It wasn't until Arianna Sholes-Douglas found herself googling ‘how to poison someone’ that she wondered if she might be going through perimenopause. She had no real interest in the search term; it was simply to make herself laugh and cut through the irrationally bad mood she felt towards her husband.
Arianna was in her early forties at the time and the symptoms were stacking up: night sweats, hot flushes, awful sleep, being permanently irritated. “I was still getting my period, but I felt like I was dealing with PMS all the time,” she says. “That's when I was like, ‘Is perimenopause happening here?’” When Arianna realised that was indeed the case, she was relieved – but also embarrassed that she hadn't figured it
