How Long Does Menopause Last?
"How long does Menopause Last?" Many women ask this question, but to answer it, we first need to answer another question. What is Menopause? Speaking scientifically, the answer to the second question is that menopause is the time in a woman's life after her monthly periods have ended. Usually doctors will say that you're in menopause if you haven't had a monthly period for more than a year. Using this definition of menopause, the answer to the first question becomes obvious. According to this definition, menopause lasts for the rest of your life. But when most women ask "How long does menopause last?" They aren't talking about how long they won't have periods, they are talking about the symptoms of menopause.
What are the First Signs of Menopause?
Of course the first signs of menopause vary from woman to woman, but doctors and researchers agree that they are caused by fluctuating hormones in our bodies as we grow older and near the end of our ability to have children. They include such things as:
irregular monthly periods
monthly periods without ovulation
unexplained irritability
unexplained anxiety
weight gain without eating more, or sometimes even while dieting
retaining water
How long does menopause last?
It's the Beginning of the Rest of Our Lives!
So Natural Menopause is Best
Menopause is sometimes almost considered a disease in modern life, but nothing should be further from the truth. In reality this change should be nothing more than a transition to one of the healthiest and most productive periods of a woman's life. However, if you're like the majority of American women, when you ask "How long does menopause last?" It is because you are struggling with...
Menopausal Symptoms
What are they? If you're anything like I was, you can answer that question in many ways. They are a continuation and worsening of those first signs of menopause we mentioned earlier. I'm not sure which were the biggest irritation to me, but I'll give you a list of those I noticed the most....
I was irritable.
I had hot flashes
I retained water
I lost my waist line...to the point where I wondered if I might be pregnant in spite of its medical impossibility.
my hips and thighs also grew to the point where it was uncomfortable
it seemed almost impossible to fall asleep at night, and I frequently woke up still feeling tired
I was moody
I felt tired most of the time and struggled with headaches
My skin looked dry and seemed to have wrinkled more in the past two or three years than it had in the previous fifty.
Those were my symptoms, but in addition you may struggle with...
vaginal atrophy, irritation, or dryness of genital tissue
lost libido
forgetfulness
inability to concentrate
losing your hair, (or growing it on your face while losing it on your head)
spotting or bleeding
osteopenia (weakening bones)
osteoporosis (weak bones)
inexplicable body aches and pains
depression
The Conventional Medical Answer -
When these symptoms get bad enough that you see your doctor, or your family pressures you to see the doctor. Your question to him or her may well be, "How Long Does Menopause Last?"
Usually his, or her, answer is to start you on conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
If I covered the topic of hormone replacement therapy here, the page would become a book, so I'll save that for another page.
But I will include the results of the Womens' Health Initiative study, which was stopped three years early due to the increased health risks for the participants.
This study was designed to show the results of using the most commonly prescribed form of conventional hormone replacement therapy, "PremPro". There were 16 thousand women between the ages of fifty and seventy-nine. They stopped the study after only five years, because they found that the women using the drugs had a...
29% higher risk of breast cancer
26% higher risk of heart disease
41% higher risk of stroke
Lest you think that estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) alone is a better option, another study by the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project done slightly later, showed that this therapy increased a woman's risk of getting ovarian cancer by more than three fold!
Please, whatever you do, don't let your doctor pressure you into taking these drugs. They are NOT a good answer to the question "How long does menopause last?"
Natural Hormonal Balance
The answer to the difficulties of menopause most women are asking about when they ask, "How long does Menopause Last?", lies in achieving natural hormonal balance. However, although the answer can be written in one sentence, understanding the answer is much more complex. There are several topics that should be covered in detail before you'll have a comfortable understanding of the topic.
The first is
estrogen.
Estrogen is not the name of one hormone, but a complex of them.
The second is
progesterone.
The third is the difference between natural hormones and the hormonal drugs such as PremPro that are commonly prescribed by doctors.
The fourth is the role of other hormones such as sex hormones, androgens, adrenal, and thyroid hormones in our bodies.
The fifth is xenohormones and their effects on our bodies.
The sixth is what estrogen dominance is, and what its dangers are in our bodies.
The seventh is how all of this information affects our health challenges during our menopausal years.All of these are important in resolving the issues of hormonal imbalance and unpleasant symptoms that prompt us to ask "How long does menopause last?" As time permits I will be addressing all of these issues. If you need answers now, I would recommend two sources for more detailed information. One is the Life Extension Foundation. Life Extension Health Concerns provides extensive articles about menopause and its health challenges under their female reproductive health section. The second is a book, called What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause (TM): The Breakthrough Book on Natural Hormone Balance . This book is available from your public library, or from Amazon. It is probably also available from many other book stores.
A Way to Move Toward Natural Hormonal Balance Now
The hormone that is most frequently deficient in menopausal women is
natural progesterone.
The best way to supplement this hormone is through a
natural progesterone cream.
For more details about how to use these supplements please click on the preceding links to read the detailed pages about these topics.For me adding a natural progesterone cream to my supplemental regimen had very noticeable results. I literally lost two inches from my waist within the first week of use. I've also found I'm much better able to sleep at night. Menopause was medically induced for me as a side effect of chemotherapy. I've struggled with what I now know are "estrogen dominance" symptoms ever since. Although doctors warned me I should use "no hormones" due to the risk of cancer recurrence, after reading What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause (TM): The Breakthrough Book on Natural Hormone Balance, I realized that the doctors were probably concerned about the risks of synthetic progestins, not natural progesterone. I had almost all of the symptoms of estrogen dominance. I was really dreading the thought that the answer to the question "How long does menopause last?" might be, the rest of my life. I have been very relieved by the improvement in my health and well being since I started using a natural progesterone cream. For me although I've remained in menopause according the the medical definition of the term, using the cream has overcome the problems this stage of my life had brought. It has restored my ability to focus on life, rather than the difficulties of menopause. I suspect it can have the same benefits for you.
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