Perimenopause or Why Aging Sucks
Men, you do not need to read this, unless you want to. This is personal. And female centered.
I just came in from a run. And I am ready to cry.
I love running. Or should I say I loved running? It was always very mood lifting when I went out for a run after a busy day and even bad runs or slow runs led me to feel much better after.
Not so this time.
And not so for quite a while.
Runs and basically all sports just lately suck. I am too tired. Motivation is zero. I basically run on discipline alone. Pun intended. I never understood the word ‘fatigued’ until now. I am exhausted half way into any day. I have dropped out of races because of odd pains. I have always been a reasonable healthy woman, so this is not me being unfit or having let myself go. It is perimenopause. I know now. I wish my fore-mothers told me. But no, my mothers and grandmothers suggested menopause is nothing, the period just stops, no difficulty or change otherwise. What liars.
Like every woman I have always had good and bad moments with my periods. Sometimes I am just happy they are there, most of the time your period is coming in the most inconvenient situations. Cramps generally suck. But overall I have been doing ok.
And then perimenopause hit.
And if I had PMS before, this is worse. I do not have any hot flashes (yet). But I am so tired. So horribly tired that often I come home from work and need to take a nap. And once I take a nap usually my energy for the rest of the day is gone. All I can do is a few household chores, watch TV, and go to bed. For someone like me who loves being active, it feels like a prison sentence. Trapped by my own body. This is how I felt after my run today. Like my body is actively working against me.
My loving husband said: No worries, it will come back, it is just very humid outside today. I am thankful he is great and tolerates me the way I am. Aches and pains and all.
I am not so sure. It feels like I will never be able to enjoy running again.
And there are these weird aches and pains. A few months ago, I noticed my right shoulder hurting. It would not go away and the dull pain and inability to scratch my back lasted for months. When it became better, my left should started hurting. Same story. Some yoga stretches helped and it eventually got better.
Weather changes are my enemy now. Every rain announces itself with a headache or migraine. As soon as the temperatures exceeds 70 degrees I am a miserable wreck. Humidity just slows me down to a point where my legs feel like they have 50 lbs weights attached to them.
I never really had digestive issues. But now I do. Bloating and IBS are not fun to deal with. At first I thought I had developed an odd food sensitivity, but then I started realizing that this just happened with food. Period. No pattern. I have eliminated a lot of foods and am mostly on real foods and avoid anything processed including bread. However, it is also not fun to be this restrictive with no real results: I am still bloated, I still deal with IBS during certain times of the my monthly cycle, and I am not losing any weight. I have never really been skinny per se and my belly has always been somewhat squishy even as a Highschool and college athlete; I am just not built for a six pack or a flat stomach. At least, though, I was in a healthy weight range the majority of my life. These days, I cannot lose the extra 5 to 10 lbs I carry around the mid section even with trying. I know it is not much extra, but it bothers me.
How often do you want to tell your boss you have a headache and need to take a nap? I do not. I rarely ask for help. Nor do I want to be “that woman”.
I also then spent way too much money on supplements. Probiotics. Antibloating stuff. Collagen. Colostrum. Anything that is supposed to help weight, immunity and energy. Nothing. Absolutely nothing works.
My monthly cycle now looks like this.
Oh great. My period is starting. I feel better.
Day 2 or 3: Ugh, why am I bloating?
Mid cycle: Why does ovulation hurt so much. Maybe it is appendicitis? Ovulation should not hurt, this feels counterproductive. Where is all the bloating coming from? I look 6 months pregnant.
I am so hungry. I accidentally ate a pound of chocolate.
PMS hits about 2.5 weeks in: I am just not good enough. I will lose my job. Everything sucks. Everyone sucks. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out.
When is my stupid period starting? Why am I even more bloated; none of my clothes fit.
The world is going downhill; no wait, the apocalypse is starting. Why is my period not starting. I want to feel better.
Oh yay, my period is back. I feel better now. Clothes fit.
(Alternatively: why is my period 5 days early, I was not planning for this. I am not ready, yet.)
I really wish that there was more health care advice for women in our situation. Sadly most of the stuff you can find online is just the same whining that I just did. Of course, I am planning to talk to my gynecologist about this. This is all very new to me and also the changes are so slow appearing and so random that I just barely noticed them until it became bad enough. Like the run I did earlier. After which I suddenly realized that I have not had a good run in a very, very long time. And the only reasonable fast runs were those where I had to turn around quickly because of stomach issues forced me to go to the bathroom a couple of meters into the run.
All over summer I blamed the heat. Now that it is getting cooler that excuse is going away. The shoulder pain I initially attributed to an odd sleep position, but when it did not go away I lost that excuse. It also did not explain how the pain moved from one should to the other.
And then I also am always living with the fear that I will get ALS like my mother who died at age 68 about 18 years older than I am now. Her illness started when she became more tired than usual. She blamed me and the stress I had caused as a kid and teen for that then. If she had more listened to her body and assumed it was an illness, would she have been better off?
Any time I get unexplainably tired or have muscle twitches, I think ALS is just waiting around the corner. I am paranoid that way now. Like some people assume every headache could be a sign of a brain tumor.
At least there is some advice for runners out there. It does not make my current situation much better — I have never been a patient person — but it gives me hope. I want to get back to running competitively. I was good at it. I want to be good at it again. Not this whiny mess whose legs turn to lead a couple of miles into any run or race.
And hope is at this point what I need.
I need to know that life is not just downhill from here.
I want a good run next week. Just one.
Running increases cortisol. Since cortisol increases naturally around perimenopause this could be an issue. Try walking instead. Also, if you are not strength training, please start. This will help with body aches if you ease into it. Muscle loss accelerates at this point in your life. Eat lots of protien and don't shy away from non industrial fats like tallow, butter and olive oil. You need these for hormone production which is going whackadoodle right now.
Chronic cardio coupled with low fat plant based diets are a killer in perimenopausal women, yet it's what many are told will help. It might have worked when you were younger. Not for most in middle age.
But seriously, walk instead of run, and just add in a few sprints or hills to rev up your heartrate on occation. Lift weights. I have had clients who run marathons and have all the problems you listed and when they shift to walking weight falls off and energy returns. I wish you luck.
I’m going through perimenopause too. I wish I had someone to talk to about it. Is what I’m experiencing normal? Did this happen to you too? My hair has quit growing, my skin is so much drier, and I worry about getting cataracts and if I would be able to afford the surgery to have them removed.
And then I think an awful lot about dying. My mom died at 64 of glioblastoma, sixteen years older than I am now.