At risk. Who is at risk for early menopause?

Octo­ber 11, 2017, 04:17 PM

At 20, and even at 30, many women pre­fer not to think about menopause. It seems that this will not hap­pen so quick­ly and, it can con­cern any­one, but not you. Does it look like the truth? But as sta­tis­tics show, the issue of ear­ly menopause con­cerns many. Who is at risk?

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Read also: TOP 5 rea­sons that pre­vent you from believ­ing in your­self

On schedule

First, let’s look at when the age of menopause is con­sid­ered nor­mal. Nor­mal bound­aries are 45–55 years and 50 years. If men­stru­a­tion stops ear­li­er, that is, at 40–45 years old, this sit­u­a­tion is called ear­ly menopause. And if the func­tions of the ovaries are turned off at the age of less than 40 years, this is pre­ma­ture ovar­i­an fail­ure.

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You can’t fool nature

But most often after 40 years, every woman begins to grad­u­al­ly decrease the func­tion of the ovaries and the hor­mon­al back­ground changes. The abil­i­ty to con­ceive decreas­es, then the cycle goes astray, then the “crit­i­cal days” dis­ap­pear alto­geth­er. All this does not hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly and not sud­den­ly, but over a fair­ly long peri­od.

Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics, about 30% of women dur­ing menopause do not feel almost any unpleas­ant symp­toms.

The body, accus­tomed to cycli­cal work dur­ing the repro­duc­tive age, begins to feel dis­com­fort and “wor­ry”. The female hor­mones estro­gen and prog­es­terone affect not only child­bear­ing, there­fore, a decrease in their lev­el in one way or anoth­er affects all body sys­tems. A range of strange sen­sa­tions lies in wait for us: insom­nia, irri­tabil­i­ty, decreased libido, dry­ness of the mucous mem­branes and skin. Meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders can pro­voke the appear­ance of excess weight and prob­lems with bones and blood ves­sels.

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Three stages

Doc­tors dis­tin­guish sev­er­al impor­tant stages of menopause:
➤ phase of the menopausal tran­si­tion. The hor­mon­al bal­ance is dis­turbed, the num­ber of fol­li­cles in the ovary decreas­es, ovu­la­tion occurs less and less. The cycle is bro­ken, the first hot tides appear. This peri­od begins at an aver­age of 45–47 years and lasts up to 4–6 years — before the onset of menopause. It is impor­tant not to miss this time and have time to pick up and start tak­ing menopausal hor­mone ther­a­py (MHT).
➤ Menopause — ces­sa­tion of men­stru­a­tion. Its date is con­firmed only after 12 months, as there are cas­es when “crit­i­cal days” stop for sev­er­al months, and then return again.
➤ Post­menopause. It lasts from the onset of menopause until the age of 65–70. At this time, all the most unpleas­ant symp­toms — mood jumps, excess weight appears, prob­lems with the heart, pres­sure, mem­o­ry, etc. begin.

Doesn’t depend on us

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True, there are fac­tors that we, unfor­tu­nate­ly for the major­i­ty, can­not influ­ence in any way:
Genet­ics. In moth­ers and daugh­ters, the age of onset of menopause coin­cides in almost 44–63%.
Menar­che age. As shown by the Inter­LACE meta-analy­sis, there is an asso­ci­a­tion between the age of the first menses and the age of menopause. If the menar­che was ear­ly (before 11 years), most like­ly, the menopause will be late.
Nation­al­i­ty. Menopause occurs ear­li­er in African women (48 years old), His­pan­ic women (at 49 years old), Asian women (50 years old) and lat­er in Euro­pean and Aus­tralian women (51–52 years old). Lifestyle. In women who smoke, ovar­i­an func­tion is turned off ear­li­er and menopause occurs.

Special attention

1. Remem­ber your pedi­gree. Did your grand­moth­er or moth­er have type 2 dia­betes? In this case, it is worth reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing blood tests for sug­ar.
2. Once a year, do a test for thy­roid-stim­u­lat­ing hor­mone, it will help to detect prob­lems in the thy­roid gland in time.
3. If you have ever had a peri­od of amen­or­rhea and you at risk osteo­poro­sis, get den­sit­o­m­e­try, a test that helps deter­mine bone den­si­ty.
4. Dur­ing menopause, the risk of oncol­o­gy increas­es, so once a year it is nec­es­sary to take a smear from the cervix for onco­cy­tol­ogy and a stool test for the like­li­hood of rec­tal can­cer. Mam­mog­ra­phy: from 40 to 50 — once every 2 years, after 50 years — once a year. Reg­u­lar­ly — ultra­sound of the uterus and ovaries.

Read more:

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The opin­ion of the edi­tors may not coin­cide with the opin­ion of the author of the arti­cle.