Menopause: your questions answered

What is menopause?

Menopause is the time in a woman’s life when she has run out of all her eggs. This results in a reduction of hormones, which therefore produces a whole panorama of symptoms.

Who is affected by menopause?

Only women can go through a menopause because only women have eggs. We think traditionally that menopause only happens to women after the age of 45 or 50 but the symptoms of menopause can begin much earlier than that.

The effects of menopause are not only placed on the women but on her family and friends. They not only impact her health but they impact her life as a whole; through her family life, her work life and her personal life.

Although menopause only happens to an individual, its effects are very wide ranging.

What are the most common physical symptoms of menopause?

Traditionally, we think about splitting menopause into various subsections so we think about the common symptoms being of hot flushes, night sweats, mode change, anger, irritability, headaches, migraines, headaches.

Other body symptoms are palpitations and there are specific problems such as vaginal dryness, problems with intercourse, pain with intercourse and problems with the bladder. Increasingly doctors are very aware of the association with the drop in sex drive with the libidio.

Additionally, there are some more difficult to measure symptoms, such as lack of interest in life, referred to as anhedonia. There is a lack of the joy of things in life, where joy and happiness might have previously been found, there is a slowing down and numbing down to the enjoyment of life as a result of menopause.

Lack of concentration and focus are important features that we’ve seen in lots of menopause patients and thankfully we can help with a lot of that.

How can menopause affect one’s psychological wellbeing?

Psychological effects of menopause are really important. It is important to the individual, to the family unit and to the woman at work.

Psychological issues often seen by doctors are conentration problems. Patients tell doctors things such as ‘I can’t concentrate on the numerous tasks that I have to undertake at work’ ‘I´ve got brain fog, stuff gets a bit foggy’ and ‘I just can’t quite focus on the on the tasks that I had.’ It is common to see women who were tolerant of their partners, of issues at home, of their kids and that tolerance goes quickly. There is a lot of irritability and quick changes. They transition from happy to, sad, angry to really angry, then not angry and the cycle continues.

Furthermore, they feel that they cannot focus and concentrate on specific tasks. This causes a lot of problems at work and a a lot of women say ‘I’m not going to go for a promotion, I’m going to do something different in my work because I feel I just can’t do it ‘. This is not true, of course they can do it but it’s that they just feel that they can’t.