How do I know if it’s Perimenopause?

Perimenopause is the word used to describe the time before a typical Menopause Day. Which makes it easy to know when perimenopause finishes, but not when it starts.

The typical Menopause Day is the one moment in time when you have traveled along the menstrual health timeline to the point when the ovarian cycle has stopped permanently. When there has been no menstruation for 12 months, the next day is postmenopause, the time before that is perimenopause.

• Menopause Day may occur because of medication used to treat another health condition such as endometriosis or cancer, regardless of the distance traveled along the timeline.
• Menopause Day may occur before the age of 45, which is below the age of a typical menopause day which most often happens between the age of 45-55. This kind of Menopause Day is called Early Menopause.
• Menopause Day may occur below the age of 40, and this is termed Premature Ovarian Insufficiency (POI).

To some Perimenopause is a fairly new word, and others say it has been made up. The earliest known use is in the 1960s. The word was first used in an official clinical capacity in 2001 when the first Sexual Reproductive Agin Workshop (STRAW) was held and then modified to include Earl and Late Perimenopause when they met again in 2011 and the new revised edition became known as STRAW+10.

Peri means ‘a time leading up to’, however, it does not help us figure out when it starts. Medically they consider the key indicator to be a change in the menstrual cycle, or ‘fertility becomes unpredictable’ (don’t like that phrase either as it takes back to reproduction).