For all women heading towards menopause or perimenopause, Dr Trish Zingel is hosting a free community talk to equip women with all the information they need.

“This is my second talk,” says Trish, “I am passionate about equipping women with the information that they need to thrive during the perimenopause and menopause years.”

Trish is holding her community talk at C3 Church on Wednesday, August 14.

“Over the last few years there have been changes to treatment options. There is a better understanding about the impact of hormonal changes.

“I think we’re talking about menopause more now in the last three years and prescribing hormone replacements have doubled in New Zealand.”

Trish says it has always been taught that you are not menopausal until your period stops.

“What we realise now is that often women can have a normal period but they can still have significant hormone changes.

She says that in the past women have come to her that have had hot flashes and they are feeling tired but they have a normal period.

“I’ve done blood tests that have come back normal, and I have told them everything’s fine. Now we’re realising that things aren’t fine. Women are getting undiagnosed.

“I’ve been doing a lot of menopause treatment in the last two years and nearly every week I’ve had someone say ‘I feel normal again’, ‘My life’s back how it used to be’.”

Trish says one of the big reasons for women being undiagnosed is because many of the symptoms aren’t usually related to hormonal changes.

“Classis symptoms are hot flushes and night sweats,” she says. However, for others they can feel depressed/low mood, anxious, brain fog, joint pain, anger, insecure, trouble sleeping, tired, chest pains, vaginal dryness, low libido, palpitations and even a crawling sensation on the skin.

“I had patients who presented with chest pain and palpitations, and it was all hormonal. I ended up sending her to the cardiologist and she had a number of admissions and six months down the track I said to her ‘Are you getting hot flushes?’, ‘Are you having difficulty sleeping?’, and then we realised that all her cardiac symptoms were actually hormonal. I put her on hormone replacement and a lot of those things disappeared.

“That’s the problem,” she says. “The symptoms are very wide and stress can also cause a lot of those symptoms. It’s not straightforward.”

Trish says that a women is likely to get painkillers for joint pain, anti-depressants for low mood and heart medication for palpitations, when the causes could all be from hormone changes.

“Information is power, equipping women with good information can be transformational.

“I have been working with a lot of perimenopausal woman and menopausal women in the last few years.

“I have realised that many women start having hormonal issues in their early 40s and they often don’t understand what is happening to them.

“If women don’t join the dots, generally, their doctors don’t.”

Trish says a big focus for her talk will be on lifestyle and breast cancer. “Once women increase in their weight, it’s actually really hard for them to lose weight, particularly when their hormones start changing in their 40s.

“A lot of women don’t realise the biggest risk for breast cancer is obesity and alcohol. If women drink more that three standard drinks of alcohol a week, they significantly increase their risk of breast cancer.

“Often with hormone changes, women put on weight, they feel tired, they’re not sleeping, they’ve got joint pain, so they often stop excising.

“If I can help women to feel better and to keep excising, eating well and sleeping well, then that’s going to be much better for them in the long term.”

Research into women’s health is changing. “More and more female GPs are doing more training just like myself. I’ve invested hours into updating myself, I listen to webinars all the time on current recommendations. It is quite an investment to update yourself because, unfortunately, it’s not one size fits all.

“The easier way is to empower women. The reason I’m doing these talks is to give women good knowledge and balanced knowledge and point them to some good website.”