The topic of menopause – both peri-menopause and post-menopause – deserves way more attention. I want to educate women and be an advocate during the menopause transition, helping women make informed decisions for their health now and into the future.

I’m Dr. Doni, host of How Humans Heal and Women’s Health expert. I’ve been helping women with their health, including menopausal symptoms, for over 25 years. I recently completed two additional trainings in helping women through menopause, including a menopause boot camp taught by my mentor and instructor in Women’s Health, Dr. Tori Hudson. 

The number of women who are postmenopausal is increasing every year. By 2030, it’s estimated that over a billion women around the world will be postmenopausal. I want to share information that should be within your reach to help you become better advocates for yourself and make informed decisions going forward.

There’s so much I want to teach you about menopause—more than I can cover in this one video. Today, I want to talk about the common symptoms and health issues for women to start thinking about and noticing in your bodies so you can understand the experience of menopause for yourself. 

In subsequent videos, I’ll go into more detail on additional topics related to testing for hormones, hormone replacement therapy, and natural approaches for menopausal symptoms, including how we can help with symptoms like weight gain in addition to hot flashes and other issues we’ll discuss today. I welcome you to join me on this journey and series of interviews and videos related to menopause.

The Scope and Timeline of Menopause

As I mentioned, the number of women in menopause is increasing. In fact, it’s estimated that women spend 40% of their life in menopause. Sometimes that’s surprising when you think about it. 

If you’re under 50 years old, it may seem odd to think about spending more than one-third, even up to half of your lifetime in menopause. That’s when it becomes very eye-opening, and we realize this is something we need way more information about.

When women go through menopause, the transition involves as many, if not more, hormonal changes in their bodies than they experienced during puberty. Take a minute to think about that and to experience validation and acceptance of what you might be feeling and noticing in your body as you’ve been going throughmenopausal symptoms.

I want to focus on understanding what women are experiencing and what they can do about it because, unfortunately, for prior generations, women didn’t even talk about menopause. It wasn’t something discussed in society, and oftentimes, you might have been dismissed by your medical doctor because, in most cases, medical doctors haven’t been educated about the symptoms of menopause and what women can do about them. 

Please know that you’re not alone if you’ve been experiencing these symptoms and you’re not alone if you’ve been dismissed by your provider. I want to be part of changing that.

I believe menopause should be something we talk about, and women should be getting help. This is not something where you just have to “deal with it” or be told “it’s all in your head” or “you’re just getting old” or “it’s just menopause.” To me, those responses are not enough. We need to notice these symptoms and help women because there’s so much we can do to help you feel good into this later section of your life.

The Individual Nature of Menopause

One thing to keep in mind, which I’ll acknowledge and repeat, is that the experience of peri- and postmenopause is very individualized. Each woman will have different symptoms in different sequences and different time periods. 

I’ve observed this through 25 years of helping women with menopause and also experiencing menopausal symptoms myself. I see how varied the experience is.

It’s not one-size-fits-all, and it might not even help to compare yourself to another person because your experience will be different. We should use this as a chance to connect with yourself and the uniqueness of your own body and experience. Don’t be hard on yourself or criticize or judge yourself for what your experience looks like—it simply is your unique experience. 

Anything we experience in our bodies is based on our genetics as well as our stress and toxin exposure in the past and present. 

When looking to help solve menopausal symptoms, we’ll come back to your genetics and your stress and toxin exposure. By helping to solve it from this perspective, we can help you feel better and prevent health issues going forward.

Defining Menopause and Common Symptoms

What does menopause mean? Menopause is when it’s been 12 months, essentially one year, since your last period. If it’s only been two months, that’s not menopause yet. If it’s been 10 months and then you have another period, that’s still not menopause. Officially, we call it menopause when it’s been 12 months without aperiod—not even any spotting.

You want to notice what’s happening with your menstrual cycle because during perimenopause, which is the time up until menopause, there can be a lot of irregular menstrual cycles. That’s the top symptom—the first thing women start noticing is that their period starts going into different patterns than ever before.

That could mean your period is coming more often. Sometimes women experience this for a period of time—could be six months or a couple of years—where your period comes more often than every 28 days. It could come every 25 days, every 23 days, or vary between timeframes. 

For some women, it starts happening less often—every 30 days, every 35 days, or every two months. That’s what we mean by “irregular”—it’s not on a consistent 28-day cycle. It starts to come earlier or later, or for a period of time later and then earlier, and this can really vary from person to person.

It can also change in terms of how heavy the flow is. For some women, it starts to become heavier because some women experience a spike in estrogen levels before they go into menopause. For other women, it doesn’t become heavier—it just becomes lighter and lighter until it goes away. I want you to know that it can really vary, and you should notice what’s happening in your body and track it.

Is your cycle becoming more frequent or heavier? Based on what’s happening with your menstrual cycle, we can determine what your body needs to help you through this transition. If you’re having heavier bleeding, we want to make sure you’re not becoming anemic, and we can help decrease the bleeding to be as consistent as possible for as long as possible.

As a practitioner, when I hear that cycles are all over the place, unpredictable, or the bleeding is heavy, that’s where I want to help. There are things we can do before your ovaries stop ovulating and producing as many hormones to help keep the cycle more regular and prevent heavy bleeding. 

Then, as the cycle becomes more irregular to the point where you’re having a year without a period, there are different approaches to help with those symptoms.

Age of Menopause and Influencing Factors

I want to emphasize that menopause can happen at different ages for different women. If it happens before age 40, that’s considered an ovarian insufficiency. We typically look for reasons why your ovaries are decreasing their functioning before age 40, which can involve additional testing including blood work and a pelvic ultrasound.

If menopause happens between ages 40 to 45, that’s considered early menopause. Again, we may need testing to find out if there’s another reason why your period is stopping or if your ovaries are truly decreasing in function. If it happens after age 54, that’s considered late menopause.

The average age of menopause—one year without a period—is 51. That means age 50 is the average for the last period to happen. Interestingly, you could start having symptoms even 4 to 8 years before that. Some sources even say women could experience symptoms of menopause as early as age 35. 

If you’re noticing changes in your body, it could be related to your ovaries starting to go through this transition. Going through menopause is not pathological—it’s a normal human experience.

Some women go through surgical menopause where the ovaries are removed for one reason or another, in which case they experience a more abrupt change in hormones. This is also something we need to do more to help women with. Sometimes women go through surgical menopause or menopause because of cancer treatment, for example, and sometimes they don’t get enough support to help them through the changes.

Other factors that can affect age of menopause include a history of smoking, drinking alcohol, toxin exposure, medications, cancer treatments, socioeconomic status, the age your mother went through menopause, ethnicity, and even the age of your first period. All these factors affect the age of your last period.

It’s very individualized, so it’s less about what’s happening for anyone else and more about what’s happening for you. We won’t be able to anticipate the exact date of your menopause until it happens. We’re discovering and learning along the way, which gives even more importance to taking nice breaths and noticing what’s coming up in your body.

I want to emphasize that stress and trauma exposure can affect the age of menopause. Studies have also shown that women who have experienced trauma from childhood can have altered menopause symptoms. 

If you have a history of sexual abuse in childhood, that can absolutely affect your experience of menopause. Any kind of stress in life and adulthood could affect your menopause symptoms, but there are actual studies showing a direct connection between childhood sexual abuse and an earlier age of menopause. 

Common Symptoms Beyond Hot Flashes

Let’s talk about some of the other symptoms you might experience. The most common one we think about is hot flashes and night sweats, which are called vasomotor symptoms. These are temperature fluctuations that may cause you to sweat, whether during the day or at night.

These symptoms occur because of fluctuations and eventually a drop in estrogen levels. I call it “turbulent estrogen.” When estrogen is turbulent, it’s more likely to affect the signaling in our body that tells us what the temperature is, making us feel hot, making us feel cold, causing us to sweat and turn red.

We can also commonly experience joint and muscle pain. Interestingly, studies show that many women in menopause experience shoulder pain. If you’ve noticed more shoulder or neck pain, that’s often associated with peri- and postmenopause.

Mood changes are also common. Often we think about feeling irritable, but I want to point out that there’s a high association—more than 50% of women—of experiencing symptoms of depression. This is really important because many women experience depression without realizing it’s related to menopause. They might question themselves and spiral into the effects of depression, including impacts on appetite and relationships.

Women might go straight to a psychiatrist and potentially use medications, which may be necessary or helpful, but the psychiatrist may not realize it’s related to menopausal symptoms, and the gynecologist may not realize you’re experiencing depression. 

It’s important to know that if you’re experiencing depression and/or anxiety, it may be related to hormone changes, and by addressing those changes, we may be able to help your mood.

Sleep disturbances are also common, including waking up with night sweats, but sometimes women wake up even without night sweats—just more wakefulness in your sleep, getting less sleep, which leads to more fatigue.

Urinary and Vaginal Symptoms

Women can also experience genitourinary symptoms. This includes an increased risk of bladder infections, urinary frequency, waking up to urinate, as well as vaginal symptoms like yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, HPV, vaginal pain, pain with sex, discomfort, itching, and burning.

All these vaginal and urinary symptoms can occur because estrogen primarily affects the vagina and bladder area. As estrogen decreases, women tend to have more vaginal symptoms and urinary infections. This also leads to symptoms related to sex, including pain, decreased desire, less interest, fewer orgasms—all very common but often not discussed.

We can help with vaginal symptoms, prevent urinary infections, and help with libido. There’s a lot you can do, so I encourage you to join me here at How Humans Heal so I can teach you more about what’s possible.

Other Symptoms and Future Health Considerations

Women may also experience vision changes, skin changes (especially dryness), hair changes or loss, hearing changes, bloating, digestive changes, and brain fog. Many women talk about “menopause moments” where you can’t remember what you were about to say or don’t remember things as well as you used to.

This can be the beginning of cognitive change, and I want to bring attention to the importance of preventing cognitive decline. Women make up more than two-thirds of Alzheimer’s disease cases, so this is something women need to pay attention to. There’s so much we can do to prevent dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, especially when starting in our 40s, 50s, and 60s.

We also want to protect your heart because heart disease remains the top cause of death for women. Often women focus on breast cancer, and yes, we want to prevent that absolutely, but we need to be aware that women also need to prevent heart disease. Women over 65 have the same risk of heart attack as men do. We need to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and monitor blood pressure.

We also need to protect your bones because menopause is when women start to lose bone density. This is an important time to protect your bones, brain, heart, and overall health. We need to start planning now to help prevent all different causes of death and health issues going forward, including all types of cancer and infections.

This is why it’s so important to pay attention to menopause, give yourself compassion and care, and learn what you can do to support yourself through symptoms now and prevent health issues later. Many things we can do to help ourselves through menopause actually help prevent future health issues.

If we start now with helping you with stress recovery and optimizing your cortisol and adrenaline levels, neurotransmitters, digestion, microbiome, hormones, nutrient levels, nervous system, immune system, and more, we’ll help you have fewer symptoms during menopause and prevent health issues later in life.

Conclusion and Next Steps

I encourage you, based on this video, to check in with your body. Take a few breaths and ask your body what it’s trying to tell you. What symptoms are showing up for you? Even if you’ve been experiencing menopausal symptoms for years, journal about what you’ve experienced, what you’ve noticed with your menstrual cycle, what changes you’ve observed in your body, what you’ve tried, what you’re curious about, and what testing you might want to do.

As you listen to my subsequent videos, you’ll learn more and discover more as I walk you through understanding peri- and postmenopause, what it looks like for you, and how to support yourself. 

This is such an important time of your life and a long part of your life, and there’s so much we can do that you might not hear about in your standard doctor’s appointment.

That’s why it’s so important for you to learn and find practitioners who can help guide you along the way. As a naturopathic doctor, I’m licensed in Connecticut, California, Arizona, and Washington state, helping women navigate menopause. I can help women with natural approaches via phone/video no matter your location, andI can help with bioidentical hormone replacement in California, Arizona, and Washington state.

The key message is that you don’t have to resign yourself to menopausal symptoms, weight gain, or declining health. There are evidence-based approaches available to help women thrive through this transition. 

If you would like to learn more about how you can navigate through menopause I have a free masterclass call Mastering Menopause.

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With proper support, testing, and treatment, women can maintain their health and vitality throughout menopause and beyond.

Remember, investing in your health is not selfish – it’s necessary. Just as we’re told on airplanes to put on our own oxygen mask before helping others, we must prioritize our own health to be able to care for those who depend on us. 

The time has come for women to take charge of their health and well-being, understanding that preventive care now leads to better outcomes in the future.

It is also important to know that it is possible to recover from stress and trauma and truly heal, because you’re not likely to hear that from your standard doctor’s office. Keep in mind, they are not educated about diet, exercise, supplements, or stress recovery. 

I am living proof that it is possible to heal holistically and naturally. It’s possible to balance your hormones or to use hormone replacement safely and effectively, as well as to clear HPV and get a normal pap result, and to eliminate the effects of stress, trauma, anxiety and depression. I help patients with to do this in my practice every day – by phone and zoom, anywhere in the world. You can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

Once I meet with you one on one, we will create a strategic plan based on your health needs during menopause, including sessions with the health coach on my team to help guide you to implement my proprietary C.A.R.E. and Stress Mastery programs. 

Thank you all for joining me for this episode of How Humans Heal and make sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss the next one! You can access it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you prefer. You can also watch at doctordoni.com.

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