Oscar winning actor Halle Berry shocked fans this week with the farfetched medical tale of how doctors misdiagnosed her perimenopause.
Instead of correctly identifying the 57 year-old’s hormonal change, the physician said her problem was, ‘the worst case of herpes she’d ever seen’.
After multiple negative STI tests, it was confirmed much later that her doctor had made a mistake. Berry is not alone in her experience of doctors failing to spot the bodily change that happens in roughly 1 million Americans every year.
Studies show that nearly one in three women aged 45-54 have had their menopause symptoms misdiagnosed by a doctor.
And the sexually transmitted virus Herpes is just one of a catalogue of conditions that women have been wrongly told they have instead.
From Alzheimer’s to heart disease, here’s all the serious health problems that menopausal symptoms can mimic…
Halle Berry opened up to First Lady Jill Biden about her experience with misdiagnoses of menopause
Sexually transmitted infections
Berry originally sought help from her doctor because dryness during sex had caused her intense vaginal pain. She was told her symptoms were caused by herpes.
However, she discovered that these same symptoms are common in menopause.
In menopause, vaginal tissues become thinner, drier and more easily irritated because of a loss of estrogen, in a condition known as atrophic vaginitis.
This can make sex painful and could cause bumps or cuts in tissue that can appear to be another problem, such as an infection.
Many sexually transmitted diseases, like herpes, gonorrhea’s and chlamydia, can cause vaginal irritation and pain during sex, according to Johns Hopkins.
Heart disease
Oprah Winfrey’s early menopause systems were misdiagnosed as a heart condition
Roughly 54 percent of menopausal women report suffering heart palpitations around the time their menopause symptoms started.
Estrogen – which plummets in the menopause – has a number of protective functions for the cardiovascular system, according to Uk charity, the British Heart Foundation. This includes regulating cholesterol levels, reducing the fat build up in arteries and regulating blood pressure.
So when estrogen levels begin to drop off, as they do around menopause, women may begin to see changes in their heart function.
Talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey shared on ‘The Checkup with Dr. David Agus’ that when she started experiencing heart palpitations in her early 40’s, doctors put her on medications and threaded a catheter into her heart.
‘At one point, a female doctor had given me, first of all, an angiogram and put me on heart medication and never once mentioned that this could be menopause or perimenopause,’ she said.
She went to five different doctors, until she discovered that her symptoms were caused by hormonal changes from perimenopause.
Dementia
One of the more confusing symptoms that a lot of women deal with from menopause is brain fog.
This happens because there are estrogen receptors in the brain that play an important in memory and speech, Dr Jessica Caldwell, a neuropsychologist, told Prevention.
So when estrogen production drops off, the brain suffers a deficiency in the hormone, and has to adjust. ‘It’s your brain figuring out how to work without as much estrogen as it’s used to,’ Caldwell said.
Women undergoing perimenopause may have more difficulty concentration, multi-tasking and recalling memories, according to Dementia UK.
This is similar to some of the symptoms you’d observe in someone with dementia, which is a blanket term for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
‘I’ve actually had patients misdiagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease when really it was menopause-related brain fog,’ Dr Gayatri Devi, a professor of neurology at SUNY Downstate Medical Centre, told Prevention.
Depression
Some doctors say that prescribing hormone therapy replacement would be more effective in treating some menopausal symptoms than other interventions, like antidepressants
The hormonal changes brought on by menopause include changes in sleep quality, anxiety, altered appetite, fatigue and mood disturbances, which ticks almost all of the boxes for the symptoms of depression.
Experts have previously highlighted that antidepressant use in women is highest in women of menopausal age, with 44.3 percent of all women in the US taking the drugs being over 40 years old.
‘We often sort of say, oh, it must just be depression. All these symptoms can be related to anxiety and depression”,’ Dr Jennifer Roelands, an OB/GYN said in a TikTok.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Some people who are going through menopause get misdiagnosed with IBS
This condition is quite common and includes cramps, constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating. Many women also experience these changes when menopause begins to set in, according to the Menopause Charity.
When estrogen and progesterone levels drop off, studies have shown that people feel more intense bloating, stomach pain and changes in bowel patterns.
Researchers from the University of Washington therefore connected that many women who begin going through menopause may experience some of the same symptoms of IBS.
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia Syndrome is a chronic condition that can cause pain all over the body, tiredness, difficulty sleeping, brain fog and IBS, according to the Menopause Charity.
Because there are no blood tests or official diagnoses for fibromyalgia, many doctors hear these symptoms, which also occur to those going through menopause, and make a rushed diagnosis, Dr Deborah Brunt, a general practitioner who focused on menopause, wrote on her website.
One user on the forum MenopauseMatters , Hill Wimp, shared that she had had her perimenopause misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia for over five years.
‘My Symptoms started with a vengeance I had a useless GP who, after a year of me complaining of brain fog, sleeping 18hrs a day, unbelievable joint and muscle pain and no periods diagnosed me with Fibro and Chronic Fatigue along with stress,’ she wrote.
