So what exactly is The Menopause?

This might feel like a blindingly obvious question to some people, but a lot of women (me included) just knew it as the time when our periods stop and we’re no longer fertile.

But there’s a bit more to it than that.

The Menopause (capital T) is a term that encompasses all stages of The Menopause - Perimenopause, Menopause and Post Menopause.

‘Menopause’ itself is actually a one-day event; the 12-month anniversary of your last period. It’s really the time leading up to this day when we’re still having periods, the Perimenopause, that we can experience a whole range of symptoms that we tend to describe as Menopausal.  It’s during Perimenopause that our sex hormones (progesterone, estrogen and testosterone) begin to fluctuate. These hormones regulate our menstrual cycle, as well as egg production in the ovaries, and as their levels start to change so does a lot of what we experience.

Estrogen (and its decline) is the hormone that everyone seems to automatically relate to The Menopause but it’s actually progesterone that initially starts to drop more consistently during Perimenopause, while estrogen can vary quite wildly (see crazy wiggly line above). And it’s the differences in the levels of progesterone and estrogen during this time that cause some of the symptoms and affect the intensity with which we experience them. These fluctuations can also be quite unpredicatable which is why the way that we experience a lot of the symptoms can seem quite random - one morning we’re fine, and quite literally that evening we’ve left the phone in the fridge. As estrogen starts to decrease more consistently later in the Perimenopause, we start to see further changes in the regularity of our periods and other new symptoms like hot flushes.

Post-Menopause is the period of time after the one-year anniversary of our last period and during this time we can still continue to experience symptoms. Those symptoms may change, and while for some they may disappear after a few months or years, for others they may stay. One of the most important things to remember about The Menopause is that every woman’s experience of it is different.

I focus on ‘symptoms’ of The Menopause a lot at the moment because this is what so many women are experiencing, and so many either don’t realise what’s going on which can be really stressful. And stress, as with most things, intensifies those symptoms and just makes things worse. So the more we become aware of these things, the more empowered we become in helping ourselves feel better and ultimately live better.

Check out these images see how the decline in which hormones relate most strongly to different symptoms.