Tearful, cranky, or feeling frustrated, but your period isn’t due anytime soon? Life can be tough, and we all feel overwhelmed at times. But if you’ve been finding it difficult to regulate your emotions lately, you might be experiencing a common symptom of perimenopause: mood swings. This is likely due to changes in the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which can cause other telltale perimenopause symptoms such as hot flashes, brain fog, and fatigue.
Heard of menopause but not perimenopause? The terms are often used interchangeably, but they’re actually two separate life stages.
Put simply, perimenopause refers to the years leading up to menopause (your final period). It usually begins somewhere between your late 30s and 50s, but most often in your 40s.
You’re then diagnosed as having gone through menopause when you haven’t had a period for 12 months (usually between the ages of 45 and 55). From then on, you are postmenopausal.