Hormones Behaving Badly

You're not a lightweight now. Your chemistry changed. 🍷

One glass of wine. And then — the flushed face, the racing heart, wide awake at 2am, a headache by morning. And you blamed yourself.

Here's what actually happened: oestrogen has two jobs with histamine. It tells your body to RELEASE it, and it powers DAO, the enzyme that CLEARS it. In perimenopause, oestrogen swings — so histamine pools. Wine just pours more on top.

That's why it all turns on you at once: red wine, aged cheese, cured meats, tomatoes, spinach, avocado, leftovers, anything fermented… and it stacks on hayfever season.

You are not fragile. Your chemistry changed.

📌 Save this for the night you ask "why?" — then send it to the friend who keeps saying wine doesn't agree with her anymore.

Follow for the perimenopause stuff no one explained. 💛

(Education, not medical advice — always chat to your GP about your own symptoms.)

Low oestrogen has had me flat all week. That heavy, grey, can't-be-bothered kind of down that nobody warns you about.

So I'm doing the one thing that actually lifts it: babysitting my grandchildren.

This is my grandson 👇

…He's a dog. Two of them, actually — and honestly, the best medicine going. No advice, no opinions on my HRT, just pure unconditional serotonin on four legs.

And while I'm here — properly here, no hiding — hi. I'm Ellana. I'm 57, and I'm the face behind Hormones Behaving Badly.

You're going to be seeing a lot more of me very soon. x

Tired isn't a mood anymore. It's a postcode. I live here now.

If you just read that and went “wait, is this written about me?” — pull up a chair.

Perimenopause-tired isn't “I had a long week” tired. It isn't fixed by an early night or a green smoothie or “trying yoga.” It's a tiredness that lives in your bones. The kind that makes you cry in the cereal aisle. That makes you snap at your kids and then sob about it. That convinces you something is seriously wrong with you — except every test comes back normal.

The tests are normal. You are not lazy. You are not failing.

Your hormones are leaving the building — slowly, clumsily, taking your energy with them.

I made a 7-page Perimenopause Symptom Checklist so you can walk into your next GP appointment and SHOW them what's happening — every weird, ignored, “is this just me?” symptom, in one place, so you stop having to explain.

👉 Comment TIRED below and I'll DM it straight to you 🩷

(Or reply TIRED to my Stories or Highlights — same thing.)

👉 to know if what you're feeling is actually perimenopause? Comment TIRED below and I'll DM you my free symptom checklist — the one you can take straight to your doctor.

"You're too young for menopause."

If you've heard that and walked out of the appointment still exhausted, still foggy, still not yourself — you weren't being dramatic. You were being dismissed.

Here's what too many of us never get told: perimenopause can start in your late 30s and rumble on for up to a decade before menopause itself. So at 42, when your memory's shot, your sleep's wrecked and your patience has left the building? That's not "just stress." That's hormones behaving badly. 🙃

The symptoms creep in slowly enough that you start to believe it's just YOU — that you're slipping, failing, losing it. You're not. There's a name for what's happening, and once you can name it, you can do something about it.

Save this for the next time someone tells you you're "too young" — and send it to the friend who's been quietly wondering the same thing.

Your shoulder isn't "wear and tear."

It's been three months. Maybe a year. You can't fasten your bra behind your back. You can't reach into the back seat. You wake up at 3am because you rolled onto that side and it screamed.

You've seen a physio. You've iced it. You've been told it's posture, tendinitis, stress, your phone, your pillow, your age.

Here's what no one told you: it has a name. Adhesive capsulitis — frozen shoulder. And women aged 40 to 60 develop it 2 to 4 times more often than men.

Why? Oestrogen. It keeps the connective tissue around your joints elastic. When oestrogen drops in perimenopause, the capsule around the shoulder joint can thicken and stiffen — and the pain comes on slowly, often in one shoulder, often for no obvious reason.

Dr Jocelyn Wittstein at Duke University has been researching this for years — published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery — and HRT may reduce both risk and severity in some cases.

You are not broken. You are not weak. You are not imagining it.

What to ask your GP:
1. "Could this be adhesive capsulitis rather than a soft tissue injury?"
2. "Given my age, could it be hormonally driven?"
3. "Would imaging help rule out other causes?"
4. "Is HRT something we should be discussing?"

Save this for your appointment. Send it to the friend who has been icing her shoulder for a year. She isn't falling apart. She's in perimenopause.

You are not broken.
If no one's said it to you today — read it again.
Perimenopause isn't you falling apart. It's your body asking you to listen differently.
Save this for the days you forget. 🤍

Your hormonal headache isn't in your head.
(Well — it is. Just not the way you've been told.)

If the pain hits right before your period, or you're in your 40s and suddenly noticing a new pattern — your oestrogen might be running the show.

Oestrogen affects how your brain manages pain, blood flow, and chemistry. So when it drops — sharply or erratically — your brain feels every bit of it. Cue the headache.

You're not weak. You're not making it up.
You're a woman whose oestrogen is fluctuating, and your brain is responding to it.

Track when your headaches hit. If there's a pattern around your cycle, or a new pattern in your 40s — that's information worth taking to a doctor who actually listens.

Save this one. Send it to the friend who keeps saying "I just get headaches now and no one can tell me why." 🌸