A Change in Life: Menopause

Menopause is the permanent end to the menstruation cycle in a woman who reaches the average age of fifty-one in the USA. Other countries have slightly earlier or later ages depending on the overall nutrition and doctor's care available to the women in that country. Menopause is said to have been reached when a woman has not had any sort of period for a minimum of one year since the last one.

Menopause: A Normal Aging Process in Women

With advancing age, there is a physiological cessation of menstrual cycles, and this condition is known as menopause, which may also be thought of as being a change of life or climacteric. When ovaries begin to stop producing estrogen and this results in the reproductive system slowly but surely shutting down, one may be reasonably sure that it is menopause.

Due to the body adapting to changing levels of natural hormones, the person will be affected by vasomotor symptoms like hot flashes and palpitations, and also psychological symptoms like increase in depression moods, anxiety, as well as irritableness, and lack of concentration. In addition, there may also be atrophic symptoms like vaginal dryness as well as having an urgency to urinate.

Symptoms

When a woman reaches her mid thirties she can begin to have menopause symptoms. Her period usually gets either lighter and shorter or heavier and longer lasting, depending on the woman, and they also become more irregular so that there are some months where she will not have a period at all.

When she reaches her forties, then the more noticeable menopause symptoms usually set in. These include the most common type of menopause symptom, which are hot flashes. A woman can also be afflicted with sleeping disorders, mood swings and changes to her skin, such as dryness around her mouth and eyes. In addition, there can be a loss of bladder control and an increase in fat around her abdomen. Her breasts will also start to lose their fullness and her hair may also thin slightly.

Women usually retain the sex drive that they had before starting menopause, but sometimes there is a decrease in sex drive, which may be connected to the problem of vaginal dryness which makes intercourse uncomfortable if certain measures are not taken.

Fewer and Erratic Menstrual Periods

All of these symptoms will show up in the form of the woman having increasingly fewer as well as erratic menstrual periods. In fact the word menopause emanates from the Greek root "meno" which means month and the word "pausis" or, a pause or cessation. In a technical sense, the word menopause refers to the ceasing of menses. Otherwise, the slow and steady process through which it takes place will typically take a year though, it may last only six months and is known as climacteric.

The onset of menopause may normally occur at the age of fifty years or thereabouts, though some women may experience it at an earlier age, especially if they have had cancer or another serious illness and also undergone chemotherapy. The menopause experience is like a transition in the life of a woman which means no more periods and no more child bearing. It also means that the woman will no longer be able to produce milk, and this transition in the woman can be a traumatic as well as a psychologically depressing period in her life.

However, women may feel depressed but may also feel elated by feeling liberated from the monthly routine and may lead to her becoming wiser as well as more mature.

Causes And Tests

The causes of menopause are that the woman's body produces less estrogen and progesterone than it used to produce. There are fewer eggs that are ripening for fertilization, and when they do, there is a lesser surge in progesterone for the post ovulation surge. This change in hormone levels is what causes the symptoms and mood swings in women.

One way for doctors to test for a move into menopause is to do a simple blood test. This test looks for FSH, or follicle stimulating hormones, and also estrogen levels. If these levels are below normal, there is a good chance that the body is moving into menopause. If the woman is too young to start the process, then the doctors can take the appropriate measures for treatment, such as lifestyle changes or hormone therapies. There are certain procedures that might trigger this early menopause, such as hysterectomies and chemotherapy or radiation treatments.