Post Menopause & PMS

By definition, a woman who is post menopausal has stopped having her periods for good and therefore cannot experience premenstrual stress syndrome, or PMS. Still, a menopausal woman may experience a few of the symptoms common to PMS, depending on what stage of menopause she's in and if she's on menopausal hormone therapy (MHT).

PMS

• PMS is a set of symptoms a menstruating woman can experience a few days to a week before her period. PMS symptoms include mood swings, water weight gain, breast swelling and soreness, headache, backaches, food cravings and poor concentration. The number and intensity of these discomforts can vary widely from woman to woman and period to period, but the Mayo Clinic estimates that three-quarters of all women are thought to experience some PMS symptoms.

  The cyclical changes in estrogen and progesterone that naturally occur in menstruating/ovulating women are thought to be the key cause of PMS, according to the Mayo Clinic. PMS typically disappears once a woman is post menopausal because she's producing only a small amount of estrogen and progesterone.

Perimenopause

• A woman is considered post menopausal when she has gone 12 consecutive months without a period. A woman may believe she's post menopausal because she hasn't menstruated for several months and then, suddenly, she'll experience PMS symptoms and have her period again. This type of fluctuation in a woman's menstrual cycle during the time leading up to a woman's final period is called perimenopause.

Misidentifying Menopause

• A woman can be perimenopausal for as long as six years before menopause. During perimenopause, a woman may experience an odd mix of traditional PMS symptoms and symptoms common in menopause, such as hot flashes, mood swings and vaginal dryness. This is because estrogen levels are dropping erratically. So a woman who hasn't had her period in a few months may think she's post menopausal and experiencing PMS symptoms when in fact she's perimenopausal. She's not done with her periods just yet.

Menopause and MHT

• Even after a woman has stopped menstruating for a full year, she may still be bothered by problems she experienced during perimenopause. Many of these women find relief through menopausal hormone therapy (MHT).

  A woman on MHT takes synthetic or natural forms of either estrogen alone or estrogen and progesterone to relieve her symptoms. Because these are the hormones a woman's body produces during menstruation, some post menopausal women on MHT find themselves suffering from the same difficulties they experienced when they were younger: breast tenderness, bloating and cramping.

  Still, according to the National Institute on Aging, MHT can relieve hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness. It can also improve cholesterol and reduce a woman's risk of bone fractures and colon cancer.

Expert Insight

• For women bothered by PMS-like symptoms who are on MHT, the North American Menopause Society says the side effects can be lessened by lowering the dose, changing the frequency of the dose, or switching to another form of whichever hormones she's taking.