Eat, Love, Supplement: A Woman’s Guide to Menopausal Health

Contrary to popular understanding, aging is an adventure, not a curse. From rights of passage such as getting a driver’s license and milestone birthdays to mark every decade, getting “old” is an adventure of change. But, in an attempt to avert the inevitable, thousands of products are launched every year in order to prevent aging. Doctors, pharma giants and the media play their roles in suggesting the allowed amount of wrinkles before age becomes “old.” But no matter how young a woman looks or how many ageless antics she attempts, she cannot avoid one of the staples of womanhood: menopause.
Experienced in the latter years of a woman’s life, menopause is the closing of the fertility door. Woman can start premenopause as early as age 35, and it can last several years. Once a woman experiences her last period, menopause begins, which usually starts mid-to-late 40s—the median age of menopause for American women is about 47.5 years, and the United States has about 41.75 million women older than the age of 50, according to the North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Once this occurs, women enter into postmenopause. During these years, several things change in a woman’s body, and because a decline in estradiol levels occurs, premenopausal, perimenopausal and postmenopausal women experience symptoms related to vasomotor instability, such as hot flashes and palpitations. Other symptoms include bone loss, mental decline, cold flashes, mood swings and many other unpleasant changes. Since 37.5 million U.S. women are at or near menopause, and 45.6 million are postmenopausal, with nearly 40 million of these women older than the age of 51 years, according to NAMS, relief for these tiring and oftentimes painful symptoms is more than needed—it’s demanded.