After menopause

What comes next?

Many of our brain symptoms — hot flushes, memory loss, mood swings do improve post-menopause and this has been backed up by brain scans.

It’s even theorised that once our brains are released from the constant hormonal fluctuations we’ve experienced all our lives that they have the capacity to work better than ever and we have the opportunity to be clearer, more creative and more purposeful.

However, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that once we’ve reached that magical one year from your last period, that suddenly the clouds will part, the sun will appear and birds will start singing.

It’s highly individual and many scientists feel that that year is arbitrary and certainly for many of us, that’s the beginning of things settling down and not the end. It can take a while after that, and sadly some people continue to experience menopause symptoms long term.

You may also find that your perimenopausal sleep problems don’t disappear. This is probably because sleep becomes more tricky as we age regardless of our sex as our sleep brainwaves form less reliably. Sleep is something all of us will need to continue to work at as we get older.

Unless we continue to take Hormone Replacement Therapy our bodies will be low in oestrogen. This has a particular effect on tissues, so we will need to make an effort to look after our bone and muscle health, mainly through exercise with weights and a healthy, relatively high protein diet. We may also need to take particular care of our intimate health. I have a blog here that might be of interest.

Many of our health issues, post-menopause, are those of increasing age so we need to make sure our diet and exercise habits are also helping take care of our hearts and circulatory systems.

Women are continuing to take HRT for longer — and recently many significantly post-menopausal women have started to take it. The recommendation from the British Menopause Society is that you should take it for as long as the benefits outweigh the risks — this is a discussion to be had with your doctor.

Another school of thought is that you can stop taking HRT gradually allowing you a more controlled decrease in your hormone levels rather than the chaos of perimenopause. Again this is a personal decision and something that should be discussed with your doctor.

If you are post-menopausal and start to bleed you should see your doctor as soon as possible. It’s usually nothing worrying, but if it is, it’s best caught soon.

As with perimenopause our experience of post-menopause varies wildly but many of us find post-menopause to be an extremely happy and fulfilling phase of life, a golden time between peri-menopause and the challenges of ageing. The post-menopausal women I know lead schools, run businesses, make art, climb rocks and travel the globe as well as enjoying their families. Many of them have begun to do those things since their menopause and are having a whale of a time!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.