Menopause

I was at the beach with my eight-year-old niece when I suddenly felt like my heart was about to leap out of my body. It was pounding so fast and I couldn't catch my breath. I thought I was having a heart attack. But then, within a few minutes, all those disturbing symptoms disappeared.

Hot flashes are the most common symptom of the menopause transition and until 2002, women routinely took estrogen and progestin to lessen the severity and frequency of those awful waves of heat that make you want to rip off your clothes and jump in a cold shower. That year, a major federal study found that the risk of hormones outweighed the benefits for many women. So what else works?

I know very few women who can truly say they love their hair. There's always something that could be better. Either it's frizzy or limp or too thin or too thick. But at midlife, those complaints seem trivial when you're forced to confront the very real changes brought on by aging.

You can witness all sorts of weird symptoms around menopause, but abnormal bleeding is one you should always take seriously. Now, let me take a minute to define "abnormal." When you're in perimenopause (which is different for everyone but can start as many as ten years before menopause) it's quite normal to have periods that come early, come late, are much heavier than usual or much lighter than usual. So unless your periods are coming more often than every three weeks or lasting far longer than usual, there's probably nothing to worry about.