Is It Anxiety or Perimenopause? The Progesterone, GABA, and Gut Connection
You spent your twenties and thirties as the steady one, and now your heart pounds over an unanswered text while you lie awake replaying a conversation from Tuesday. I know that feeling from the inside, because my own anxiety arrived in my late forties like a houseguest nobody invited, and my first question was whether I needed an SSRI.
The timing turned out to be the clue, because progesterone, the hormone that hands your brain its background sense of calm, starts declining years before your period changes in any obvious way, and your gut sits right in the middle of that handoff. Molly and I spent a full episode of She's Got Guts untangling which part is anxiety, which part is hormones, and what actually helps with both.
