Menopause from the Greek word pausis (“pause”) and mēn (“month”)
Menopause is only ONE day? One day in the past?
This was one of the first interesting facts…I’m not in menopause and I’m not in a menopause journey because menopause only lasts one day, a single day…
Also, it is a retrospective diagnosis, because you can only say that a specific day in time was your menopause day 12 months later (when you have a continuous period of 12 months without a single menstruation cycle)
A bit confusing?
Say you don’t have a period since 1st of January 2021 for several months and then you have one, so you go back to square 1. If on the other hand you reached 1st of January 2022 without any bleeding then you can say your menopause day was 1st of January 2021. And after that day you are postmenopausal.
This is important to know because symptoms can actually start many years before your periods stop or change. And that’s when it can start to be very confusing and it becomes very important to be informed. It definitely it was for me as I could not explain certain symptoms I was having and I would not associate them with menopause because my periods continued to be regular. To be fair none of the GPs I consulted associated them either despite being in my late 40’s.
During the years leading up to the menopause day we are in perimenopause, which literally means “around menopause”. Although, technically, we still have periods and therefore, our ovaries are still producing enough hormones for the ovulation process to take place (and yes, we still can get pregnant), the levels of our estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are starting to fluctuate and/or decrease. This may lead to several (or none) menopausal symptoms which vary in severity. The menopausal transition, similarly to puberty, menstruation and pregnancy affects each woman uniquely and in various ways.
According to NHS website “On average, most symptoms last around 4 years from your last period. However, around 1 in every 10 women experience them for up to 12 years.” and Womenshealth.gov “Perimenopause, the transition to menopause, can last between two and eight years before your periods stop permanently. For most women, this transition to menopause lasts about four years.”
Both websites mentioned respectively that in “the UK, the average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 51.” and “the average age for menopause in the United States is 52.” If one adds to these ages the perimenopausal and the postmenopausal symptomatic years, then on average, women in the UK may start having menopausal symptoms in their mid-forties until well in their fifties.
But again, it may last much longer. And it also may start prematurely (“before the age of 40”), early (“between ages 40 and 45”), abruptly (for example after certain medical treatments) or surgically, following the removal of the women’s ovaries (oophorectomy).
To conclude, this is an important period of a woman’s life, when many changes and symptoms occur and can last for several years. The umbrella term climacteric includes all stages from peri to post menopause.