Menopause period: physiological changes and their characteristic manifestations

How to preserve the quality of life?

2024-03-01

The growing interest in the problems of the postmenopausal period is associated with an increase in the life expectancy of women. Half a century ago in industrialized countries, its average indicator was no more than 50-60 years, but today it reaches 80. Under such conditions, aspects that determine the quality of life of women of menopausal age acquire special medical and social significance.

Having accumulated certain life and creative experience, a woman aged 50+ can give it to those around her with benefit. But it is precisely in this age period that changes occur in her body, which negatively affect the quality of life. The main factor of this condition is the lack of sex hormones, mainly estrogens, which leads to the appearance of various pathological changes.

Menopause is characterized by natural involutional processes that occur in the female body, especially in the reproductive system. Physiological changes are expressed by the cessation of childbearing function, and later also of menstruation. According to modern ideas, the involution of the reproductive system is based on age-related hormonal changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary structure of the brain, which entails irreversible changes in the cyclic function of the pituitary gland and, as a result, in the cyclic function of the ovaries. The age of onset of menopause largely depends on the ovarian reserve, namely the number of primordial follicles.

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