Ladies, if you’re wondering the stages of menopause, we have perimenopause, which is the menopausal transition. “Peri” means near menopause, and it’s this extended transitional state that brings you to a point in time that is called menopause, which is actually one day, which is one year or 365 days after your last period. And post menopause means after that point in time, which basically is the rest of a woman’s life.
Perimenopause can start as early as 35 years and can last 10 or more years and your hormone production begins to decline at this point and menstruation starts to change. If your hormones are fluctuating in perimenopause, in menopause, they’re bottoming out. Surges of your hormones then turn into abrupt absence of hormones in menopause, and this can happen in our 40s and 50s, on average, menopause is reached at 52 years of age.
So the transition to menopause greatly varies amongst women. No two women are alike and their symptoms are can be very different. This stage of transition can last three to four years. And for some women longer, it can also last as little as a few months or extend as long as an entire decade.
And women, because they’re all different, feel these symptoms differently. I mean, you can be very overwhelmed by the inferno of hot flashes like I was. And even some women are depleted by their heavy periods and so much loss of blood and many other bothersome symptoms. Periods may end more or less abruptly for some and others they can menstruate unpredictably for years.
A lot of women also have some frightening symptoms that they discover, like uterine polyps, fibroids, endometriosis, while other women go just sailing smoothly on calm waters. So, besides the decline in your sex hormones, progesterone, estrogen and testosterone, there are other symptoms of fatigue and stress, you know from all this fluctuation and this is also can affect the function of your thyroid and adrenals.
