Why Menopause Makes You Tired (And How Tracking Can Help)

Feeling fatigued during the menopause transition? We’d be amazed if you weren’t! Menopausal symptoms such as night sweats, anxiety, poor sleep, and brain fog are incredibly common, and they can all lead to physical and mental exhaustion.

However, the relationship between menopause and fatigue goes far beyond the obvious. Learn why you’re feeling so tired, and why tracking your energy levels can help.  

Menopause fatigue and energy: Two sides of the same coin?

Do you think about your energy levels like the gas gauge in your car? You can feel full of energy, freshly filled up from good quality sleep. Or you can feel completely fatigued, like life has you running on empty.   

While this makes sense, recent studies have suggested that fatigue and energy aren’t opposite sides of a single gauge: they’re two different measures entirely, each with its own neurological causes (Filippi, 2022) (Filippi, 2022).

This means that when you feel a bout of menopause fatigue, it’s not just that you “don’t have energy.” You’re actually dealing with an altogether separate symptom that can make you perform mental and physical tasks more slowly. 

What are the causes of menopause fatigue?

During menopause, there’s a lot more to fatigue than just poor sleep quality (though that certainly has an impact, too!). Complex physical changes and circumstantial factors can affect your energy levels in profound ways. 

• Neurological transition: Your brain goes through several tiring transition phases during life: one during adolescence, and one during perimenopause. The perimenopause transition phase can affect how your brain regulates your energy (Brinton, 2015) (Brinton, 2015).

• Abnormal menstrual bleeding: Fluctuating estrogen levels affect your menstrual periods. Having heavier and longer periods can negatively impact your energy levels during perimenopause (Harlow, 2025) (Harlow, 2025). 

• Metabolic changes: Hormonal changes in perimenopause can mess with your metabolism, or how your body transforms food into energy, and even lead to metabolic disorders (Jeong, 2022) (Jeong, 2022). Your body’s metabolism can influence your energy levels and cause fatigue (Filippi, 2022) (Filippi, 2022).

• Life circumstances: A study of over 1,500 perimenopausal women found that high levels of fatigue and pain were associated with relationship stress, health-related stress, lower education, and trouble paying for basic needs (Woods, 2022) (Woods, 2022).

How tracking your energy can help

If you’re wondering how to reduce menopause fatigue, tracking is a no-brainer. It allows you to see how your energy levels fluctuate, and helps you understand what impacts your energy the most. From there, you can discuss your symptoms with your doctor and make a treatment plan. 

However, tracking is still worthwhile even if you’re not currently dealing with extreme fatigue. Menopause symptoms build upon each other and change over time. By tracking as many symptoms as possible, you can understand why you’re not feeling fatigued now, in case you start to feel tired later.    

Perimenopause puts your mind and body through the wringer. Monitoring your symptoms helps you stay in control, no matter what comes next. 

DISCLAIMER

This article is intended for educational purposes only, using publicly available information. It is not medical advice, and it should not be used for the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease. Please consult your licensed medical provider regarding health questions or concerns.