31/12/2025
This ⬇️
Slow down
Sleep
Stress management
Strategise
Priorities need to change as your body and body recalibrates.
There is so much talk about oestrogen being the master hormone.
But we really need to be looking at the benefits of progesterone.
It’s the first hormone to decline in perimenopause.
Causing …….
PMS/PMDD exacerbation or new symptoms
Exacerbation or new mental health difficulties
Neurodiversity unmasked
Changes in menstruation
Post natal depression for 35+ women
I invite you to “Think progesterone”.
She Discovered Why Women Crash After 35 — And It’s Not Laziness.
They told her she was slowing down because she was aging.
That after 35, exhaustion was just the cost of getting older.
That weight gain, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, and bone pain were personal failures—things to manage with better habits and lower expectations.
She knew that story was wrong.
What women were experiencing wasn’t laziness.
It wasn’t weakness.
It wasn’t a motivation problem.
It was physiology.
Her name is Jerilynn Prior, and her work changed how science understands what actually happens inside women’s bodies in their late 30s and 40s—long before menopause ever arrives.
For decades, medicine treated menopause like a cliff. Estrogen falls. Periods stop. Symptoms appear. End of story.
But women kept saying something didn’t add up.
They were crashing years before menopause.
They were still cycling. Still menstruating. Still technically “normal.”
Yet their bodies felt unfamiliar. Unstable. Unreliable.
Doctors told them it was stress. Or parenting. Or career pressure. Or anxiety. Or just life.
Prior didn’t accept that.
She noticed something critical that most research had overlooked: perimenopause is not estrogen loss first.
It’s progesterone disruption.
That single insight reframed everything.
Progesterone isn’t just a reproductive hormone. It’s a calming hormone. A sleep-supporting hormone. A bone-protective hormone. A nervous-system stabilizer.
And in perimenopause, progesterone becomes erratic years before estrogen declines.
Cycles shorten. Ovulation becomes inconsistent. Progesterone drops unpredictably. Estrogen may spike or fluctuate wildly, unopposed.
The result?
Women feel wired and exhausted at the same time.
Sleep collapses.
Anxiety appears out of nowhere.
Migraines worsen.
Periods become heavier or chaotic.
Weight redistributes.
Bones quietly lose density.
This isn’t burnout.
It’s a body losing hormonal rhythm.
What made Prior’s work radical wasn’t just identifying the mechanism—it was insisting that women deserved accurate explanations instead of moral judgments.
You’re not failing to cope.
Your body is changing its signaling system.
That distinction matters.
When women believe their crash is personal, they push harder. Restrict more. Sleep less. Train harder. Drink more coffee. Ignore symptoms.
Which makes everything worse.
Because perimenopause isn’t a phase that responds to force.
It responds to understanding.
Prior emphasized that supporting progesterone rhythms—through cycle awareness, stress reduction, sleep protection, and appropriate medical strategies—could dramatically change women’s midlife experience.
Not to “optimize.”
But to stabilize.
And with stability comes power.
Women stop blaming themselves for needing rest.
They stop gaslighting their own symptoms.
They stop accepting narratives that frame biological transition as personal decline.
The emotional shift is profound.
Validation replaces shame.
Knowledge replaces fear.
Agency replaces resignation.
Perimenopause is not the beginning of the end.
It’s a transition—one the body undertakes with intention, not sabotage.
The problem was never women’s resilience.
It was a medical system that refused to study women’s hormones unless reproduction was the endpoint.
Dr. Jerilynn Prior helped correct that.
She gave women language for what they were living.
Science for what they felt.
And permission to stop apologizing for a crash that was never their fault.
Women don’t fall apart after 35.
Their bodies are recalibrating.
And once you understand that, the story changes—from quiet self-blame to informed self-respect.
