At what age does menopause begin in women?
Every woman's body is unique. The decline of childbearing function occurs in every woman at different ages. Nevertheless, the collected medical statistics make it possible to identify the average age corresponding to the onset of menopause. This is the age of 47 years .
In some cases, the first signs of menopause in women may appear before the age of 40. In this case, we can talk about the early onset of menopausal syndrome. This is a pathology that has been detected more and more often in recent decades.
The following groups of women may experience early menopause
- smokers;
- have had a large number of abortions;
- do not have a regular sexual partner;
- drinkers;
- those suffering from excess weight;
- dieters and starving people;
- having endocrine diseases;
- suffering from cancer.
Women experience menopause differently. Some feel only a slight discomfort, while others suffer greatly.
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Eyes are the mirror of the soul
A woman’s look, wise from life experience, immediately reveals her age. This can be seen even in photographs, in which in youth one can see eyes sparkling with hope and fun, which over time begin to look stern and tired. If you don’t constantly think about daily problems, don’t frown and create a stern appearance, you can slightly change your appearance for the better. A barely noticeable, thoughtful smile will not turn a forty-year-old woman into a girl, but it will make you pay attention to her.
Factors influencing a woman's condition during menopause
Doctors identify 4 main factors that determine the well-being of patients during menopause.
- Natural aging. It is always accompanied by changes in the body at the level of receptors and hormones. Nerve cells die, which leads to a decrease in motor activity and the appearance of disorders of mental functions. Against this background, the development of depression is possible.
- The presence of somatic and nervous diseases. Every person has them. Another thing is that they obviously do not manifest themselves in everyone. Such diseases develop throughout life under the influence of a variety of factors. In women, they begin to manifest themselves acutely during menopause. By and large, they determine the signs of menopause in women at 47 years old. These are diseases such as: atherosclerosis, arterial hypertension, musculoskeletal disorders, anxiety, depression, etc.
- Hormonal changes. Their most striking manifestations are hot flashes and disorders of the genitourinary system. Against the background of hormonal changes, a restructuring of the central system occurs, affecting metabolic, endocrine, motivational and cognitive processes.
- Psychosocial state. We are talking about the living situation, financial condition, the presence of a man nearby, family harmony.
How does this happen?
Menopause is one of the characteristic signs of a woman’s aging. Its onset is associated with functional changes in the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovarian system. It is expressed by a change in regulation until complete cessation, a decrease in the hormonal activity of the ovaries. The restructuring of the female body during menopause goes through two phases:
- menstrual irregularities (increased interval between periods, decreased intensity of discharge) - most often observed at 45-48 years old and can last up to 50;
- fading of ovarian function - the duration of the phase is individual, on average it is 3-5 years, but even after the complete cessation of menstruation, signs of menstrual-type bleeding and late pregnancy may be observed.
Symptoms of menopause in women
After 45 years, with the onset of menopausal syndrome, every woman, to one degree or another, experiences the following symptoms:
- Psycho-emotional syndrome. It is best characterized by such terms as: menopausal depression and involutional hysteria. By the way, such disorders occur in women at any age, but are most often detected during menopause. Moreover, after 45 years they are more pronounced and in the vast majority of cases are accompanied by somatic diseases. Women in menopause get tired very quickly, stop paying attention to their appearance, worry about trifles, become suspicious, and overly vulnerable. They begin to fear old age and cry a lot.
- Sleep disturbance. This is one of the most striking symptoms of menopause. It occurs in 60% of all women. Patients complain of the inability to sleep, nightmares, and frequent awakenings at night. The causes of dyssomnia can be: vascular disorders in the brain and emotional disorders. Often during menopause, women begin to snore in their sleep. In addition, while sleeping, they may suddenly begin to kick their legs. Women experience headaches in the morning and want to sleep during the day.
- Psychovegetative disorders. We are talking about women’s complaints of difficulty breathing, pain in the left side of the chest, heart rhythm disturbances, and surges in blood pressure.
- Decreased performance. During menopause, a woman's thinking abilities deteriorate. It becomes more difficult for her to switch from one process to another. This causes some emotional problems.
- Endocrine disorders. This symptom most often manifests itself as an eating disorder. A woman begins to eat more or less. This leads to changes in body weight and swelling. This often leads to the development of joint pathologies and heart problems.
- Psychosocial symptom. The patient is unable to find a common language with others. Problems arise in the family and at work. This leads to a decrease in quality of life and isolation. It is for this reason that when menopause begins, a woman definitely needs the help of a psychologist.
- Sexual disorders. The vast majority of women lose interest in sex when menopause occurs. This is due to a significant decrease in the production of major sex hormones. Due to a 50% decrease in estrogen production, the vaginal walls become drier. Sexual intercourse in such conditions becomes painful. Due to testosterone deficiency, a woman is less interested in the opposite sex. Due to a lack of progesterone, a woman begins to have headaches, which discourage any interest in sexual intercourse.
Life after 45: work
Woman after 45: professional and social life
Of course, the age limit puts pressure on women much more than on men. However, women still have their trump cards - their life experience, the ability to pay attention to people’s relationships in the professional process and build them.
Inessa, 52 years old. At forty-seven, she felt that the child no longer needed her; in the service she clearly felt the pressure of younger people. I realized that I had to try to change something. And I went to study to become a lawyer. Many told her that she could not compete with the young people. "Let it go!" - she waved it off, - “I’m studying for myself, I like it!” At first, friends turned for advice. Inesse conducted three successful divorce proceedings. It was life experience and the ability to competently talk with people and grasp their weak and strong points that allowed her to resolve situations largely peacefully, somewhere resorting to persuasion, somewhere - to reasoned, logical and firm conviction. Over time, she became one of the leading divorce lawyers in her city. Now she has a line of clients.
At this age, experience is a trump card that you need to be able to sell correctly. But many women do not believe in their own strengths and constantly compare themselves with younger women - it seems that the latter are more in demand everywhere. However, this is only if you stand in the pose of a supplicant.
But if you set yourself up to the fact that you will have to look for the volume of work yourself, you can achieve more. Young people are waiting to be offered something, because they have nothing else to offer themselves, except, in fact, youth and potential opportunities. And they are not yet experienced enough to develop their own business strategies.
An adult, experienced person who has seen a lot in his work does not necessarily have to wait for offers. At the same time, anything can become a business - even if you know how to get along well with children, you can turn tutoring into a business. The main thing is to know exactly what you want and can do, and not wait for someone to be “interested in you” and offer something.
A woman’s life after 45 is, in a sense, the time to offer herself to the world without fear and false modesty, which is confirmed by many successful examples, despite the usual social patterns: in Russian society there is already a layer of women who are actively pursuing careers and business at this time own life.
It is sometimes difficult for a person to change from the system “I get a job and they guarantee me something” to the system “I find my own scope of work and only I am my own guarantee.” For some reason (perhaps due to the widespread dependence in Russian society on public opinion and the assessment of others), it is assumed that offering oneself is shameful and humiliating. But if you are “called”, this necessarily means you are in demand and needed.
Interestingly, people who started their own business at a young age rarely experience concerns about age in connection with work. They already understand that age cannot stop their development in this regard, because there is no age limit for organizing their own business.
But even if your specialty is such that it is extremely difficult to establish your own business with it, this does not mean that all doors are closed to you. There are many ways to justify your usefulness to companies and confirm your competence. To do this, you need to have confidence in your own quality, which sometimes disappears due to the attitudes I mentioned: a person begins to feel insecure due to the belief that he is already “second-class” and that “offering yourself is a shame.” However, confidence is something that can be re-developed and realized.
Men after 45: professional and social life
It seems to be easier for them - life after 45 for them does not always involve falling out of the picture, and with a successful combination of circumstances they can work for at least seventy years, and sometimes even more. But in reality, few people succeed.
Svyatoslav, 46 years old. He worked as a lawyer in a large company and had a very solid income. And it was at this age that I began to feel terribly uncomfortable in company. He was irritated by the team, his relationship with his superiors was not going well. He always felt like he was being pushed aside and not being taken seriously. That they interfere with him everywhere, meddle in his affairs, reproach him with his age.
It's not hard to guess that he ended up losing his job. And he could qualify for a much lower salary in the labor market. What played a key role here? Panic. A man gets entangled like a fly in the web of his own fears and grievances, he is afraid of young people, his superiors, he tries to prove his experience and, as a result of this fuss, he loses the last remnants of respect from his colleagues and superiors.
Meanwhile, the less a man makes himself dependent on the environment (and even more so, the less he fantasizes about the thoughts and feelings of others), the more worthy of an employee he will actually look. We communicate on a non-verbal level, it’s worth remembering. And if a person broadcasts fears, tension, and uncertainty outwardly, then sooner or later he will begin to be perceived as an unreliable employee, and then his age “at the same time” will suddenly become noticeable, as a plausible excuse for dismissal….
In fact, age and the restrictions associated with it are only in your head. This is especially true for social life. What have you really lost as you get older? Have your experience or skills decreased? Hardly, rather the opposite. If you have developed in your profession, then you are like wine: the older you are, the more expensive it is. What makes you think you've lost something?
Yes, there are certain processes in the body that sooner or later occur (menopause, for example, or changes in the elasticity of the skin, hair structure, accumulated chronic diseases appear over time), but all this, firstly, happens gradually, and you can always notice, and secondly, it happens at an individual pace. And now is the time to talk about health.
Treatment of menopause
In order not to deceive readers, we will say right away that it is impossible to cure menopause . When it comes to treatment, it means eliminating the unpleasant symptoms caused by menopausal syndrome. Their elimination makes it possible to stabilize a woman’s condition during menopause.
For example, to eliminate unpleasant hot flashes, doctors recommend using Clonazepam. To prevent a woman from rolling her legs in her sleep, she is prescribed dehydroxyphenylalanine.
High blood pressure can be managed by taking ACE inhibitors . Poor sleep and nervousness are combated with sleeping pills and sedatives.
Symptomatic treatment with massage and special gymnastics gives good results.
Hormone therapy
Today, many doctors believe that in case of menopausal syndrome, the first step is to treat the patient through hormone replacement therapy. This approach allows you to avoid the development of complications such as diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, obesity, etc.
Naturally, such therapy should be carried out under the strict supervision of a doctor, because it has a number of contraindications:
- Uterine bleeding for no apparent reason.
- Breast oncology.
- Pre-infarction condition.
- Thrombophlebitis.
- Thyroid diseases.
- Preoperative preparation.
Drugs for replacement therapy contain small dosages of estrogen and progesterone.
Signs of early menopause
One of the first symptoms of menopause in women forty-seven years old is menstrual irregularity. Menstruation can occur on uncertain days and hours, having different durations, they can be scanty or too abundant. However, you should not delay your visit to the gynecologist, because an irregular menstrual cycle may be caused by a female disease, and not by menopause. It is worth noting that women who have taken large doses of alcohol and nicotine may experience menopause before the age of forty-seven, because the body has been severely poisoned over the course of its entire life.
But when taking hormonal drugs, there is a possibility of the onset of menopause much later. Since hormones are able to maintain ovarian function.
What symptoms are observed during menopause in 47-year-old women?
Tides
In medicine, hot flashes are the sudden appearance of heat above the waist, which causes redness of the skin of the face, neck and chest. For a woman aged 46-48 years, these signs are the first signal about the onset of menopause. These symptoms are accompanied by sudden and profuse sweating. Literally within a minute the woman becomes drenched in sweat as if she had just taken a shower. However, the body temperature remains normal. Hot flashes are mostly caused by psychological factors.
With hot flashes, you feel great malaise and weakness, and sometimes fainting is possible. Also, this symptom can cause insomnia, chronic fatigue and upset the cardiac system. It is impossible to predict the appearance of hot flashes; they can occur frequently or very rarely, their duration is no more than two minutes.
Hot flashes during menopause are one of the most unpleasant symptoms
Sweating
Increased sweating is the most common symptom of menopause. Sweating is very profuse, clothes get wet, and at night all bedding becomes damp. With thyroid disease, as with menopause, profuse sweating is observed. Therefore, it is important not to confuse the symptoms here. In order to determine what exactly is bothering your body, you should consult a specialist doctor.
You don’t need to think that sweating is a pathology. Mother nature created the human body in such a way that throughout life, sweating is a natural process in which all harmful elements leave the body. During menopause, this process is simply necessary.
Lack of sleep
With early menopause, the body's hormonal levels are disrupted, which can be expressed in different ways. Many people suffer from insomnia during menopause. This process is the climacteric period. A night without sleep leads to lethargy and fatigue in the morning. Therefore, if these symptoms last for a week, it is necessary to resort to the help of sedatives and sleeping pills, after consulting with a doctor. A little exercise and brisk walks in the fresh air won't hurt either.
Headache
According to surveys of women who are experiencing early menopause, frequent dizziness and migraines are a must. At this time, the woman is depressed due to a lack of hormones. A woman during menopause cannot relax; she constantly experiences negative emotions. Gloomy and gloomy facial expressions lead to regular migraines, which can last for more than one week.
Headaches often accompany early menopause
Blood pressure surges
During menopause, blood pressure constantly fluctuates. Very often you can observe high blood pressure, which negatively affects the cardiovascular system, which is weakened by low levels of hormones. The main signs of non-compliance with normal blood pressure are frequent headaches, gag reflexes, and fainting.
If there is a sudden and frequent increase in blood pressure, you should immediately consult a doctor. Such symptoms can be fatal.
Depressive state
During early menopause, a woman is often visited by depression. Throughout menopause, she is depressed and pessimistic. The main signs of depression are prolonged sadness, insomnia, lack of concentration, silence, reluctance to eat, and fatigue.
Vitamin therapy
At a certain point in a woman’s life, there comes a time when the body begins to acutely lack the vitamins and minerals it receives from food. Such conditions most often appear during menopause. And we need to fight them.
To maintain carbohydrate and fat metabolism at the proper level, doctors prescribe vitamin and mineral complexes to patients.
Vitamins A, B, D, E are of greatest importance for a woman during menopause.
To compensate for the lack of vitamin D, Calciferol is prescribed. This drug helps prevent the development of osteoporosis.
Vitamin E is contained in the drug Tocopherol. Together with vitamin C, it reduces the severity of hot flashes and relieves irritability.
Treating menopause symptoms
To reduce the impact of negative symptoms on a woman’s body during menopause, there are many different methods: from traditional medicine to medications.
First of all, a woman who has reached the age of 47 should not give up the active rhythm of life. You need to spend more time in the fresh air, play sports, and normalize your diet and sleep patterns.
In special cases, after consultation with a gynecologist, during menopause it is possible to take various medications that help reduce or completely get rid of unpleasant symptoms. These include hormonal drugs, homeopathic remedies and vitamin complexes.
Continue to live and enjoy life!
Treatment of menopause with folk remedies
Traditional treatment for menopause should be treated with caution. The fact is that with such therapy unexpected side effects . Therefore, before starting treatment, you should definitely consult a specialist.
Traditional recipes use herbal ingredients rich in estrogen. Most often these are soy products. Here it should be understood that it is not the estrogens themselves that have a positive effect, but the soy components.
Black leather has a good effect in combating hot flashes. This remedy should be taken with extreme caution as it may cause stomach upset.
Health
Women's health after 45
Yes, the impending menopause is a serious thing, and you need to be prepared for it. But when faced with the facts of signals from one’s own body, a person always has a choice: how to deal with them, how to perceive them, and what life strategy to ultimately choose.
Zulya, 55 years old. By the age of forty-five, I realized that hypertension was progressing, that I had become less mobile, and was gaining weight. By the time she decided to start fitness training, she was size fifty-six. I was terribly embarrassed, I even cried after training - it was hard to come to a gym full of young, trained girls. But she didn't give up. I visited an endocrinologist and selected replacement therapy. By forty-eight, when menopause began to take hold, Zulya was already size forty-eight, hypertension had subsided, replacement therapy was selected and adjusted by the doctor. And Zulya got a taste for movement and even began to engage in extreme sports with her son. And at fifty-five, she doesn’t take her friends’ complaints seriously - “Age? I practically don’t feel it!”
A woman’s health after 45 affects everything - her mood, relationships, interest in life. Not because she “passed”, but because, firstly, the value of comfort increases, and secondly, sensitivity, attention to oneself grows over the years with interest in oneself. And this is good, because this is how the ability to feel your body better and do many things proactively develops, and not “when it’s too late.” During this period, you can safely put your well-being first. Health doesn’t go away – we lose it ourselves.
In matters of working with psychosomatics and especially in the topic of aging, where the health of women after 45 is considered, because it is women who are more concerned about this topic, we often used this technique: it is necessary to find the point at which a person felt at his peak. As a rule, most people say their age is somewhere around thirty. And this is what we do: we remember those feelings, actions and ideas that were characteristic of man at that time. Then we select a set of measures, both psychological and physical, designed to return the sense of self to that specified point. And the rest is just work. Which in most cases brings good results.
A woman’s health after 45 is what she can make of it herself. Genetics, external influences, “circumstances” and “fate” all, of course, have some influence. But not decisive. And this is the very age when a person either takes responsibility for his health or it begins to be seriously determined by external and supposedly independent factors, which he can only come to terms with and endure.
Think about it: what and who really prevents you from playing sports? Who is stopping you from leading a more active lifestyle? Who is stopping you from realizing your long-standing desires? Who's stopping you from doing what you did, say, when you were thirty? Who is stopping you from reconsidering your diet and, if necessary, thinking about quality medical care? Really - no one. But all sorts of stereotypes and fear of condemnation from the outside interfere perfectly: “you can’t jump into the last carriage,” “oh, why is she looking so young? At her age, it’s high time...” etc.
But only we ourselves make this choice: what is more important to us? — avoid possible misunderstandings or make serious investments in your own body? And if you don’t do this, think about what beliefs are behind it? Your “age” and some “impossibilities” are most often also in your head.
Men's health after 45
The biggest problem for men is their inability to recognize the fact that the male menopause (andropause) exists along with the female one. But most men over forty (at least in Russia) brush off this problem.
Meanwhile, there are many aspects to this. For example, there is a connection between testosterone levels and the state of the vascular system; modern medicine offers hormonal support for a smoother passage of andropause and adaptation to a slightly different mode of operation of the body, and especially if the lifestyle has not yet been restructured - perhaps some men should think about replacement therapy , as well as women.
But, of course, a doctor is not a panacea for aging. Testosterone that does not pass through the necessary stages of metabolism can pose a threat even with the most well-chosen replacement therapy. And therefore, life after 45 is the time to rethink your principles of life: change your activity mode, amount of movement, review your diet and deal with bad habits, if any.
Many people at this age face a problem: changing their lifestyle means leaving their comfort zone. On the one hand, there is a desire and need not to slip into rapid old age and “living out life.” On the other hand, to do this you need to get out of the usual and, perhaps, start doing something that you haven’t done before or haven’t done enough.
And here it is necessary to resolve this internal conflict, because a lot of energy is spent on the conflict itself: on the one hand, you would like to improve your well-being and not be afraid of old age, on the other hand, you have limitations inside that do not allow you to start acting. You scold yourself for being “lazy” and end up spending even more energy, which is less and less for change.
The good news is that for a psychologist, working with such resistance is common, such issues are often resolved in psychotherapy, and it doesn’t take much time to figure out what motives are really important to you, learn to rely on them and realize why you something is slowing you down and what you can do about it. So if resistance to change is a serious problem for you, then it’s time to think about a series of consultations with a psychologist; this issue can be completely resolved.
47-year-old woman looks no older than 25
Women spend a lot of money to get rid of wrinkles and regain their former attractiveness. But the 47-year-old British woman is ready to do anything to show signs of aging on her smooth face.
At the age of 24, British Anne
(Anne) married her peer Christopher Bolton (Christopher Bolton). At first, the couple doted on each other, but after five years, conflicts began to arise in the Bolton family.
The reason for the quarrels was Ann's appearance - old age passed her by.
“Shortly before I was about to turn 30, my husband noticed that I was attracting the attention of guys who were much younger than me, and he became jealous,” the woman recalls. “Over the years, the difference in appearance between me and Christopher led people to consider him a man with strange inclinations who married a young girl. I did everything I could to look older, but it didn’t help.”
Two children and 8 years of married life did not affect the desire of the head of the family to end his marriage with Ann and thereby get rid of the gossip behind his back.
The mother of two sons was having a hard time with the divorce and ignored all the young people’s attempts to start communication. However, 4 years after the painful breakup, the woman met Brian Graham, who did not hide his pride in his beautiful-looking girlfriend.
“He really liked the way I looked and he constantly complimented me. Even after I gave birth to Joshua and Jacob, my appearance did not change at all. But when Brian turned 42, the curse of my eternal youth made itself felt again. My husband began to get annoyed, and later enraged, by questions about who he was to me - a father or an older brother,” says the mother of many children with a sad smile.
Eventually, Anne's second marriage broke up, and she was left alone again. The British woman tried to communicate with her young suitors, but quickly realized the error of her actions.
“At first I was flattered to receive attention from guys, and a couple of times I agreed to go on a date. However, the conversation with them was incredibly boring - they only talked about cars and nightclubs. I realized that such guys don’t interest me,” the correspondent quotes the 47-year-old woman as saying
Ann's latest attempt to improve her personal life was with 32-year-old electrician Paul Smith.
“This union almost drove both of us crazy. They called Paul a dirty, lustful goat, and I was a gold digger who lived with a man for money,” the British woman describes the reaction of others. “It all happened again: we got divorced and my ex-husband left the city.”
The woman tried to distract herself from sad thoughts and sought solace in communicating with her sons, but the older children began to avoid their mother because she scared the girls away from them.
“My sons’ peers thought they were busy and this really annoyed the guys. Relationships with friends were also destroyed: my friends were envious and jealous of their husbands towards me. Therefore, I became persona non grata even among good friends.
Every morning I look hopefully at my reflection in the mirror, trying to find at least one wrinkle, but my skin still remains smooth. My youth has become a real curse - children, like my peers, do not recognize me, men shun me, and I have nothing to talk about with young people,” Ann sadly concludes.
How to alleviate a woman’s condition during menopause
It is impossible to avoid hormonal changes in the body. Reviewing your lifestyle and performing a number of activities will help reduce the severity and number of symptoms that accompany it.
- A woman should follow a daily routine and get rid of the habit of going to bed after midnight.
- It is necessary to abandon strict diets. Meals should be complete, and dinner should not be postponed until night.
- Physical activity and sports are included in the daily routine.
- A mandatory item is to stop smoking and abuse alcoholic beverages.
- On the recommendation of a gynecologist, you should take hormonal medications.
