For Meg Mathews, menopause looked likeThe Golden Girlsgray hair, elderly gentleman callers, chic but shapeless caftans.
Not me at 49, Mathews says.
After coming back from a holiday, Mathews started experiencing some anxiety, brain fogginess, and aching joints.
Getty Images / Bella Geraci
She didnt feel like herself.
But how do you explain that to the doctor?
So of course I went in going, I just can’t cope with life.
And of course they just gave me antidepressants and off I went.
I had no idea that [those symptoms] were anything to do with menopause.
That’s not a huge number necessarily, but it’s hardly trivial, she says.
Menopause represents agingand no one really wants to deal with that.
Its time to start talking about menopause.
Menopause may be the last great taboo in womens health.
While conversations aroundfertilityandfemale pleasureare (finally) becoming more open, menopause still feels like a secret.
And that leads to a lot of misinformation.
Part of the taboo is that menopause represents agingand no one really wants to deal with that.
So I went to an AA meeting and I said, Why the hell am I staying sober?
As she was leaving, a woman tapped her on the shoulder.
She just said, I think you’re going through menopause.
And I was a bit like, God, thats cheeky.
You know, Im imagining gray hair and a cane.
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There’s no training in medical school or residency around helping women after their reproductive years, she says.
Everything that we’re taught is mostly focused on the reproductive years.
According to astudyby researchers at Johns Hopkins, only 20% of residency programs have a formal menopause curriculum.
Menopause is not an old womans thing.
That hurts women in the exam room.
Instead, women are often told to just suck it up, says Sholes-Douglas, to stay silent.
In the U.K., menopausal women are already thefastest growing demographicin the job market.
Im 46 now, so I am in perimenopauseI realized this was such an underserved space.
Theyll say, I was told I was crazy.
I was sent from one psychiatrist to another psychiatrist.
But really I was just perimenopausal.
But the greatest menopause myth might be that, whatever symptoms youre experiencing, there are no solutions.
We need to change that mode of thinking because there are real solutions to what women are experiencing.
From a medical perspective, many of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause are treatable.
More high-profile women are starting to open up about going through menopauseincludingMichelle Obama and Gwyneth Paltrow.
That gives women hope, it starts a conversation, Angelo says.
That can help drive change in medicine, says Sholes-Douglas.
I think that it starts as a grassroots [campaign].
For Mathews, the day she got treatment for menopause was the most empowered shed ever felt.
In menopause Im comfortable in my skin, she says.
That was like, wow, I’ve accepted I’m here now.
