My Menopause Blog: Telltale Symptoms of Menopause

When people, men and women alike, think of menopause, it is the hot flash that gets the most attention. Given 75% of menopausal women face some degree of flushing, this makes sense.

Hot flashes also get the focus they do because they lean toward the dramatic side of the coin. If you're bright red with beads of sweat pouring down your brow and indulge your desire to strip naked, you will be noticed. You will also be on high alert for future heat attacks and likely take some measures to reduce the flame.

The hot flash is not the only thing to look forward to as you enter this stage of your life. Declining estrogen production will impact other parts of your body besides your central heating system.

Take this list of other telltale symptoms for example. (Pass this post on to other pre/peri/meno/post women you know.)

• Night Sweats: first nocturnal cousin of the hot flash.
  
• Weight Gain: sometimes referred to as figure changing, shape shifting or thickening.
  
• Memory Lapse: the nice way of saying your brain turns into a sieve.
• Vaginal Dryness: the oasis turns to desert.
• Vaginal Itching: ouch.
  
• Decreased Sexual Desire: the third in the trilogy.
• Mentrual Irregularity: the band does not play on.
• PMS: prementrual syndrome becomes peri-menopausal syndrome. Same thing, different day.
• Dizziness: can be nauseating.
  
• Heart Palpitations: beating to a different drummer. No cardio vascular required.
• Migraines and Head Aches: throbbing noggin'. Needles in your eyeballs feeling.
• Stiff Joints: knees, hips, shoulders all seem to be fused together.
• Leg Cramps: your PMS cramps move from your lower abdomen to your legs.
• Body Aches: all parts, for no apparent reason, anytime.
• Fractures: your bone density is revealed in a snap.
• Breast Tenderness: double ouch.
• High Blood Pressure: know as hyper-tension, your blood flow reduces.
• Skin Wrinkles: face character enhancement.
  
• Bladder Control/Infections: frequent, urgent, often or ouch.
• Mood Swings: shifts in your outlook from one blood curdling extreme to the next.
• Digestive Sensitivity: you've reached your quota.
• Fluid Retention: swelling up.
  
• Hair Thinning: falling out.
  

As you can see, pretty much every part of you, top to bottom, inside and out will go through a metamorphosis of some sort. Kind if like a baby in the womb, only opposite.

Not everyone will experience all these symptoms at once or at all. But the stages of menopause have fuzzy lines drawn between them. No symptom is cut and dry, orderly about appearing or predictable.

Kind of rogue like, your menopause will unfold with little consideration of your appointment book, with little regard period.

Sue Richards

Tag: menopause