Cuenta

Cesta

La cesta está vacía

Seguir comprando

Sign Up & Unlock 15% Off Neumina

Join the Neumina community today! Use code: WELCOME15 at checkout.

Enter your email above to instantly activate your 15% off code for your first purchase.

The Brain and Nervous System

Something shifts in how you feel day to day, and it is not always easy to name. You feel like you are annoyed more than you used to. A conversation that would once have rolled off your back now lingers for hours. You are tired in a way that sleep does not seem to fix, and your mood feels like it's all over the place. Nothing is wrong with you. Your brain is working its way through a major hormonal change, and a great deal of what you are feeling traces straight back to that.


The changes are common, and they are measurable. Perimenopausal women are up to 40% more likely to experience depressive symptoms than they were before the transition,¹ and among women who went into perimenopause with little to no anxiety, the risk of developing symptoms rises by as much as 61%.² Understanding why this happens is what makes it feel less frightening.

Why Anxiety and Low Mood Show Up

Anxiety and low mood are not random side effects of this transition. They happen because the brain loses some of its built-in tools to stay calm. Estrogen and progesterone do more than run your reproductive cycle. They help hold your nervous system in balance from one day to the next, and as they fall, that balance is harder to keep.

Esterogen

Helps your brain make and use a calming chemical called GABA, a signal that keeps your nervous system from overreacting to ordinary stress.³ When estrogen levels are good, that brake for your stress works. When it swings unpredictably during perimenopause, the brake starts failing. When estrogen dips, it takes far less to make you anxious or overwhelmed. That is why anxiety can feel so inconsistent, for no apparent reason.

Progesterone

Adds a second layer, and levels often begin to fall even earlier than estrogen. Your brain turns it into a calming compound called allopregnanolone, which works on the same GABA system as before to create a quiet, background sense of ease.⁴ Many women only notice that ease once it starts going away. This also adds as to why you may feel more irritable than usual.

Why the Brain Feels Foggy and Slow

Brain fog is not only feeling tired, and it is not your imagination. Many women notice something specific in this stretch: thoughts take longer to form, familiar words go missing mid-sentence, and tasks that used to be routine, suddenly take real effort. The brain feels like it is working harder to do less.


There is a reason for it. Estrogen plays a direct role in how your brain makes and uses energy,⁵ so when its levels become unstable, the brain can shift into a lower gear.⁶ This is completely normal and nothing is broken. It is just running slower than usual, which is also why caffeine hides over the feeling rather than fixing it.

What May Help

The nervous system does not reset overnight, but a few things and extra support genuinely helps. A few of them are:

  • Sleep: It is the single biggest point to watch here. More than half of women in this transition struggle with it,⁷ and when sleep starts becoming irregular, your body starts feeling the consequences. Protecting it is a subject of its own, check the Sleep and Thermoregulation guide to see exactly how.
  • Movement: Nothing extreme, but a walk most days has a real, measured effect on how well your nervous system handles stress.⁸
  • When the change feels stronger than usual: If low mood or anxiety has grown too heavy, it is worth getting help. Reaching out is not a sign you are failing to cope with the symptoms; it is one of the wisest things to do. For signs of depression especially, therapy and some antidepressants are the first steps usually recommended.⁹ Hormone therapy can play a part too: for women earlier in perimenopause, it has been shown to lower the chance of depressive symptoms appearing in the first place,¹⁰ so all of it is worth raising with your doctor. None of this is a last resort, or anything to be ashamed of. You do not have to find your way through this alone.
  • Nutrition: A few nutrients have early evidence for the same two things we have been discussing throughout the article: staying calm, and handling stress. Magnesium has shown a modest benefit for anxiety in people who experience it, though the research is still limited.¹¹ Ashwagandha, an adaptogen, has been shown to lower anxiety and cortisol.¹² The Neumina Magnesium Complex brings these together, pairing magnesium glycinate with ashwagandha with vitamin B6, which your body uses to make its own calming chemicals to support your body.

How This Changes From Perimenopause to Postmenopause

What you feel right now actually develops differently as time goes in a good way: much of the symptoms start going down once the transition passes. Low mood tends to peak during perimenopause and then it starts to go down.¹ Memory and focus follow the same arc, dropping during the transition, then returning to normal.¹³ Anxiety is the one exception though. For women who were not anxious before, it can go up during the transition and stay raised into the postmenopausal years.² The table below is a rough map of the changes during the transition, however, it is not a certainty, since it can vary a great deal from one woman to the next.

Perimenopause vs Postmenopause

What you might notice Perimenopause Postmenopause
Low mood or depression Peaks, most likely at this stage Eases, no longer raised above baseline
Anxiety Can rise, especially if it is new to you Often stays raised, rather than lifting
Memory and focus (brain fog) Dips, often worst in late perimenopause Usually recovers, toward premenopausal levels

Common Questions


Why is my memory worse than before?

This is very common during perimenopause. The forgetfulness and the words that slip away mid-sentence are real, but studies that tracked women's thinking through menopause found the drop tends to be temporary, with memory and focus becoming better as the transition stops.¹³ So this is far more likely a passing phase than a permanent change. If your memory ever slips suddenly or gets noticeably worse, it's worth mentioning to your doctor, but for most women, this will pass.


I've never been an anxious person. Why is it hitting me now?

It's not you, and it isn't coming out of nowhere. When estrogen drops, the brain loses some of its natural brake on anxiety, so worry can flare over things that never used to bother you. There's research on exactly this: the women most likely to feel anxiety climb during the transition are the ones who weren't especially anxious before it.² So if this feels out of character, that's because it sort of is, a change in your brain chemistry.


Why are some days fine and others a mess?

Because the hormones themselves are changing constantly. In perimenopause, estrogen can be up one week and down the next, and your mood, energy, and patience tend to go along with it. That's why you can have a genuinely good stretch and then a rough patch in the middle.


Why do little things set me off now?

The short fuse is part of the same transition. With less of the brain's natural calm to draw on, your patience for small annoyances goes down, so everything hits you harder than it used to. It doesn't mean you've turned into an angry person, your tolerance is just lower right now.

How Your Mind Touches the Rest of You

Your brain does not work apart from the rest of your body. When your nervous system struggles, the rest of you feels it too, and during this transition that shows up most clearly in two other systems.

The first is sleep. A mind that refuses to switch off at night is one of the most common reasons sleep falls apart in this transition. The anxiety that keeps you awake leaves you more on edge the next day, and a harder day makes for a harder night, so the two feed each other. Ease either side and the other softens too, which is why protecting your sleep does so much for your mind. The Sleep and Thermoregulation guide covers how.

The second is your metabolism. Steady stress and low mood quietly shift the everyday things: what you reach for, whether you have it in you to move, how your body handles energy when the pressure does not let up. It is not a lack of willpower; it is the same strain showing up somewhere new. The Metabolism and Weight guide picks up that thread.

So caring for your mind is not separate from caring for your body. Ease the load on your nervous system, and some of it lifts off your sleep and your weight as well.

If what you have read here feels familiar, the Neumina Magnesium Complex was built with these mechanisms in mind.


Explore Neumina Magnesium Complex →

Also in this series:

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.*

References

  1. Badawy Y, Spector A, Li Z, Desai R. The risk of depression in the menopausal stages: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Affect Disord. 2024;357:126-133. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2024.04.041
  2. Bromberger JT, Kravitz HM, Chang Y, et al. Does risk for anxiety increase during the menopausal transition? Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Menopause. 2013;20(5):488-495. doi:10.1097/gme.0b013e3182730599
  3. Cho JM, Lee J, Ahn EM, Bae J. Beyond hot flashes: the role of estrogen receptors in menopausal mental health and cognitive decline. Brain Sci. 2025;15(9):1003. doi:10.3390/brainsci15091003
  4. Stefaniak M, Dmoch-Gajzlerska E, Jankowska K, Rogowski A, Kajdy A, Maksym RB. Progesterone and its metabolites play a beneficial role in affect regulation in the female brain. Pharmaceuticals. 2023;16(4):520. doi:10.3390/ph16040520
  5. Yu Y, He Y, Liu Z, et al. Mitochondrial dysfunction in perimenopausal mood disorders: from hormonal shifts to neuroenergetic failure. Int J Mol Med. 2025;56:215. doi:10.3892/ijmm.2025.5656
  6. Brinton RD, Yao J, Yin F, Mack WJ, Bhatt D. Perimenopause as a neurological transition state. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2015;11(7):393-405. doi:10.1038/nrendo.2015.82
  7. Tamanna S, Ullah MI, Iftekhar R, Shamsuddin L. Sleep disturbances in menopause: neuroendocrine mechanisms and clinical implications. Physiologia. 2026;6(2):22. doi:10.3390/physiologia6020022
  8. Philip AE, Singh H, Nanjundiah SY, et al. Impact of exercise on perimenopausal syndrome: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Cureus. 2025;17:e80862. doi:10.7759/cureus.80862
  9. Maki PM, Kornstein SG, Joffe H, et al. Guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of perimenopausal depression: summary and recommendations. Menopause. 2018;25(10):1069-1085. doi:10.1097/GME.0000000000001174
  10. Gordon JL, Rubinow DR, Eisenlohr-Moul TA, Xia K, Schmidt PJ, Girdler SS. Efficacy of transdermal estradiol and micronized progesterone in the prevention of depressive symptoms in the menopause transition: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018;75(2):149-157. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.3998
  11. Boyle NB, Lawton C, Dye L. The effects of magnesium supplementation on subjective anxiety and stress: a systematic review. Nutrients. 2017;9(5):429. doi:10.3390/nu9050429
  12. Lopresti AL, Smith SJ, Malvi H, Kodgule R. An investigation into the stress-relieving and pharmacological actions of an ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) extract: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Medicine (Baltimore). 2019;98(37):e17186. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000017186
  13. Greendale GA, Huang MH, Wight RG, et al. Effects of the menopause transition and hormone use on cognitive performance in midlife women. Neurology. 2009;72(21):1850-1857. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181a71193