Stages of Menopause
Understanding Your Changing Stages of Life life
Menopause is a part of every woman’s reproductive life cycle. It is not an illness that necessitates treatment. To understand menopause, you first need to understand the whole reproductive process and how your body changes from stage to stage.
Some of the important times in your reproductive life are:
- Puberty
- Premenopause
- Perimenopause
- Menopause
- Postmenopause
Puberty
is the time in a young girl’s life when increased estrogen production begins to cause physical changes in her body, such as the development of breasts. During this time her menstrual cycle begins, and her first “period” occurs, generally around the age of 12-1/2 years. This is known as menarche (me-nar-key).
Premenopause
includes the years between puberty and menopause. For many women their production of hormones is regular, so their periods are usually predictable.
Perimenopause
also formerly known as the climacteric, begins before menopause. Again your body begins to experience changes—both physical and hormonal. The symptoms we associate with menopause such as hot flashes and irregular menstrual cycles may start to appear. The average perimenopause lasts for 4 years. It continues, by definition, through the 12 months following your last period.
Menopause
is a point in time—the time of your last menstrual cycle. However, your doctor cannot know for sure that it was your last period until you have been period-free for 1 year without being pregnant, breastfeeding, or using certain medicines, all of which can also cause menstrual cycles to cease.
- Natural menopause usually occurs some time between the age of 45 and 55.
- Surgical menopause may occur at any age if you and your physician decide that removal of your uterus (hysterectomy) and/or both ovaries (bilateral oophorectomy) is medically necessary.
- Premature menopause is said to occur before the age of 40. What factors effect when you have your last period? If you smoke, you could go through menopause about 1-1/2 years earlier than your friends who don’t smoke. Some studies indicate that thinner women, and African-American and Hispanic women also tend to go through menopause at an earlier age. Other evidence suggests that if you used oral contraceptives (“the pill”) or have had children, you might go through menopause just a little later than other women.
Postmenopause
is the stage of life after menopause. It begins with your last period and continues for the rest of your life. One hundred years ago some women associated menopause with the end of life. The average life expectancy for a woman born in 1900 was 50.7 years. Indeed, throughout history many women did not live long enough to go through menopause. It’s easy to see why they connected menopause with death. However, advances in medicine and disease prevention have greatly increased life expectancy. A girl born in 1990 can expect to live nearly 79 years. This means that she will probably live a third of her life after menopause.