I Thought Estrogen Was Just A Reproductive Hormone

Previously, if someone asked me what estrogen does, I would answer like this: estrogen is a female hormone involved in menstruation, reproduction, and finally menopause.

But recently I started learning about perimenopause, and lo and behold! I just got to know that estrogen has receptors in almost every tissue in the female body and influences hundreds of different functions.

Guess what my immediate reaction is?

Aha. No wonder lah!

Did You Know that Estrogen Is Involved in Almost Everything?

The estrogen receptors are found in the brain, heart, bones, skin, gut, bladder, joints, and blood vessels. Gosh! I now understand why the list of things women experience during perimenopause can seem completely unrelated.

How many of these symptoms do you experience? These are some of the most common ones:

Brain fog, difficulty finding words, sleep problems, anxiety, irritability, joint aches, changes in body composition (belly fat), changes to periods, hot flushes, and night sweats.

When you put it all together, you start thinking, "Wait... are you saying these things can all happen at the same stage of life?"

Take the Menopause Quiz

If you're unsure about what's going on with your body, especially if you don't feel quite right but aren't diagnosed with clinical conditions, try this (peri)menopause quiz/symptom checker from Menopause Asia. It will be insightful.

The Brain Fog

This one caught my attention because it's so annoying. Have you ever experienced the following?

• You are talking halfway through a sentence, and suddenly the word you wanted is just... gone.
• You walk into a room and forget why you went there.
• You read the same paragraph three times and realise that absolutely nothing has registered.
• You know that you know someone's name, but your brain refuses to retrieve it.

And when it starts happening more often, you start to think, "Is there something wrong with me?"

What I didn't realise before is that estrogen also plays a role in brain function, including memory, language, concentration, processing, and mood.

Estrogen supports processes involving acetylcholine, which is important for memory and learning, blood flow to areas of the brain involved in focus and decision-making, synaptic plasticity, and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.

So when estrogen fluctuates during perimenopause, that's why some women experience cognitive slowness, difficulty retrieving words, trouble concentrating, or that strange feeling of mental static.

Aha. No wonder lah!

Estrogen Doesn't Just Drop Dramatically During Perimenopause

This was another big aha moment for me. For years, I thought hormones were high when we were younger, then declined as we got older, and finally became very low at menopause. Simple, right?

But... perimenopause doesn't behave quite so politely!

Estrogen does not decline in one nice, smooth line. During perimenopause, estrogen actually fluctuates quite dramatically like a rollercoaster before eventually settling at a lower level after menopause.

Source: LinkedIn

Now this makes the unpredictability of this stage make a little more sense.

• Why do I feel relatively normal one week and quite unlike myself another week?
• Why does something suddenly bother me when it never used to?
• Why can a symptom appear, disappear, and then return?

How Much Have I Been Blaming on "Getting Older"?

This is probably the part that has made me think the most. There are so many little changes that are incredibly easy to dismiss once you reach your 40s. You basically just lump everything into the "getting older lah" bucket.

• Tired more easily? Must be because old already lah.
• Brain fog? I just have too many things to remember lah.
• Stubborn belly fat? Metabolism slows down liao lah.
• Easily triggered, irritable? Stress from work, driving, incompetent people...
• Can't fall asleep fast enough? I play too much phone before sleep lah.

Perhaps sometimes those explanations may absolutely be part of it. But learning more about estrogen has made me a little less willing to automatically throw everything into the "I'm getting older" bucket.

The Biggest Shift for Me

I'm not trying to explain every little thing that happens to me with hormones, and I'm definitely not suggesting that every ache, forgotten word, bad night's sleep or bad mood is only caused by estrogen.

But I'm starting to understand that midlife isn't always as simple as "you're getting older".

The more I learn about perimenopause and estrogen, the more I feel reassured because understanding why something might be happening makes it feel a little less random.

I have a feeling there will be another Aha. No wonder lah! coming very soon. 😅

Turning 13 Requires Two Birthday Meals!

My Eldest Son Turns 13

I am truly resisting the temptation to turn this into one of those deeply reflective posts about how quickly children grow up, how the years have flown by, and how I suddenly have a teenager in the house. Hahaha.

For now, I just want to say... turning 13 requires two birthday meals!

Early Birthday Dinner at Hoshiki Japanese Izakaya

We started celebrating with an early birthday dinner with the family at Hoshiki Japanese Izakaya restaurant at Pearl Shopping Gallery, Old Klang Road.

I quite like the plan of stretching birthdays out over a few days anyway. It takes away the pressure of having to squeeze everything into one supposedly perfect celebration on the exact date.

Dinner can be dinner, cake can be cake, and no one has to rush. And this cake here is a Vanilla Blueberry Cake from Butter Olive Pastry House at BK5A Bandar Kinrara, Puchong.

Actual Birthday Lunch at Torte by Linda

We have eaten at Torte by Linda before, so going back there again for a birthday meal is very much part of the plan. Torte by Linda serves Russian and Eastern European food, which is still not the sort of cuisine we eat very often in KL.

I'm a big fan of celebrating a birthday meal at just somewhere you already know you enjoy and not necessarily somewhere new. See what we ordered from the menu during this birthday lunch.

Of course, there was cake too because regardless of how many birthday meals you have already had, the actual birthday still needs cake, even if it's just one slice.

So now we have a teenager!

Happy 13th Birthday, Luke. ❤️

Why Do I Love Structures and Think in Systems

Flexibility doesn't mean zero planning.

Over the years, I have occasionally described myself as a control freak at work, not in the sense that I need to make every decision or dictate every detail, but because I have always felt uncomfortable when people begin executing a piece of work without first agreeing on a clear plan.

If there is one thing that consistently raises my stress level, it is ambiguity.

We often hear that good leaders should be flexible, adaptable, and willing to change course when circumstances require it.

However, I disagree that flexibility means zero planning. Structure matters a lot to me.

Therefore, I believe I am not reacting to a change of plans but rather to uncertainty that could have been reduced through proper or structured planning.

Am I planning for too much?

Whenever I delegate work or work with a team, I naturally gravitate towards a structure: defining the objective, the scope, the timeline, and what the outcome should look like before we begin.

I like knowing who is responsible for which part of the work, what decisions still need to be made, what assumptions we are making at the start, and when the deadlines are.

I have occasionally wondered whether that makes me difficult to work with.

From my observation, there are people who seem perfectly comfortable beginning with only a broad objective. They start doing, observe what happens, and refine the work along the way. Sometimes they produce excellent results despite having no detailed plan at the beginning.

I have always admired that ability because it is so different from the way my own mind works.

If someone gives me an objective that feels abstract to my understanding, my first instinct is not to accept it.

My first instinct is to ask structured questions:

Who are the decision-makers? What exactly are we trying to achieve? What are the expected outcomes? What constraints are we working with? What is our approach if issues arise?

To me, those questions are not obstacles to getting work done. They are part of the work.

Isn't structure necessary?

One misconception about people who enjoy planning is that we dislike change. That has never been true for me.

In my line of work, Google updates its algorithms, clients change priorities, budgets get revised, top management changes, and campaigns that looked promising last FY may no longer be relevant today.

I have no problem changing direction when new information becomes available; what unsettles me the most is changing direction when the direction was ambiguous in the first place.

There is a difference between adapting because circumstances have changed versus improvising because no one thought through the approach before starting.

The first is flexibility; the second is often avoidable confusion.

To be fair, being structured isn't about predicting everything.

One of the lessons I have gradually learned is that planning and certainty are not the same thing.

A good plan does not guarantee success, nor does it prevent unexpected events from happening. The purpose of structured planning, at least from my perspective, is to reduce the amount of unnecessary uncertainty.

When a team has already agreed on the objective, the scope, the assumptions, and the expected outcome, everyone has a common reference point. If something changes halfway through, the discussion becomes much easier because people understand what is changing and why.

Without that shared understanding, every adjustment feels like starting the conversation from the beginning.

Perhaps that is why I have always felt more comfortable investing time in planning than spending even more time correcting avoidable misunderstandings later.

Some people think before they act. Others think by acting.

Recently, I started wondering whether this is simply a difference in how people process information.

Some people, like me, organise our thoughts internally before taking action. We ask questions, identify risks, build a mental framework, and only then begin executing.

Others seem to discover the solution through the act of doing. They are comfortable taking the first step without knowing every subsequent step because they trust themselves to adjust along the way.

I guess neither approach is inherently right or wrong; perhaps both approaches are necessary.

If everyone gravitates towards structures and systems the way I do, projects might become over-analysed before anything ever gets started.

If everyone prefers to figure things out as they went, there might not be enough structure to keep larger projects consistent.

Perhaps the real challenge is not deciding which style is better, but recognising that different people reduce uncertainty in different ways.

Maybe this is why I don't understand "just wing it".

For years, I interpreted phrases such as "We'll figure it out" or "Let's just start first" as a lack of preparation.

I am beginning to wonder whether that was an unfair assumption.

Perhaps some people genuinely think more clearly once they begin moving.

Just as I need structure before I can act confidently, they may need action before they can see the structure.

Understanding that has helped me become more patient with people whose working style differs from mine.

At the same time, it has also helped me understand myself better.

I don't think I need control for the sake of control. I think I simply find comfort in reducing ambiguity wherever possible.

A plan, to me, has never been a rigid document that predicts the outcome.

A plan is a shared understanding of what we are trying to achieve, why we are approaching it that way, and how we will recognise whether we have succeeded.

The plan may change tomorrow. In fact, it probably will. But I would still rather begin with one than begin with none.

Perhaps that doesn't make me a control freak after all. 

Perhaps it simply means I think in systems.

Here's a deeper, work-related reflection on my LinkedIn page.

Why The Thursday Murder Club Made Ageing Look So Interesting

Image source: Wikipedia

I watched The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix the other night. It was star-studded – Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, and Tom Ellis, to name a few.

It was entertaining too; there were murders to be solved, plenty of amateur sleuthing, a retirement village full of personalities, and a group of older people who were far more capable than anyone around them initially assumed.

The biggest entertaining gem for me was how the movie portrayed ageing. Because it neither portrayed ageing merely as inevitable physical decline nor disguised ageing with inspirational messages about "staying young and not looking your age".

Instead, The Thursday Murder Club showed something I think we do not see often enough on screen: people who have aged, accumulated experience, lost things, lived through things, and are still curious about the world.

Retirement Does Not Mean You Stop Being Useful

The Thursday Murder Club consists of four retirees who spend their Thursdays looking into unsolved crimes. Joyce is a retired nurse. Elizabeth is a former intelligence operative. Ron was a trade union activist. Ibrahim is a psychiatrist.

Elizabeth understands strategy and how people behave when they are hiding something. Ibrahim understands psychology. Ron knows how to confront people and mobilise others. Joyce understands people in a quieter way. She observes, listens and often gets information precisely because people do not see her as threatening.

Their careers may have ended, but their knowledge did not disappear. I really liked that.

We tend to associate usefulness with employment. Once someone retires, there is almost an assumption that the productive part of life has ended and the remaining years are mainly about leisure, healthcare and grandchildren.

But a person who has spent forty years practising medicine, teaching children, running businesses, solving problems, caring for patients, raising families or managing difficult people does not suddenly lose all that knowledge because they no longer have a job title.

Experience does not expire at retirement.

The Characters Are Old, and That Is the Point

Another thing I appreciated was that the movie did not try to make ageing look youthful. The characters are older, and the story allows them to be older.

They talked about health concerns, grief, illness, and how time is no longer unlimited. But none of those things cancel out curiosity, humour, intelligence or purpose.

There is a common way of praising older people that sounds something like, "She is 75 but still behaves like she is 40!" It sounds complimentary, but underneath it is the assumption that being younger is still the ideal.

The Thursday Murder Club offers a much more interesting possibility:

What if seventy years of living actually makes someone more interesting?

Ageing and becoming less relevant are not the same thing.

Joyce Was Probably My Favourite

I also have to mention Joyce, and not only because we share the same name. Hahaha!

When she first joins the group, she seems like the least intimidating member of the club. She is docile, friendly, and very ordinary when compared to Elizabeth, who appears capable of organising an international espionage operation before breakfast.

But Joyce has her own kind of intelligence. As a former nurse, she understands people. She notices small things, she listens, and because she does not immediately look like the smartest or most dangerous person in the room, people underestimate her.

That actually becomes an advantage.

You know what? There is something very satisfying about watching a character whose strength comes not from being loud, dominant or obviously brilliant, but from decades of paying attention to human beings.

Perhaps This Is What Interested Me Most

Perhaps the most obvious reason for why I immensely enjoyed this movie is that I have become increasingly interested in what happens as we move through midlife and eventually into older age.

There is so much conversation about ageing from a medical perspective. We talk about disease prevention, physical decline, healthcare costs, retirement planning and longevity.

All of those things matter.

But there is another question that interests me just as much:

What happens to identity?

Who are we when the titles start disappearing, and when are we no longer the manager, the doctor, the teacher, the business owner or the person everyone calls when something needs to be solved?

The Thursday Murder Club gives a surprisingly simple answer:

You are still the person who spent decades becoming who you are.

The job may end, but the expertise remains.

Stay curious, stay relevant.