What are the importance of health during menopause?

The core value of menopausal health management is that it directly determines a woman’s quality of life for the next 30 to 40 years of her life, and can even widen the gap in life expectancy by about 10 years. This is not an alarmist statement.

Many people's understanding of menopause is still that "it's over after a few years of hot flashes and irritability." They don't realize that the fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone at this stage is the first trigger for the decline of multiple organ functions throughout the body. I met Aunt Zhang when I was doing women's health follow-up in the community two years ago. She went through menopause at the age of 48. During that period, she was always sweating, tossing and turning at night until two or three o'clock, unable to fall asleep, and her knees always ached. She felt that she was tired from raising twin grandsons, and her family also advised her, "Menopause is like this, just be patient and it will pass." She endured it for four years and had a physical examination last year. Her bone density has dropped to the point of severe osteoporosis, her blood lipids are more than twice the standard value, and she has found slight plaques in her coronary arteries. The doctor who treated her said that if she had started to intervene when she first showed symptoms related to menopause, such as adjusting her diet, regularly supplementing calcium and vitamin D, and standardizing hormone supplementation when necessary, her condition would not have progressed so quickly.

Don’t think that only physical problems are worthy of attention. The mental health state during menopause is also the invisible trigger of many family conflicts. I have seen many aunts who were originally very mild-tempered. When they were about fifty years old, they couldn't control their emotions for some reason. They would quarrel with their husbands and children over trivial matters, and they would slap their thighs and regret afterwards.

Nowadays, there is actually quite a controversy over menopausal health intervention. One group believes that "menopause is a natural physiological process, and human intervention is just a fool's errand. Hormone supplementation will definitely have side effects." The other group regards hormone supplementation as a "miracle medicine for aging." They buy all kinds of so-called imported menopausal health medicines overseas. In fact, The current clinical consensus is very clear: as long as there are no contraindications such as hormone-dependent tumors or severe liver and kidney dysfunction, the benefits of standardized conditioning during the "intervention window period" within 10 years of menopause and before the age of 60 far outweigh the risks. On the contrary, if you buy health products with unknown ingredients indiscriminately, you are prone to additional problems.

In fact, to put it bluntly, menopause is like the first major maintenance of a car that has been driven for more than ten years. You may not notice minor scratches or aging parts at ordinary times. At this mileage, you need to check and adjust the car in a unified manner. The wearing parts that need to be replaced are timely and the parts that need to be maintained are according to the specifications. It will be worry-free for the next ten or twenty years of driving. If you insist on dragging it without dealing with it, and wait for a small problem to turn into a major failure, repairing it will not only cost money, but the performance will not return to its original state. If you do the math, if you pay more in the past few years and enjoy a comfortable life in the next few decades, it's a good deal no matter how you calculate it.