First Signs of Perimenopause

Brooke Masters: Hey there everyone, my name is Brooke Masters. Welcome to Master Your Metabolism. And today I wanted to share a little bit about the symptoms of perimenopause. Because I know when I went to the doctor and started sharing my symptoms, I was told my labs are normal, maybe you're just not attracted to your husband. And I just knew menopause was hot flashes. So I didn't have any idea what was going on. And I hear this a lot from women and not understanding because their doctor says it's fine and hands them an antidepressant or some birth control and doesn't explain what exactly is happening and how the symptoms are correlated to. Certain things happening in the body. So I wanted to share a little bit because I love educating my clients on what is going on in the body. And that is the reason, and the result are these symptoms. So in perimenopause, you may still get a cycle because what happens initially is that progesterone drops first, testosterone drops next. Your estrogen starts fluctuating all over the place. In our cycle, it was very normal, the same cycle every month. But in perimenopause, it starts going nuts. And those changes and fluctuations result in a lot of symptoms. And symptoms are different for every person. Not every person has the same types of symptoms, but everyone can experience certain symptoms to a degree. So the first one people typically notice is anxiety. Because with progesterone dropping, that is your calming hormone. That is what regulates GABA in the brain, which relaxes you. So if you don't have that, you may wake up anxious. You may be in your car and suddenly feel anxiety. So this is something that is normal for perimenopause. And your doctor may offer you an antidepressant or something like that or some type of medication, but the real issue is the hormones. and because progesterone drops, that is the what keeps your body resilient from stress when you don't have that same resiliency. And stress can come from your family, your life, your work, your kids, undereating, overtraining. All of these things are stressors on the body because your body doesn't know you're dieting. Your body thinks there's a famine. So your body's trying to keep you alive. So again, things happen. It's like a cascade of symptoms. So when you have low progesterone and estrogen is fluctuating, things like weight gain, especially in the midsection, lower back, back of your arms, because this is a sign of insulin resistance. Because when your body stresses, it produces glucose, lots of it, especially sustained. Stained stressors can cause this imbalance in the body, resulting in this weight gain. Also, when there is an imbalance, things that can happen: bloating, trouble going to the bathroom, you will also feel a lot less tolerant of people, often rage. Things will bother you that never bothered you before. You will literally feel totally dysregulated. Because your central nervous system is now, you are gonna be kind of set to that fight or flight all the time. And you won't even realize it to a point that it starts feeling normal. And when things are quiet and you have to sit and actually chill and relax, you can't because your brain is like still going and racing and worrying about things and taking care of everything. The brain fog. starts kicking in where you're literally going into a room and you don't remember why you're there. You're in at your job and you can't function because you can't remember the things you did before. You can't find the words that you wanted to to say because everything feels like a fog. So you may still get periods, but your periods may be more less frequent Or coming more frequently, you may see either months that you'll have a lot of heavy bleeding and then months that you like are barely spotting. So when those irregularities start happening, when you typically had hormones and periods that were normal and on the day, this is where you can start saying something is going on, something is changing, right? The sleep, the sleep. Whether or not you have hot flashes, you may find you are waking up at two or three in the morning ready to start your day. You may find that when you are going to sleep, you can't sleep because your mind is racing and thinking about all the things that you have to do the next day, and you literally can't shut it off. With regards to lower testosterone, this is where we start seeing: I'm working out all the time, I eat healthy, but like I never look toned, like I look puffy. And when I go to work out, like I'm sore for like three or four days. And I'm not even like motivated. I used to love working out and now I'm not even motivated to go to the gym. So all of those things, low test testosterone is what is our Energy. It is what builds muscle. It is what helps us and allows us to recover. So when this is dropping, this is where we'll see not just low libido, and you don't like you could care less about having sex. You're really just not motivated to do anything. the bloat from the changes in estrogen, with the constipation again and then when there's constipation, estrogen goes back into the body and recirculates. And this is where you have that puffiness, that weight gain. And even with low estrogen, the last thing that most women notice is you get very dry skin, your hair, like the texture of your hair starts changing, your nails could be dry, and again, hormones dysregulate, thyroid becomes impacted. So all of a sudden, women are like, I am now hypothyroid. I now have high A1C. My cholesterol is up. And you're starting to see some of these things on labs when your diet hasn't changed. you have to start looking at the variable. What is different? Well, the difference is is hormones are changing. Hormones change. The rest of your systems, they don't work alone. Your systems work together. So if one thing is off, other things are impacted. So, especially with changes in hormones when you don't have the resilience for stress, your body, when there is something chasing you, that fight or flight response is meant for short bursts. There is a bear coming, have some glucose, run from the bear. If you're not running from these stressors and you keep stressing, all of this glucose goes into your body, your pancreas senses it, tries to take the insulin and put it into your muscles, your brain, your liver, all of the spots runs out of spots. Excess insulin in the body. Now we have insulin resistance, which causes inflammation in the body. So then even the people that say, Well, I'm gonna take HRT, and then they say, I didn't, it didn't work for me. It didn't work because if you have a system that is so inflamed, HRT isn't an end-all-be-all. It won't work if your body is inflamed because they are messengers. So if the messenger isn't able to signal because of the the think of it like rust on a lock. It can't get into the lock to open up the key to lock. The key is just on the outside, stuck in the rust. You're not gonna feel the results of that hormone. And if it is really inflamed, those signals are just more signals that your body becomes overloaded. So you really need to understand what is happening in the body. I tell people, labs are labs, and when you look at them, you look at them from the perspective of symptoms that are being reported with the labs, and those labs have very broad ranges, ranges of all the sick and the healthy. So if you are feeling a certain way, your optimal range for you may be somewhere in the middle. So you don't want to be at the very low end, you don't want to be at the very high end, you wanna be somewhere in the middle. So if you're having symptoms but you're on the low end, or you're having symptoms and you're on the high end, it may be within normal range, but optimal range is something different for each person. So if this is something that you would love to hear more of, please reach out. The link is in the notes to set up a call. I would be happy to share and chat with you about your symptoms or what is going on. We have lots of resources for clients that we share all the time. I'm going to go ahead and put our lab decoder in the notes so that you have access to that as well. And if there's anything else that you would like to hear about in regards to perimenopause or any other symptoms with or systems with weight loss, metabolism, mindset. Please drop it in the comments. We would love to share more. And if you wouldn't mind sharing a review and following us, I would truly appreciate it. Until next time, appreciate you taking the time to watch.