How early can you start peri-menopause?

[Jenny Wren]

Hello doctor, I posted to you a while back, I am 35, I have had alot of strange symptoms in the last 8 years, starting with migraines that I never had before, then came anxiety attacks, over the last 8 years I have gained a good bit of weight and its not that I eat alot, my hair is thinner and it seems to be dry, plus I notice alot of hair loss when combing and washing, I did not sleep well until recently when my doc put me on buspar for anxiety, sleeping is not affected now.   My skin is really dry.  My periods come anywhere between 24 to 30 days apart, some months are shorter, maybe only a day or two, and some months its 4-5 days of heavy bleeding.  My gram went through menopause, naturally at age 39, my mom was around 53.  I have read on the computer that facial tingling is a sign of peri-menopause, I have this, and have had a brain MRI done, and also a cervical MRI, the only thing found was a bulging disk at C-3, C-4.  I also get these weird feelings that are like little power surges through my veins, like someone is injecting ice water in my veins, its a weird feeling.  I heard this is called formication.  I have not seemed to have hot flashes, but do get cold flashes on occasions.  I just downright feel awful around ovulation time, or near my period.  The strange feelings are definently worse then.  My neuro seems to feel that these strange feelings are related to migraines, even though I am not having the migraines at the time.  Migraines do run in my family. TSH levels are fine, so is other bloodwork.  Does this sound like maybe its hormone related to you? Thank U!!

[Jekesha]

I was wondering when you can start as well I had a period in October of this year and missed Nov's which usually start around the 27th of each month on Nov 10th I had a dark brown discharge and started feeling weired after that. Morning sickness, dry skin, metalic taste, frequent urination, most aweful headaches,hot flashes I sleep with my window cracked open just to breath my breast are tender and I'm having mood swings. So I keep telling myself that it's menopause. I took a pregnancy test
on last week and it came up negative. So I was going to wait unti I miss my next af for this month. I'm lost here I don't know what to think or do I have sleepness nights sometimes I wake up so hungry around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and the pains wont stop until I eat something is this just my nerves, menopause or what.

[Machelle Seibel, MD]

A. You have a large number of symptoms and it is difficult to know exactly what is causing them with only the information you have provided and without an examination.

Formication is the belief that bugs are crawling on you. It comes from the work "formica" which means