Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Not an illness but a transition — not always free of symptoms, but well supportable.
Also known as: menopause · perimenopause · climacteric
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
The menopause is not an illness but a transition, and it lasts longer than the name suggests. The menopause itself is a single day — the last period, defined in hindsight after twelve months without bleeding. The years before it are the hardest: the ovaries work irregularly, oestrogen swings widely rather than simply falling, and that very swinging explains why hot flushes, disturbed sleep and mood changes often begin years before the last period. Sleep is the underrated axis here: being woken at night by flushes makes you irritable and forgetful by day — and that gets blamed on hormones when it was the night. A blood test does not make the diagnosis; FSH and oestradiol swing too much in this phase, and the diagnosis rests on age and symptoms. On hormone therapy the assessment has turned around over twenty years: with marked symptoms and a start within the first ten years after the last period, the benefit outweighs for most women. It is a balance decided individually — but no longer the blanket warning of the past. What counts in every case: after the menopause bone density falls faster, and cardiovascular risk moves towards that of men.
After the menopause urethra and vagina grow thinner and less tight. Urgency, burning and recurring infections follow from that and respond well to a local treatment.
The most effective option for marked symptoms; weigh benefit and risk individually with a doctor.
Eases symptoms, protects bone and heart, supports sleep and mood.
FSH and oestradiol swing too much in this phase to settle anything. An abnormal value proves nothing, a normal one rules nothing out.
The assessment has turned around: with marked symptoms and an early start, benefit outweighs for most. It is a balance, not a forbidden zone.
Dryness and burning can be treated locally, whatever one thinks of hormone therapy overall. This is offered too rarely.
Bone density falls fastest in the first years afterwards. Strength training and enough protein do more here than any supplement.
A cool room, layers instead of one thick duvet, checking alcohol in the evening. Much of what gets blamed on mood improves with the night.
Hormones replace what the ovaries no longer make. Hot flushes and sleep usually improve within weeks. They do not stop the menopause — they carry a person through the years when the change is felt most.
The last period comes at fifty-one on average; the transition before it lasts four to eight years. Hot flushes persist for a median of about seven years, considerably longer in some — much longer than most people expect, and the reason for many wrong conclusions.
Heat rising in the face, neck and chest, often with sweating and palpitations, usually a few minutes. Commoner at night, which takes the sleep apart.
Shorter, longer, absent, then heavy again. Very heavy or very long bleeding is not simply the menopause, though — that belongs looked at.
Usually staying asleep rather than falling asleep. Much of what gets blamed on mood in truth comes from the broken night.
This is the sign that tends to increase rather than fade with time, and the one least often raised — although it responds well to local treatment.
Common and little known. If the stiffness lasts over an hour and the joints are swollen, it is something else.
This always belongs investigated — without exception and without waiting. It is usually harmless, but the check is not negotiable.
First irregular, then rarer, then not at all. Only after twelve months without bleeding is the transition complete — before that a pregnancy is still possible.
For hot flushes — mixed evidence.
Much taken for menopausal complaints; the studies are small and short.
Contains isoflavones and is much taken for flushes; the studies are inconsistent.
At the inner ankle; the point for kidney yin, to which this phase of life is assigned.