Menopause May Not Mean What Most Women Think

Menopause is 'known' but its correct meaning is not so obvious among women. Common usage of the term is often different from it clinically correct meaning. Many women often take as 'menopause' what is clinically perimenopause or postmenopause. This article seeks to provide you with a better understanding of the term 'menopause' by trying to answer the question 'what is menopause?'

Common usage

The most common usage I have found so far amongst women is to call the years that follow the complete cessation of menses as 'menopause'. That is, menopause is taken as the rest of the years of a woman's life after the last menses. The correct terminology for this period is 'post-menopause', and not 'menopause'.

Another common usage which is gradually increasing in popularity is to take menopause to mean the years preceding the complete cessation of menses during which menopause symptoms are experienced. Again, this is not 'menopause' but 'perimenopause'.

What is Menopause?

Clinically, menopause is taken as the time after which no menses occur for 12 consecutive months. Therefore menopause is considered as the date after the very last menstrual flow. This implies menopause can only be ascertained clinically after a waiting period of 12 months, making its clinical definition a retrospective one. If you wait for 12 months and do not have any more menstrual flow, then the day after your last menses which you had 12 months ago is taken as your menopause.

Nevertheless, once the 12 months have elapsed, though menopause is certain the woman is already 12 months past it, that is already 12 months into postmenpause already!

Why wait 12 months? Because menses actually become so irregular during this period that to be certain there is little or no chances of having any more periods, the time lapse of 12 months was fixed. Therefore the 12 month period ensures that perimenopause is actually over.

Menopause is a transition

Women have used different colloquial terms such as 'the change', 'the change of life' or 'the climacteric' to call menopause.

Not from the above clinical definition that menopause is not a span of years but a transition point, from perimenopause to menopause.

What ever we had in mind before as menopause, all at least agree that it is not a disease but a shift from one phase of a woman's life into another. Though unavoidable, it can be fully contained and well incorporated into a woman's daily life as much as she had to learn to live with menses when they started occurring at menarche.