No more taboo: self -confident & informed by menopause

At some point between 40 and 55 it starts. Mostly with hot flashes and sleepless nights and similarly beautiful things. If you then go to the gynecologist and complain about the leaden tiredness, drivelessness and extreme monthly bleeding, you usually hear the same thing: all women have to go through. That is natural.

"Duchmüsen" and "totally natural", however, is a bad joke for some women who suffer from menopause.

Menopause, menopause: which term for what?

The fact is: very few women know a lot about it. It starts with the terms alone. We often speak synonymously of theAnd menopause. Menopause, however, only describes the time of the last period, which does not follow any further menstrual period for 12 months.

Incidentally, the medical correct term for menopause is the climatic. He describes the phase before and after the last menstrual period. If the period becomes more irregular and use the first symptoms, you are a woman in perimenopause. However, some women don't notice anything and have long been perimenopausal.

The menopause - still a taboo

Few know the first symptoms of the climacterist. And not all the different complaints and backgrounds from what happens in the female body. One doesn't like to talk about it.

And if so, then we often talk about women in this phase of life in a very generalized way. Also happy by making jokes over the "flying heat". Or as a specter by saying that women become "invisible" and unattractive after menopause. Overall a sad picture.

You should only consider how much space the topic of sex, contraception and pregnancy takes up in our society, and how quietly and unnoticed women are sent through the menopause.

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Vaginal dryness and bladder weakness: the woman in menopause as a customer

In advertising, pour light blue liquid into huge binding and you can see women who are afraid of doing sports or wearing tight things because you could notice their bladder weakness.

"I'm afraid that something completely different will flow," says the woman in advertising. The whole thing should sound funny and relaxed. Take XY and everything is in perfect order again. That is the solution in the commercial. And in real life? Where is the great tip when the body and psyche suddenly get out of joint?

"Learn how to avoid UUPS moments when sneezing, why you should eat horseradish and how to breathe properly with a squeaky duck!" In the mail is a book that should help women during menopause. Uups moments, which are fought with rubber ducks and horseradish. Rotklee recommends the next email on the subject.

The opponent of Rotklee and ducklers has it all. Cardiovascular diseases. Osteoporosis. Depressive phases. Wash of muscles. Drivelessness and thinner hair.

Although the topic is still rather dead in our society, the industry has long since spotted the woman in this way and is enjoying the sales for creams against vaginal dryness, average against sweating and sagging basin soils.

We women have to know ourselves

What is also noticeable? Many gynecologists speak to women on their desire to have children without being asked, but in return do not explain what happens when we slide into sterility in the second phase of life.

Nobody asks if as a woman you already have complaints that could have to do with the climacteric. Ultimately, women have no choice but to abolish our knowledge.

In the friend circle this book by Dr. med. Sheila de Liz recommended, where the three female hormones are portrayed as Charlie's Angels. "Woman on fire". A very clear and enlightening book. Or the book "The irritated woman" by the author Miriam Stein.

Both books are very different from the approach. But in both, as a woman, which is troubled by complaints, you can find answers. For example, about the shorter cord that many women now have.

Miriam Stein writes: “The chemical cause of the anger attack is the neurotransmitter serotonin. It regulates the emotional household and ensures balance. Estrogen is required for the body's own production. As is well known, fewer and less estrogen is formed in the climatic-according to the serotonin household and gives me an inner relationship with Ms. Mahlzahn, the beastly kite from Michael Endes Lummerland. "

Knowing that helps a lot. Not only to understand yourself better, but also for the social environment, the family or partner.

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Hormone replacement therapy: yes or no?

Magazines recommend hormones glued to the skin, cream, spray, spray or swallow. Miriam Stein writes: “With the help of different preparations, whether synthetic or bioidentical hormones, the body's own deficit can be compensated for.

There are only two problems with it: synthetic hormones may cause cancer. And when exactly is the right time to start with any hormone therapy is also open. But what would help would be a prevention through education. "

When this is exactly this right time (or, as Sheila de Liz calls it, the "golden window"), in which it is worth starting for women to start hormone replacement therapy, explains the gynecologist in detail in her book.

She advocates a clever use of hormone replacement therapy: "However, we women often have reservations about it, because in the course of our lives we have repeatedly learned how much our hormones influence us," she writes on hersWebsite.

For them, the facts are quite obvious: “(...) The physical complaints come about due to hormone deficiency, missing hormones or sinking hormone levels. Most women can now eat body identical hormones. This applies to most women, not for all women.

This usually works with creams or gels that you smear on the skin that is absorbed by the body and that simply compensate for this deficiency. The whole thing must of course be discussed in a medical conversation. But you can fix these problems relatively easily, ”she says in an interview with theSWR.

But what about women who are not allowed to do hormone replacement therapy for a variety of reasons? I was told: "Unfortunately, you just have to go through it". So without hormones. If you consider that this time, when you have to go through it, lasts between 5 and 12 years old, this is a very frustrating announcement.

If you talk to other women, you can tell that not everyone may come openly to the topic of menopause. That many are still playing their symptoms. Only a few are as open as a friend who tells that she always thought that during menopause the period would simply fail - and instead, on some days a month, she has the feeling to blew. Nobody had told her that.

The fact is: The topic of the climacteric is also taboo because femininity is so good for itself, with a beautiful external and this impressive female ability to be fertile and to be able to give life.

Sex and reproductive skills, like thatDeutschlandfunk NovaReporter Fanny Kniestedt aptly said. And that is apparently the currency that counts. No wonder that there is silence about you when you fall out of this pot of young, childbearing women.

A third of women have complaints that restrict everyday life

In the meantime there are many who celebrate rethinking and menopause as a liberation of women. Menopositivity. I think it's great and commendable, but if I am honest: For me it is no liberation to make friends with all the physical and psychological changes that come faster than you did at the time. And which already influence life in some areas.

While some women have little or hardly any symptoms, a third of women have strong symptoms that restrict normal everyday life and make medical treatment sensible.

It would help if you knew more about it. And if the thought of menopause and all of this were something normal, because all women go through it at some point.

Especially since our society is getting older and we will have over a billion of affected women worldwide in 2025. So you cannot see the woman's climatic as a niche topic.

Science and doctors even know little about menopause

So there is still a lot of educational work ahead of us. And research on it. “Modern medicine can keep hearts through pacemakers, move bodies in cold sleep, witness children in the test tube and, last but not least, compensate for hormone -related erectile dysfunction in men by giving a reliable drug. Complaints in the climacteria, on the other hand, seem to be a little medically opposed, ”Miriam Stein writes in her book.

And the knowledge of menopause not only lacks the women concerned themselves. The topic in the training of gynecologists only plays a subordinate role. It is not treated in the basic course of medicine. This shows again how little important women's health is considered in our society.

Also funny, as the author Miriam Stein writes: “German health insurance companies do not take on consultations on the climatic. The reason for this should be that this period is so difficult to define. ”

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"No man would endure that"

So if it is surprised that the symptoms of the climacteria are often not recognized when women go to the doctor, that women suffer alone and try to continue to work?

“How can you explain people who have permanently very impaired complaints with such technical possibilities that they should endure because that is something very natural? No man would endure that, ”said Miriam Stein in an interview with thetaz.

Therefore, we should all talk more about what women go through during menopause. Because it should be normal that you get old - and no failure or disappear. Especially since the menopause is not a short phase through which we just have to take through.

This “phase” takes up to twelve years, then it should be clear: Nobody should suffer for twelve years without having the feeling: Hey, that is damn so many. And we don't have to pretend. And do not reinvent. And above all, we must not feel invisible and worthless.

This article first appeared in another formEdition F.

Book tipson the subject

  • Miriam Stein:The irritated woman, Goldmann Verlag, nowhere on Amazonview.*
  • Dr. with Sheila de Liz:Woman on Fire: Everything about the fabulous menopause, nowhere on Amazonview.*

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