We all have those moments where we just can’t find the right words, let alone recall what we walked into a room for, but from perimenopause onward (which can be up to several years before actual menopause), many women (and men) find brain fog and cognitive skills get even worse. As a PCOS sufferer all my life, I hope to goodness mine don’t get any worse; my memory and brain fog have been terrible since my teens!
The general thought is that ‘menopause brain’ is because of reducing oestrogen or progesterone, but actually some experts think it is more likely testosterone. That’s perfectly possible, I reckon, because clinically I often see low DHEA on adrenal tests and consequently low testosterone levels as you make testosterone partly out of DHEA (It’s much more complicated than that, we are talking hormones here, of course, but lack of DHEA = reduction in testosterone particularly.
The answer in these cases is not to rush to the doctor for testosterone pills – in effect a form of HRT – but to boost waning adrenal function. Most people just think of having hormone tests, which is of course the obvious thing to do, but don’t forget your adrenals.
You make much more of your steroid or ‘sex’ hormones from your adrenals after about forty, and most of us with stressy lifestyles are pounding away at our poor adrenals expecting them to cope and, Bob’s your uncle: not only do you feel less able to cope with life as you used to as your adrenal output starts to drop (so-called adrenal fatigue), you also start to get ‘hormone deficiency’ type symptoms.
Moral of the story: look after your adrenals after your 40s, men and women. You can read much more about adrenal fatigue here, testing hormones here and testing adrenals specifically here.
Also, here is the article that sparked that post for you: