7 Warning Signs You May Be Approaching Menopause
Your Body Is Talking. Are You Listening?
Maria is 43. She has always been the sharpest person in any meeting. Last month she forgot the name of a colleague she has worked with for six years. She stood in the cereal aisle of her grocery store, unable to remember what she came for. Her period, which arrived like clockwork for 30 years, showed up nine days early, then skipped a month entirely.
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Her doctor told her she was “too young for menopause” and suggested she might be stressed.
Maria is not stressed. Maria is in perimenopause. And she deserved a doctor who recognized it.
Perimenopause is the transition your body makes on its way to menopause. It typically begins in the mid-40s, but a 2025 study of more than 4,400 U.S. women published in npj Women’s Health found something striking: over 55% of women aged 30 to 35 already reported moderate to severe perimenopause-related symptoms [1]. That number climbed to 64% for women aged 36 to 40.
Yet most women do not seek treatment until age 56 or older.
That gap should concern every ObGyn in America.
The problem is not that women ignore their symptoms. The problem is that nobody tells them what to look for. Anticipatory guidance about puberty is embedded in our schools. Pregnancy gets an entire prenatal care infrastructure. Perimenopause? Women are left to figure it out alone, often told their symptoms are “just stress” or “just aging.”
A 2024 study in the journal Menopause described the experience perfectly. Researchers found that 63% of perimenopausal women reported “not feeling like myself” at least half the time [2]. That phrase captures something important: these symptoms are real, they are measurable, and they have specific hormonal explanations.
Here are seven warning signs your body may be approaching menopause, and the numbers behind each one.
