Dr. Betty Murray describes her own perimenopause symptoms in her late 30s: hair loss including eyebrows, cystic acne, fatigue, rapid weight gain, and menstrual cycles shortened to 21 days. She explains these changes are real and common, not thyroid problems, and part of a normal hormonal shift that varies widely among women.
I started having all kinds of weird hormonal symptoms. My hair started falling out. I got big old cystic acne and acne on my face, on my chin, and across my cheeks. Pretty big fatigue, hair loss, loss of the outer eyebrow. So everybody thought it was thyroid, and I had probably some thyroid stuff going on, but your sex hormones and your thyroid are tied together. And so also, over the course of about a year, I gained about 35 pounds. Doing nothing different than what I did the day before, right? My workouts and everything were the same, and I just started gaining weight. The other thing that happened is my periods started coming closer together. And so, you know, within a couple of years, my periods then were almost every 21 days, right? So what it means is, is I had something that changed my hormone trajectory. I had a tubal, right? But I was in my late 30s. Mid to late 30s, and I was really already having symptoms of perimenopause. So when you look at that 8-year window, some people have 16 years or 15 years or 14 years, and then some people sail through with very little. So if you're 36, 37, 38 and you're listening to this, or you happen to be somebody who might be older and you know somebody going through these kind of symptoms, it is not you being crazy. It is truly part of the thing that can happen.
