Menopause and Midlife

Candace Cooley’s experience encompasses menopause related concerns, and she has treated menopausal symptoms; this index collects the entries on that transition and the years that follow it. The National Institute on Aging describes menopause as the point at which periods stop permanently, recognized only after a full year without one, and notes that most women begin the transition between 45 and 55, that the average age of menopause in the United States is 52, and that symptoms can last from two to eight years.¹

Sources differ slightly on the numbers. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists gives the average age as 51 and explains that estrogen made by the ovaries begins to fluctuate in a woman’s 30s and 40s, the years called perimenopause, when cycles may lengthen, shorten or skip.² The best known symptom has a clinical name. The Menopause Society groups hot flashes and night sweats as vasomotor symptoms, reported by up to 80 percent of women, with each episode typically lasting 1 to 5 minutes and the symptoms persisting for a mean of 7 to 10 years.³

The five entries are Perimenopause, Vasomotor Symptoms of Menopause, Menopause Hormone Therapy, The Women’s Health Initiative and Cardiovascular Risk Across the Menopause Transition.