Especially unbearable was heat intolerance. Shelley’s inability to stand being outside in warm weather dominated her travel and social plans: She scrapped her dream of going on safari, and even a day trip on a friend’s boat was out of the question.
Perhaps even harder to handle than any of these symptoms, though, was Shelley’s sense that she had lost control over her own life. Patients who are ill often express a feeling of helplessness, but Shelley wasn’t ill. A perfectly normal physiological process had sent her into a tailspin in which she felt betrayed. “My body,’’ she declared, “turned against itself.’’
For much of human history, menopause wasn’t a problem because most women didn’t live long enough to reach it. A 100 years ago, the average age at which women in the United States died was 50 - tuberculosis and other infections were the most common killers. It’s only in the last few decades that the majority of women have survived well beyond their childbearing years.
A woman is menopausal when her menstrual periods have stopped for one year. The average age of menopause is 51, but many women have symptoms related to falling or erratic hormone levels for years before menopause, during what’s called perimenopause. Even though many women are not much bothered by menopausal or perimenopausal symptoms - some women even feel better than ever during this time - doctors have long thought of this normal decline in ovarian function as something to be “fixed.’’
Estrogen supplements were available as early as the 1930s and became wildly popular after a bestselling book, “Feminine Forever,’’ by Dr. Robert Wilson, appeared in 1966. The message of this book was that menopause is preventable, and that women who do not take estrogen after menopause are unhealthy and unattractive, and no longer truly women.
