SIXTY-SIX PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS:
These are very real physical changes and conditions. Some symptoms alarm a woman that she may be suffering from a serious disease. Perhaps you know the more common ones related to menopausal symptoms in this list. But many of these may surprise you, as they have not been typically associated with this normal physiological transformation.
1. Change in Menstrual Cycle, Cycles may get closer together or farther apart, lighter and shorter in duration or much heavier, lasting longer than one has been accustomed to. Menses may seem to take forever to begin with dark spotting for days until you actually flow, or it might seem like you have your menses every two weeks.
2. Menstrual Flooding can come on with sudden onset and feel like you may hemorrhage to death. Or it can be a gradual build up just when you think your menses will end and you start gushing for days. Flooding commonly accompanies the woman with uterine fibroids as she transits into menopause.
3. Headaches, Migraines, especially before, during or at the end of your menses debilitate and radically interferes with normal functioning.
4. Decreased Motor Coordination, Clumsiness, almost begins to make the woman who experiences this feel like she is a bit spastic, certainly less than graceful during perhaps an already awkward period in her life.
5. Lethargy, a persistent feeling sluggishness physically and mentally, that seems to negate ones ability to do much.
6. Physical Exhaustion , and Crushing Crashing Fatigue that can come on so suddenly and grip you into feeling like you will collapse unless you stop this instant.
7. Exacerbation of any Chronic Illness or Existing Condition transpires as hormones decline or deviate from their normal balance.
8. Insomnia, this includes a new or unusual pattern of either difficulty falling asleep, or dropping off to sleep for a few hours and then awakening with the inability to return to sleep.
9. Sleep Disturbances sometimes are from nightmares, night sweats, or just a vague sense of restlessness keeping you up or disrupting your precious revitalizing retreat from this realm of responsibilities.
10. Night Sweats often begin between a woman’s breasts, initially a night or two before her menses, waking her from sleep, later more profoundly disturbing with up to total body saturation, followed by damp or sweat drenched chills.
11. Interference With Dream Recall interrupts the sense of normal sleep, if you are someone accustomed to vivid or at least some detailed memory of your dreamtime.
12. Muscle Cramps can occur anywhere in the body from legs to back to neck, and sometimes reflects the need for more calcium, or simply that your progesterone levels are too low.
13. Low Backache often worsens before or during menses, but if your hormones remain at low levels, you can experience it on a regular basis.
14. Gall Bladder Symptoms of pain, spasms and discomfort felt in the right upper abdominal quadrant under the ribs, which may be accompanied by belching, bloating, and intolerance to certain foods reflect the increased liver load with declining hormones.
15. Frequent Urination, or sensations that mimic urinary infections is a disturbing symptom often unrelieved by actual urination. It is often experienced as the sensation of needing to urinate all the time, even immediately afterwards.
16. Urinary Incontinence, the uncontrollable and spontaneous loss of urine, or the Urge for Incontinence, can occur suddenly or feel continuous, and not only in response to coughing, sneezing, jumping or running.
17. Hypoglycemic Reactions happen when suddenly your blood sugar crashes and you must have food now.
18. Food Cravings, often for sweets or salty foods, but can include sour or pungent foods.
19. Increased Appetite, especially at night and after dinner contributes to that unusual and unwanted weight gain.
20. Dark Circles Under Eyes can also be caused by adrenal exhaustion and thyroid dysfunctions, but no amount of sleep seems to eliminate it.
21. Joint and Muscle Pain, Achy, Sore Joints, Muscles and Tendons, which sometimes develop into actual carpal tunnel syndrome, or give rise to the questioning of other disease possibilities.
22. Increased Tension in Muscles demonstrates itself in those hunched up shoulders as you work or talk about anything uncomfortable, along with promoting lower back pain and a stiff neck.
23. Increased Hair Loss or Thinning anywhere on body, including your head, armpits, pubic area.
24. Increase in Facial Hair especially under your chin, or along your jaw line. It may be defined by generalized hair growth, or a specific and coarse single strand of hair that pokes out, even curls.
25. Unusual Hair Growth, around Nipples, between Breasts, down your back, places where your hair was finer, less coarse.
26. Acne, quite disturbing to any woman who dealt with this in adolescence and never thought it would recur.
27. Infertility causes grief in the woman who postponed pregnancy in her earlier years and now wishes to conceive, carry to term a healthy baby, and discovers she is unable to do so.
28. Loss of Breast Tissue begins with the decrease of progesterone production. Women often feel as though their breast have become empty sacs devoid of their normal fullness, with or without sagging.
29. Breast Soreness/Tenderness/Pain/ Engorgement and swelling, occurs particularly a few days to one week before bleeding actually begins, which usually potentiates complete relief of any pain or swelling.
30. Painful, or tender nipples have been described as this exquisite localized pain only in the nipples and suggests estrogen excess.
31. Cold Extremities feels quite strange especially in the presence of a hot flash, the combination of which is not impossible.
32. Being Accident Prone, bumping into things, not even realizing it until the bruise reveals itself later and then lacking the ability to recall the causative incident feels perplexing and a little scary at the prospect of something more damaging.
33. Hot flashes initially may be described as mild to severe flushes of heat waves, and for some women these evolve into intense outbreaks of sudden heat with sweating and turning bright red all over.
34. Loss of Sexual Energy, our Libido, can be marked by a gradual or sudden disinterest in sex, to the development of an actual aversion.
35. Painful Sex often described as if one’s vagina would tear open at the point of penetration along with feelings of abrasion during intercourse.
36. Vaginal Dryness, Irritation, sometimes accompanied by a consistent unusual discharge - typically odor free, negates a woman’s ability to be sexually active, or able to enjoy or be comfortable in her body.
37. Dizziness, feeling lightheaded and the loss of physical balance, and even a bit wobbling at times, requires pause in movement to prevent falling over or deepening into vertigo or feeling faint.
38. Ringing in the Ears, Tinnitus, can be experienced as a pulsing sensation, a whooshing sound, an almost musical or buzzing sound with a fuzzy sensation.
39. Abdominal Bloating comes on suddenly often after eating, or seems to be all the time, and can be visibly evident making you feel that you look like you are pregnant.
40. Weight Gain disturbs most women, particularly when it seems to happen over a couple of days, settles in the waist, buttocks and thighs, promoting a visceral thickening from the waist down, the classic middle-aged figure.
41. Fluid Retention, Edema, commonly with swelling in the legs and ankles, though not limited to this area and it is unrelieved by urination.
42. Palpitations or Heart Racing usually comes on suddenly, without warning or provocation, and dissipates spontaneously. The experience can be so wild and intense that a woman may become alarmed and wonder if she is having a heart attack.
43. Irregularities in your Heart Rate may feel more like your heart has just done a flip-flop or skipped a beat.
44. Constipation/Diarrhea, intermittent or alternating, results from declining hormone levels, which increase the demands on liver function and alters intestinal motility.
45. Tendency towards Candidiasis can increase, even if you have no prior known history – and if you do, it may worsen.
46. Gastrointestinal Distress, Increased Flatulence, Unrelieved Gas pains, Indigestion, Nausea all can reflect intestinal changes due to hormonal imbalances.
47. Slow Digestion often goes along with the bloat – what previously took four to five hours to digest, now seems to take all night. It seems worse in the evenings.
48. Lack of Appetite may be experienced as more of a lack of interest in food, going to the fridge and standing there with the door open and staring blankly. Feeling completely uninspired, you busy yourself with something else and forget that you need to eat.
49. Changes in Body Odor especially disturbing when it seems to focus in the groin area, but can be anywhere on the body.
50. Puffy Eyes, not only from sleep disturbances, but also can accompany low progesterone.
51. Facial Pallor alternating with Facial Flushes is often intermittent with hot flashes.
52. Flare up of Arthritis worsens with low progesterone levels and increase sugar intake.
53. Loss of Bone Density, Osteoporosis, is not only an elderly woman’s disease, though it seems to develop over an extended period and is triggered by the decline of hormone production.
54. Dry Hair, Change in Skin Tone, Integrity, and Texture, becomes more wrinkled, and may begin the thinning process.
55. Changes in your Fingernails characterized by easy breakage, bending, cracking and getting softer.
56. Itchy, Crawly Skin with a strange sensation like insects crawling around under the skin – quite different than the dry skin feeling.
57. Muscle tone seems to slack and sag, and loose its previous response to normal exercise.
58. Pelvic Pain can be random and independent of cycles and may feel continuous for some women.
59. Dry, Itchy Eyes felt in the deep posterior aspect of the eye socket, as well as superficially.
60. Teeth Aching or the experience of a strange sensation in one’s teeth or gums, often accompanied by an increase in bleeding gums.
61. Change in the normal Tongue sensation, which can be accompanied by a feeling of burning in your tongue and roof of mouth, malodorous breath or change in breath odor, and/or a bad taste in your mouth.
62. Memory Loss or Lapses in time, makes one feel disoriented and less focused, especially when you go into another room to get something specific and seconds later cannot remember what you went to retrieve.
63. Feeling Faint for no known reason (this does not include standing up too quickly)
64. Tingling in Extremities not only feels weird and like your hands or feet are falling asleep, but if persistent can be a symptom of diabetes, B12, potassium or calcium deficiency, or a compromise in blood vessel flexibility.
65. Sensation of Electrical Stimulation, Prick or Shock occurring in the tissue under the skin, and may signal you that a hot flash will begin.
66. Increase and worsening of Allergies occurs as hormones become imbalanced, so can our immune system.
TWENTY-FIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL & EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS:
You may feel like you have stepped onto the emotional roller coaster ride of your life without ever giving your conscious consent to the ride. The emotional aspects can be intense and extreme, often described as if feeling stuck in a relentless PMS loop with all the perceptible alterations suffered to an extreme. Most of these symptoms are a result of progesterone deficiency and can be relieved with natural progesterone alone. Some, such as # 2, 9, 11, and 12 may require the addition of estrogens and/or DHEA. Others, if unresolved with phytogenic hormones may necessitate intervention and/or alternate therapy.
1. Crying or Weeping Spontaneously, which may be uncontrollable and either exaggerated for the circumstance, inappropriate or unprovoked.
2. Feelings of Panic, usually without warning and beyond one’s control to change, and may be accompanied by heart palpitations or a racy sensation.
3. Easily Frustrated and having a Very Short Fuse can lead to hasty and sometimes inappropriate reactions and/or decisions, not to mention glass breakage.
4. Feeling Violent, Aggressive or Hostile may or may not be expressed, and when this remains suppressed or inappropriately expressed repeatedly over time, serious disturbances result.
5. Feeling Self-Abusive or Self-Inflicting Injuries requires immediate attention and treatment.
6. Sudden Anger and Angry Outbursts, with greater intensity than a situation may provoke, or completely unprovoked by any known external cause disturbs ones sense of harmony or induce feelings of elation and self-satisfaction.
7. Feelings of Anxiety or Terror, often unexplained or irrational, when unprovoked by outside forces feels extremely disconcerting and if sustained can lead to a breakdown.
8. Verbal and/or Physical Abuse may flare up suddenly and be directed at anyone.
9. Feelings of Dread, Apprehension, again when sustained over time, feels like a relentless weight that catalyzes disturbing behavioral changes.
10. Loss of feeling Normal or general Sense of Well-Being, feeling the Loss of Self, can make one feel disconnected to the fabric of this existence and the meaning of everyday life.
11. Disturbing Memory Lapses can be physiologic in origin, or emotionally rooted. Either one usually responds over time to hormone therapy, unless due to organic brain disease or brain trauma.
12. Inability to Focus or Concentrate, Disorientation, Mental confusion contributes to feeling abnormal and disrupts any focused, mindful activities.
13. Irritability responds to the heightened sensitivities that escort us through this transitional time, and everything from your mood to your skin may feel irritable.
14. Mental Exhaustion and everything becomes too overwhelming to consider, even simple tasks or answering the phone to talk to one you love.
15. Depression, often described as different than other experiences with depression, welling up from deep within the soul, a prolonged dark night.
16. Feelings of Hopelessness, devoid of any sense of inspiration to go on with life, though not suicidal, supports the lethargy so often experienced in the menopausal process.
17. Mood Swings, crying over nothing in particular one minute, feeling elated the next and raging the one after that – the ultimate emotional antithesis of Yin/Yang, leading to #18.
18. Feelings of Being Crazy happens when we cease to recognize ourselves anymore due to all the wild, uncontrollable changes we endure physically, emotionally, mentally and possibly spiritually as well.
19. Inexplicable Thoughts of Doom that may be so severe that one becomes fixated on one’s own death, imagining the details. Effective assistance is just a natural hormone away.
20. Feeling Suicidal or actually Attempting Suicide necessitates intervention of more than hormone therapy if an actual attempt has occurred.
21. Feeling Withdrawn, curling up in a ball on the couch or under the covers works briefly, but really interferes with any sense of normal everyday life. Balancing alone time and hormones transforms perception and seems to expand horizons.
22. Feeling Hysterical or Actual Hysteria, beyond alternating crying jags with episodes of laughing, without provocation, it can also include somatic symptoms emulating any type of physical disease. The term stems from the Greek word hystera, which means uterus.
23. Feeling that Anything Happening is far Worse than it may be in reality, an exacerbation of perception may evolve into paranoia if left unattended.
24. Excessive Use of Alcohol, Drugs, or other Escape Mechanisms, if prolonged beyond hormonal adjustments, becomes a symptom that illicits further investigation and treatment.
25. Feeling in an Existential or Spiritual Crisis or Crossroad when nothing in your life truly makes sense anymore and you know you must change your life because you simply cannot go on living like this, even if the clarity with which to accomplish this eludes you.
PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO STOP POURING TEA FOR EVERYONE
But now that I am in love
with a place that doesn't care
how I look and if I am happy,
happy is how I look and that's all...
Excerpt from the poem, Weathering
Fleur Adcock
That place we want to love is inside ourselves, devoid of the expectations of who we think we were programmed to become, of how we think we ought to be. And we can stop trying to pretend that we must do life the way a culture dictates it, discovering our own way, one of the beauties of embracing our authentic selves. When we welcome our own evolution, including the aging process, we step into grace.
The years work their weathering regardless, and we can soften the lines of time with hormonal balancing. But the real softening occurs someplace deep inside the psyche when we stop trying to pour tea for everyone. We cease to try to be nice all the time and find a greater peace in being real with who we are in our essence. This is self-compassion. And if we are truly to be compassionate with others, we must learn to begin with ourselves. This requires discernment without judgment, and forgiveness of everything that triggers a reaction within us. We discover how to say no, simply and without feeling guilty. We do not need to await a cancer diagnosis, or catastrophic event to step into now as the most important moment. Practice, like establishing any new patter, it takes practice. And if we truly desire to live in a world of peace, we must choose to create it within ourselves first.
Know thyself. We’ve heard this expression throughout the ages. The process and changes we go through during life’s transitions, challenges this beyond our wildest dreams. Through revealing ourselves to each other, we reveal self to self. And contained within this raw truth we create a gateway to freedom, to awakening. And our journeys take us here. These journeys are what matters, not just the goal. Good journey to you.
