Your claims of brain fog, senior moments, or whatever you want to call the small but frequent memory lapses you experience during the menopause transition are real, according to the findings of a new study just published in Neurology journal . Researchers spent four years investigating the effects of the menopause transition and hormone use on three areas of cognitive function; processing speed, verbal memory and working memory.  They concluded that mid-life women, particularly those in the late-perimenopause stage (they haven’t have a period in three to 11 months) were not able to learn as well as they had during pre-menopause.  The good news is that their test scores eventually improved and rebounded to pre-menopause levels once they hit post-menopause (no period for 12 months), indicating that “menopause related cognitive difficulties may be time-limited.” The impact of hormone treatments on cognitive function were also evaluated. They found that if you started taking hormones before your final menstrual period, the hormones had a “beneficial effect” on cognitive function. The opposite was true for women who began hormone therapy during the post-menopause transition. In those cases, cognitive performance was worse! So, if you’re a mid-life woman (mid 40s to early 50s) who is struggling to learn new computer skills, or returning to school for a degree, cut yourselves some slack and know that your body’s hormones, which have always been in control, will take a temporary performance break as you approach menopause. Be sure to read (Bay area physician) Doc Gurley’s humorous take on this study:  “Are You Moron-o-pausal? which appears in her City Brights online column for the San Francisco Chronicle

Read the original here Your Brain’s RAM and Processing Speed ARE Impacted by Hormonal Changes During the Menopause Transition