Secrets of Sarah blog

Sexual Side Effects of Menopause As you know, sex, desire, and sexual satisfaction vary from one woman to the next. Your sex drive may have been higher than your girlfriends, or your sexual satisfaction may have been easy to please. Whatever the case, menopause can often change everything you thought you knew about sex. A 2015 study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that postmenopausal women, on average, experienced a greater rate of sexual dysfunction than their premenopausal peers. This is because menopause can trigger a variety of sexual side effects. Here are some of the issues you may have started to experience, or should be prepared to experience in the near future. Reduced Desire According to the North American Menopause Society, both men and women experience reduced desire with age. But women are two to three times more likely to feel that decrease in sexual urges. This is because a woman’s estrogen hormone levels are changing. It’s important to remember...

Researchers say fluctuating hormones can disrupt women’s sleep up to five years before menopause. Midnight hot flashes aren’t the only way that menopause disrupts women’s sleep, according to a new study.  Researchers said women in perimenopause, the earliest stage of the menopausal transition, get less deep sleep and wake up more often in the week before menstruation. The symptoms usually appear when a woman is in her late 40s, three to five years before the beginning of menopause.  Changes in Body Affect Sleep During perimenopause, women can have irregular menstrual cycles because of fluctuating hormone levels in their body. Younger women generally don’t experience changes in their sleep habits over the course of their menstrual cycle.  Progesterone has a particularly powerful effect on sleep in the lead-up to menopause, according to the study. "Menstrual cycle variation in hormones is one piece in the overall picture of sleep quality in midlife women. ...