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Climacteric and
Hormonal Replacement Therapy
(HRT)
A new stage in women’s
lives
It is the period between the immediate previous stage to menopause and the
subsequent 5 years.
It represents, in the same way as adolescence and maternity, a key stage
in women’s lives.
These stages are characterized by physical facts, such as menarche (first
menstruation) during adolescence, the delivery during maternity and
menopause (cease of menstruation) during climacteric which takes place
around the age of 45 to 50.
Nowadays, the woman spends a third of her life in the post-menopausal
stage.
This represents, from the biological point of view, the end of a woman’s
reproductive period and it is characterized by ovarian function
declination (in charge of producing estrogens, progesterone, and few
quantities of androgen during the fertile period).
From that fact on, a series of phenomena are triggered, some of them
directly associated with the cease of hormone production and others
involved in changes of lifestyle.
Actually, ovarian function declination starts some time earlier than the
cease of menstruation. This is shown in irregularities in the menstrual
cycles which precede menopause, such as short or too long cycles, the lack
of some of them, etc. But it is the gynaecologist who must diagnose
whether these symptoms belong to this phenomenon or to affections with
similar signs and symptoms which correspond to severe pathologies.
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