Subtle yet Major Hormonal Shifts
I am 42 years old, turning 43 later this year. I had my child when I was 30 and breastfed her until she was 2 years and 3 months old because she LOVED breast milk and the comfort she gets from it. I didn’t get my period back during the entire time I was breastfeeding. It came back a few weeks later once I stopped breastfeeding, which felt remarkable how my body responded naturally and swiftly to the change. ( A side note - my breasts were still producing a lot of milk, so I had to go to a women’s clinic to learn how to take care of my rock hard very painful breasts, massaging them with warm compress while squeezing excess milk out and gradually teaching my body “no need to produce milk anymore.”)
Now my child is 12 years old, and I am sort of done with parenting. My body is going through gradual shifts with its endoctrine system. Ever since my menstruation had began at age 13, I’ve had a pretty steady flow (always a bit light side). Never used birth control pills (it wasn’t popular thing in Japan back then), and the uncomfortable cramps and PMS symptoms were sort of manageable with the energy of youth and some meds busting it through busy life styles. And here I am now going through the long entry way towards the end of menstruation. I have been noticing various changes in my physical and energetic bodies. I like to share the major ones with you with the hope of facilitating this kind of conversations and normalizing the subtle yet major changes of perimenopausal period.
Starting around age 38, my sexual drive got very high feeling like “my body is very ripe”, which lasted for about 3 years.
I aways had a very tender breasts for several days leading up to the bleeding. When I was taking a course with Dr. Judy Noe, I’ve learned I have been progesterone deficient (tender breasts, hair thinning, hard to conceive, etc), and started to balance the hormone with Vitex aka Chasteberry, which reduced the symptoms of breast tenderness and hair thinning. She said progesterone deficiency is very common phenomenon for modern women who are so busy juggling multiple tasks.
Last year in the fall, I started to experience pain in my left breast. My left breast was the one that had less milk flow, and I knew it is somehow compromised for a long time. Pain started out small at the left edge of the breast that moved to the base of the breast and it felt like mammal glands shriveling up. I was observing the pain and doing more breast massages and interestingly the pain always dissipated with the monthly bleed for 3-4 cycles. But the initially light pain was building up its strength as the cycle continued, so when the sensation of pain got very strong (like I had difficulty raising my left arm and couldn’t lay down on the left side), I decided to get a thorough check up. It took a month and half for me to get an appointment with a specialist and I got ultrasound done. It confirmed that there are some benign cysts (supposedly common), but there are no other abnormalities. And by the time of the appointment, the pain subsided greatly, and it was almost entirely gone. So it was good to get checked up for sure, but it is not clear why there was pain from the medical perspective. But I feel it was the hormone and mammal glands at play as a part of going through the hormonal shift.
Now I do breast massages using herbal oil, and lymphatic massages all around the upper front chest area including the side of torso and arm pits with a wooden massage comb (see the picture below). The best time to start doing the breast massage is right after finishing the bleeding. The breast tissue will be least tender then.
My energy gets tanked 2-3 days prior to bleed now. I started to notice the pattern last 6 months or so. It is not a usual “I am tired from being overworked.” It is like my psych gets really dark, and my brain gets squeezed hard to produce the hormone to induce the monthly bleed. A lot of energy needs to be spent now on the reproductive organ/endocrine system to perform what had been easily performing during the last 30 years. It’s intense!
My hair is greying quickly now. Many people dye their hair not to show the aging process, but I feel more inclined to keep it natural or play with more color.
Educating myself with books and the wooden comb I use to massage my break area
And there are numerous small changes I am experiencing and I am observing them all closely. I want to feel all the nuances and experiment how I can remedy it with herbs, more exercise, and different self-care routines. And at the same time, some of those don’t need to be remedied or corrected, right? It is a natural process. Our body has been constantly changing even before the perimenopause. There is a beauty and sacredness in impermanence (that’s my mantra for going through this!).
