Some Women Are Sad When Menopause Symptoms Start
Thursday, March 19th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Whether starting menopause is a good or bad thing all depends on your perspective. Whether you grieve when menopause symptoms appear or you celebrate will depend on you. Many women grieve because it signals a loss not only of youth, but the ability to have any more children.
Other women, however, view menopause as a liberating event free from the monthly menstrual cycle that often left them depressed and riddled with pain.
In either case, your goal is to make that transition to non-childbearing status as pain free and symptom free as possible.
Technically, menopause isn’t a disease that needs cured. Nor is it a disorder. It’s a natural biological process. Ask some women, though, and that’s not what it feels like. Many females are plagued with a variety of symptoms from sleep disruptions to hot flashes to mood swings to name just a few.
If you want to get technical, a woman doesn’t enter menopause until one year after her final menstrual period. The average age this occurs in a woman is about 51. But women as young as 35 may enter this process. This belies the fact that physical symptoms often appear long before that one-year anniversary mark hits. Physical signs of impending menopause may include irregular periods, dryness of the vagina, hot flashes, decreased fertility, as well as problems with sleeping.
Other signs of an impending cessation of periods might also include, mood swings, thinning hair, loss of fullness of the breasts and increased fatty tissue in the abdomen.
The physical symptoms are caused by hormonal changes in the body. The emotional signs, though, are often due to mistaken notions and perspectives about the cessation of the menstrual cycle itself. Far too many females mistakenly believe that menopause signals that the end of their lives is near. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Some individuals reach menopause in their early 40s. That means they may have another 35 to 40 years left to live. Life is barely half over.
Other women fear that the onset of menopause may extinguish their femininity and their sexuality. On the contrary, a woman in menopause is finally able to enjoy the sexual act in a fuller and liberating fashion than ever before without the need to worry about pregnancy.
Many people have the mistaken notion that menopause is something that happens within several days or at most weeks. The truth is that your body goes through menopause slowly, and the physical changes associated with it occur over years. For this reason, medical experts usually divide it into two phases.
The first is described as the perimenopausal stage. This is characterized by the initial signs and signals of menopause, even though you’re still experiencing your normal menstrual cycle. During this phase, your hormonal level rises and falls unevenly. You may experience occasional hot flashes and other symptoms routinely associated with the process. This phase lasts in some women as long as four to five years.
Once you have gone a full 12 months without a period, you’ve reached menopause. Your ovaries produce very little estrogen compared to your younger years and produce no progesterone at all. Moreover, your body no longer releases eggs.
Once this 12-month mark is over, you are technically, postmenopausal
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March 19th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Great positive perspective on menopause. Once the night sweats and hot flashes disappear, I’ll be happier and will be able to celebrate the menopausal stage of life.