Menopause Signs, Symptoms, and Suggestions

Even though going through menopause is an inevitability, it still manages to sort of sneak up on you. One minute, you are firmly believing that you really will not experience it after all – maybe it will skip a generation, maybe you will not experience it for another ten years, something. The next minute, you are suffering from hot flashes and waking up soaked from a night sweat. Fortunately, there are a number of menopause signs, symptoms, and suggestions that can help you identify it and cope.

First of all, you need to understand what menopause is. For such an emotional ordeal, it is quite simple. Your body stops producing enough estrogen. That, in turn, stops you from ovulating. That, of course, makes you stop menstruating. The number of eggs a woman has during her lifetime is finite, whereas a man, for example, can be fertile well into his eighties, at the very least. There is no real way to tell when you will start to go through menopause. A lot of women follow the patterns set by their mothers and grandmothers, so it can be genetic. You can begin to go through it in your mid thirties; some women do not experience it until they are in their sixties. On the whole, however, women are in their fifties when they have their very last period.

That being said, there are stages of menopause – three primary ones, to be exact. As such, it is not uncommon for menopause to take upwards of fifteen years from start to finish. Once again, it can strongly depend on how long it took your closest female relatives to go through it. Perimenopause, or pre menopause, is the first stage. Ovulation starts to get erratic at this point, which is part of the reason why doctors caution that a woman between her late thirties and late forties to early fifties can have a difficult time getting pregnant. You still ovulate, but not as regularly, so pregnancy is not simply a matter of timing your monthly cycle correctly. Generally, this lasts between two and five years, although it can be longer or shorter. During this stage of menopause, you can start experiencing symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and hot flashes. Your periods eventually become more erratic themselves, gradually winding down. You may experience vaginal dryness, irritability, and depression. A lacking sex drive is very possible, and you might find that both your hair and your skin are getting thinner and dryer.

The second state is actually called menopause. It is what happens when you finally have your last period. As mentioned, the average age is your early fifties, although that is by no means a set standard. In order to be considered truly in menopause, you have to be without a period for at least twelve full months. You continue experiencing night sweats, hot flashes, headaches, and mood swings.

Lastly, there is postmenopause. You have survived. The hot flashes start to fade away, your night sweats dry up, and generally, you finally have something resembling a sex drive again.