Dr Natalie Crawford

The life you built that you could manage, you're suddenly losing resilience.

So we see sleep disruptions, mental health challenges increase, 40% increase across perimenopause transition, and the cognitive changes.

And that is what really scares my patients the most.

And they come in and most of them are, you know, we're all high functioning in some degree, some of us in academia, some of us in the OR, some of us, but...

Most women are high-functioning because they're juggling so many jobs.

So even if she didn't choose to go the routes that we've chosen, she has managing children, school drop-offs, all the things that women tend to put on their plates.

And suddenly, she can't remember anything.

All the things she used to remember.

Where are her keys?

You know, word salad.

You're struggling to find.

I can't tell you how many times I am like I see people and like I cannot remember their names or I can't remember.

I get in the car and I can't remember where I'm going or what my purpose of getting in the vehicle was.

You have to think for a second.

And so all of that is related to the hormonal changes.

You know, it's frustrating to us, all of us, and we talked a little bit about this last night, is the people who kind of make the rules, the institutions that make the guidelines and the academic kind of ivory tower, you know, they are like, whoa.

Back off.

Slow down.

We shouldn't be blaming everything on menopause.

You know, like, and I don't think that's what we're saying.