Endometriosis and Age at Menopause

Menstruation, there’s good and bad things about it. Any post-menarcheal woman reading this will be more than familiar with the ‘bad things’ which include: pain, irritability, bloating, pain, nausea, headaches, tiredness, pain, bleeding, generally feeling shit, I could go on. So I bet you’re wondering where I’m going to pull the ‘good things’ associated with menstruation from. Well one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the mere mention of menstruation is enough to halt any conversation dead in its tracks; and that can come in handy sometimes.

Seriously, give it a try, next time you’re at wedding or other such family gathering and get stuck talking to some boring relative just drop in a quick description of your last period and everyone within earshot will try to climb inside their own shoes, leaving you to enjoy the buffet in peace. Done something wrong at work and got called into the boss’s office? Start off the conversation by recounting a memorable menstrual episode and I guarantee you’ll be out of there scot free within five seconds. Pulled over for speeding? Tell the office on duty about how many tampons you get through a month and he’ll tear up your ticket there and then*. But there comes a time in woman’s life where menstruation stops, and that time is menopause.

*ok that last one may not work

Menopause, for those that don’t know, signals the end of a woman’s menstrual cycles. In the western world menopause occurs, on average, around the age of 52 and is usually a gradual process that takes place over months or even years. If you’re a lady and you’d like to know approximately when you’ll go through the menopause, a good indication is your mother’s age when she went through menopause. The reason that a woman’s menstrual cycles stop is that, as a woman gets older, her body’s hormone levels change, this means that the levels of oestrogen in her body will gradually decrease and the production of mature eggs (ovulation) will eventually stop and so menstruation becomes unnecessary.

This change in body hormone levels doesn’t come without consequences though. You’ve probably heard of some of the common symptoms of menopause such as hot flushes and mood changes and this is all tied in to the body adjusting to the new hormonal balance.

There are a number of factors that affect the age at which a woman goes through menopause. I’ve mentioned above that one of the major influences is her mother’s age at menopause, However, factors that may increase the age at menopause include: Having more than three children, being of high socioeconomic status, and having a high BMI. Factors that can decrease the age at menopause include: smoking and low BMI.

Why am I talking about menopause though? Well there was a study published recently that showed women who have a history of endometriosis are likely to have an earlier menopause. The study itself was quite thorough in its methods, they looked at surveys of 49,927 female, Japanese nurses between 2001 and 2007. In this population the average age at menopause was 49.5, that decreased to 48.8 for endometriosis sufferers. Why might this be the case? The authors of the paper suggest that surgical and medical treatments associated with endometriosis may contribute. For example, surgery involving the ovary, such as excision of removal, was found to decrease the age at menopause. The role of medical treatments was harder to judge as there are conflicting reports as to the effect of certain drugs on menopause. Certain studies on oral contraceptives, for example, show they increase the age at menopause, whereas other studies show they have no effect at all, so the jury’s still out on that.