I have been doing sports since I was a little girl; exercise is part of my everyday life. It has been with me all my life, completing my good days and helping me through bad ones. When I was a teenager I did artistic gymnastics, then I took up running and swimming. The latter two I still regularly do today at 48. Exercise relaxes and recharges me. For me, those 1.5 to 2 hours I can spend daily in peace with myself while exercising are an everyday luxury. I always tell my friends that sport is my therapy. They laugh, but they know and see that it works.

I was about 43-44 years old when I first noticed signs of anxiety in myself, but a lot of things were happening to and around me at the time: my husband was starting a new job, my children, though still in college, were growing into adulthood, and my parents were ill. As a result, I didn’t pay much attention to these negative feelings; I treated these emotionally demanding days as a natural byproduct of this difficult period. I mentioned the symptoms to my primary care physician, who recommended taking magnesium and vitamin B6. I tried it, and since I took vitamins every day, it wasn’t hard to add one more pill to my daily dose. Despite my trust in the effectiveness of vitamin replacement, my symptoms didn’t subside, and anxiety became part of my everyday life. My previously stable and balanced life had turned upside down. No matter how much I exercised, the tension and gloom stayed with me on most days. Even though I wanted to change things, I felt powerless. My husband and kids noticed my anxiety too. The supportive rock of the family had become unstable, and both I and they took this hard.

I was about to make peace with my chronically high stress levels when I started to feel muscle pain regularly in various parts of my body. By then I had exhibited so many never-before-seen symptoms that I decided to take my fate into my own hands and find out what was wrong with me. Doctor’s examinations and consultations were fruitless, so I was left with the mostly curious, other times anxious information gathering on the internet.

I spent multiple hours a day searching and scouring forums and medical websites when I finally self-diagnosed as perimenopausal. The supposition was comforting and shocking at the same time. Comforting, because the strange feelings and symptoms defining my everyday life for months finally had a name. And shocking, because I felt too young to have anything to do with menopause, especially because my cycle was still regular. It had never occurred to me before that I was exhibiting the symptoms of the start of menopause. At the same time, it was obvious that my life was changing and more and more things that had made me happy and refreshed before, such as swimming, running or the regular yoga classes with our friendly group, had become hard for me. I came across the concept of menopause for the first time when I was looking up joint pain. I was very surprised that changes in hormone levels can produce such symptoms even before the age of 40. In theory everything came together, and I believed and doubted at the same time that this was my path.

With my self-diagnosis in my pocket, I went back to the doctor to make sure I was right. I recommended a thorough examination and targeted blood tests, with which the doctor agreed despite his skepticism about the possibility of menopause. Neither the blood nor the hormone tests showed anything out of the ordinary. In the meantime, the symptoms remained, the tension in the family grew, and I was being impatient with both my husband and my kids. As I couldn’t accept that the results didn’t back me up, I kept investigating. I turned to my mother this time and told her about the preceding months. It turned into a surprisingly honest discussion, whose most important moral for me was that my mother had had very similar symptoms in her forties. Although at the time there had been even less public discussion around the change of life, it was obvious that I was going through the same things she had been through. There, sitting on the couch in my mother’s living room, I admitted to myself and said it out loud that I was perimenopausal.

I am the kind of person who likes to recognize problems and find their solutions as soon as possible. It wasn’t any different then. After thorough research, I decided to use targeted herbal and dietary supplements. I felt that I wanted to do something differently to enhance my quality of life so I could return to my peaceful and balanced personal and family life. Since my cycle was still active, the use of hormone replacement therapy wasn’t the obvious choice. So as a first step I chose herbal therapy, which seems to be effective for me so far. There are hard days when exercise doesn’t feel good or when I feel more gloomy than usual, but all in all I think my symptoms have subsided. If in a few months or years the situation turns more serious and I notice new menopausal symptoms, I’m open to the use of other kinds of hormone replacement as well. It doesn’t matter how old I am, I would like to be the best woman, wife and mother I can be.