Danyale Thomas the Menopause Mentor on Oral Health Challenges During Menopause
Photos by Jordan Somers
This week on "The Day with Trae," Menopause Mentor Danyale Thomas returned for another Menopause Monday to discuss with host Trae Holiday the oral health issues that arise during perimenopause and menopause.
“It's not on most folks' radar, and it's still really important,” Thomas said. “Mouth dryness is a symptom that's associated with perimenopause, and burning mouth syndrome is a symptom. It affects your gums, altered taste, bone thinning, like there's this whole myriad of things that happen orally with perimenopause and menopause, really specific to the lack of estrogen in our systems.”
Thomas pointed out that a lot of women don't even realize that they could be possible symptoms. Essentially, they could be experiencing them and not knowing where to attribute them.
“If this is something that they are experiencing, they need to bring it to the attention of their dental professional,” Thomas said. “Tell their doctor about it, because there are medications that you can be taking that could be making it even worse.”
Thomas explained that while it's important to talk about menopause openly and honestly, sometimes someone may not even know what's going on or what's contributing to the pain.
“The more vocal women are, the more we research, the more we have these conversations, then we're realizing not only that we're not alone,” Thomas said. “But some of the things that we're experiencing can be attributed to menopause, right? Because sometimes we don't even realize that it is menopause. The other thing is, is that we're sharing solutions, right? We're sharing what we what we've tried. And what we found a doctor to say are, and then comparing notes. And that makes a difference.”
Often, women encounter symptoms without realizing they're related to menopause, particularly if they're not experiencing the most prominent one, which is hot flashes. This is partially because hot flashes are the primary symptom of menopause that women hear about.
“We definitely don't think that we're going through menopause if we're not having hot flashes, but there's a whole lot of other things that could be going on,” Thomas said. “I recently had a woman in our Mainstreaming Menopause group that I realized had been going through menopause for several years and hadn't even realized it just based on symptoms other than hot flashes that had been coming up.”
To continue learning about mainstreaming menopause go to @mainstreamingmenopause on Facebook.
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