I reviewed 50 websites looking for perimenopause misinformation.
Here's what I found
We need the truth.
This isn’t a political statement; it’s a human biological one.
According to Britt Frank, LSCSW, someone I mention often and the author of The Science of Stuck, when our brains come across information that doesn’t make sense (such as it does with misinformation and lies), our brains fire up trying to make sense out of it.
It usually doesn’t go well.
Let’s use an example.
Let’s say you and your husband are painting the living room together and run out of painter’s tape. Your husband offers to pick up some more, but he’s taking longer than usual. You may start to get concerned, “Did something happen?”
Your mind will play out all sorts of scenarios as you try to figure out where he is.
When he gets home, you realize you may have freaked out for nothing, but ask him anyway what took him so long.
He answers with, “I stopped to get gas.”
But, you know that the car didn’t need gas.
Now your brain tries to figure out why he really stopped at the gas station or if it was even a gas station he stopped at. Maybe you’re concerned about a gambling problem, and now you’re worried he stopped at the gas station to pick up lottery tickets. Maybe he stopped to pick up cigarettes, and you were hoping that he had quit for good.
Your mind will continue to generate increasingly worse and worse worst-case scenarios until you have accurate information. This leaves us feeling trapped in a mental loop until we can break free by uncovering the truth.
But with health information, we sometimes don’t even realize we’re being fed misinformation. We can get pulled in without even noticing it, caught up in the moment. Perhaps it’s the excitement of discovering a “hack” for your health issue or maybe you feel like the wellness industry really understands you.
This article will provide clarity on what’s perimenopause misinformation and why.
I reviewed 50 random websites based on a Google search for “perimenopause,” plus a few others I knew about, and I’ll share my results with you.
We simply cannot make the best health decisions for ourselves if we don’t have valid and authentic information to base those decisions on.
What Types of Misinformation Did I Find?
I’ve grouped the types of perimenopause information into 5 categories.
Outdated information - A lot of websites were once well-loved and then were left to rot or just aren’t reviewed and updated as new information becomes available. One trick I use to determine if a website is a valuable resource is to look at the copyright date at the bottom of the website. If it isn’t the current year, it’s most likely going to contain outdated health information. Website owners need to update the copyright year annually, and if they aren’t doing this, I wonder what else they aren’t updating. Unless the website is deleted, it will continue showing up in Google searches.
Innocent - Some misinformation is “innocent,” meaning that the website doesn’t have malicious intent to spread false information. The person writing the information may not understand what they are writing about with thought and purpose. It’s very easy for someone to think of themselves as a health expert after spending some time on Dr. Google, but health education requires extensive health knowledge and high health literacy to pull all of the pieces together.
Purposely malicious - There was one website that I came across that was so far away from the facts that it was mind-blowing. I will mention more about it below.
Intent on selling products - This seems to be the biggest source of misinformation where companies will bend science for their use to push products and supplements.
Definitive statements - The first thing one learns in health education is that there are no “absolutes,” meaning that everything in health and health information can change and can be different among individuals. Therefore, it’s important to use the words “may” and “can” instead of “it is” when providing health information. I make a conscious effort to follow these guidelines.
Top Themes in Perimenopause Misinformation
❌ Menopause is your final menstrual period (FMP).
✔ Menopause is when you have gone period-free for 365 days, had surgical removal of your ovaries, or were given medicine to shut your ovaries down (such as with some cancer treatments). It is one day in time, your 365th day since your last period. The days between your final menstrual period and the 365th day are still considered perimenopause. It’s only in retrospect that your final period was, in fact, your final period.
After the one day of “menopause,” you are post-menopausal, although most people just say “menopausal.”
Your FMP marks the end of your menstrual cycle, but it’s not menopause.
❌ Perimenopause is the transition through menopause.
✔ Perimenopause are the years prior to reaching menopause. It’s also called the menopause transition, but it’s not the transition through menopause. It’s the transition to reaching menopause.
❌ You can tell your perimenopause stage by taking a test.
✔ Clearblue, the makers of ovulation and pregnancy tests, would have you believe that by using their pee-on-a-stick test, you can determine if you’re pre-menopausal, early perimenopause, late perimenopause, or post-menopause. There is no one test that determines this.
This test uses FSH levels, which do rise the closer you reach menopause. However, they are wildly erratic during perimenopause and not a good indicator if you are in perimenopause. Incidentally, Clearblue is being sued for claiming their tests can do this and that it “exploits mid-life women by selling them useless menopause tests.”1
❌ Menopause doesn't last forever!
✔ While that may be technically true since menopause is technically only one day, this is extremely misleading. Menopause and post-menopause lasts the rest of your life.
❌ Some women benefit from using vaginal lubricant to counter vaginal dryness.
✔ I saw some confusion around the difference between vaginal lubrication (used for sex) and vaginal moisturizers (helpful for vaginal dryness). Vaginal lubrication can make sex more pleasurable because it reduces pulling or friction against sensitive vaginal tissue, but it does nothing to heal vaginal tissue.
❌ Outside of smoking, there aren’t many lifestyle factors and underlying conditions that cause early or late menopause.
✔ 🙄. Poor lifestyle, as well as some conditions, can affect when a woman reaches menopause. Smoking is a factor, but so is endometriosis, PMDD, PCOS, history of cancer treatments, some autoimmune conditions, family history of early menopause, an early first period (under 8), and some infections are all examples of things that can affect the age a woman reaches menopause.
❌ Hormone therapy is effective in preventing dementia and is cardio-protective.
✔ The current guidelines would not agree with this. Hormone therapy is useful in treating hot flashes/night sweats, preventing osteoporosis, and may help with the urinary and vaginal symptoms of perimenopause/menopause (called The Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause, NOT vaginal atrophy, which is an outdated term.)
❌ Perimenopause symptoms are not harmful.
✔ Let’s focus on hot flashes and night sweats to look at whether perimenopause symptoms are harmful or not. Hot flashes and night sweats fall under the heading “vasomotor symptoms.” I’m going to quote The Menopause Society, “Vasomotor symptoms are major risk factors for depressed mood, anxiety, and impairments in quality of life during the menopause transition.”2 They also go on to talk about the effects on work productivity and lost wages, sleep problems, and cardiovascular disease risk.
just wrote an excellent article, Women Have Been Misled About Heart Disease on her Substack, . If you’ve ever been confused about the term “cardiovascular disease,” this article is informative and addresses the risk of heart issues related to hot flashes as well as obstetrical complications, a fairly recent discovery. Maryann, a longtime healthcare professional and registered dietitian, earned her master’s degree in nutrition.❌ You can balance your hormones during menopause and get rid of symptoms with natural support.
✔ What they may mean is you can buy their untested supplements, claiming it’s backed by evidence-based science (it’s not) to do things that have been unproven. It’s ridiculously easy to make your own supplements in the U.S. The FDA (Food & Drug Administration) won’t stop you unless there are complaints.
Or, this can mean that you can order their special compounded “bioidentical” hormones, which are also unregulated by the FDA.
In this regard, I also think they are using the word “menopause” when they really mean “perimenopause” because in menopause, your estrogen, progesterone, and eventually testosterone hormones are all low. There’s nothing to balance.
❌❌ Earlier, I mentioned a website that had clear malicious intent to promote misinformation for their own ill-gotten gains. This website says that you can prevent menopause from happening. “Perimenopause is preventable and reversible.”
✔ You can’t, and it’s not.
Anyone who was born with ovaries and went through puberty will, at some point, reach menopause. Maybe one day in the future, you’ll be able to as scientists are working on it (Click here for what I learned about this topic by attending last year’s The Menopause Society Annual Meeting).
It can be overwhelming and hard to face the facts sometimes, but it’s important to if we want to move ahead without feeling stuck or trapped by situations. As the saying goes, the truth will set you free.
Better information coming in means that you can make educated decisions for your health. And that, my peri friends, is empowering.
Why Can I Write This Article?
My mother always said, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” So many of the reviewed perimenopause websites are reliant on the support (financial and otherwise) of others and must adhere to guidelines, messages, and promises in order to continue to receive such support.
The Periprofessional is different.
The Periprofessional is self-supported and doesn’t rely on affiliate links, outside advertisers, or sponsored products. This allows me to provide unbiased information 100% of the time.
We need independent individuals whom we can trust to provide us with reliable information, especially now that our chain of communication is being affected.
Get Further Support from Shelby!
✨Book a personalized session with me to get your perimenopause questions answered. I know you have them! Learn more and book online using my HIPAA-compliant client portal.
Be well, stay cool…
Shelby Tutty, MHA
Certified Perimenopause Educator
Founder of The Periprofessional, LLC
Disclaimer, Content Use Policy, Privacy Policy
McGrath, Maggie. “Lawsuit Claims Proctor & Gamble’s Menopause Test Kit Is a “Fraud.” Plus: How Will Tariffs Affect Your Bottom Line?” Forbes, 7 Feb. 2025, www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2025/02/07/lawsuit-claims-proctor--gambles-menopause-test-kit-is-a-fraud-plus-how-will-tariffs-affect-your-bottom-line/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2025.
Thurston, Rebecca C. PhD, FABMR, FAPS. Basics of vasomotor symptoms. Menopause 31(12):p 1085-1086, December 2024. | DOI: 10.1097/GME.0000000000002479
“preventable and reversible” 🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for the mention!