This Is Your Brain on Perimenopause

So the first thing that I thought was a really interesting shift for me and sort of allowed me to understand what was going on in my body was something that Dr. Felicia Gersh often says, and she sort of had the same epiphany for herself.

She said when she finally accepted that the prime directive for her body for life was reproductive success, and once that period of time was over, things were shifting in her body metabolically and through all of her body, and it allowed her to understand that our cells, that's what they're driven for as females is for reproduction.

Not that culturally in, in society now, that's not our main purpose, but our cells and our being, our body, that's its main purpose.

And so when it's done with that from an evolutionary perspective, for most of the course of human history, we didn't live super long after our reproductive time had ended, right? It's only really been in the last 100, 150 years that we've had the advancements of science and modern medicine to extend our lifespan well beyond those reproductive years.

And so just kind of accepting and understanding that allows you to, I think, settle in with, "Okay, my body thought it was sort of gonna be, like, calling it quits after, but now I get to stay for the ride for a lot longer." And I kind of envision this conversation in my head with my cells where they're like, "Uh, okay, guys, um, anybody, a- anybody know what to do now? Now that, like, estrogen's starting to go lower and stay lower and kind of being crazy, and progesterone, again, not really responding properly, luteinizing hormone," all these other reproductive hormones that thus have effects on the rest of our body.

And everybody's like, "Well, anybody got the manual? Does anybody know what to do? Anyone? Heart? Liver? Pancreas? GI? Nervous system? Anybody? Bones? Muscles? Does anybody know? Anybody know?" And th- and they're just...

everybody's just, like, doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to handle it.

Like, "What's happening? How do I deal with this?" And I sort of put that in my head as my body's going through this [laughs] where every, all these cells are just looking for answers from the other one.

Nobody knows what to do.

Nobody knows, like, "Do, uh, you have a secret manual? How do we handle this?" 'Cause our body was really designed to have the manual of reproduction and these very rhythmic pulsing of our hormones, and when that goes away, they're just very confused, like their leader has left them, and they don't know how to operate.

And so that's sort of how I have given myself a little bit of a grace during this period of time.

And explaining that to my husband really helped 'cause he's like, "Oh, I didn't know all this." And so I encourage you, after we have this conversation today, to really find some time with your husband to have that conversation with him or your significant other or, you know, a family member that you're with or your children if they're old enough and can help you and sort of understand.

Or if you have girls, um, and they're of age or they're getting their menstrual cycle or they're older, have this conversation with them too and be like, "Let me tell you, like, here's ...

This is gonna happen, and don't be afraid of it.

It's not scary." And the other thing I think that's really powerful from a mindset is no woman will not go through menopause.

You can go through menopause in different ways.

You can have a full hysterectomy and go into menopause really quickly.

You can have early menopause.

You can have late menopause.

But there's not a woman who has her ovaries who isn't gonna go through this senescence of her ovarian function, meaning, like, it's turning down and turning off, okay? And so I think all of that is very helpful to set us up for today, but today I really wanna talk about, as the title is, this is your brain on perimenopause [laughs] because nobody really talks about this, and it is super important.