Understanding Perimenopause, Menopause and Postmenopause
When we talk about the stages of perimenopause and menopause, we’re really talking about the normal aging process—a subject that’s become nearly taboo in our youth-oriented Western culture. Fortunately for America’s burgeoning postfifty population, however, aging today is a happier, healthier business than it was even thirty years ago. We’re living longer, healthier lives now. Medical advancements have made the age of fifty more of a midway marker than the opening of the final scene that it used to be. Remember, menopause isn’t really something you go through, although that’s often the easiest way to describe the period of change most women experience in the years preceding and following full, natural menopause. Menopause is merely one event in the long journey women make as they move away from their reproductive years and into their postreproductive years.
This transformation takes place in stages that occur, for most women, over a period of decades. Although every woman’s body chemistry and, therefore, age experience is unique, many experts agree that most women typically experience the following physical changes on the menopause journey:
Perimenopause - the years when a woman’s estrogen production gradually decreases as a natural result of aging—typically occurs during a woman’s midforties.
Menopause - the time when ovulation ceases and estrogen production falls to such low levels that all menstruation stops for at least twelve months in the case of natural menopause or immediately in the case of surgical or induced menopause. Many women enter natural menopause in their fifties.
Postmenopause - the years following menopause.
According to some studies, your menstrual cycles may shorten before age forty, then lengthen slightly as you approach menopause. So, while your period may occur every twenty-six days when you’re forty years old, as you reach forty-five, thirty-five-day cycles may be normal for you.
