Why digestion changes in these years

In the Flo survey of more than 12,000 women reported by The Menopause Society, 76 percent described digestive issues. That is the same proportion that reported sleep problems.

It is one of the least discussed parts of this stage, which is why so many women assume it is something they have developed on their own.

Estrogen and progesterone both influence how quickly food moves through the gut, which is why many women notice digestion shifting alongside their cycle long before perimenopause.

As those hormones become unsteady, the pattern becomes unsteady with them. Bloating, slower transit and a gut that reacts to foods it used to ignore are all commonly described.

Stress plays a genuine and often underrated part. The gut and the nervous system are directly connected, and this is not a decade short of stress.

The gut is one of the few areas here where ordinary changes to what you eat tend to show up within a few weeks rather than a few months.

That makes it worth working on methodically rather than guessing, and there is a piece in this section on how to do that without cutting out half your diet.