You are likely to be perimenopausal if your periods have stopped or become irregular and if you have symptoms of perimenopause. A blood test can check the levels of two hormones, FSH and oestradiol. As you approach menopause, FSH levels rise and oestradiol levels drop.
If you have a persistent change of seven days or more in the length of your menstrual cycle, you may be in early perimenopause. If you have a space of 60 days or more between periods, you're likely in late perimenopause. Hot flashes and sleep problems. Hot flashes are common during perimenopause.
Perimenopause can begin in some women in their 30s, but most often it starts in women ages 40 to 44.
Perimenopause is a process — a gradual transition. No one test or sign is enough to determine if you've entered perimenopause. Your doctor takes many things into consideration, including your age, menstrual history, and what symptoms or body changes you're experiencing.
Usually, most testing is done in the luteal phase, around days 19, 20 or 21. This is the phase when PMS symptoms are at their peak, so I always tell patients you want to be tested on your bad days.
When testing for menopause is warranted, doctors may order an FSH test to detect elevated levels of FSH in the blood. Measuring FSH can help determine if a woman is perimenopausal or has already gone through menopause.
Most Australian women experience menopause between 45 and 60 years of age. The average age of menopause is 51 years. You have reached menopause when you have gone 12 months without having your period.
The average age of entering perimenopause in Australia is 48 years and perimenopause is a period of slowly declining oestrogen production from the ovaries.
There are three stages of menopause: perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause.
The main medicine treatment for menopause and perimenopause symptoms is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which replaces the hormones that are at low levels. There are other treatments if you cannot, or choose not to, have HRT.
You can still get pregnant during perimenopause defined as the years leading up to your final period. This “menopausal transition” brings unpredictable ovulation cycles as estrogen and progesterone hormone levels go up and down.
A change in menstrual patterns and the appearance of hot flashes are usually the first signs. Although blood tests are not required, healthcare providers can run blood or urine tests to determine levels of the hormones estradiol, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and luteinizing hormone (LH).
Early menopause occurs between the ages of 40 and 45 years. Up to 12% of women have their final period before they are 45 years of age. This percentage is likely to be higher if we include menopause caused by surgery and cancer treatment.
The FSH test only tells you if you have a high FSH level. It doesn't tell you if you are definitely in menopause (or premenopausal or perimenopausal). The bottom line is, if you have menopause symptoms, see your doctor, because your symptoms can be due to another medical condition.
Blood tests for hormones are notoriously unhelpful when used to make a diagnosis of perimenopause. This is because the perimenopause is a time of hormonal fluctuations. It's often not until very close to, or sometimes even after periods have stopped, that changes show reliably on blood tests.
A blood test is one of the most common ways to test hormone levels. This test can detect testosterone, estrogen, cortisol, and thyroid levels. You should order a test that's specific to your gender, as a women's hormone test will look for different levels of sex hormones than a men's test.
Perimenopausal hormonal changes can lead to a variety of different bleeding patterns. You may have heavy menstrual bleeding one month and light bleeding the next. You may even experience bleeding or spotting between periods – or you may skip your period completely some months.
But women are more likely to gain excess belly weight -- especially deep inside the belly -- as they go through perimenopause and into menopause, when their menstrual cycle ends.