.svg){kind=logo}
May 25, 2026
Perimenopause or Stress? How to Tell the Difference
Perimenopause and stress share symptoms like anxiety, poor sleep, and mood swings. But cycle changes and symptom timing reveal which is more likely.
Two big research reviews landed last week. One on menopause, one on endometriosis and ovarian cancer.
Both pull from years of past research to give a clearer answer than any single study could. And both come with a twist the headlines don't capture.
If you've been told menopause is "just hormones" or that endometriosis "raises your cancer risk," what these papers actually say is more useful than that.
A team at Oxford looked at 61 studies (picked from more than 9,200) to ask one question: what shapes who has the hardest time with menopause?
The answer: it isn't random. How rough menopause gets tracks with a handful of things, including ethnicity, mental health, income, education, smoking, and weight.
Some of what they found:
The authors' bottom line: ...
Carly Malo is myStoria's Head of Concierge. She has 2 decades of experience in direct nursing care, having worked in long-term care, sports medicine, practical nursing, and fertility/reproductive health.
