WebMD Health Tuesday, March 8, 2022 2:23 PM A new study finds education and language skills can help predict who will go on to develop dementia and who won't. |
WebMD Health Tuesday, March 8, 2022 1:36 PM Devices for measuring blood pressure at home are simple, reliable, and more accurate than conventional methods, a new study found. |
Mark's Daily Apple Tuesday, March 8, 2022 12:00 PM When you think about perimenopause and menopause, you probably think of hot flashes (aka hot flushes), night sweats, trouble sleeping, perhaps weight gain. These are the most well-known symptoms, but there are many others that your doctor and your mother probably never told you about. Research shows that most women, and even many medical professionals, don't know how to recognize the signs of perimenopause. This is partly due to a lack of education and understanding about what perimenopause entails, but it is also because the signs and symptoms of perimenopause and menopause can be ambiguous. Are your brain fog and forgetfulness related to menopause, or are they simply signs of aging? Are you feeling anxious because your estrogen is plummeting or because you're trying to balance the demands of a career, parenting teenagers, and caring for an elderly parent (during a pandemic, no less)? There is no test for perimenopause, so women often don't recognize that they are in perimenopause until they have been experiencing symptoms for a number of years. Only in hindsight do they see how their seemingly disparate issues are related. To add to the confusion, perimenopause and menopause can look wildly different from person to person. Some people skate through with relatively few issues, while others have debilitating symptoms that severely disrupt their quality of life. All this ambiguity means that many people don't talk to their doctors about the changes they're going through, despite feeling that something is wrong. And unfortunately, even if they do bring it up at their next check-up, their doctors may write off their symptoms as "just getting older." That's why it's important to spread the word about some of the less notorious—but still meaningful—signs of perimenopause and menopause in order to get the best treatment possible. What is Perimenopause? Before getting into the symptoms, let's do a quick refresher on perimenopause, menopause, and the difference between the two. Perimenopause begins when your menstrual cycle starts to become irregular. Once this happens, you're considered perimenopausal until a full year goes by without having a period, at which point you are officially in menopause. This whole phase is often referred to as the "menopausal transition." While the conventional wisdom is that perimenopause starts for most women sometime in their mid-40s, hormone changes can start much earlier. In fact, some experts argue that perimenopause actually begins for most women in their mid-30s and lasts for two to three decades. On average, women usually hit menopause in their early 50s. However, the length of the menopausal transition, symptom type and severity, and age of menopause are all affected by race and ethnicity, overall health, socioeconomic variables, and other factors. During perimenopause, estrogen and progesterone levels decline overall, although they can fluctuate up or down, sometimes dramatically, from day to day. Once you hit menopause, estrogen and progesterone are consistently much lower than during the premenopausal years. Erratic and declining hormones, especially estrogen, are probably responsible for most unwanted perimenopause symptoms. 6 Surprising Symptoms of … Continue reading "6 Surprising Signs of Perimenopause and Menopause" The post 6 Surprising Signs of Perimenopause and Menopause appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple. |
