From Puberty to Menopause….What Happened?

(update 9/18/20 — additional link from verywellhealth.com)

When you’re a young teen and female life seems unbearable. Your hormones are raging, your body is changing, you start menstruating, and pimples seem to be popping out everywhere. And with all that and more going on you also try to make yourself presentable to someone that you are attracted to. My teen years were tough on me. I was always overweight until I got in the 8th grade and decided that if I wanted a boyfriend (like all my friends at the time) I would need to lose some weight. So, I lost the weight by an unconventional method….basically starved myself. The weight did come off but I would not recommend this method to anyone. I think it actually made all my body changes seem worse and exaggerated all the symptoms I was already dealing with. Well, when you’re a young teen you don’t always make the best decisions for yourself.

Then I fast forward to where I’m at today. I’m a 58-year-old woman whose body has gone through being perimenopausal to now being menopausal. The symptoms have not stopped since the early 2000’s. If you were to list all the symptoms that women go through at this stage in their life I probably have had just about all of them at one time or another. I’ve dealt with hot flashes, heart palpitations, weight gain (here we go again!), anxiety, fatigue, irregular periods, irritability, moodiness, foggy brain, and reduced sex drive. Luckily, the last is not to the extreme. I even had to deal with fibroids and having not-so-fun periods. Oh and not to forget, I started getting pimples again and in the weirdest places. I learned a lot about my body and how to care for myself so that the symptoms did not impact my quality of life. Exercise, eating well, and drinking lots of water helped to lessen some of the symptoms. I’m still dealing with a few symptoms (like hot flashes) to this day but it’s getting better.

So, what happened was me becoming a woman and all that it entails. Sometimes not an easy road but I’m getting closer to being post-menopausal. Yahoo! From what I understand, life can actually be quite pleasant at this stage as long as you take care of yourself both physically and mentally. I’ve even heard of women who have said that their sixties are amazing. I’m looking forward to amazing! I hope you’re having an amazing life.

Here’s a couple of blog sites that talk about women, their bodies, and menopause that you might find of interest. (link) (link)

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