Abstract
The climacteric years define that phase in the aging process of women marking the transition from the reproductive stage of life (characterized by regular, ovulatory menstrual cycles) to a stage when the ovary is no longer capable of releasing eggs for fertility and when the ovarian estrogen production falls below the levels that stimulate menses. This transition involves three steps: Premenopause is an interval of months to years during which hormone secretion is erratic and menses are consequently irregular. Menopause is simply the cessation of menses. The date is retrospectively assigned when a woman has been without menstrual flow for one year. Postmenopause is the succeeding years during which symptoms directly or indirectly attributable to the waning ovarian estrogen secretion may or may not appear. By common usage, “menopause” and “menopausal syndrome” have become synonymous with “climacteric” and “climacteric syndrome.”
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Strickler, R.C. (1990). Management of Female Menopause. In: Armbrecht, H.J., Coe, R.M., Wongsurawat, N. (eds) Endocrine Function and Aging. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3240-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3240-7_10
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