UnTouchableMenopause and perimenopause
Menopause is when your periods stop for good because your hormone levels have fallen. Perimenopause is the run-up to it, when hormones have started changing but periods have not yet stopped. It usually happens between 45 and 55, though it can be earlier. The symptoms are wider than most people expect, and they are not only physical. Low mood, mood swings or depression, anxiety and irritability, and problems with memory or concentration are all on the NHS list — alongside hot flushes, night sweats, palpitations, disturbed sleep, vaginal dryness or discomfort, pain during sex, more urinary infections, incontinence, weight gain around the middle, weakening bones, headaches and migraines, aching muscles and joints, thinning hair, dry skin, lower sex drive, and dental problems. Symptoms usually last around seven to nine years, sometimes longer, and change over time. Treatments include HRT. How long to take it, and when to review it, is a conversation to have with a GP rather than something to settle from a number you heard somewhere.
This is a plain summary, not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for talking to your GP or your clinical team. For NHS information about menopause and perimenopause, speak to your GP or call NHS 111.
People who have talked about it
1 story, each one written in our own words from what the person said publicly themselves.
Ruby Wax
Ruby Wax started HRT early, and says she never really had a menopause
Ruby Wax's account of the menopause is short, and mostly about not having had one. She started HRT early — as soon as she was suspicious, before symptoms really arrived — because, she says, she does things early. She is the sort of person who asked to be cut open rather than go through labour; she had one contraction and decided that was enough. The upshot, as she describes it, is that she never really went through the menopause at all. What she is less certain about is stopping. She does not know whether she ever will, and she is only half joking when she says God help her when she does. She says she was told HRT could only be taken until 55, and does not believe that is right. She credits it with her bones and her brain being in good shape — and then, immediately and unprompted, took it back. She cannot say her brain is good because of HRT, because she has no idea what her brain would have been like otherwise. That hedge is hers, not ours, and it is the most useful thing in the passage: one person's experience of a treatment is not evidence about what it does. Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here is a recommendation for or against HRT. How long to take it, and when to review it, is a conversation for you and your GP.
Photographs, in order: Ruby Wax by DavidPMaynard (CC BY-SA 4.0).