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Testing Times….

Do you need a test to know if you are in perimenopause, or if you’ve reached menopause?

Helen Clare
3 min readAug 12, 2020
FSH. Pretty isn’t it. (Wikicommons)

The short answer is, not usually

If you’ve gone more than a year without a period and you are in your late forties and beyond you would normally be considered to have reached menopause. If you have a bleed beyond this, the doctor will probably want to check that nothing else is going on.

You don’t need a doctor to tell you you are in perimenopause. They’ll probably say “Yes, you’re around that age, and weird things are happening, so it would seem so….” which is not telling you much you hadn’t already figured out.

I created a pack of mapping and tracking tools to allow you to build a visual representation of your symptoms which might help you figure it out. You can get that by clicking here.

I asked my doctors about getting a blood test to confirm perimenopause. I have two very good female doctors who both said pretty much the same. Firstly that it’s only a snapshot and secondly it’ll only tell us what you know from your symptoms.

Getting treatment for perimenopause

The guidelines in the UK state that perimenopause is diagnosed through symptoms and it would be unusual for you…

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Helen Clare
Helen Clare

Written by Helen Clare

Helping you get to grips with peri/ menopause before it gets a grip of you. https://linktr.ee/Helenclare

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