A Doctors Surgery in Eccles has organised a social group for women to discuss the menopause and work to break the stigma surrounding the term.
Orient Road Doctors Surgery organised the social group in Eccles last Tuesday.
Menopause is when your periods stop, due to lower hormone levels. This usually happens between the ages of 45 and 55.
“Too many women need to educate about menopause but they don’t have enough time.” said Dr. Selva Vannamalar from Orient Road Doctor’s Surgery. “There’s more focus on menopause recently because people are more willing to talk about the symptoms than they were a few years back.”
Dr. Selva explained that the group was organised due to extreme demand for advice on the menopause.
Joanne Naylor, 51, is one of the patients who has bee struggling with the menopause. Ms Naylor was anxious and worried about dealing with menopause, at the time she had no support from anyone.
She said: “I didn’t wanna bother anyone with my questions, I should have looked at the internet but I didn’t want to.
“I wanted to ask somebody.”
Dr. Selva, the organiser of the menopause social club, is planning to organise more events about menopause, especially for women from ethnic minorities from different cultures.
There are 45 symptoms of menopause but the most common symptoms women face are anxiety, stress, joint pains, heat flashes, night sweats, and changes in mood.
According to the NHS, there are around 13 million women who are currently peri or menopausal in the UK, which is equivalent to a third of the entire UK female population.
Carole O’Reilly, a lecturer at the University of Salford, has described her physical symptoms were worse than her mental health during menopause and peri-menopause.
She has had to live with symptoms of the menopause for 10 years without starting he process.
She said: “Menopause does affect your brain. As part of my career, I have to do research and for a period of my time I couldn’t concentrate and that has affected my confidence.
“Four years ago I was giving a lecture in front of 40 students and my brain stopped, I forget what I was saying completely. In a room full of students I was embarrassed.
“Menopause it’s not a woman’s issue only. Even man has to be educated as they have women in their lives so they experience it. Dealing with the anger that comes with the menopause is really difficult for men to handle because Menopause changes our personalities and people around us must accept this.”
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