More than hot flashes!

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is 40, and she was asking me, what kind of coaching am I doing, and I told her that I was a menopause support coach and I was studying to be a menopause doula. So, she asked me, “what is that and why do you need that”. So, I explained to her that a menopause support coach and menopause doula helps women navigate their menopause journey. And her reply to me was, “I didn't know all of that about menopause, I thought it was hot flashes”.

When I first decided to be a menopause support coach and I was learning more about menopause, I found that this is really a common thing that women think about menopause. A lot of women look at menopause as having hot flashes. And one of the things I like to say as a tagline is it’s more than hot flashes because there are so many symptoms of menopause that women don't even understand that they have.  They don't look at the many symptoms as a byproduct of menopause. They look at them as something being wrong with them.

So, an example I like to use because it happened with me when I was going through peri-menopause (which means you are still having periods or you haven't been period free for one whole year). I was having hot flashes, and I had weight gain, and those are the things that I equated at that time, with menopause. The thing that was happening to me in peri-menopause was I was having heart palpitations. It was very scary because I knew that heart disease ran in my family. And it wasn't until I started learning more about menopause, that I learned that, heart palpitations, are a symptom of perimenopause. And what I didn't put together was when I would have a hot flash. I would have heart palpitations, not all the time, but sometimes, and I didn't equate the two because I didn't think that the heart palpitations, were a symptom of menopause. 

So, another symptom of perimenopause that happened to me, is vertigo. So I woke up one night, feeling like I was on a roller coaster the room was spinning so fast. it dissipated, probably five to seven minutes after it started. And I went\ back to sleep and when I woke up I was out of sorts. and I was groggy like I was drugged. Being out of sorts lasted for a couple of days and finally, I went to the doctor. When I went to my primary care doctor, 

he diagnosed me with benign positional vertigo. He did not take into account my age, whether I was going through menopause, he didn't even equate the two. He didn't even mention that it could be a byproduct of menopause. This was not my OB-GYN. This was my regular doctor, and I have learned since that normally family physicians when they go through their medical training they get one hour of training that has to do with menopause, one hour, so I couldn't expect him to put the two together.  

There are between 37 and 40 symptoms of menopause depending on who’s list you look at. You have your normal night sweats hot flashes, weight gain, brain fog, and mood swings those are the ones that most women equate to menopause. But there's dry skin vaginal dryness, low libido, and so many more. And a lot of the times when a woman will go to her doctor, and talk about what's happening to her the doctor may offer a couple of things, an anti-depressant because she may say she is angry and out of sorts or I don't feel like myself instead of digging into what's going on you many get an antidepressant or hormone replacement therapy. 

I'm not a doctor and anything I ever tell you I will preface with, talk to your doctor, get the information, make an informed decision.  Do your homework, there are so many symptoms of menopause that when I started learning more to be able to be an effective menopause support coach, it was mind-boggling that these things were happening to my body and I didn't put it together, because we're not taught about menopause, we're not taught about how to navigate this time of our lives, while we're going through menopause. There are so many other things that are colliding together. When you're in your 40s 50s 60s you have kids that are leaving the house or getting ready to leave the house, you have menopause going on or perimenopause or post-menopause. So you have an empty nest, you have menopause, and you're at the point in your career or life that you are contemplating changing jobs or retiring. 

So, it's not just menopause at this time of your life. So, when all these things collide, you may not feel like yourself. You feel weary you feel confused. You feel angry.

Take a beat, sit in it for a minute and talk to someone. 

One of the things that I am working on to be able to help more women understand menopause, is I am creating an online course called menopause 101: what your mother did not tell you which should be ready to be released in the middle of August.

Because my mother had zero conversation with me about when she was going through menopause. I had no point of menopause reference. I could not get the answers to question like when did she start going through menopause?  At what age did she start?  what was it like?  Most women don't get that information from their mothers, and one of the things that a gynecologist may ask you if they talk to you about menopause is, when was it that your mother went through menopause because sometimes we mirror our mothers. 

There's so much information on the internet about menopause, some good, some not so good. What I'm trying to do with the course I am creating is to curate the information for you so that you can have an understanding of what you're going through or what you're about to go through.  

So, menopause is multifaceted. And the more we learn about what's happening to our bodies for our specific menopause journey, because all journeys are different, the better will be in the long run.