The main treatment offered for women during perimenopause are artificial hormones. These come most often in the form of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) or the contraceptive pill.
HRT promises to balance your unruly hormones, and thereby fix all those horrible symptoms: the hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings . . .
But for now I’m not going to go any deeper into the evidence for or against artificial hormones.
I want to explore whether these artificial hormones are the only option, and is it necessarily a good one?*
I also want to look at what these artificial hormones are doing to our physical, emotional and spiritual being.
Transitions, Rhythms and Control
The menopause transition period (including pre-, peri- and post-menopause) is daunting.
Any major transition in life is scary and as humans we don’t like to be out of our comfort zone very much!
Think back to your first period (menarche), and all the changes we had to deal with, both physically and emotionally!
Modern medicine has done a great job in disconnecting us from our natural rhythms. It has even turned normal life transitions into diseases that must be treated with synthetic medicines.
In fact, our whole reproductive cycle has been hijacked by modern medicine. We let artificial hormones control our periods, our fertility, our childbirth, our pelvic health, and the end of our periods!
What this tells most women is that our bodies are not good enough, they need to be fixed.
Messing around with hormones is not a good thing!
Our hormonal system is all interconnected
If you’ve been reading my posts and blogs, you know how the thyroid, adrenal and sex hormones are linked together.
Any changes in them also affect insulin and hunger hormones, our sleep hormones, and many more!
But our hormones are also interconnected with our emotional and spiritual being.
Are artificial hormones disconnecting us from the emotional and spiritual transition we need to make in perimenopause?
Do we want to become wise and powerful women in our post-menopausal years?
If so, then we need to deal with and heal all the emotional and spiritual crap that we have accumulated in our lifetime.
Artificial hormones disconnect us from the physical expression of these emotional issues. If we can’t recognise the problems then we are not going to deal with them!
By letting synthetic hormones control us, they are also disconnecting us from ourselves.
Symptoms are messages
Perimenopausal symptoms are usually messages. Our bodies are telling us that we need to looking inward and start rediscovering our intuition and inner wisdom.
How can we do that when we are disconnected?
This not only happens at perimenopause — it happens all throughout our reproductive years.
PMS, irregular periods, ovarian cysts, postnatal depression – these are all physical signs that something needs to be healed.
If we suppress these symptoms with artificial hormones, it is likely our physical symptoms will be worse when perimenopause comes along.
And if you are taking HRT, once you come off it, these issues will still be there. So many women coming of HRT report that all those horrible symptoms do come back again!
What are the alternatives?
Do you want to truly step into our full power and potential post-menopause? Then you really need to consider whether taking HRT will be of benefit in the long run.
Unfortunately, modern medicine doesn’t give us many alternative options.
But if you look outside the box, into complementary and alternative treatments, there are so many things that you can try.
There are many wonderful herbs out there that have been used for thousands of years to great effect.
There are many foods and supplements you can take to help you balance your hormones.
And of course, homeopathy and flower essences are just amazing because they get to the root of the problems and help us heal our body, mind and spirit.
If you want to now more about how homeopathy can help you to manage and relieve perimenopausal symptoms, please get in touch! I’m here for you. Book a free 15 minute call with me to see how I can help!
* This may not apply to women who are on HRT due to premature or abrupt menopause (due to surgery or illness), and who may need to take these hormones as their bodies cannot produce enough on their own. And I’m not berating anyone who has chosen to take HRT or artificial hormones and done their research and decided that is the best course of action for them. If you are happy with your choice, then that’s absolutely fine, and your right to do so!! My main objective here is to highlight the fact that we are usually not given many other choices when HRT is not suitable or necessary, and the risks and negative aspects of it are downplayed or not even considered at all.
Mine has been terrible! I’ve also heard from friends or clients that their sleep has been atrocious!
I love sleep, so this is not good for me!
Then I read a few articles recently saying that many people are finding it hard to sleep well during lockdown – so I thought maybe that’s it!
I have to confess that my stress levels have been higher than normal.
There’s just too many things on my plate at the moment – my girls at home all the time, I’ve been homeschooling them, husband is working from home, I seem to be cooking non-stop… Not to mention the political lockdown situation and all that goes with that!
I’m also working and getting busier and trying to fit that into my spare hours, which is usually in the evenings and later at night! And we all know what blue light does to our sleep, right?
Combining all this with perimenopause, it’s a wonder I sleep at all!
Insomnia and trouble sleeping is actually quite common during perimenopause.
And the reasons are varied and unique to you.
Maybe you get hot flushes and night sweats, or are prone to anxiety and panic attacks.
Eating too many refined and processed foods or not exercising enough.
Or you are exposed to too much blue light in the evenings.
Often our liver is overtaxed, and that can also have a big impact….
During perimenopause we are in a transition period for our sleeping patterns.
We may need more sleep now, like in our teenage years, and then once we are in proper menopause we may need less.
So don’t feel guilty if you feel you need to sleep more!!
Now, let’s talk about STRESS.
This is what is I think is the main thing getting to me at the moment.
Stress in not all bad, it is there to motivate us and help us when we are in danger and to survive. One of the main hormones involved in this is CORTISOL.
Cortisol is there to wake us up and give us energy in the morning and during the day. By evening it should decrease, giving way to melatonin to help us wind down and go to sleep.
The problem starts when we are constantly stressed. Our cortisol levels are constantly on a high, making it much harder to go to sleep.
During perimenopause, our adrenal glands (which produce cortisol) also need to help out with estrogen production, and if they are already over-stressed… well you can see where I’m going with this! It’s a wonder we ever sleep at all!!
This is probably where my problem lies at the moment. It is just hard to get away from stress at the moment, isn’t it?
And remember me mentioning the liver?
I reduced my alcohol intake to 1-2 glasses a week, and now am sleeping so much better.
Sleep is so important for our health and well being. It is especially so during perimenopause because we need that recovery time for our hormones that are naturally all over the place.
We also need it to reduce stress and recharge our energy levels.
If we don’t get enough we can be more prone to inflammation and therefore more at risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other related conditions.
Homeopathy can help get you better sleep during perimenopause, especially if it’s stress or anxiety related. Feel free to book a free 15 minute discovery call to see if I can help you!
During these interesting times, it wouldn’t be surprising if your anxiety has gone through the roof!!
There are very real reasons for our anxieties at the moment, but some have also been hyped up by the media.
If you are in the middle of perimenopause, your anxiety has been likely worse than usual, and that was bad enough!
Let’s have a little deeper look at why we are so prone to anxiety during perimenopause.
Anxiety is actually one of the most common symptoms during perimenopause. It’s usually is the type of anxiety that is disproportionate to the situation. You seem to worry about everything and anything!
This anxiety can easily lead us to experiencing panic attacks, which can be quite scary.
Everything seems overwhelming. You can’t even make a decision without breaking into a sweat of worry and panic.
So, what is going on within us that is causing all this?
Fluctuations in our hormones, have a major part to play in this. Especially progesterone levels.
Progesterone is a calming hormone. When its levels start to decrease in perimenopause, we can feel worried and anxious about any little thing.
Perimenopause is the time when our past unresolved emotional traumas come to the fore. It is natural that we start feeling anxious much more easily. It is our body’s way of telling us we need to resolve something.
In more normal times, this is likely the main reason why we get so anxious during perimenopuase. Have a deeper look into what is making you anxious and panicky. Those seemingly little things are usually a standing in front of a bigger thing that keeps calling you to be resolved.
At this moment in time, however, I can see that our cortisol and adrenaline levels are the ones causing most of this mayhem.
Cortisol and adrenaline are our survival hormone. It takes precedence over all the others. They are produced when we are in perceived danger, it’s our flight or fight hormone.
We have all been feeling in some sort of danger these last few weeks – from the virus, from losing our freedom, from our inability to see friends and family, from being in financial hardship, from the probability of losing our livelihoods… the list can go on…
If these two hormone is overflowing due to stress, they will create imbalance in all the others. Including progesterone, our calming hormone.
It’s no wonder we are all feeling super anxious. We’ve got anxiety coming at us from the external stresses and fear being thrown at us every day for the past 2 months. And we are also getting it from the hormonal imbalances that result from it.
So what can you do to feel more calm?
Some simple things you can easily do right now include avoiding alcohol and caffeine, and taking time to exercise and to rest as well.
Nutritionally some vitamin B6 and magnesium could help, as they calm your nervous system.
If you feel your anxiety is too much, out of proportion or persistent, or you are having a difficult time dealing with it, then do try to get help.
EFT, meditation, mindfulness and counselling may be very helpful in this instance.
Homeopathy and flower essences are also amazing in these situations.
Please don’t let yourself get mired in your anxiety. I am here to help.
I’m offering free 15 minute chats to all my clients, to talk about how you are doing, and help you feel calmer and more at peace.
I’m a registered Homeopath living in the small, beautiful rural county of Herefordshire in the UK. My passion is to help women balance their hormones in a natural, safe and effective way, so they can feel like themselves again.
