Is it Perimenopause or Aging? Studies show…
If you’re wondering why you can’t tolerate caffeine or alcohol all of a sudden - you’re not alone. Same goes for suddenly having high cholesterol when you’ve never had high cholesterol in your whole life. Scientists took note of this too. The found at certain ages, you somehow fall off a cliff in terms of your health only to stabilize several years and do it again. Specifically, this happens around 40-45yo and then leading up to 60-65 years of age.
This honestly made me laugh as my patients would tell me, “YOU JUST WAIT!” which was usually followed by, “When you turn 45yo, you’ll see you can’t tolerate wine anymore!” I was in my 30’s at the time. Now that I’m in my late 40’s - they were absolutely right!
At What Age?
The particular study linked below was small but it was done on both men and women between 25-75 years old. This is important to note as not EVERYTHING is due to perimenopause. Some things are truly due to aging (ugh).
They found that cardiovascular disease, lipid, caffeine and alcohol metabolism changes started in the 40’s while immune regulation, caffeine (again)and carbohydrate metabolism shifted during the early 60’s. I would argue for most women carbohydrate metabolism changes earlier but maybe in a larger study they would see that. The researchers also found that kidney issues and type 2 diabetes went up after 60yo.
Please keep on top of your labs! I have a free e-book for this here.
Skin and muscle aging seemed to move quicker at 45yo and then again at 65yo. This might be why you look in the mirror one day and don’t recognize yourself…or wonder if you’ve aged overnight. It’s known that muscle mass decreases by approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of 30, with an even higher decline rate after the age of 60 - which matched up with this study. All the more reason to keep your protein levels up at each meal and start weight training if you’re not already. Both help maintain and build skeletal muscle.
Aging vs Perimenopause
While this study was not perfect, it did mirror (more or less) other studies that evaluated what’s happening to us as we age. It’s also nice to know that not EVERYTHING is perimenopause. Some is legitimate aging, although the authors discuss how 40’s do line up with prime perimenopause time which feels like a double whammy.
There are a lot of unanswered questions of course - no discussion was done on different levels or variations of healthy habits compared to “standard American.” They were not specifically looking at men or women on or off hormones such as testosterone or estradiol respectively.
I am glad to see ongoing aging studies occur so that I can continue to help educate you on what might be coming and how to be proactive about it!
Study: Shen X, Wang C, Zhou X, et al. Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging. Nature Aging. Published online August 14, 2024:1-16. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-024-00692-2