The Relation Between Menopause And The Brain

By Liana Badea


Researches developed a brand new concept, which is that menopause doesn't just originate in the ovary, but also in the brain!

The North American Menopausal Society consider a woman menopausal when she didn't had her period for 12 consecutive months. The most frequent menopause symptoms are hot flashes, depression, anxiety, fatigue, mood swings,insomnia, joint pain, loss of sex drive, all caused by hormonal fluctuations.

There are real biochemical changes in a woman's body occurring during menopause. Researchers are beginning to understand how those changes start to occur, which is the first step in trying to come up with more effective treatments.

It is a fact that menopausal symptoms are causes by the hormonal imbalance, which starts in the ovaries. But new researches suggest that some menopause symptoms are not ovarian, they begin in the brain.

The idea behind this statement is that hypothalamus and the pituitary gland stop reacting normally to estrogen in some women when they reach menopause.

The pituitary gland releases hormones that control many of the endocrine system's functions, while the hypothalamus controls the pituitary gland to release the hormones. The hypothalami-pituitary function is a critical part in the development and regulation of the body's reproductive and immune systems. Fluctuations in the hormones produced by each gland have various effects on the body. Estrogen and progesterone fluctuations produce menopausal symptoms. Researches discovered that in some women, pituitary responded good to lower levels of estrogen, while hypothalamus didn't respond properly.

These findings may lead the way to further research that will ultimately help doctors predict the type of menopausal transition a woman might have, and help to design non-estrogen medications that could help reduce symptoms that women experience as they enter this phase of life.




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