What is Menopause?
Menopause is the permanent shutting down of the female reproductive system, a considerable length of time before the end of the lifespan. Menopause occurs in a variety of animals, as well as humans. It is usually a natural process.
The word was first applied to humans, and because of this it literally means the cessation of monthly cycles or menstrual cycles, from the Greek roots meno (month) and pausis (a halt). However, the word is not only applied to humans, and menopause is the permanent stopping of female reproductive cycles of various lengths and kinds; menopause is indeed present in a number of mammal species other than humans.
In adult human females who still have a uterus, and who are not pregnant or lactating, postmenopause is identified by a permanent (at least one year’s) absence of monthly periods or menstruation. In women without a uterus, menopause or postmenopause is identified by a very high FSH level.
In human females, menopause usually happens more or less in midlife, signaling the end of the fertile phase of a woman’s life. Menopause is perhaps most easily understood as the opposite process to menarche, the start of the monthly periods. However, menopause in women cannot satisfactorily be defined simply as the permanent “stopping of the monthly periods”, because in reality what is happening to the uterus is quite secondary to the process; it is what is happening to the ovaries that is the crucial factor.
For medical reasons, the uterus must sometimes be surgically removed (hysterectomy) in a younger woman; her periods will cease permanently, and the woman will technically be infertile, but as long as at least one of her ovaries is still functioning, the woman will not have reached menopause, because even without the uterus, ovulation and the release of the sequence of reproductive hormones will continue to cycle on until menopause is reached. But in circumstances where a woman’s ovaries are removed (oophorectomy), even if the uterus were to be left intact, the woman will immediately be in “surgical menopause”.
Thus menopause is based on the shutting down (or surgical removal of) the ovaries, which are a part of the body’s endocrine system of hormone production, in this case the hormones which make reproduction possible and influence sexual behavior. The process of the ovaries shutting down is a phenomenon which involves the entire cascade of a woman’s reproductive functioning, from brain to skin, and this major physiological event usually has some effect on almost every aspect of a woman’s body and life.
The menopause transition, and post-menopause itself, is a natural life change, not a disease state or a disorder. The transition itself can be challenging for a number of women, but for others it is not difficult.
Tags: Health, Menopause, women health
