'When my dad said peri-menopause I thought he was daft!': Two women lift the veil on what it is REALLY like going through 'the change'
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Weight gain, anxiety, dry skin, headaches, insomnia, hair thinning... Sound familiar?
Women in menopause are known to experience up to 34 of these life-changing side-effects over a period of ten years, impacting everything from family life and friendships to work, by challenging a woman's confidence, mobility and memory.
Yet many women never achieve a formal diagnosis or explanation, instead reporting feelings of loneliness and confusion about their condition*.
One platform that recognizes the many challenges of menopause is Live Better With, a unique healthcare resource dedicated to improving the day-to-day lives of people living with long-term conditions, like cancer and dementia.
Since expanding their reach to women with menopause using helpful articles, specialized products and community forums, Live Better With has proved to be an invaluable resource to thousands.
Nicki Williams says her father was the first person to suggest she might be in peri-menopause
Here, we speak to women living with menopause about the ways they have found to live better with the condition.
'When my dad said I was in peri-menopause I thought he was daft,' says 52-year-old Nicki Williams, whose father was the first person to mention the 'm-word', ten years ago.
'I was only 42 and readjusting to my busy corporate job not long after having my children. The idea of being in menopause so far off my 50s seemed ridiculous to me.'
But Nicki displayed many of the common symptoms, including extreme changes in mood, weight and energy levels.
She says: 'I used to have enough energy to do a full day's work, then go to the gym and enjoy time with my children after all that.
'But life became quite exhausting when I hit 40. I didn't want to put myself out there anymore - I felt frumpy, fat, tired, which meant I wasn't great company at work, or at home.
Nicki, 52, says she had many symptoms such as forgetfulness, tiredness, and weight gain
'By 52, I'd turned into somebody else entirely. My work was being affected by horrific brain fog, like forgetting things in the middle of a meeting, and my husband and children always got the brunt of my bad moods.'
Tearful and confused, Nicki took a 'never-ending' list of symptoms to her local doctor, who prescribed a course of anti-depressants and swiftly 'ushered her out of the surgery'.
'I knew I wasn't depressed,' she says. 'But I had no idea what was happening to my body. That's when I called my dad for help.'
Nicki's dad, a former general practitioner who had long-since retrained as a hormone specialist to manage chronic fatigue syndrome, worked with women in peri-menopause regularly and recognized many of the symptoms Nicki described, as menopausal.
She says: 'I was shocked to hear that these were the effects of normal hormone imbalances that started in my late 30s.
'Unknowingly, I had also been doing all the wrong things for my body: like crash dieting, which ruins your metabolism, getting stressed at work, which can make the hormones worse, and neglecting exercise, which often helps to offset the deficiencies and the stress.'
Nicki's dad recommended some simple dietary changes and stress management techniques, along with supplements to give her body the right nutrients.
Everything changed within weeks, Nicki says.
Nicki says once she found the correct treatment, her symptoms changed within weeks
'The brain fog lifted, I lost weight, my energy came back and my mood balanced out. It seemed like a miracle to me.'
In fact, this nutritional 'miracle' fascinated Nicki so much that she wanted to learn more. The mom-of-two subsequently returned to college to retrain as a nutrition and hormone specialist and now serves as a community expert at Live Better With, where she writes expert articles aimed at helping women live better with menopause as well as curating a line of specialist products available to purchase on the site.
'I have this "secret weapon" that I am desperate to share with other menopausal and peri-menopausal women. No-one should have to suffer through it anymore because there are natural ways that are proven to target and prevent the symptoms.
'Live Better With is an amazing platform helping women every day with guidance, training and advice, not to mention the support they get from speaking to other women their age.
'I'm 52 now and since I learned to manage my hormones naturally, I haven't experienced a single menopausal symptom. I dread to think what would have happened to me without the right help.'
Like thousands of the women Nicki helps every day with menopause, 52-year-old Samantha Shaw also says discovering Live Better With was an 'eureka' moment.
Samantha Shaw, 52, says she felt weak, irritable and tearful before she got proper treatment
Samantha, who holds down a busy job as a project manager for a bank, describes her experience of menopause as 'the longest journey of [her] life,' saying she has visited her local doctor regularly for the last four years desperately seeking help for her symptoms.
But discovering Live Better With was when Samantha learned how to manage it for herself.
'Getting help from doctors was going nowhere,' she says. 'So, when I first came across the site, I thought, "at last!" What I needed was that reassurance from other people that I wasn't going mad, I wasn't depressed, I wasn't losing my memory - it was all just a normal part of being a woman, and growing older.'
Like Nicki, Samantha was wrongly prescribed anti-depressants but accepted the course of treatment, feeling 'desperate to do anything'.
'It was a very low time for me,' Samantha says. 'I couldn't concentrate at work with brain fog and anxiety, which I'd never experienced before. My email inbox was enough to make me breathless every morning, worrying about the amount of work I needed to get through.
'In myself, I felt weak, irritable and tearful most days so looking back, I can see why my moods were mistaken for depression. But the tablets made things so much worse, to the point where I couldn't get out of bed in the mornings. It really sent me into a dark place with this numbness that left me unable to cope with everyday life.'
After that, Samantha was recommended Estrogel, to target her estrogen levels, as well as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) without any preliminary blood tests to establish which hormones expressed the greatest imbalance.
Samantha says finding Live Better With was a relief after years of being ignored by doctors
That's when Samantha decided to take matters into her own hands and found Live Better With online, where she discovered a community of people living well with menopause, as well as experts like Nicki who were on hand to help.
Sam says: 'Live Better With directed me to the right doctors and nutritionists after years of being ignored and cast aside. It was a relief to feel listened to.
'Inside the forums, I was also thrilled to listen to other women's experiences and gain the kind of information that I could share with friends and colleagues, like which foods were high in estrogen and how important exercise is for strength at a certain age.'
Since discovering the site, Samantha has started Pilates Reformer, a fitness class that helps to strengthen the muscles and the core, and found the confidence to put herself out there at clubs and communities again.
'Managing menopause well has changed my life,' she says. 'It can be a very lonely condition to live with, but having one place where you'll find like-minded people, all trying to find the same answers is exactly what I needed.
'Finding the ways to live better with menopause has been the longest journey of my life although it needn't be this way. It's great to finally be a part of a community that picks up anyone who's struggling along the way.'
Samantha says the forums on Live Better With were a source of comfort and practical help
*SOURCE - 1. https://www.webmd.com/menopause/guide/emotional-roller-coaster
