This week: if you're angrier, more anxious, or sadder than you used to be, that may be perimenopause, not your personality. Plus, why women should be screened for migraine every year.
Dolly Parton sang about working women and told the truth about her own body. In her last months, she gave caregivers a voice too.
Rage, brain fog, and insomnia are perimenopause symptoms, too.
Your doctor (and pop culture) may be looking for hot flashes and night sweats. But for many women, perimenopause feels more like screaming into the void.
Researchers found that women were talking about anxiety, anger, and just not feeling like themselves anymore — more often than those symptoms showed up in their medical charts.
This is also a time when women are more likely to experience depression and anxiety, whether or not anyone connects it to perimenopause.
What to ask: Could these symptoms be perimenopause, and what can we actually do about them?
1 in 5 women has migraine. Many don’t know it.
Women get migraines nearly three times as often as men, largely because hormones enjoy making everything more complicated.
They’re most common in women between 25 and 54 and can increase around perimenopause. Except a lot of women have migraine without anyone calling it migraine.
That’s why headache experts are now recommending annual migraine screening for women.
What to ask: If you can answer yes to two of these three questions about your headaches in the past three months, talk to your doctor about migraine: Has a headache kept you from your usual activities on at least one day? Have you felt nauseous or sick to your stomach? Has light bothered you more than when you don’t have a headache?
Your mammogram may eventually have a second job.
Researchers trained an AI model to look for signs of cardiovascular disease in mammograms, and found it could identify women with high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, or a history of stroke.
The technology isn’t ready for your doctor’s office yet. But if it holds up, mammograms could someday screen for breast cancer while also flagging cardiovascular risk in women who might otherwise go undiagnosed.
Which would be useful, since heart disease is the leading cause of death for women.
What to ask: Your doctor already has your mammogram in your chart. Ask whether your mammogram report mentions breast arterial calcification. If it does, ask what that changes about how your heart disease risk is assessed.
That shingles shot may be doing more than saving you from shingles.
A new study found that people who got Shingrix were about 10% less likely to develop coronary heart disease and 12% less likely to be diagnosed with heart failure than people who received an older shingles vaccine. That doesn’t prove the vaccine protected their hearts. Avoiding shingles is reason enough anyway.
What to ask: The CDC recommends Shingrix starting at 50 — or at 19 if you’re immunocompromised. Are you due for yours?
Dolly Parton did what a lot of women do: took care of someone else and put herself last.
Four days before her death this week, Dolly Parton told People magazine she was dealing with health problems she didn’t pay attention to while caring for her husband, Carl. She wasn’t unusual. Family caregivers spend an average of 27 hours a week providing care. Nearly two-thirds report emotional stress, and almost half report physical strain.
When you’re managing appointments, medications, and somebody else’s emergencies, maintaining your own screenings and appointments can become one more thing you simply don’t have the bandwidth to deal with. Sometimes it’s easier not to know.
Only 15% of caregivers say a health care provider has ever asked about their own health.
What to ask: Tell your doctor you’re a caregiver and ask what routine care you may be overdue for. At your family member’s appointments, ask whether the health system has a care coordinator or caregiver support program. Or ask a local area agency on aging for respite care resources.
Know someone in the “wait, what the hell is happening” years? Forward this to her.
See you next Friday. — Trista