Editor’s Note: A podcast chasing life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medicine behind the mysteries of life, big and small. You can listen to the episode here.
Hot water and night sweats. Light, heavy, or skipped period. My mood shaking, my brain fog. A sleepless night. Hair and skin changes.
These are all symptoms of menopause transition, with women being women being It passes as her brain and body get caught up in and blocks off her ability to recreate.
However, there was an honest and open debate about the period of menopause and the years leading up to that (the year known as perimenopause did not exist until recently). Women’s experiences were either ignored for laughs or superficially played in public, often resulting in feelings of secret secrets and shame.
Treating menopause as a taboo has even made this process a mystery to those experiencing just that.
“When I first started to notice changes in my body, I was probably… 46, 47 years old,” Emmy-winning comedian and writer Samantha Bee told CNN medical correspondent Meg Tyrrell Recently on a podcast chasing life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “And I was starting my own show. ‘Full Frontal’ was just starting out.
“And I started to feel like I wasn’t really dealing with it,” she said. “My body was changing – I had physical changes – and I actually didn’t know what was going on, literally.”
Bee, who first rose to fame as a correspondent for “The Daily Show with John Stewart,” and later gained fame with her own series, “Full Front Samantha Bee,” said she would stop acquiring her period here and there for months. Her hair also began to fall off in a way that didn’t have the typical feel. And she developed frozen shoulders, began to sweat at night, riding an emotional roller coaster inside “Roiling.”
Most of her friends are a little younger than her, so Bee said she thought she was “crazy” for her job.
She eventually confessed to her gynaecologist that she couldn’t sleep well and “became Lady Macbeth.”
“And she was like, ‘Oh, you’re in menopause.’ And I was like, “Do you have words?”
“We’re all talking about it. You can read about it, and people are like, ‘Yes!’ But 8 years ago: zip, like zero info,” she recalls. “No one in the conversation. Not cool. Very sexy. Please mention that. You look like a clone of a witch living in a cave. Don’t come out.
You can listen to the entire episode here.
Bee’s latest project, Survival of Menopause, was born out of her own confused experiences. She performed a single woman’s show in New York City in October 2024, where she was recorded live and adapted to audio on Audible.
Having words and frameworks for what she was going through, Bee said she helped put her in the “path of knowledge.”
“You’re taking care of yourself,” Bee said. Her doctor had this helpful guidance. “Remember all the pain you felt… were you 15 years old and all zits an opera tragedy?
The first thing that helped Bee the most is, “Even if it’s just one person, you have to find a community of people you can talk to,” she said.
“You can say the words out loud and normalize them. That’s normal. It literally happens to 50% of the population,” she said. “It’s good to be kidding. It’s good to be loud. That’s the main thing that actually helped me.”
What’s not helpful is her eyes on social media, she said. “I don’t want to receive advice from people trying to sell any kind of product. No. 1 ever.”
Who did the bees trust? For advice and guidance, in addition to her own doctor, she turned to a woman called “Internet Gynecologists.” Gunter, who wrote the bestselling Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism, is known for exposing myths about this stage of life.
“She said that some of the things that happen when you’re in menopause are that your brain is cleaning itself, and that’s why your brain is creating new neural pathways,” Bee said. “It scrubs all neural pathways associated with becoming pregnant, feeds the baby, and drives all mother pathways in childhood into the mother pathways in the brain.
Gunther said he liked to call it “menopause experience” or “menopause continuum,” but we agreed not to talk fully about menopause and menopause.
“If you’ve never heard of it, how do you really know what’s going on with your body?” she told Tyrrell. Another episode of the Chasing Life podcast.
You can listen to the entire episode here.
“Many women dismiss symptoms,” she said. “But the symptoms can be really non-specific.”
For example, women said that for other reasons, they could have severe bleeding, hot flashes and brain fog, for irregular periods. “So there’s a combination of reasons why a lot of people don’t understand what it is until it’s in it.”
how Menopause is also discussed in broader cultures.
“The way you talk about something actually changes your mind about it,” Gunter pointed out.
“That means we have physical and mental experience,” she said. “Everyone around you says you’re an ugly old hug that ‘time’ and you’re only looking at a 70-year-old man dating a 20-year-old girl.
Gunter said we talk about men in e-song representations. “They have ‘erectile dysfunction’. I’m not saying “penny failure,” Gunter said. “If you talk about a man’s body in the way you talked about a woman’s body, Weft threadthat would be a completely different ball game. ”
So, what do women need to know about menopause? Here are the top 5 facts of Gunter.
Menopause marks the end of an individual’s reproductive year. The ovaries stop releasing eggs. “This is when ovulation stops,” Gunter said in an email. “This means that estrogen levels will eventually drop and progesterone production will halt.”
However, progress is neither step-by-step nor linear. “Hormones can be confusing until they reach menopause, known as menopause.”
Remember the chaos of adolescence? “Think of menopause like adolescence in reverse,” she said.
According to Gunter, menopause transitions usually start at an average age of 45. “The average age and normal range for menopause 51 is 45-55.”
“This means that symptoms can begin in some women in their early 40s, but for others, they may not be symptoms until their late 40s or early 50s,” she added in an email.
In other words, everyone is different, which makes it an unpredictable ride.
Gunter explained that individuals reach menopause milestones when there was no one-year period. “In the transition of menopause, menstrual irregularities are normal and if people are sure they are skipping periods, menopause is likely to be a year or three years away,” she said.
According to Gunter, there is no blood or urine test that can indicate if someone is close to menopause. No blood tests are required for diagnosis. “If you’re over 45 and spend a year without a period of time, it’s a diagnosis,” she said.
But sometimes more testing is needed. “If someone is under the age of 45 and has been on the way for more than three months between periods, a blood test is shown. The reason for the test is to identify the cause of irregular bleeding, and one cause could be early menopause (ages 40-44) or primary ovarian deficiency (ages under the age of 40),” she said.
For those who are using the hormone IUD or have had a hysterectomy and do not get a period for other reasons, Gunter said the doctor would go with symptoms other than bleeding, such as hot flashes.
Symptoms and medical concerns
Symptoms vary widely from person to person, affect many physical systems, and can be started and resolved at various times.
“The most common symptoms in the transition of menopause are irregular periods, but they can be severe,” Gunter said.
“Everyone is different. Hot flashes and night sweats are common symptoms,” she pointed out. “Depression, brain fog, and joint pain can also occur. Dry vaginal pain, sexual pain, and increased risk of urinary tract infections are also common concerns.”
Menopause leads to physical vulnerability. “The risk of osteoporosis increases with menopause. Menopause is also marked when there is a change in risk of diabetes and heart disease, so it’s important to check for diabetes, blood pressure, and check for cholesterol and lipids,” she said.
The best treatment for you will depend on your symptoms and health risks, Gunter said.
“Menopause hormone therapy (also known as hormone replacement therapy) is the gold standard for hot flashes and night sweats, and for women who choose this therapy, it should be an FDA-approved product,” she said in an email. “Hormone pellets and compound hormones are not FDA approved and are not recommended as administration is inconsistent and leads to unnecessary and serious health concerns.
“Many women hear the term bioidentic, and that’s a marketing term. Women should know that most hormones approved by the FDA are bioidentical,” she said.
Should all women who enter menopause be there? “We do not recommend that all women take menopause hormone therapy, rather (it) we do not recommend that they be prescribed for specific reasons that there is data to show that it works or that it is biologically plausible that it may be useful,” Gunter explained.
Gunter said there are also some important lifestyle opportunities. She recommends aiming for 25 grams of fiber every day.
“It’s also important to do resistance training and cardio because this will improve many areas of health,” she said.
To maintain physical fitness, aged adults can follow the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention Guidelines for Medium Intensity Aerobic Exercise for 150 minutes each week.
“There are no menopause-specific supplements that are shown in rigorous studies to help with symptoms. Given the menopause gold rush, those who avoid selling content online online are almost always directed towards sales rather than education,” she said.
However, if you have certain health concerns like iron or low vitamin D levels, Gunter said in a podcast that supplements may be worthwhile. Look for third parties certified, such as the US Pharmacopair (USP) or the National Foundation for Health (NSF).
We hope these five tips will help you understand menopause better. Listen to the entire episode with Samanthaby here And with Dr. Jen Gunter here. And when you see what happens to your brain during pregnancy, join the Chasing Life Podcast next week.
