Menopause symptoms & women of colour
Oct 20, 2022
“I remember having one on Marine One. I'm dressed, I need to get out, walk into an event, and, literally, it was like somebody put a furnace in my core and turned it on high, and then everything started melting. And I thought, 'Well, this is crazy. I can't, I can't, I can't do this,'" said Michelle Obama.
Is menopause a global experience?
Yes and no. There are massive variations in how menopause experienced.
Menopause affects all of us differently. We don’t know what’s coming until it hits us between the eyes, or legs, or brain, or any part of our bodies to be honest. It sneaks up and wham, hello menopause.
For women of colour, it is an even tougher experience. The symptoms are stronger, more diverse, go for longer and are more challenging to manage. Enough talking to only white women, let’s open the conversation globally and learn more together.
No two experiences are the same.
Although this goes pretty much for everything in life, including menopause. All women go through this transitional phase of life but each one has a very personal menopause experience.
The experience of women of colour may be different from that of white women. White women are more represented in menopause talks everywhere. Let’s try and change this landscape.
These are a few of the ways women of colour experience menopause differently:
- Black women often start menopause earlier than their white peers
- In general, black women’s menstrual cycles start to become erratic more than a year earlier than white women.
- Latina and Asian women reach menopause at 1.7 years and 1.2 years respectively in advance of white women.
- This transition into menopause earlier also means suffering from menopausal symptoms sooner.
- Symptoms include declining muscle density, reduced muscle tone, higher fat mass, and increased cholesterol levels.
- These make women of colour susceptible to issues like heart disease and osteoporosis.
- Longer transition periods which means the menopause transition can last longer.
Oprah is open. Maya is magical and Woopie brings humour. These women make a significant contribution to the narrative about women’s health and menopause. If you read our stuff you – you would have seen them quoted often.
It doesn’t pay to go into menopause early
Some think getting menopause earlier is a good thing because they’ll get through menopause faster. That’s not necessarily true. It means they experience perimenopause longer & have more extended transition periods. Irregular bleeding is one of the earliest signs of transitioning into menopause, which starts early among women of colour.
For white women, night sweats and hot flashes only last for 6.5 years. Meanwhile, it’s on average, 8.9 years for Latina women and 10.1 years for black women. And it’s even worse for black women with a high BMI as not only do their hot flashes last longer, they’re also more severe.
Danielle, 46 went to her doctor. She is “fat shamed” and told to lose weight before there is any discussion about perimenopause. She leaves feeling overlooked and unvalidated.
Or this from Dr Stephen Phillips and Harvard’s Prof Michelle Williams about medical misogyny….
"Our medical system has a long history of minimizing women’s symptoms and dismissing or misdiagnosing their conditions as psychological"
“Women of color with long Covid, in particular, have been disbelieved and denied tests that their white counterparts have received.”
Yesterday I read the following lowlights from the 2022 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey (thanks @Deeegan):
“Women are still dramatically underrepresented in leadership; they’re experiencing burnout at higher levels and they’re demanding greater flexibility”
Only 1 in 4 C-suite executives is a woman, and only 1 in 20 is a woman of color.
The “broken rung” is still holding women back: for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted.
The “broken rung” is still holding women back: for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted.
Women of colour experience menopause more intensely although no one knows for sure why.
Most experts hypothesize that it’s all about allostatic load which happens when your body responds too much to anything that threatens homeostasis. After some time, what’s responsible for maintaining your body’s balance wears out. This could mean your body sets new homeostasis, takes too long to revert to normal, or fails to respond altogether.
Since women of colour have to deal with racism during their lives, their allostatic load is much heavier than that of a white woman. They’re more exposed to more stressors and their body tires of regulating itself.
Women in poorer communities experience the same thing.
Many black women feel unsupported by their doctors. Imagine going to a doctor feeling that they don’t understand what you’re going through. Would you be able to trust them? That’s the real experience of many black women during menopause. They feel that doctors don’t understand what they are going through, so they prefer specific treatment options.
Many of their mothers and grandmothers received conflicting information and variable access to HRT. So they’re not fans. They feel reluctant to tell their doctors of the severity of their symptoms because the doctor does not understand or appreciate what they’re going through. This affects testing and treatment decisions.
In Australia there is very little research done to understand the experiences of First Nations Women.
Transparency, greater awareness, and access to supportive treatment is needed. Only then can doctors offer the best treatment options. Or at the very least, open the discussion on possibilities not even considered by the patient.
Women’s health and menopause is under-researched.
What do we know? Bias is everywhere and the variations across cultures (including positive and negative attitudes) are significant. Hearing diverse voices and experiences is critical.
We would love to hear from any women willing to share their experience.
Maybe what you think are symptoms are just a natural reaction to what’s happening. If you’re feeling rage, it might not be because of menopause. But it might be diagnosed as that if the doctor doesn’t understand where that rage is coming from. Talk to a GP, take someone with you to the appointment; ask about HRT; take a list of your symptoms with you so you’re prepared; talk to an alternative therapist for natural remedies.
You can also talk to us & join a like hearted community of women who are tackling the symptoms of menopause head on.