Menopause symptoms in Newcastle upon Tyne

If you’ve said those words to yourself today, I want you to know you aren’t actually losing it. Your nervous system is just under incredible pressure. Having supported people for 26 years through Reiki, I’ve heard so many in the UK and in Newcastle upon Tyne struggling with this exact feeling. And here I am experiencing menopause symptoms too.

I just turned 50, and I would say perimenopause began in my late thirties. I’m not sure if it is because I have never had children, but I started to get itchy, burning skin in the earlier years. I never had hot flashes, fortunately, but I did get my share of feeling like I was burning from the inside out, needing to have windows open in the winter and feeling like creepy-crawly insects were on my skin. Now in my 50th year I have even more fun things going on. Previously, I had major emotional mood swings, ridiculous depression and anxiety and never felt quite right. The only thing that kept me going was natural progesterone cream and giving myself hands-on reiki healing.

This year (2026), after a few years of incredible stress and trauma, I started getting even more itchy skin. I also got headaches with the heat that was circulating in my body. The burning and itching were focused primarily on my upper body (back, arms, neck and head), and weirdly, my armpits became super itchy, but not in the usual place, just to the side of the armpit. I soon realised that’s where the lymph nodes were.

HISTAMINE INTOLERANCE?

What I struggled with the most was I had gone on a strict exclusion diet earlier in the year, staggering letting go of my worst intolerances to food groups; this included sugar, white potatoes and yeast. So I had expected three months in I would start to feel the wonderful benefits of this new eating habit. However, what happened instead was increased brain fog and what I now understand as histamine intolerance. Apparently it’s a thing we women can get in perimenopause. Foods you were always okay with suddenly making you hot, itchy and unwell. I had to cut out curries, bananas, chocolate, even foods that just had a hint of spice, and many other things because I realised my histamine bucket was overflowing. And don’t get me started on the sinus issues. 

So I fully understand how incredibly hard it is to manage life as a woman going through the menopause. I do think in many ways we got the raw end of the deal. We had years of periods, and now our bodies are changing, and we can’t even rely on anything. No wonder we feel like we are all going a bit nuts.

The transition into menopause can feel like an emotional and physical whirlwind. While we often talk about the hormonal shifts, we rarely discuss the energetic upheaval. Using self-compassion during this time is vital, but sometimes we need more than words. This is where the gentle, restorative power of Reiki for menopause can make a profound difference.

How Reiki Supports the Menopausal Transition

• Regulating the Nervous System: Reiki helps move the body from “fight or flight” into the “rest and digest” state, which can help reduce the intensity of hot flushes and anxiety.

• Emotional Release: Many women find that menopause brings up old “failure stories” or suppressed emotions. Reiki provides a safe space to let these go.

• Improved Sleep: By balancing the endocrine system energetically, Reiki for menopause can help quiet the mind for a deeper, more restorative sleep.

Suddenly, your body feels like it’s reacting to everything. You’re itchy, you’re bloated, or you just feel ‘hot’ and irritated from the inside out. Your system is basically screaming ‘too much’ at things that never used to bother you.

Most people don’t realise that as oestrogen drops, histamine levels can skyrocket. This leads to that “allergic to life” feeling of hives, digestive flare-ups, or just feeling generally “inflamed”. I never felt I had any allergies but to have such a limited diet while I allow the histamine cup to release excess, living on rice, chicken, certain vegetables (not all) and protein.

How Reiki helps: It shifts the body out of “Red Alert” (sympathetic) mode and into “Repair” (parasympathetic) mode. By calming the nervous system, you’re helping the body dial down its overactive inflammatory response. It’s about creating an internal environment that is less “reactive”.

BRAIN FOG

It’s that feeling where you’re staring at a screen or a person and nothing is clicking. You know the words are there, but you can’t reach them through the muddle. It’s like your brain is wading through treacle. I have lost count of the number of times I have started a sentence and stopped, as I have totally lost track of my thought process.

• How Reiki helps: It acts like a “system reboot”. It helps clear the energetic clutter, allowing the mental “static” to settle. Clients often describe it as the clouds parting, and suddenly they can find their keys, their words, and their train of thought again because the “noise” has been turned down. This isn’t always a guarantee that this happens because sometimes brain fog is a signal to simply slow down and surrender to the emptiness inside. Sometimes we have overfilled our minds with too much stuff; menopause is literally a life pause, a mental pause.

THE DEEP EXHAUSTION (BONE-TIRED)

This isn’t the kind of tired a cup of tea or an early night can fix. It’s a heavy, leaden exhaustion in your bones where even the thought of making a decision feels like climbing a mountain. And when you do make a decision to do something, you need Nanna naps midway through a task – been there, bought the t-shirt here.

• How Reiki helps: Instead of caffeine or “pushing through”, Reiki provides a deep energetic infusion. It’s like plugging an exhausted battery into a charger. It doesn’t demand anything from the client; it just replenishes the reserves so they have enough petrol in the tank to actually function.

THE “MENOPAUSE BLUES” & DEPRESSION

It’s that heavy, grey cloud that just won’t shift. You don’t feel like ‘you’ anymore; everything feels flat, and the joy you used to find in small things has just been turned off. You wonder who you are; your whole identity shifts.

• How Reiki helps: It offers a gentle emotional release. Often, we hold that “flat” feeling in our bodies. Reiki helps move that stagnant energy, providing a sense of being “held” and supported. It helps a woman reconnect with her spark when she feels like it’s been extinguished.

The truth is, we spend so much time trying to ‘manage’ these symptoms that we forget to acknowledge the person buried underneath them. It is exhausting to live in a body that feels like a stranger, and it’s even lonelier when you’re told it’s ‘just a phase’. But what if you stopped fighting the fog for an hour and just let yourself be held in the blank space? What if the version of you that feels ‘lost’ isn’t actually gone but is simply waiting for the noise to quiet down enough to hear herself again? Who would you be if you weren’t so incredibly tired? And what if a new you is also waiting on the other side, one with a low tolerance for BS and a more honest version of who you really are?

Reiki isn’t a ‘magic wand’, but it is a way to settle a nervous system that is being battered by these shifts. In my Reiki practice in Winlaton, Blaydon-on-Tyne (near Newcastle upon Tyne), I use an intuitive approach to help your body stop reacting so intensely and start finding a bit of quiet again. If you are local, drop by my site above for more information; if you aren’t local, look for your own reiki practitioner near you, and good luck! It’s quite a ride. 

How is the menopause affecting you?