Any way you cut it, aging not always a pleasant experience for women. And we don’t even talk age of change exclusively: Perimenopausethe period before that (no pun intended), can also hit hard.
Classic symptoms such as heat waves and night sweats It may be infamous (have you ever seen that viral video of a woman with steam rising from her head at an outdoor event?), but this stage of life can also come with other side effects, such as changes in appetite, Rachel Pessah-Pollack, MDendocrinologist at NYU Langone Health and clinical professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, tells SELF.
So what does this mean? And what can you do about it? Here’s everything you need to know about a lesser-known side effect of perimenopause.
First, a refresher: What exactly is perimenopause?
If you swap the ‘r’ with the first ‘e’ and cut out the ‘i’, you essentially have the answer: before-age of change. Specifically, perimenopause is “the period that lasts until the end of menstrual cycles.” Melissa Groves Azzaro, RDN (aka “The Hormone Dietitian”), a doctor who specializes in women’s health issues like PCOS and perimenopause, tells SELF. While the average menopause occurs around age 52, your body actually sets the stage eight to 10 years before that, as your ovaries produce less sex hormones. estrogen and progesterone.
Perimenopause symptoms they usually appear in your mid-to-late 40s, but can appear as early as your mid-30s or even your mid-50s. In the beginning, you may find that your cycles are getting shorter. “If you were a typical 28-day cycler and you went regularly, you might notice them coming every 26 days or 25 days,” Azzaro says as an example. You could experience it too more pain or heavier bleeding-a bit like puberty in reverse.
Then, as perimenopause progresses, your cycles become decidedly more erratic. “You’ll notice a 28-day cycle followed by a 15-day cycle and then a 60-day cycle,” says Azzaro. In the end, you start complete skipping of cycles– “so in this case 60 or 90 days pass between periods.”
How does perimenopause affect appetite?
Remember when we said perimenopause is governed by fluctuating levels of estrogen and progesterone? According to Dr. Pessah-Pollack, since estrogen naturally acts as an appetite suppressant by inhibiting hunger signals, this specific hormonal shift is responsible for the changes in appetite during perimenopause.
