Maybe it's the circles I run in, but this is a topic I do NOT see discussed enough - it gets glossed over, men and medical professionals ignore or gloss over it (or outright gaslight women), and yet it can have a HUGE impact on our lives! If you're in the US and stuck on regular/private insurance, it's a double whammy with the cost of medical care these days.

So, I've been struggling the past little while - close to a year. I kept attributing it to this, that, or the other thing - stress, finances, etc. There were some legitimate things, but like many, always took to blaming my inability to manage myself rather than there actually being something physically "off."

Well, in a random reddit post someone had mentioned peri and tinnitus being linked - that raised an eyebrow as my tinnitus had been getting horrible, often downright intrusive, but again, I just blamed loud hobbies and age...but that post got me thinking and doing a little more research.

Turns out, every single issue and symptom I've been struggling with the past 12ish months falls in line with peri symptoms. EVERY single one.

Peri often goes un or mis diagnosed due to the fluctuations in hormones and if you're on birth control, it can be even a little more complicated to tell (in my case, I'm on an IUD). It can be expensive to chase this (depending on your health care) since it's all "elective" treatments and hit or miss on getting a diagnosis. Primarily it's diagnosed through symptoms, which doctors VERY frequently ignore, dismiss, or refuse to acknowledge.

Personally I'm giving a supplement routine a go here before sinking money into labs and such (prefer that route, just a personal choice for a variety of reasons). I started just over a week ago.

I want to give it a month before I give any kind of "real" report, but in the past week, my mood has started to stabilize (anecdotal), I'm sleeping better (anecdotal), my body temperature is stabilizing (NOT anecdotal - per FitBit), and the scale is dropping while changing nothing beyond what I've already been doing (not anecdotal).

I'm no expert on the subject - my mother had too much other shitake going on in her life to even notice it (although it was probably a problem, she just never realized it), and I'm the oldest daughter. A couple friends have recently mentioned it, but before that I barely even knew it was a thing - yet I feel like that should have been a big thing for women to be aware of???

Like, I don't feel that old - (mid 40's) - there's a lot of "adult" life still ahead of me, and menopause has this reputation of being a thing for "old" women - like seniors - even though that's not the case, and peri can start as early as one's 30's! Very common for someone my age - in the middle of being a working adult!

I'm still a little shocked at how dismissed these issues are in general...