1.1 Dancing hormones

All people pass through a climacteric period – this is perfectly natural. Like in puberty, our body once again changes its hormonal balance. Hormones are messenger molecules in the human body. They are produced by glands and tissues and are released into the blood. Women’s ovaries produce the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. Oestrogen stimulates the development of the female sex characteristics and the menstruation cycle, i.e. the period. Progesterone plays an important role in the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy.

During menopause the production of both hormones is reduced. As a consequence, menstruation stops. When hormone production starts to be reduced at the beginning of the menopausal transition, pregnancy will be very difficult to achieve, and later it will become impossible. That is why menopause is also called the “change of life”. It marks the transition from our childbearing years to our non-childbearing years. The medical term used to describe this transition period is “climacteric”.

The change in hormone levels always involves physical and psychological changes which will take some time to get used to. We know this from puberty or pregnancy. And it is the same when hormone production is again reduced during menopause: We need to get used to the changes that occur quite naturally during this time in life.

Every woman experiences menopause differently. Some women are mostly glad to be done with their periods and not to have to think about contraception anymore. Some women do not notice anything different or only experience slight menopause symptoms, while others suffer more severe ones. The length of the transition to menopause varies from woman to woman, but on average it lasts 9 years.

Menopause can be divided into different stages, which are shown in the figure below. We can see that a woman’s oestrogen and progesterone levels start to decline from the age of 40 onwards. Let us look at how the individual stages affect us and find out how we can cope with it.