Can we have more time? We know so little.
In fact, I was just listening to a podcast called “This Podcast Will Kill You.” The title of the podcast episode was, “Menopause is whatever you want it to be”. It made me both angry and happy to listen to it. They talked about all the different symptoms that occur during perimenopause, which is the two- to 10-year period prior to menopause, the cessation of menstrual cycles.
We just know so little about it. I think there's 0.5% of research on the female brain during the menopause, which is really low, so we don't really have a lot of information.
There are so many different symptoms that we can experience. Everybody thinks about hot flashes, but there are many more than that. I think that's why people drop out of the workforce. They don't realize what's happening. It's musculoskeletal. I'm now getting arthritis in my joints, and it's a menopause-related symptom.
Sometimes, people will say, “Well, it's just aging.” There's a bit of that, but think about the loss of ovarian hormones. In ovarian hormones, we have estrogen receptors and progesterone receptors. They're everywhere across our body. They're not just in the parts that we cover with a bikini; they're everywhere. It makes sense, then, that when we lose these hormones, we're going to experience many different kinds of symptoms.
We need research, research, research.