Is this perimenopause…?

For a while, I was convinced my body was failing me early.

I started to see shifts in my cycle. I started seeing a little spotting mid-cycle for months. My cycles started getting shorter, normally 28-30 days to 26-27 days.

And my brain immediately went to the worst place.

Perimenopause. At 39. Already.

I told my doctor. She ran a few labs, looked at the numbers, and said what she always says, “You're fine. Progesterone looks normal. Testosterone is low, you should get on testosterone.” 

I told her no way, that is a bandaid solution to a problem I know has a root cause.  I just didn't want to admit this out loud.

But here's what I knew as a practitioner that I had to finally apply to myself:

The labs she was looking at were built on conventional ranges. Ranges based on the average of a population that is largely unwell. Not optimal ranges. Not thriving ranges. Average ones.

When I ran my numbers through functional medicine reference ranges — the ranges that tell you what a healthy, hormonally balanced woman actually looks like — my progesterone wasn't fine.

🩸 I also did a DUTCH test.  It was critically low.

🩸 Not perimenopause low. Running-on-empty low.  Along with all of my hormones, sadly. 

🩸 My estrogen was low, but still higher than progesterone, and my testosterone was low too despite eating ample protein and lifting 4 days a week, heavy weights too. 

Here's the thing nobody told me — and nobody is probably telling you either:

Shorter cycles, mid-cycle spotting — those aren't automatically signs of early menopause.

Sometimes they're signs that your body is screaming for help.

I had no heavy bleeding. No cramping. No irregular cycles. No hot flashes. No night sweats. Nothing that textbook perimenopause actually looks like.

What I had was a depleted nervous system, a business I was scaling as fast as I could, three kids, a husband, a household, and a roster full of other women's health I was holding — all while quietly running my own into the ground.

Chronic stress doesn't just make you tired. It steals the very hormones that make you feel like yourself.

Your body has to make a choice under pressure — survival hormones or sex hormones. Every single time, it chooses survival. Cortisol gets made. Progesterone doesn't. Not because your ovaries are aging. Because you haven't stopped long enough to let your body do anything other than cope and push through, stick to your daily routine of doing more.

I had to learn this the hard way. And I had to make some hard decisions about how I was running my life before my body was going to give me anything back.

If you've had the thought — is this perimenopause? — I want you to sit with this question first:

Are you running on empty? Have you been for a while? Because if the answer is yes, there's a very real chance your hormones aren't failing. They're just waiting for you to stop long enough to let them work.

That's what I'm doing now. That's what I want to help you do, too.

Reply and tell me — have you been told your labs are fine while you feel anything but fine?