Journal · topic
Progesterone, oestrogen, cortisol and testosterone, explained one at a time.
Testosterone is the hormone most often left out of the perimenopause conversation. Here is what it does in women, how it declines, and where the evidence for replacing it starts and stops.
Wired but tired. Jolted awake before dawn. Overreacting to small things and unable to switch off. Cortisol is doing what it always did. What changed is what used to hold it in check.
Nothing is wrong, and yet your heart is going and your mind is racing. Perimenopausal anxiety has a mechanism, and it starts with a progesterone metabolite most people have never heard of.
If your worst week keeps arriving just before your period, you are watching the late luteal phase at work, and in perimenopause it gets louder. Why that happens, and what to do with the pattern.
For years, perimenopause means erratic oestrogen, with peaks above anything you had in your thirties and crashes to match. The swing is what you feel.
Long before oestrogen drops, progesterone quietly goes missing. It is the hormone behind a surprising amount of early perimenopause, and the one least often talked about.
Perimenopause is a stretch of years, often starting in your early forties, when your hormones change long before your periods stop.
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