My top Perimenopause books

There are loads of great books about perimenopause out there. But these 4 are my favourites that I refer back to and recommend all the time. They’re in no particular order, so take a look at my brief summary and what I love about them and then grab yourself the one which most appeals to you (or 2, or 3, or all 4.) There are no paid links in this blog.

The Hormone Repair Manual by Lara Briden.

What I like:

• Great information to help you understand exactly what is going on during your perimenopausal years.

• Great information on a variety of symptoms, including causes, and what you can do to help yourself when experiencing them.

• A fantastic mix of science, nutrition, HRT and holistic advice which all comes together to give you back some control during these turbulant times.

Extra: Check our Lara’s website for a massive range of information on periods, perimenopause and menopause here.

Second Spring by Kate Codrington

What I like:

• An incredible holistic overview of the different stages of perimenopause, menopause and our post menopausal years.

• An honest and frank book with practical meditations, mantras and holistic practices you can easily use to support yourself.

• Filled with real life stories to help you deeply realise that you are not alone, far from it.

• This book offers guidance, like a best friend of a book, supporting you through these sometimes turbulent years.

• The hope. This is a time of transformation, not to be feared, but revered - I’m on board with that!

The Menopause Brain by Dr Lisa Mosconi

What I like:

• Key message that your not loosing your mind, quite the contrary, your brain is rewiring itself for a higher purpose - whoop!

• Science backing up a holistic approach to women’s health during the perimenopause and menopause

• Explaining what is going on and the deep connection between our hormones and our brain - fascinating stiuff!

• Deep dive on the benefits of hormonal and non hormonal therapies

• 100 pages on the importance of an all round approach to your health at this time - one size does not fit all and one aproach does not tend to reduce all your symptoms.

• This is a great book for giving you the tools and knowledge you need to make the best choices for you.

Extra: Check out Dr Mosconi’s Ted Talk: Lisa Mosconi: How menopause affects the brain | TED Talk

Wise Power, Red School, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer

What I like:

• A completely holistic approach to the perimenopause experience, but grounded in the reality of the experience too.

• Offering you guidance on how to cope and honour the emotional changes that occur

• Giving you hope and belief in yourself that even in the darkest of times, you will get through this and emerge more wonderful than every before.

• A framework in which to put your experience in (fluid as those frames may be) which allows you to truly experience the incredible change that is occurring in your body.

• This book empowers, honors, cherishes and celebrates the perimenopause years and beyond.

Extra: Check out their podcast for loads of great interviews and conversations around the perimenopause The Menstruality Podcast | Red School

In conclusion… every woman’s experience of the perimenopausal years is different, I could have recommended 20 books, I could have picked just 2. But I wanted to offer a range of books which would appeal to a range of women who all have their own needs, demands, desires and preferences.

I’d recommend if you can to choose one book from the above that immediately calls to you. And one that doesn’t.

Your brain is being rewired (which I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen to me) so open it up to something new, and you just might find something magical which help transforms your perimenopause experience.

Lets love growing Older, Wiser and Happier ladies,

Heather*

email me heather@deavilleyoga.com with your perimenopause book suggestions - I’d love to know them.

3 reasons why you should practice yoga during Perimenopause

Firstly yoga is fantastic for reducing stress, which can be at an all time high during perimenopause.

It’s quite likely that during your perimenopausal years, which could start in your mid 40’s (or sooner) and continue for up to an average of 3-7 years, that you are going to be busy working, raising a family and life is going to jam packed with work/life commitments.

Add into that mix achy joints, night sweats, anxiety, brain fog, disturbed sleep, and any number of perimenopause symptoms (find a list here: What is Perimenopause?) And, well, then you have the perfect storm for stress.

Yoga is a great antidote to stress, many forms of yogic breathing, referred to as pranayama, are specifically designed to help us release stress from the body, bringing us into a calm state of rest and digest. It does this by activating what is known as our parasympathic nervous system. This 20 minute free class is specifically designed to help reduce your stress levels, so give it a go.

Secondly, yoga is also wonderful for reducing feelings of anxiety, which might pop up from out of no where, which feels unnerving to say the least. I remember frequently wondering why on earth I felt anxious when they was seemingly no real reason.

As I learnt more about the hormonal changes during perimenopause, check out my blog on these here. I started to understand that it was these hormonal shifts that were causing my anxiety, which was a relief, but it didn’t mean those feelings just went away.

So I turned to my yoga practice once more. Moving gentle and kindly, and working with mantras like “It’s going to be okay” I found I was able to support myself through those days and weeks each cycle where I just couldn’t shake off my anxiety.

Yoga is designed to help us find a deeper connection to our bodies, minds and souls and when we do this we feel more grounded and centered, which helps those feelings of anxiety slip away. I’ve created a lovely free class for you to enjoy on YouTube here:

And thirdly, yoga is great for getting our joints moving, which helps to ease those common perimenopause aches and pains. I remember waking up some mornings and thinking, “oh my god, I feel like I’ve never even practiced yoga.” I was so stiff and everything ached.

I found that gentle rhythmical movements (like those in the class above) really helped to ease out my early morning aches and pains.

By gently rotating our joins we encourage blood and lymph (a fluid in the body that delivers nutrients and proteins to your muscles) to head to these areas and this really helps us to feel less achy. It’s especially important to do this before you get into a more challenging yoga practice, or before you go running as it helps to cushion and protect the joints.

With limited time I also regularly reached for this morning practice below:

Yoga can support you during the perimenopause transition in so many wonderful ways. In this blog I’ve touched on just 3 of hundreds, and I hope they help you. Heather*

Hormonal changes during Perimenopause

So, what exactly is causing all these physical and emotional changes in your 40’s?

During perimenopause, the years leading up to Menopause, you may experience any number of changes in mood as well as physical changes, maybe some of the symptoms listed in my What is Perimenopause blog article will ring true for you.

And why is this happening? Well, it’s your hormones. And not just your sex hormones, known as progesterone, oestrogen and testosterone, there’s others involved, stress hormones in particular, but our sex hormones are the main instigators so that’s what were going to fucus on.

During perimenopause the first thing that happens is that progesterone levels lower, and when that happens you may experience some of the following.

Symptoms of low progesterone:

• Feeling of anxiety

• Your periods may become irregular

• Your cycle length may shorten

• You may get spotting in the luteal phase of your cycle, although you should always get this investigated if you're worried. Note, The Luteal phase of your cycle is the days or weeks after you have ovulated, before your period comes or pregnancy occurs.

• Depression

• Water retention

• Migraines

  Secondly oestrogen peters out, but not without some major ups and downs. And when that happens you may experience:

  High Oestrogen:

• Breast pain

• Heavy periods

• Fibroids (non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb (uterus) and vary in size. They can cause heavy periods, pain, infertility and other complications, and are linked to the hormone oestrogen.)

• Fluid retention

• Irritability

• Anxiety

  Low Oestrogen:

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Weight gain

• Hot flushes/night sweats

• Insomnia

• Hair loss

• Vaginal atrophy

• Vaginal dryness

• Inflammation

• Muscle aches and pains

Now you may be reading this thinking but I have symptoms of both high and low Oestrogen, and low progesterone, what's going on?

Well, our hormone levels change throughout the day and throughout the weeks of our cycle (which is what makes blood testing for perimenopause so inaccurate) so it would make sense that you have a range of symptoms and some that might cross over.

What I would recommend you do, is take 5 minutes now to write down the symptoms you’ve experienced, and do this every few days from now on (or daily if life allows) and over time you may seem a pattern forming that helps you to work out which stage of perimenopause you are in. Or maybe it just reassures you that you are perimenopausal, which I certainly found a relief to know.

Please let me know if you have any questions from the blog above or if anything isn’t quite clear heather@deavilleyoga.com I’d love to hear from you!

I’s also highly recommend this blog post from Lara Briden, which includes a great graph of what goes on with your hormones throughout your life.

What is Perimenopause?

On a clinical level perimenopause is the years leading up to you having had no period for 12 months. Then for one day you are in menopause, day 366 since your last period started. And then after that you are post menopausal, although you may have another period or bleed.

Perimenopause can be felt in the body and mind, showing up in an array of different symptoms. Some women will experience none of these, for some they’ll have a few and for other they can be debilitating.

It’s difficult to have a blood test to determine weather you are in perimenopause or not, because our hormone levels change from hour to hour. So in my opinion, the best way we can discover if we are in perimenopause by looking at our symptoms.

So what do perimenopause symptoms include?

Lets break them down into the body, physiological and the mind or emotions, psychological.

Possible psychological emotional/mind symptoms of perimenopause

• low mood

• anxiety

• depression

• rage

• anger

• brain fog (this falls into both physical and emotional symptoms)

• low libido (as does this)

  Possible bodily symptoms of perimenopause

• Abdominal pain

• bloating

• constipation

• diarrhea

• altered sense of smell/taste

• heavy or light bleeding

• brown discharge

• spotting

• breast tenderness

• brittle nails

• dizziness

• difficulty breathing

• dry eyes

• dry/ itchy skin

• oral health problems

• hearing issues

• heart palpitations

• heartburn

• hot flushes

• night sweats

• joint pain

• muscle pain

• migraines

• pelvic floor problems

• overactive bladder

• vaginal prolapse

• urinary tract

• Infections

• vaginal dryness

And this is by no means exhaustive.

You can also see how the two could very much interact with one another. If your bleeding heavily and in terrible pain with vaginal dryness, its quite likely that would affect your mood.

And likewise, if your mood is low and you lack the motivation to leave the house, its highly like that you could end up suffering with joint and muscular pains from a lack of gentle movement. Note the word gentle here. Perimenopause is not the time for extreme exercise in my opinion, but gentle to moderate exercise with weight and resistance training could be just what you need, to support you physically and emotionally through this time of transition and change.

So now you know what PERIMENOPAUSE is. How it may look, feel and show up in your body. Next week in my blog we’ll be exploring the why. Why are these symptoms occurring, what is going on?

Thanks for reading, Heather*

Perimenopause and me

To start the story of my perimenopause journey in many ways I need to travel back into my early teens when my periods started and the role of hormones in my day to day life became more obvious.

As a child of the 80’s periods weren’t really talked about that much and the emotional changes that can occur were never mentioned, but I had all the practical info and like most girls cracked on with it.

In some ways I was lucky, I had light, irregular periods (no 28 day cycle for me) and I didn’t feel that they had a huge impact on my day to day life. Although I knew I was never going to wear white and go rollerblading when I had my period, who remembers those adds!

I was lucky, pregnancy came easily in my 30’s and it was only really towards my late 30’s that I started to experience any symptoms in relation to my periods.

It started with heavy bleeding and periods coming quicker and faster. My periods were so heavy I had to spend the day in bed. These hormonal changes, which I know now were the early signs of perimenopause, soon developed into low moods, anxiety, achy joints, crying uncontrollably, headaches, exhaustion and memory problems. I found it terrifying not to be able to explain how I felt, or equally remember the word windowsill (bit of wood under the window anyone?)

It’s hard to think back to how awful I felt some days, I’ve almost forgotten how bad it was now that I’ve educated myself, made pretty small but dramatic life changes (slowly and one at a time.)

I’ve now grasped this life change with both hands. But it was awful, it really was. And if you’re going through something similar my heart reaches out to you. You will be okay. With time and support, you will.

In some ways I’m now thankful for this journey, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I feel present and alive and I have a much stronger sense of who I am and what it is I care about than every before.

But the roads been a bumpy one and a long one and I’m by no means at its end. But over the next few weeks, months and years I’m going to share my story here on my blog and everything I have learnt with you. In the hope that it will help. I really hope it does.

Please reach out to me if you’re struggling through this time.

Heather*

email heather@deavilleyoga.com