It’s something that roughly half the population will experience, but it’s only recently that people have started to talk more openly about it. Menopause, or “the big M,” is often a time that women dread.
Even the mere mention of menopause brings up the negative side effects associated with the change, like hot flashes, insomnia, stubborn weight gain and mental fog, none of which are exactly pleasant to think are on the horizon.
But there’s a subtle shift happening. Celebrities like Oprah, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow are leading the way on making menopause a more approachable topic, and there’s more conversation about supporting women while they go through this big life change.
Tamsen Fadal, a journalist and menopause advocate, shares that there’s still more to do to normalize the conversation and varied feelings around menopause. “I wish I knew that was going to feel like a ‘kickass’ time in my life—and that I was going to be bolder, not just older.”
What is menopause?
When you haven’t had a period for 12 consecutive months, you’re considered officially in menopause. However, you may experience symptoms associated with menopause for up to 10 years before this, says Dr. Bruce Dorr, Senior Medical Advisor for Biote, a bioidentical hormone replacement therapy company and education company.
During this lead-up to menopause, a time commonly called perimenopause, you’ll experience a natural decline in hormones. It’s this shift that ultimately marks the end of your reproductive cycle, and the trigger for the symptoms many women experience.
Dorr says there are more than 100 symptoms (ranging from back pain to mood changes) that women can experience as they go through menopause. He says more than 80% of women will experience night sweats and hot flashes, the most common symptoms.
Why is it common to dread menopause?
While getting your first period is often celebrated and seen as a positive step into adulthood, going through menopause is typically met with the opposite reaction.
“Menopause has traditionally been associated with aging and the loss of femininity, sexuality and fertility,” says Alyssa Dweck, MS, MD, FACOG, the chief medical officer of Bonafide Health, all things that usually have a negative connotation associated with them.
On top of that, many doctors aren’t well-versed or comfortable talking about menopause. A recent AARP study found that only 20% of medical residency programs currently have any menopause training and even then, the coursework is very limited.
Allison Lewin, a menopause coach and the founder of Menowar, says because many OB-GYNs aren’t experts in menopause, they aren’t “priming their patients during the time period when they could be entering perimenopause.” As a result, “women aren’t getting the heads-up from their doctors, can often be dismissed, or not properly treated during this time due to lack of expertise.”
Elektra Health found that as many as 16% of women are experiencing menopause symptoms without having been diagnosed by their doctor. “I wish I knew that the symptoms were normal and that there was nothing “wrong with me,” says Fadal. She says she just didn’t know what was going on, and sadly, her experience is similar to other women who suffer in silence.
Feeling like menopause is a taboo topic to talk about and not getting a heads up from your doctor about what to expect is enough to make most people dread the changes.
The current generation can flip the script on dreading menopause
The good news? Menopause is becoming more mainstream. Oprah hosted a “Menopause Talk” with celebrities like Maria Shriver and Drew Barrymore last year. Halle Berry shouted “I’m in menopause!” on Capitol Hill in May. Fadal created a community on TikTok around the hashtag #menopausetok so that women could share their stories.
There’s a groundswell working to embrace this life change rather than fear it. “The connotation of menopause is changing from ‘state of hysteria’ to just another natural stage of life that 50% of the population will experience,” says Dr. Dweck.
As Berry told Good Morning America earlier this month, “It’s a normal stage of life. Don’t make it a negative.” Instead, she said, “Let’s talk about it, and let’s figure out what we can do.”
How to embrace menopause
If you are currently dreading menopause, here are 4 tips for changing your perspective, according to experts:
1. Educate yourself on what’s coming
Knowledge is power. Learning more about what symptoms you might experience and what might signal your body is going through menopause can help make it less scary. Sarah Lussier, menopause health mediator and strategist, suggests seeking out older women to learn about their experience going through menopause, and to understand what helped them get through the changes. “Often when the patient herself is unfamiliar with menopause symptoms they are attributed to something unrelated to menopause and subsequently treated incorrectly, or with a bandaid solution such as antidepressants or sleeping pills, says Dr. Dorr.
2. Advocate for yourself
“Every woman needs to be the CEO of their own health” says Lewin. Ask your OB-GYN or primary care doctor before you start experiencing symptoms how comfortable they are treating menopause. Dr. Dweck and Lewin are fans of using The Menopause Society to find a doctor well versed in treating menopause systems, and Lewin also recommends telehealth menopause provider Midi to find care. “Menopause symptoms can be treated, and if your provider tells you that you should put up with it until it passes or it’s a normal part of aging then you need to go to a different provider, says Dr. Dorr.
3. Know that symptoms are treatable
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been a method for successfully treating menopause symptoms since the 1990s but in 2003, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) published a study that claimed HRT had detrimental side effects like breast cancer and strokes, essentially halting the use of these drugs overnight. The good news is that this study has been reinterpreted and HRT is considered to be the most effective way to treat menopause symptoms. Outside of HRT, lifestyle changes like getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well and reducing stress can also help with symptom management.
4. Keep a positive mindset
Yes, most women experience at least some symptoms while going through menopause. Yes, it is a big life change. But you’ll never have to deal with a period again or worry about accidentally getting pregnant. Dr. Dweck calls it a liberation of sorts, and also points to all of the examples of women killing it personally and professionally while they’re going through menopause. “Yes, [menopause] is a time of great change,” Lussier says. “There are many challenges, but those challenges could be less challenging if we didn’t fear aging and losing our value as women in society.”
