Learn What Early Menopause Is And Its Causes

Early menopause, which is also referred to as premature menopause is menopause that happens at an earlier age than the usual. This term is usually used a general one to cover different conditions and situations ranging from menopause brought about by premature ovarian failure to surgical menopause. In addition, this is also used to refer to menopause brought about by chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

All of the types of menopause that have been mentioned above are under the bracket of early menopause. The link that connects all of them together is age. This is so since early menopause happens during women's 20s, 30s, or early 40s. The only difference between premature menopause and normal menopause is the time as to when they happen. If menopause happens at an earlier time even without you undergoing surgery, radiation therapy, or chemotherapy, this condition is now commonly called premature ovarian failure or POF. This term sounds really scary but you don't have to worry too much if you have it since this only refers to a condition wherein your ovaries are not functioning really well as they ideally should. In other words, they are shutting down really earlier than their time.

Let's take a more detailed look at the causes of premature menopause. If you have this condition, you will experience menopause symptoms including a stoppage of your monthly periods. If you try to get a hormone test, which is a test that's looks into your FSH or follicle stimulating hormone and estradiol which is the main circulating estrogen, your results are going to show post-menopausal levels. You need to know however that if women have premature ovarian failure, this doesn't mean that they're out of eggs. In some cases, women with POF stop having periods not because they no longer have eggs but because their bodies are no longer responding to signals to ovulate.

Another common cause of premature menopause are surgery and cancer treatments. In here, it's pretty obvious that the changes that are happening to a woman's body have been brought about by an outside cause. Oophorectomy is a surgical procedure that involves removing the ovaries, which causes a woman to stop producing ovarian hormones. Hysterectomy is another type of surgery that can lead to menopause because this has a possibility of interfering with blood flow directed to the ovaries and causes ovarian failure over time.

In cancer treatments, decreasing ovarian function occurs as a side effect of the treatment. Because of this, menopause happens at an earlier time than it normally should.