going to share with you today three things that you can do, starting immediately to improve your quality of life and your experience of perimenopause. So the first thing that I recommend to any woman that comes to me all of my clients is to start keeping a journal. Now you can keep this journal in whatever format works best for you. Some women like to keep a note on their phone just in the Notes app. Some women keep Google Docs. Me, I'm a bit old-fashioned and I keep a handwritten journal. Now, in this journal, you want to start tracking all of your symptoms and concerns, so that might be as simple as today. I was a bit moody, I was a bit grumpy, I snapped at the kids, I snapped at a client. It might be I didn't sleep really well last night. I woke up and I was really hot and sweaty and I spent the night kicking Doona on, doona off, trying to get comfortable. It might be that you noticed that your period was a couple of weeks late and you were concerned that it maybe wasn't coming this month or that it was heavier than usual. Whatever the symptoms and concerns that you've been noticing, keep a record of them on a daily basis. So this is the most effective way for you to become an expert of your own body, but it's also arming you with the tools that you are going to need when you go and speak to your doctor, and it empowers you to be able to advocate for your own health when we collect data, which, at the end of the day, is what all of the symptom tracking is. It empowers you to sit down. Start a really robust conversation with your healthcare professional. Now, whether that's a doctor, whether that is a naturopath or whether that might be for you, the more information that you can take to your appointment, the quicker you can get to the crux of what is going on, and the more information that they have right off the bat to be able to help and support you. For example, if you're sharing with them any changes in your period, the regularity of hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings it means that you can work together as a team and you can start making decisions straight away that are going to improve your quality of life. While we're talking about keeping a journal, I really want you to think of this as, like I said, first of all, data collection, but also an opportunity for you to identify patterns. So if you can keep this journal for a good couple of weeks before you go in to see your health practitioner, you might be surprised to see some of the patterns that appear that if you weren't documenting, if you weren't journaling, you wouldn't potentially recognize and remember. So keeping a journal my absolute number one top tip for any woman that is not really sure what's going on and wants to get to the bottom of things. Now my next tip tip number two is all about engaging in an open conversation with your doctor or your healthcare provider. Now, it's really, really important here to be prepared that not all doctors and healthcare professionals are experienced with women's health, and this is really prominent when it comes to perimenopause and menopause, and this might mean that when you do sit down with your normal GP or your normal health provider, they might be a bit reluctant to consider the fact that perimenopause or menopause is actually a possibility for you. I have had so many conversations with women, with clients, where they've sat down with their doctor, explained everything that's going on with their life and how they feel, and the response is something along the lines of oh but come on, you're a mom, you've got three kids, you're working, you're tired, love, maybe it's time to cut yourself some slack. When was the last time you guys took a holiday? And, yes, those things might still be relevant, but we should not be bobbed off when we have concerns and we feel that we're not being listened to. So if we go along to our appointments prepared, as I just talked about, with a journal with some data, you give them the opportunity to be open to working with you and supporting you. And here is the most important piece of advice I can give you at this point it's time are not willing to work with you if they are not open to having a conversation about heraminopause and menopause, and it's time for you to get proactive. And it's time for you to advocate for your health and how you can do that, because it's really easy to say, hey, go be an advocate for yourself, but at the end of the day, we need to understand what that means. So, from my perspective, what that means is seeking out referrals to doctors and professionals that are supportive and that do have experience with women's health. Now, there are a number of ways that you can do that. You can reach out within your friend group, in your family group, and ask who has a great GP or who has a great health practitioner that they talked to about their women's health issues that they would recommend to me. I'm having a little bit of trouble finding someone that is willing to have these conversations with me, so obviously, anybody that comes to you as a referral is a great option. Secondly, I highly recommend, if you are in Australia or New Zealand that you head to the Australasian Menopausal Society website, the AMS. They have a search function within their website that allows you to put in your postcode or your suburb name and it will populate a list for you of health care practitioners in your area that are registered with the AMS. A brilliant tool, super easy to use, and you know that if you reach out to one of those doctors, it's more likely you're going to find a health care practitioner that is open to having these conversations with you, that is educated and informed and able to work with you to find some treatment options that can be tailored to your specific needs and can help improve your quality of life. And my final tip reconsider your lifestyle. Now, let's be brutally honest here. You've probably realised that what was working for you 10 years ago probably doesn't work as well for you anymore. So we can talk about things like how you work out, the benefits that you get from your workouts, what you eat and the impact that what you eat has on your body today versus 10 years ago. When it comes to drinking alcohol, the impact that alcohol has on you today versus 10 years ago, even if you've resisted making some changes, this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see women in their 40s make. It's really important that we understand and respect that our body is changing and, as a result, so must our approach to our nutrition, our exercise, our body image, our mental health and our self care. This is the time to educate yourself so that you can take back a little bit of control around the stuff that you feel is messing with you, and I'm going to give you a really prime example here. I suffered from quite debilitating hot flashes hot flashes depending on what country you're listening from and I realized quite quickly that one of the biggest triggers for me was white wine. Initially it was white wine was the thing that I realized. If I was out for lunch with the girls and I had a glass of white wine, literally within seconds of that first sip I would feel the hot flash, hot flash coming on. It would move through me like a wave. I would feel like I must have been glowing red, sweating from head to toe and incredibly uncomfortable. I worked that out pretty quickly, but it took me quite some time to break up with that glass of white wine and, as a result, I soon worked out it wasn't actually just red wine that was having that impact on me. It was alcohol in all formats, and today I have made a lifestyle choice where I pretty much drink. I follow a bit of an 80-20 rule, and I'm not talking about 80-20 across a week, I'm talking about 80-20 across a year. So 80% of the time I don't drink alcohol, 20% of the time. For example, I recently celebrated a birthday. I had a couple of drinks, but can I tell you that having those couple of drinks is a great way to remind myself why I don't drink 80% of the time, the differences that I've noticed by making this change to my lifestyle I sleep better, I feel better, I'm less moody and I have so many less hot flushes as a result. So these are the types of things that I would always, always be suggesting that a woman considers is what changes can I make within my lifestyle that can support me and make me feel better? Because we need to step up and take the driver's seat here. We need to learn how we can thrive in midlife. Because it is possible and if you can start off by following these three simple steps keeping a journal being armed with tools to take to your doctor or your medical practitioner. Talking to your doctor, having a conversation to understand A if they are prepared to help you and B if they're not starting to look at alternative options. And when you do find a health practitioner that is willing to work with you, learning about and understanding the different therapies that are available to support you and, finally, reconsidering your lifestyle what's going on that perhaps I could make some small tweaks and changes to to help myself feel better and more in control of how I feel on a day-to-day basis. I hope that you have found this helpful. I do have a quiz on my website. That very short quiz takes you through a series of questions to identify if how you're feeling in your life could be linked to perimenopause and then, once you've taken yourself through that quiz, I then provide you with links to a whole heap of resources that take you through some of the three points that I've just talked about, but also some further resources that you can go on and use to feel confident, feel more in control and feel a little bit better about what is going on in your life. You can find that quiz on my website and it is stellarwomancomiu. They'll also be a link in the show notes of this episode. Thank you for listening today. I am so grateful to have these conversations with incredible women and experts and I'm grateful that you chose to hit play on this episode of Dear Menopause. If you have a minute of time today, please leave a rating or a review. I would love to hear from you, because you are my biggest driver for doing this work. If this chat went way too fast for you and you want more, head over to stellarwomancomau slash podcast for the show notes and, while you're there, take my midlife quiz to see why it feels like midlife is messing with your head.