Perimenopause for Veterinarians: Managing Symptoms in a High-Demand Clinical Role

A Profession That Puts Everyone Else First

Veterinary work is demanding in ways that are hard to overstate. You're physically active, emotionally engaged with clients, clinically precise under pressure, and often working through lunch. Adding perimenopause into that mix, with its unpredictable symptoms and hormonal fluctuations, creates a set of challenges that most vets are navigating entirely on their own.

You've trained for years to care for patients who can't tell you what's wrong. It's worth turning that same diagnostic skill on yourself. Understanding what perimenopause is doing to your body, and how it interacts specifically with your work, is the first step toward managing it effectively.

Physical Demands and Musculoskeletal Changes

Veterinary work involves prolonged crouching, lifting large animals, restraining patients, performing surgical procedures, and spending long hours on your feet. These demands are hard on any body. During perimenopause, they can become significantly harder.

Estrogen has an anti-inflammatory effect on joints and connective tissue. As levels fluctuate during perimenopause, joint pain, stiffness, and inflammation become more common, particularly in the back, hips, knees, and wrists. For a vet who is regularly on the floor with a large dog or leaning over a surgical table, these changes are felt directly.

Carpal tunnel syndrome and hand pain are also linked to perimenopause, likely due to fluid retention and changes in connective tissue. If you've noticed these symptoms alongside other hormonal changes, mention them specifically to your GP. They may be treatable as part of an overall perimenopause management approach.

Hot Flashes in Clinic and in Surgery

Hot flashes during a consultation with a client are uncomfortable and distracting. Hot flashes during a surgical procedure are worse. You can't step away, you need your concentration, and clinical environments are often warm already.

Between consultations, getting into cooler air, even briefly, helps your body reset. Moisture-wicking base layers under your scrubs can make a real difference to how quickly heat dissipates from your body during a flash. Keeping a water bottle consistently within reach and drinking throughout the day, rather than catching up in bulk at the end of a shift, helps.

Knowing your personal triggers can give you more control. Common hot flash triggers include caffeine, alcohol, spicy food, and stress. You likely can't eliminate stress from vet work. But moderating other triggers, especially on heavy consulting days, can reduce frequency and intensity.

Emotional Labor and Mental Load

Veterinary medicine involves an enormous amount of emotional labor. Euthanasia conversations, delivering difficult diagnoses, and managing distressed owners all require emotional regulation and steady communication. Perimenopause can make emotional regulation harder because fluctuating estrogen and progesterone affect the brain's limbic system, which governs emotional response.

This doesn't mean you're losing your professional composure. It means your brain's regulatory system is working with less hormonal support than it was. Irritability, low mood, and anxiety are documented perimenopause symptoms. Recognizing them as physiological rather than personal makes it easier to take them seriously and seek appropriate support.

Many vets also carry a high cognitive load, holding medication doses, treatment plans, and client information in working memory across a full day of appointments. Brain fog from perimenopause directly affects working memory. Systems that offload cognitive work, like thorough notes, checklists, and brief verbal reviews with colleagues, are sensible and not a sign of decline.

The Compassion Fatigue and Perimenopause Overlap

Veterinary professionals are at higher risk of compassion fatigue and burnout than many other professions. Perimenopause adds another layer. Fatigue from night sweats and poor sleep, reduced emotional resilience from hormonal shifts, and the relentless demands of client work can combine in a way that feels overwhelming.

If you find yourself dreading work in a way that feels new, or noticing that your capacity to care has shrunk significantly, please take that seriously. It may be perimenopause amplifying pre-existing stress load. It may be burnout developing independently. In many cases, it's both interacting together.

Talking to your GP about what you're experiencing is important. Some women find that treating the hormonal component of their symptoms also meaningfully reduces emotional exhaustion. Others benefit from additional support, whether that's counselling, peer supervision, or practical workload adjustments.

Practice Culture and Disclosure

Veterinary practices vary enormously in culture. Some are small owner-managed clinics where you may be one of only a few clinical staff. Others are large corporate practices with HR functions. In both environments, you have workplace rights around health and reasonable adjustments.

You are not obliged to name perimenopause to access support. Describing a health condition affecting your energy, physical comfort, or concentration is sufficient. Many practice owners are more sympathetic than you might expect, particularly if they are women of similar age themselves.

If you find that your symptoms are affecting your work quality or your safety in surgical or physical procedures, involving your GP and potentially occupational health is the right step. Documentation of your symptoms over time strengthens any conversation about adjustments.

PeriPlan lets you log symptoms daily so you can see patterns and have something concrete to refer to when talking to your healthcare provider or employer.

You Can Thrive in This Profession Through This Transition

Many vets navigate perimenopause and come out the other side without it ending their careers or their effectiveness. The key is taking it seriously early, rather than pushing through until the burden becomes unmanageable.

Evidence-based treatments, from lifestyle adjustments to hormone therapy, can make a substantial difference to symptom severity. You know better than most people that early intervention usually leads to better outcomes. Apply that knowledge to yourself.

This content is for informational purposes only and does not replace medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider about your specific situation.