In popular culture, menopause is typically associated with hot flushes. In our Menopause: What's Changed? exhibition, we invite visitors to drop a pebble if they experience any of these symptoms. And it turns out, hot flushes are much less common than brain fog or mood symptoms!

Around menopause (known as perimenopause), your brain is doing some interesting things. First of all, the brain is reactive to hormones such as oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Changing levels of these hormones around menopause affects how your brain processes information and emotions.

The other thing that's going on in your brain around menopause is that it is literally rewiring itself! There are differences between a pre- and post-menopausal brain!

One main difference between pre- and post-menopausal brains is that after menopause, you have weaker reactions to negative stimuli. Things that might have strongly upset you before are less upsetting after menopause.

In other words, there's a biological basis to "not giving a shit" which lots of people report feeling after menopause!

Another key change to the post-menopausal brain is that there's a stronger empathetic reaction, particularly towards the people who are closest to you. This might be linked to the Grandmother Hypothesis as to why menopause exists at all https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/110378569676074998
Vagina Museum (@[email protected])

Menopause is incredibly rare in nature. Most animals die soon after their reproductive capability comes to an end. Aside from humans, only four species of wild animal are known to go through a form of menopause: orcas, narwhals, beluga whales and pilot whales. These animals might shed light on why menopause exists at all.

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So if you're perimenopausal and finding yourself forgetting things, your brain feels like it's wrapped in cotton wool, or feeling angry and sad all at once... it's all very normal, and you are *definitely* not alone!

P.S. Please be kind about any typos, run-on sentences, and general grammatical messes in our posts. Our social media person is perimenopausal and sometimes forgets what she's doing mid-sentence because brain fog is super normal.

Love, our perimenopausal brain-foggy social media person xoxo

@vagina_museum this is the best part of getting older IMHO. The shit I do not give is increasing daily. πŸ˜†
@vagina_museum
Hmmmm, suddenly getting old sounds really good...
@vagina_museum I might be looking forward to this part.
@vagina_museum excellent! I look forward to it πŸ˜€

@vagina_museum I wish people talked about this 10 years ago, I am only just foguring out what is going on that is perimenopause/menopause now that I am through most of it.

Thank you for having conversations now so people going forward will have a better idea what to expect.

An excellent exhibit on the #menopause at @vagina_museum I recommend everyone goes. Most informative.
@vagina_museum love this interaction. I found out recently (because I have peri-menopausal muscle pain) that a third of all people who experience menopause symptoms only experience muscular or joint pain and don't report any of the hot flushes or more commonly known symptoms!! I had no idea.
@tiny_m @vagina_museum I discovered that I get pain in my elbows and toes, when I'm low one progesterone. It's crazy, all the strange things that suddenly happen to us that are caused by hormones and can sometimes be remedied quite easily, provided you know what's going on. We need more education on menopause and have to make sure everybody comes across helpful information.
@OutoftheBlueDD @vagina_museum The other thing which was a complete surprise was the pain I had in my hip and weird weak finger joints that happened during pregnancy came back, exactly the same, so that was obviously a hormone progesterone thing, which nobody explained at the time or suggested might be a problem in the future. They are such tiny things that you don't think to mention to people but that was a massive lightbulb moment, and then a friend said oh yeah pregnancy hip, what? you knew?
@vagina_museum Mum told me that she experienced just mild hot flushes, and they became perfectly manageable when she started wearing cotton underwear instead of synthetic fibres. Obviously, just her experience but thought I'd mention it in case someone here might find it helpful.
@vagina_museum wtf? Gum problems are perimenopausal too?? I'll add that one to my list! 😢
@vagina_museum Hair loss not mentioned? Bone density?
@vagina_museum I have urgency incontinence as a symptom. Missing from the list but very much associated with menopause.
@vagina_museum menopause made my inner ears itchy AF. HRT helped alleviate that. I also started getting a nasty-smelling oily secretion behind my left earlobe (but not my right). This happens despite washing the area. It's gross and weird.