For the 4th symptom of menopause our bodies gave to us … completely random periods!
Long gone are the days of regular cycles. Personally my cycle only gets shorter, never longer which is even more annoying. A week of period, 2 weeks off and then another period. Other aspects that can occur during this lovely perimenopausal period (that’s the time when you start getting the various symptoms but are still having periods):
* Really heavy periods or very light periods or pic a mix periods!!
* Flooding – basically a gush from nowhere and usually at the worst possible time.
* Worse PMT or PMT that seems to last most of the month
* Irregular cycles
* PMT that comes but no period
* Leaking
* More disturbed sleep due to needed to change tampon in the night
* Anaemia which is generally due to the excess blood loss
Your average menopausal woman may therefore be trying to hold down a full-time job, in important meetings, or dealing with young children / old parents, suffering brain fog, struggling to concentrate, after a terrible sleep, paranoid that her tampon has overflowed, having awful period pains, feeling dizzy from anaemia and about to burst into tears. And yet we just get on with it. Imagine if this was all more talked about and there was more support for women in the workplace?
The anaemia is a pretty common side effect of heavy periods and in fact the daily iron requirement for women who are menstruating is 14.8mg compared to only 8.7mg for those post-menopause or if you are a man. Clearly if you have heavy blood loss or a shorter cycle you may need even more than this. And to put it in perspective the amount in an 8 oz filet steak is 8mg so you might think if you’ve had steak you’d be well up on your iron for the day but actually we need to eat high-iron sources all day or take a supplement, such as Floradix which seems to be well tolerated by most. Symptoms of anaemia include fatigue (on top of the disturbed sleep I wrote about on Friday), dizziness, headaches, etc. Again well worth seeking help from your GP if you are struggling with anaemia or excess blood loss.
There are a couple of nutritional aspects that can help. Firstly powdered Ginger taken 3 times a day during your period can reduce blood loss & Fennel Seeds have also been shown to help alleviate pain and PMT. More info here. https://nutritionfacts.org/…/fennel-seeds-for-menstrual-cr…/.
Shall we do weight gain tomorrow?? Yes let’s. Pls like/share. Sue x