Not Knowing If It Counts: The Perimenopause Uncertainty Study

A new NAMS study officially names perimenopause uncertainty as a clinically distinct and widespread experience — and explains why so many women feel dismissed or confused before they ever get a diagnosis. This episode also covers a promising randomized trial on compassionate mind training for menopause-related mood and anxiety, and takes a hard look at what "shows promise" actually means when a supplement brand uses it in a headline. Key Takeaways: • Perimenopause uncertainty — not knowing whether your symptoms are perimenopause or something else — is now recognized in peer-reviewed research as a clinically meaningful phenomenon, distinct from illness-related uncertainty. • The uncertainty isn't just uncomfortable; it delays validation, delays care, and has real mental health consequences for women in the transition. • Compassionate Mind Training (CMT), a structured group intervention rooted in self-compassion and emotion regulation, showed feasibility and early signal for reducing anxiety and low mood in a randomized controlled trial — though a fully powered effectiveness trial still needs to happen. • Elysium's NR-based supplement generated a headline claiming it "shows promise" for menopause symptoms — but the source is NutraIngredients, a trade publication, not a peer-reviewed journal, and no independent trial data was available at time of publishing. • For mood and anxiety specifically, non-hormonal, evidence-adjacent options like CMT are worth watching — particularly for women who can't or don't want to use HRT. Sources & References: • Perimenopause uncertainty prevalence and drivers: a mixed-methods study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42445...) - Menopause (NAMS Journal) • Compassionate mind training for low mood and anxiety in the menopause transition: a feasibility RCT (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42412...) - Menopause (NAMS Journal) • Elysium's supplement shows promise for menopause symptoms (https://news.google.com/rss/articles/...) - NutraIngredients.com Listen with full show notes: https://hotflasher.com/episodes/2026-... Have a menopause story to share? We'd love to hear it: https://hotflasher.com/share --- Hot Flasher provides informational content only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical concerns.