Gut
Digestion changes in these years far more often than anyone mentions. What is commonly described, what tends to help, and what is worth an appointment.
Start here
Why your digestion changed in perimenopause
Digestive problems are reported as often as broken sleep in perimenopause and mentioned a fraction as much. What changes, why, and what tends to help.
Perimenopause bloating: what helps and what to watch for
Flat in the morning, uncomfortable by evening. Why bloating shows up in perimenopause, the changes that tend to work, and the version that needs a doctor.
What to eat when your gut has become fussier
How to change what you eat for a midlife gut without cutting out half your diet, and how to find out what is actually causing it.
Questions to ask your doctor about gut symptoms in midlife
Gut symptoms get put down to diet, stress and the menopause. How to describe yours so they are looked at properly, and what to ask.
What to do about it
Start here
Why digestion changes in these years
Level with sleep problems for how often it is reported, and almost never mentioned. What is understood about why.
5 min · Narrated
The pattern
Bloating that was not there before
Flat in the morning, uncomfortable by evening. The shape most women describe, and what tends to sit behind it.
4 min · Narrated
Food
Fiber, and why going slowly matters
The most useful change for most guts, and the one most often abandoned in week one because it was done too fast.
4 min · Narrated
Working it out
Finding what is actually doing it
How to work out which foods are involved without cutting out half of what you eat.
5 min · Narrated
The link
Why stress lands in your stomach
The gut and the nervous system are directly wired together, which is not a metaphor and is often the missing piece.
4 min · Narrated
Honestly
Alcohol and the midlife gut
The change many women notice first, and the one they are least keen to hear about.
3 min · Narrated
What to try
Eat for it
The recipes we already hold, filtered for gut comfort
Move for it
Gentle movement keeps things moving, which is most of it
Take the edge off
The gut and the nerves talk to each other more than anyone says
What works
What works for gut symptoms
Every approach women ask us about, with what the research actually shows. No hype, no hard no.
Take it to your doctor
Doctor Prep
It turns what you have been living with into a dated sheet your doctor can act on.
The gut is one of the few places in this stage where small, ordinary changes to what you eat reliably show up within weeks.
Later in the journey
Digestion keeps changing with the decades, and the gentler eating described here holds up well past menopause. Later on, the same fiber and variety do double duty for heart and bone health. New, persistent digestive symptoms arriving years after menopause are always worth an appointment in their own right rather than being put down to age.
Where this comes from
Written for Narrated, plus the recipes Narrated already holds, gathered because digestion changes are reported far more often than they are covered anywhere.
Grows as new recipes arrive. Sources: NHS, British Dietetic Association, Guts UK, Written for Narrated.
Nothing here is ranked by who paid, and nobody buys a place on this page. Narrated is paid by the women who use it and by nobody else. Where we link out, the original publisher is named so you can check it yourself.
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