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Symptoms of menopause after 45 years

Alexey Portnov, medical expert
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024

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Climacteric syndrome occurs in all women, and any woman knows that her ability to become pregnant and give birth to a child (fertility) decreases with age and, sooner or later, she will lose her childbearing function. Symptoms of menopause after 45 years just indicate the depletion of the functional reserve of the ovaries and the loss of their follicular activity.

During this period, there is an inevitable transition of the female body from the reproductive period of life to the physiological stage of menopause, for which certain changes in the body are characteristic.

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The main changes in the body of a woman with menopause

Normally, the period of decreasing the functions of the female reproductive system (egg production and development of the fetus before birth) continues from 45 to 55 years. And the first signs of menopause - a violation of the regularity of the menstrual cycle - usually begin to appear after 45 years (plus or minus 2-3 years). Also part of the climacteric syndrome is a more pronounced unpleasant premenstrual state. All these gynecologists are called premenopausal, and the only cause of the ongoing processes are irreversible hormonal changes in the body.

As is known, the activity of the reproductive system of women throughout life is regulated by hormones:

The gonadotropin-releasing hormone produced by the hypothalamus (GnRH), which controls the pituitary secretion of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH);
FSH, which is released by the anterior pituitary gland and stimulates growth in the ovaries of immature oocytes (follicles);
LH, also synthesized anterior lobe of the pituitary gland and causing ovulation and formation of a yellow body from the follicle cells;
Estrogen, which is produced by a growing egg and yellow body.

Hormonal changes in the body of a woman with menopause are expressed in a decrease in the synthesis of luteinizing and follicle-stimulating hormones, which ensure the regular maturation of the ovum in the ovaries (and, accordingly, the menstrual cycle). This leads first to violations of the monthly cycle, and then to its complete cessation. At the same time, the level of estrogen synthesized by the ovaries sharply decreases.

Usually from the onset of the apparent instability of the menstrual cycle to its complete cessation passes from 1.5 to 4.5 years (which is associated with the individual characteristics of the process of producing sex hormones and the existing somatic or endocrine diseases). Monthly can become meager and short, or longer and more plentiful than usual.

To the irregularity of menstruation, such symptoms of menopause after 45 years are added, as

paroxysmal feeling of heat in the head and upper body ("hot flashes"), often accompanied by flushing of the skin and tachycardia. According to the specialists of the International Menopause Society (IMS), this is due to changes in the hypothalamus, in which there is a temperature regulation center that enters the limbic-hypothalamic-reticular system of the body, and with the physiological hypothyroidism of the thyroid gland, which manifests itself as part of hormone-dependent changes in the organism in this period.