Why Are My Autoimmune Symptoms Worse in Perimenopause?

Your labs keep coming back acceptable. Your symptoms keep getting harder to hold. And you have probably landed on one of two conclusions: either something is wrong with you that nobody has found yet, or something is wrong with how you are handling it.
I want to offer a third.
Full show notes
Three things change at the same time in this decade, and each one is invisible on its own.
Your immune baseline was set decades before perimenopause. Estrogen, which your immune system has been reading as an instruction every day for years, stops declining in a straight line and starts swinging. And cortisol, which is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory signals your body makes, stops being received even while your body is producing more of it.
That third one is why a normal lab result can be a false negative. The all clear is being sent. It is not landing.
In this episode I walk through all three, and I translate the research into language you can use with your own provider. I also tell you why I stopped calculating ACE scores, what a hazard ratio actually means when you read one about your own health, and what has to be stabilized before anything else will hold.
Perimenopause does not create the autoimmunity. It does not create the pattern either. It removes the margin that had been holding that pattern quietly, which is why it feels like it arrived out of nowhere.
In this episode:
Why a cortisol test can read normal while inflammation gets worse
The four immune control points estrogen sits at
Why unpredictable estrogen costs more than declining estrogen
What "seventy percent increased risk" really means
Why I stopped calculating ACE scores
What has to come first, and why most people start at the wrong end
Resources:
Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma: https://biologyoftrauma.scoreapp.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_audio&utm_campaign=ep195-autoimmunity-perimenopause&utm_content=show-notes
The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637746237?tag=draimie-20
Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-195-why-autoimmune-symptoms-get-worse-in-perimenopause
Full show notes
Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma