Perimenopause, which typically occurs in a woman's mid-40s, precedes menopause

This is what happens to your body during menopause

The menopause transition may begin in one's mid-40s with erratic periods and a decrease in estrogen. It can trigger health complications, including hot flashes, palpitations, and elevated risks of osteoporosis.

Perimenopause can last as long as 8 years

Typically lasting around four years, beginning around age 45, some women experience it as early as their 30s. Smoking and thyroid disease are factors that can trigger early perimenopause. Early menopause, which can increase health risks, occurs in about 5% of women. Researchers are still investigating why it occurs.

How menopause affects mental health

Menopause, a natural biological process, occurs in three stages: perimenopause (hormone fluctuations), menopause (end of menstrual cycles), and postmenopause (12 months without menstruation). Hormonal shifts during this time can affect neurotransmitters, increasing the risk of mood disorders.

Menopause and perimenopause symptoms may affect both the mind and body

Women going through these aging transitions may experience some common physical and mental symptoms to varying degrees, including hot flashes, bladder control issues, brain fog, and vaginal dryness. This article dives into some of the most common symptoms women might expect during perimenopause, plus what they can do to relieve them.

Postmenopause is a stage lasting roughly a third of a woman's life

Postmenopause is the final stage of menopause, occurring once a woman hasn't had any bleeding for a full year. She is then considered postmenopausal for the rest of her life. While some of the intense symptoms she might experience during perimenopausal will decline, her risk for certain conditions and diseases will increase.

What to know about early and premature menopause

Although it's rare, some women may experience menopause early. Early menopause describes women that are menopausal between the ages of 40 and 45. Women that go through menopause before age 40 experience premature menopause. Early experiences of menopause impact under 6% of women, and doctors can’t point to a specific reason why it happens. Learn about what we do know about the conditions here.

By 2030, roughly 6% of the world's population will be in menopause

An estimated 25 million women pass through menopause annually, with a projected increase in the number of women in menopause in both lower-resource and higher-income populations in the years ahead, highlighting the social and economic value of focusing on menopause care.

Menopause is defined as 12 months without a period

Menopause is officially when a woman stops getting her period, meaning she has stopped ovulating and can no longer get pregnant. A woman has to go a full year without bleeding or spotting to know she has hit menopause.

Menopause is a hormonal transition point, like puberty

Yet menopause isn't talked about as much. In this podcast episode by Houston Methodist, a Texas-based hospital, the host speaks with a gynecologist with a specialization in menopausal medicine about what menopause really is, and how women and the people in their lives can navigate this next life stage.

Early menopause, occurring before age 45, can be triggered by certain risk factors

Some potential causes of early menopause include autoimmune disorders, chemotherapy, smoking, and certain surgeries that cause the body to produce lower levels of estrogen and progesterone.

Menopause can exacerbate anxiety

Some research shows that menopause can fuel anxiety and also that pre-existing anxiety can boost the chances of experiencing other menopause symptoms, including hot flashes, insomnia, and brain fog. But treatments including hormone replacement therapy, breathing exercises, and other forms of exercise can alleviate some of these symptoms.

Late-onset menopause lowers osteoporosis risks, but heightens the risks for certain cancers

Defined as when a woman starts to experience perimenopause after age 55, this delayed menopause onset is linked to elevated risk of developing breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers.

Treatment-induced menopause is menopause induced by surgery or medicine

Chemotherapy and radiation, as well as oophorectomy (a surgical procedure that removes the ovaries) and a radical hysterectomy can cause a woman to become menopausal. Women that go through medical menopause experience the same symptoms as women that experience menopause caused by natural hormonal cycles.

Menopause hormone therapy infuses the body with estrogen after the body's natural levels drop

The treatments can treat symptoms like hot flashes and vaginal dryness at varying doses. Progestogen, another hormone, is also typically prescribed with estrogen because estrogen alone can thicken the uterus lining, which elevates the risk of developing endometrial cancer.

Health problems are being misdiagnosed as perimenopause symptoms

Symptoms of menopause and perimenopause (the premenopause period) can be varied enough that clinicians dismiss them in patients in their mid-30s and onward as just a symptom of hormone level change. In this story, a woman's itching was dismissed as a hormonal change, but after two years and 11 separate doctor consultations, was diagnosed as cancer. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Menopause, once not discussed in polite company, is now a plot point in some television shows

Menopause has long been a topic left out of film and TV. But some shows, like "The Change," and celebrities, like Jennie Garth, are now openly talking about it. This article breaks down how Hollywood is starting to come around to the menopause conversation and how celebrities are talking about their own personal experiences, as well as advocating on Capitol Hill.

Scientists have not yet answered what the evolutionary benefit may be of menopause

Few animals are known to experience menopause, raising questions about why it would be evolutionarily advantageous to have women survive past their reproductive years. One leading hypothesis is the grandmother hypothesis—older women and other species known to experience menopause, like whales, can aid families and pass down knowledge to future generations.

'Menobelly' is real, with more fat stored around the abdomen as estrogen levels drop

The way fat is carried in the body shifts with menopause, with those pounds increasingly settling around the abdomen instead of the hips and thighs. Exacerbating this phenomenon, muscle mass also begins to decline, so calories stick around longer than usual. Resistance training, including push-ups and planks, alongside a heavier protein diet can help.

Menstruation, which occurs monthly, is the release of an unfertilized egg

This routine vaginal bleeding is part of a woman's hormonal cycle and occurs after an egg is released by an ovary during ovulation and isn't fertilized. Also known as periods, this monthly occurrence can cause symptoms including cramping, fatigue, and mood changes.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Why we should care about renaming the hormonal disorder PCOS to PMOS

The new name, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, nods to the hormonal disruptions that cause this condition, which affects roughly one in eight women. People with PMOS may have symptoms including irregular periods, trouble conceiving, weight gain, acne, undesired hair growth, and more. The earlier name, polycystic ovary syndrome, was a misnomer because women with the condition don't have cysts in their ovaries. Rather, they have masses that are actually immature follicles. World health experts think the condition often goes undiagnosed.

Premarin was the bestselling drug in the US in 1992

The drug, derived from the urine or pregnant mares, raised ethical and animal welfare concerns, but also became wildly popular until the Women's Health Initiative study findings in 2002 (which have since been largely disproved). In the 1990s, Premarin was used to treat menopause symptoms and also to protect against osteoporosis and heart disease among older women.

How women grow tiny humans inside of them

Pregnancy is a complex biological journey, lasting about 40 weeks. When a sperm fertilizes an egg, that event triggers intricate cellular and hormonal processes, driven by hardwired cellular instructions, which lead to cell division, differentiation, and development—ultimately culminating in the birth of a baby.

Schizophrenia symptoms, like psychosis, often first emerge among young adults

A combination of genetics, significant brain changes to the frontal cortex, and hormonal changes during young adulthood—late teens to early 30s—result in schizophrenic symptoms often showing up during this period. The stress of life changes at that age may also be a contributing factor.

One theory suggests real estate markets follow a predictable 18-year pattern

The theory dictates that real estate markets tend to experience about 14 years of growth, including a mid-cycle dip, then experience four years of decline. Real estate experts in London discuss the theory in an article.

Becoming a man in ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, boys between the ages of 14 and 17 underwent a traditional ceremony marking their transition from childhood to adulthood. This article explores what we know about this common practice and its significance. Learn about the ritual celebration, which included a new white toga, sacrifices, and becoming registered as a citizen.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Between 10 million and 50 million people in the US develop rashes from poison ivy, poison sumac, and poison oak each year.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution