6 Hidden Benefits of Perimenopause and Why We Need To Know About Them
- Brainz Magazine
- 4 days ago
- 11 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Tanishka is a world-renowned author, speaker, and facilitator who’s passionate about supporting people to transform times of chaos and crisis into empowering turning points. Beloved as ‘The Moon Woman’ for her blog followed by half a million people, she helps people understand how the cycles of nature initiate us to mature, ancient wisdom that’s essential for social sustainability. Her work has been translated into multiple languages.
Perimenopause is a loaded word like Voldemort, the villain in the Harry Potter books, it’s dreaded by 31% of women, according to an NIH study conducted in 2022. Understandable that the mention of the word perimenopause is associated with a long list of symptoms that incite fear and dread. Such as vaginal atrophy, a term that conjures, in my mind, the image of the painting The Scream, in my underpants, accompanied by the music from the Psycho shower scene!
So why is it nearly impossible to find anyone who has anything good to say about perimenopause? And why does most available information on perimenopause focus on the downside? We’re meant to assume it’s because most women experience extreme physical discomfort and brain fog. That’s the apparent reason but there’s also another, less obvious reason fueling perimenopause’s negative PR campaign.
The first rule of marketing is to identify a problem and then offer prospective customers a solution.
So who is listing the problems of perimenopause on Google and marketing a solution? Big Pharma. Yes! Perimenopause is big business, at women’s expense. So it’s worth scrutinizing those asserting themselves as our saviour, rather than blindly trusting science as our father figure who will rescue us from our suffering.
The backstory
HRT (hormone replacement therapy) was introduced in 1942 under the name Premarin, a synthetic oestrogen that promised men that their women would be “pleasant to live with once again.” However, it wasn’t until the ’60s that sales skyrocketed, thanks to the book Feminine Forever by Robert A. Wilson, published in 1966. Wilson, an American gynaecologist in the twilight of his career, had never published a single medical paper when he accepted funding from the pharmaceutical industry to write Feminine Forever, followed by more funding to do book tours promoting HRT.¹
He did this by rebranding perimenopause as a “serious medical disease,²” inferring that doctors who didn’t treat it with synthetic hormones were negligent. To ensure uptake by women, he preyed on their fear of aging, claiming that with HRT, her “breasts and genital organs will not shrivel she will not become dull and unattractive.” And the result? Sales quadrupled by playing on women’s fear of ageing, with the implied threat that they’d be rejected by men should they age naturally.
Fast forward 60 years, and the global conversation on perimenopause is dominated by those acting on behalf of the medical and pharmaceutical industries, which profit from women’s physical and financial dependency on synthetic hormones.
A balanced perspective requires a concerted effort
It’s worth remembering that nothing in life is one-sided. Everything is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it. To balance the pharmaceutical marketing monopoly vying for our dependency, we need to take back our power by acknowledging our fears, not just conscious fears like, “Will I have a dry, itchy vulva for the rest of my days?” but subconscious fears, such as the fear of ending up as an ‘old maid.’ Not uncommon, thanks to the card game many of us played as little girls, where we tried to outsmart our friends to avoid being dealt the card that would see us alone, a figure of mockery in our old age.
Are there any benefits of perimenopause? What are they?
Having recently completed a 12-year journey through perimenopause, here’s my offering to the collective sisterhood who are currently in perimenopause or approaching it.
1. Women prioritise self-care in perimenopause
As women, we tend to caretake the needs of others, whether that’s the needs of clients, tending to projects that serve the collective good, or the needs of loved ones. Perimenopause demands we tend to our health and well-being as a matter of priority. This is because there’s so much change occurring within our bodies that we are forced ‘out of our heads’ to focus on the needs of our bodies.
The onset of neurological changes such as vertigo, brain fog, and tension headaches also dictates that we set and maintain personal limits that honour our well-being, such as spending less time on screens where we’re exposed to harmful radiation that undermines our sleep quality.
Our increased levels of sensitivity in perimenopause also require that we assert our needs more than ever before, rather than continue relegating our needs to the back burner to please and appease others. This is why women typically start speaking up during perimenopause, asserting themselves as advocates on their own behalf. It’s also when women tend to make necessary changes to restructure their lives so they don’t burn out or exacerbate their perimenopausal symptoms due to overwork.
A patriarchal culture values productivity as a measure of self-worth. So, as young women, we’re more inclined to override our body's needs to ‘get the job done,’ even at ‘that time of the month.’ Perimenopause sounds like a death knell to this pattern of self-sacrifice. A 2022 study found that 1 in 10 women left their jobs during perimenopause, and this trend is increasing. A study in late 2023 conducted by a UK workplace healthcare provider found that 23% of perimenopausal women were considering resigning, and 14% had a plan to do so.
My cousin used to joke that women suffered from ‘late-onset feminism.’ I see it more as, with maturity, we become more empowered and aware of the impact of our choices, so we take greater responsibility for ourselves.
2. Women often make more discerning relationship choices in perimenopause
It’s not just in our working lives that perimenopause serves as a catalyst to ‘lift our game.’ Many women choose to leave relationships that are not meeting their needs during perimenopause. Why? Perimenopause ushers in our third life stage, the autumn phase of our seasonal wheel, known in traditional women’s wisdom as the ‘mage phase.’ This life phase corresponds to the third phase in our fertility cycle: the luteal phase.
In both perimenopause and the luteal phase, we experience a waning of energy. So, just as a deciduous tree drops its leaves to conserve energy, we become more discerning about the company we keep. Hence, the onset of perimenopause serves as a catalyst for us to honour our limits and set boundaries that protect our energy and time. This starts with observing and identifying who drains us or elevates our nervous system.
As our oestrogen declines and fertility wanes, we are also less inclined to be over-responsible for others. Put another way, we’re less likely to mother people. This typically manifests as having less patience with those who demonstrate an inability to reciprocate and be mutually supportive, both in friendships and partnerships.
The hormonal fluctuations we experience in perimenopause also mean we’re more inclined to insist our adolescent children take on age-appropriate responsibilities, or, if they’re young adults, leave the nest if they’re not honouring their agreements by pulling their weight with domestic chores and/or financial contributions.
3. Women become more informed and empowered in perimenopause
When we’re younger, we tend to abdicate responsibility for ourselves and put blind faith in the so-called ‘experts’, such as doing the simplest option, taking a pill instead of seeking to understand the cause and effect of our actions. In my youth, I took my body for granted. I did ‘what I could get away with’ when it came to my health by doing the bare minimum. That is, until the onset of perimenopause. Why? Perimenopause exacerbates any underlying chronic health conditions, so it serves as an initiation to become hyper-vigilant by putting in the time needed to research and understand how our bodies function, so we can play a more active role in addressing our specific health conditions.
For me, the chronic conditions that came to the fore during perimenopause, a time of reckoning with myself, are common to many women. They included:
Irritable bowel and leaky gut
This pre-existing condition was due to the large amount of antibiotics I’d been prescribed as a child, which had decimated my microbiome, along with my intolerance to gluten and lactose. The lowering of oestrogen in perimenopause further compromised my gut health. While I got some relief from naturopathic supplements and herbal tinctures, it wasn’t until I saw an Ayurvedic doctor in Bali, who put me on cooked foods for six months and removed soy from my diet, that I healed my gut health and improved my digestion. This helped me to increase my metabolism and digest lentils and pulses. I also became more vigilant about not eating foods that I found difficult to digest, such as gluten and dairy.
Joint and nerve pain
This pre-existing condition was due to a disintegrated disc from a car accident and scoliosis. I healed the inflammation that was causing the joint pain by changing my diet. This was instigated by weight gain during the lockdowns. Motivated by vanity, I enrolled in an online course that claimed the liver shrinks in size during perimenopause, which could contribute to weight gain. I did my research and discovered that, rather than shrink in size, what occurs is that oestrogen, which has a protective effect on the liver, dramatically declines in perimenopause. As a result, our liver has to work harder to detox, especially when we ingest foods and substances that are harder for our liver to process, such as those containing saturated fats or alcohol. The more ‘fatty’ our liver, the more sluggish our metabolism, resulting in weight gain.³ I suspect this is why my vegetarian friends reported fewer perimenopausal symptoms. While I found a paleo diet worked well initially to repair my gut health in early perimenopause, it became unsustainable due to the joint pain I started to experience. This led to me becoming more informed about my body and making dietary changes that would alleviate my symptoms. I switched to a pescatarian/Mediterranean or ‘Blue Zones’ diet, rich in good fats such as avocado, nuts, olives, and oily fish. I relieved the nerve pain with daily yoga and core strengthening to support my back.
Auto-immune & pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder
This condition was due to the underlying Epstein-Barr virus, a common stealth virus that cloaks itself in the B-cells of the body and undermines immune function. Typically, this presents as swollen glands when one’s energy is depleted and contributes to premenstrual dysphoric disorder (extreme premenstrual tension) due to the viral load taxing my body in the luteal phase, when 80% of our energy reserves are directed to menstruation.⁴ I healed this with bio-resonance, a technological modality that directs specific frequencies to counteract their corresponding ailments. It wasn’t until I had my amalgam dental fillings removed that the Epstein-Barr virus was cleared, since it feeds on heavy metals like mercury.
Today, I am healthier than ever before. I’m less dependent on health professionals, which saves me money. That said, I am vigilant in maintaining my diet and exercise routine out of a deeper sense of reverence and respect for my body.
4. The body steps up detoxification to promote immunity in perimenopause
While hot flushes are often inconvenient, just as with fever, hot flushes raise our temperature to detox the body. When we’re fertile, we detox once a month through menstruation. As we menstruate less or cease menstruating, the body finds an alternate way to detox. This is why hot flushes are more common in the final year of perimenopause and why many women experience them long into menopause, when periods have stopped. This is also why I notice more hot flushes if I drink alcohol.
Today, modern science admits it doesn’t know what causes hot flushes, but hypothesises that the reason for hot flushes is our hypothalamus ‘gets confused.’ I would suggest it’s not the hypothalamus that’s confused, but the hypothesis!
It seems more likely that hot flushes are the response of the natural intelligence of the body counteracting the decrease in oestrogen that occurs in perimenopause. Why? Lowered oestrogen means lowered immunity. As mentioned previously, gut health declines in perimenopause. This is due to the decrease in oestrogen, making us more susceptible to germs and bacteria. Our regular temperature is 98.6˚F / 37˚C. Germs happily exist at this temperature, but when our temperature rises to 102˚F / 38.88˚C to 104˚F / 40˚C, germs struggle to survive and reproduce.⁵ So bless your hot flushes, they are protecting you from illness by ensuring you’re not a welcome habitat for an imbalance of harmful germs and bacteria.
5. Women become more intuitive and creative during perimenopause
Depression and anxiety are often cited as signs of perimenopause due to hormonal sensitivity. We become more sensitive as we age. Sensitivity is viewed as a weakness from a rational/material (patriarchal) perspective. When understood and embraced, our increased sensitivity can be viewed as a sign of evolution, a strength. Traditional women’s wisdom honours sensitivity as a proclivity to harness our subtle senses. When we are in perimenopause, we are more sensitive and therefore have greater access to our:
clairvoyance (clear inner seeing)
clairaudience (inner hearing)
clairsentience (inner sensing)
precognition (sensing future events)
and intuition (inner knowing)
Perimenopause is a threshold where we start to make wiser choices so that in our next life stage, we can embody the wise elder woman, who in the ancient world was revered for her psychic power. This is a novel concept for women raised to equate ‘hearing voices’ with madness and psychics with sideshow charlatans.
While our enhanced sensitivity during perimenopause can make it more challenging to unwind at the end of the day and get a good night’s sleep, I found that if I awoke during the night due to a hot flush, this enabled better dream recall. Rather than fight it, I used the opportunity to reflect on the unresolved issues being processed by my subconscious in the dream state. By spending more time dozing in the liminal space, the bridge between the sleep and wake state, I also received more intuitive insights and creative inspiration. In the Native American tradition, women dry gourds in perimenopause, as the seeds represent the creative children we can birth in this phase when our energy is not gestating physical children.
6. Easing of menstrual pain
Last but not least, for those of us who experienced painful menstrual cramps, perimenopause ushers in lighter and shorter periods with less or no pain on the heaviest days. That said, our monthly cycle often shortens, so we bleed more often. For me, that usually meant every three weeks rather than every 28 days, but I experienced significantly less premenstrual bloating and breast pain, as well as less painful periods.
While I’m sure this was also due to the changes in diet that I made, such as reducing sugar, processed foods, and foods I struggled to digest, I went from being someone who couldn’t get through my first two days of bleeding without painkillers to not needing any pain relief! That said, for a time, I did experience excessive bleeding, like a lot of women in perimenopause, but it didn’t last.
In summary
Perimenopause is a time of intense change. Change is often uncomfortable, so it’s understandable we resist it. We need to be aware that our resistance is being exploited. We are actively being encouraged to circumvent the process of ageing rather than seek to understand and embrace it.
As daughters of a patriarchal culture, it can be hard to trust our intuition, let alone the innate intelligence of our bodies, especially when we’re encouraged to see our bodies as a problem to be fixed by ‘the men in white coats,’ the experts who know better than we do. Or the women who have trained in the hierarchical institutions that assert this ideology. This attitude of scapegoating the female body as a problem signals an insidious internalised misogyny that is rampant in our society, and so prevalent it can be hard to identify.
This is why it’s never been more important that we gather to share our experiences firsthand, to draw upon our collective wisdom, what we’ve earned and embodied through our lived experience. While wisdom doesn’t come with a certificate or a title, it is highly valuable and worthy of recognition. While knowledge has its place, compared to wisdom, it’s just a head trip, a hypothesis asserted as fact, until proven wrong.
We are all on the precipice of great change as we enter the information age, making it crucial we question the most dominant voices betwixt the colossal marriage of Big Tech and Big Pharma. As women in transition, distilling our wisdom and attuning to our heightened psychic power, perimenopause invites us to discern and deprogram ourselves from the cult of patriarchy, a cult that dismisses women’s wisdom as ‘old wives’ tales’ in favour of ‘evidence-based’ science, the phrase most commonly used to market books on the subject of perimenopause.
Read more from Tanishka The Moon Woman
Tanishka The Moon Woman, Author, Speaker, Retreat Leader
Tanishka is a world-renowned author, speaker, and facilitator who’s passionate about supporting people to transform times of chaos and crisis into empowering turning points. Beloved as ‘The Moon Woman’ for her blog followed by half a million people, she helps people understand how the cycles of nature initiate us to mature, ancient wisdom that’s essential for social sustainability. Her work has been translated into multiple languages.
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