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It Got Blamed On Menopause. It Wasn't.
Somewhere in my early fifties, menopause became the answer to everything. Tired? Menopause. Not sleeping? Menopause. Warmer than everyone else in the room? Menopause. Puffy, swollen, holding water in my face and hands and ankles in a way I never used to? Menopause, apparently. Just menopause. Get used to it. And look, some of that is true. A lot of things genuinely do change. But "it's menopause" had become a door that closed every conversation. It wasn't an explanation. It was a way to stop looking. And I'd accepted it about the puffiness the same way I'd accepted it about everything else, because what else are you supposed to do? The thing that made me stop accepting it was noticing that the puffiness wasn't constant. If it were simply menopause, if it were just my new normal, why was it worse some mornings than others? Why did it change depending on how I'd slept? Why did it shift with what I'd eaten, how much I'd moved, or whether I'd spent the whole day sitting? A permanent hormonal change doesn't fluctuate like that. Something else was happening. And "it's menopause" had stopped me from asking what. So I asked. Here's what I found. Yes, the estrogen changes that happen during menopause can make your body hold onto more fluid. That part is real. But holding more fluid is only half the story. The other half is whether your body can clear it. Your body has a second circulation system, completely separate from your blood, whose entire job is draining excess fluid out of your tissue. Your blood has a pump. Your heart. This system has none. It only moves when you move. And it tends to slow down with age at exactly the same time menopause is encouraging your body to hold onto more fluid. So you get hit from both sides. More fluid coming in. Slower drainage taking it out. And the result is exactly what I was seeing. The puffiness. The swelling. The rings that fit one day and not the next. The face that looked different from one mo
