Menopause

These are very real physical changes and conditions. Some symptoms alarm a woman that she may be suffering from a serious disease. Perhaps you know the more common ones related to menopausal symptoms in this list. But many of these may surprise you, as they have not been typically associated with this normal physiological transformation. 

1. Change in Menstrual Cycle, Cycles may get closer together or farther apart, lighter and shorter in duration or much heavier, lasting longer than one has been accustomed to. Menses may seem to take forever to begin with dark spotting for days until you actually flow, or you might feel like you have your menses every two weeks.

2. Menstrual Flooding can come on with sudden onset and feel like you may hemorrhage to death. Or it can be a gradual build up just when you think your menses will end and you start gushing for days. Flooding commonly accompanies the woman with uterine fibroids as she transits into menopause.

3. Headaches, Migraines, especially before, during or at the end of your menses debilitate and radically interferes with normal functioning.

4. Decreased Motor Coordination, Clumsiness, almost begins to make the woman who experiences this feel like she is a bit spastic, certainly less than graceful during perhaps an already awkward period in her life. 

5. Lethargy, a persistent feeling sluggishness physically and mentally, that seems to negate ones ability to do much. 

6. Physical Exhaustion , and Crushing Crashing Fatigue that can come on so suddenly and grip you into feeling like you will collapse unless you stop this instant.

7. Exacerbation of any Chronic Illness or Existing Condition transpires as hormones decline or deviate from their normal balance.

8. Insomnia, this includes a new or unusual pattern of either difficulty falling asleep, or dropping off to sleep for a few hours and then awakening with the inability to return to sleep.

9. Sleep Disturbances sometimes are from nightmares, night sweats, or just a vague sense of restlessness keeping you up or disrupting your precious revitalizing retreat from this realm of responsibilities.

10. Night Sweats often begin between a woman?s breasts, initially a night or two before her menses, waking her from sleep, later more profoundly disturbing with up to total body saturation, followed by damp or sweat drenched chills.

11. Interference With Dream Recall interrupts the sense of normal sleep, if you are someone accustomed to vivid or at least some detailed memory of your dreamtime. 

12. Muscle Cramps can occur anywhere in the body from legs to back to neck, and sometimes reflects the need for more calcium, or simply that your progesterone levels are too low. 

13. Low Backache often worsens before or during menses, but if your hormones remain at low levels, you can experience it on a regular basis.

14. Gall Bladder Symptoms of pain, spasms and discomfort felt in the right upper abdominal quadrant under the ribs, which may be accompanied by belching, bloating, and intolerance to certain foods reflect the increased liver load with declining hormones. 

15. Frequent Urination, or sensations that mimic urinary infections is a disturbing symptom often unrelieved by actual urination. It is often experienced as the sensation of needing to urinate all the time, even immediately afterwards.

16. Urinary Incontinence, the uncontrollable and spontaneous loss of urine, or the Urge for Incontinence, can occur suddenly or feel continuous, and not only in response to coughing, sneezing, jumping or running. 

17. Hypoglycemic Reactions happen when suddenly your blood sugar crashes and you must have food now.

18. Food Cravings, often for sweets or salty foods, but can include sour or pungent foods. 

19. Increased Appetite, especially at night and after dinner contributes to that unusual and unwanted weight gain.

20. Dark Circles Under Eyes can also be caused by adrenal exhaustion and thyroid dysfunctions, but no amount of sleep seems to eliminate it. 

21. Joint and Muscle Pain, Achy, Sore Joints, Muscles and Tendons, which sometimes develop into actual carpal tunnel syndrome, or give rise to the questioning of other disease possibilities.

22. Increased Tension in Muscles demonstrates itself in those hunched up shoulders as you work or talk about anything uncomfortable, along with promoting lower back pain and a stiff neck.

23. Increased Hair Loss or Thinning anywhere on body, including your head, armpits, pubic area.

24. Increase in Facial Hair especially under your chin, or along your jaw line. It may be defined by generalized hair growth, or a specific and coarse single strand of hair that pokes out, even curls. 

25. Unusually Hair Growth, around Nipples, between Breasts, down your back, places where your hair was finer, less coarse.

26. Acne, quite disturbing to any woman who dealt with this in adolescence and never thought it would recur. 

27. Infertility causes grief in the woman who postponed pregnancy in her earlier years and now wishes to conceive, carry to term a healthy baby, and discovers she is unable to do so. 

28. Loss of Breast Tissue begins with the decrease of progesterone production. Women often feel as though their breast have become empty sacs devoid of their normal fullness, with or without sagging.

29. Breast Soreness/Tenderness/Pain/ Engorgement and swelling, occurs particularly a few days to one week before bleeding actually begins, which usually potentiates complete relief of any pain or swelling.

30. Painful, or tender nipples have been described as this exquisite localized pain only in the nipples and suggests estrogen excess. 

31. Cold Extremities feels quite strange especially in the presence of a hot flash, the combination of which is not impossible.

32. Being Accident Prone, bumping into things, not even realizing it until the bruise reveals itself later and then lacking the ability to recall the causative incident feels perplexing and a little scary at the prospect of something more damaging. 

33. Hot flashes initially may be described as mild to severe flushes of heat waves, and for some women these evolve into intense outbreaks of sudden heat with sweating and turning bright red all over. 

34. Loss of Sexual Energy, our Libido, can be marked by a gradual or sudden disinterest in sex, to the development of an actual aversion. 

35. Painful Sex often described as if one?s vagina would tear open at the point of penetration along with feelings of abrasion during intercourse.

36. Vaginal Dryness, Irritation, sometimes accompanied by a consistent unusual discharge - typically odor free, negates a woman?s ability to be sexually active, or able to enjoy or be comfortable in her body.

37. Dizziness, feeling lightheaded and the loss of physical balance, and even a bit wobbling at times, requires pause in movement to prevent falling over or deepening into vertigo or feeling faint.

38. Ringing in the Ears, Tinnitus, can be experienced as a pulsing sensation, a whooshing sound, an almost musical or buzzing sound with a fuzzy sensation.

39. Abdominal Bloating comes on suddenly often after eating, or seems to be all the time, and can be visibly evident making you feel that you look like you are pregnant. 

40. Weight Gain disturbs most women, particularly when it seems to happen over a couple of days, settles in the waist, buttocks and thighs, promoting a visceral thickening from the waist down, the classic middle-aged figure.

41. Fluid Retention, Edema, commonly with swelling in the legs and ankles, though not limited to this area and it is unrelieved by urination.

42. Palpitations or Heart Racing usually comes on suddenly, without warning or provocation, and dissipates spontaneously. The experience can be so wild and intense that a woman may become alarmed and wonder if she is having a heart attack. 

43. Irregularities in your Heart Rate may feel more like your heart has just done a flip-flop or skipped a beat.

44. Constipation/Diarrhea, intermittent or alternating, results from declining hormone levels, which increase the demands on liver function and alters intestinal motility.

45. Tendency towards Candidiasis can increase, even if you have no prior known history ? and if you do, it may worsen.

46. Gastrointestinal Distress, Increased Flatulence, Unrelieved Gas pains, Indigestion, Nausea all can reflect intestinal changes due to hormonal imbalances.

47. Slow Digestion often goes along with the bloat ? what previously took four to five hours to digest, now seems to take all night. It seems worse in the evenings.

48. Lack of Appetite may be experienced as more of a lack of interest in food, going to the frig and standing there with the door open and staring blankly. Feeling completely uninspired, you busy yourself with something else and forget that you need to eat.

49. Changes in Body Odor especially disturbing when it seems to focus in the groin area, but can be anywhere on the body. 

51. Facial Pallor alternating with Facial Flushes is often intermittent with hot flashes.

52. Flare up of Arthritis worsens with low progesterone levels and increase sugar intake.

53. Loss of Bone Density, Osteoporosis, is not only an elderly woman?s disease, though it seems to develop over an extended period and is triggered by the decline of hormone production.

54. Dry Hair, Change in Skin Tone, Integrity, and Texture, becomes more wrinkled, and may begin the thinning process.

55. Changes in your Fingernails characterized by easy breakage, bending, cracking and getting softer.

56. Itchy, Crawly Skin with a strange sensation like insects crawling around under the skin ? quite different than the dry skin feeling.

57. Muscle tone seems to slack and sag, and loose its previous response to normal exercise.

58. Pelvic Pain can be random and independent of cycles and may feel continuous for some women.

59. Dry, Itchy Eyes felt in the deep posterior aspect of the eye socket, as well as superficially.

60. Teeth Aching or the experience of a strange sensation in one?s teeth or gums, often accompanied by an increase in bleeding gums.

61. Change in the normal Tongue sensation, which can be accompanied by a feeling of burning in your tongue and roof of mouth, malodorous breath or change in breath odor, and/or a bad taste in your mouth.

62. Memory Loss or Lapses in time, makes one feel disoriented and less focused, especially when you go into another room to get something specific and seconds later cannot remember what you went to retrieve.

63. Feeling Faint for no known reason (this does not include standing up too quickly)

64. Tingling in Extremities not only feels weird and like your hands or feet are falling asleep, but if persistent can be a symptom of diabetes, B12, potassium or calcium deficiency, or a compromise in blood vessel flexibility.

65. Sensation of Electrical Stimulation,or Shock occurring in the tissue under the skin, and may signal you that a hot flash will begin.

66. Increase and worsening of Allergies occurs as hormones become imbalanced, so can our immune system.