You are too young. You are still having periods. You have a stressful life.

All three sound reasonable when said quickly. None of them settles the question. Perimenopause can begin while you are still menstruating, your periods can stay regular for a long time, and the symptoms rarely arrive in the order you were taught to expect.

Being dismissed leaves you somewhere awkward. Either you start trying to prove that every bad night, headache and argument is hormonal, or you stop mentioning any of it at all. Neither serves you well, and both make the next appointment harder.

This book explains what perimenopause is, why it can touch so many unrelated-looking parts of daily life, which symptoms deserve prompt attention rather than patience, and how to describe what is happening to you in terms a clinician can act on.

Perimenopause is Book Two in The Menopause Clarity Series.