For many decades, the language around women’s midlife has been confusing. Without clear names, treatments cannot be scientific.
Some call “menopause” everything changing and negative for women in their 40s, or the “final menstrual flow” (which can’t be considered final without a no-period year). This confusion means Perimenopause, often women+’s most difficult time, gets lost.
Perimenopause, although sharing night sweats, hot flushes and sleep disturbances with menopause has high and widely bounding estrogen levels, not low ones, and experiences such as heavy flow, breast tenderness, and PMS that menopause does not share. Studies of women over time led the World Health Organization to state that Menopause required one year without a period. The symptomatic time before Menopause is called Perimenopause. The purpose of this info-graphic is to support accurate terminology so women+ can understand what’s ahead and ask for what they need if they are symptomatic in midlife.
You can also watch a short recording of Dr. Prior’s explanation of the below infographic at the British Columbia Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) Annual Conference on March 8, 2024.
