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35 Menopause Issues

Women speak out about how menopause really feels: here are the 35 issues women can experience during "the change." One or more may be your experience.

An electronic mailing list created by Judy Bayliss and Lucy L. Brown, Ph.D. at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has been used to collect information about the true experience of menopause. From information given by the mailing list’s perimenopausal and menopausal subscribers, these women have compiled a list of 35 menopause issues– many of which have not yet been recognized by the medical mainstream.

If you’ve had menopausal issues that you’ve never been told to expect, and that your doctor can’t explain, you’ll be relieved to find that other women have had similar experiences. All of the challenges were reported to be cyclical or were relieved by therapies known to remedy hormone imbalances – the root cause of all menopause and perimenopause problems. (Many of these can be classified as perimenopausal, occurring in the months or years prior to the complete cessation of menstruation.)

Some Little Known Menopause Issues

Bouts of rapid heartbeat
Anxiety
Mental Confusion
Itchy skin
Memory lapses

Judy Bayliss and Lucy L. Brown, Ph.D.

Here are the 35 most seen menopause issues compiled by Judy Bayliss and Dr. Brown:

Hot flashes, flushes, night sweats and/or cold flashes, clammy feeling
Bouts of rapid heartbeat
Irritability
Mood swings, sudden tears
Trouble sleeping through the night (with or without night sweats)
Irregular periods; shorter, lighter periods; heavier periods, flooding; phantom periods, shorter cycles, longer cycles
Partial or complete loss of libido
Dry vagina, resulting in painful intercourse; a general drying-out that can include eyes, mouth, joints, skin
Crashing fatigue
Anxiety, feeling ill at ease
Feelings of dread, apprehension, doom – thoughts of one’s own death, picturing one’s own death
Difficulty concentrating, disorientation, mental confusion
Disturbing memory lapses
Incontinence, especially upon sneezing, laughing; urge incontinence, where leakage occurs when one needs to urinate
Itchy, crawly skin – feeling of ants crawling under the skin
Aching, sore joints, possible carpal tunnel syndrome
Increased muscle tension
Breast tenderness
Headaches increase or decrease
Gastrointestinal distress, indigestion, flatulence, gas pain, nausea
Sudden bouts of bloat
Depression that can become overwhelming; feeling of loss of self that has been dramatically relieved with hormone therapy
Exacerbation of existing conditions
Increase in allergies
Weight gain, especially around waist and thighs, resulting in ‘the disappearing waistline’
Hair loss or thinning on head, in pubic area, or on whole body; increase in facial hair
Dizziness, light headedness, episodes of loss of balance
Changes in body odor
Electric shock sensation under the skin and in the head – "the feeling of a rubber band snapping in the layer of tissue between skin and muscle…the precursor to a hot flash."
Tingling in extremities, which can also be a symptom of B-12 deficiency, diabetes, or depletion of potassium or calcium
Gum problems, increased gum bleeding
Burning tongue, burning roof of mouth, bad taste in mouth, dry mouth, change in breath odor
Osteoporosis (after several years)
Changes in fingernails: softer, crack or break more easily
An additional symptom some report: tinnitus, a ringing in the ears or sounds of whooshing, bells, or buzzing.

Unfortunately, the 35 menopause issues listed above are often attributed to estrogen lack, and many doctors think that HRT is the best treatment. While HRT usually does work to relieve many of these menopausal concerns, there are better options – natural ones that present far less risk and equal benefit. (Recent research on conventional HRT drugs has shown that it increases breast cancer risk and does little to reduce the risk of osteoporosis and heart disease.) Some of the 35 menopause challenges are the result of estrogen lack, but the majority are actually due to lack of progesterone and the resulting condition of estrogen dominance. Read more about low progesterone, estrogen dominance, and the use of natural hormones for challenges women face in additional articles on this site.