The Signs & Symptoms of Menopause

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Doctor Susan Jewell and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to talk to you about how to live with menopause. Now, in this clip, we're going to talk about some of the signs and symptoms that you'll find when you are entering menopause. Now, here, I've written a few of the signs and symptoms; one of the main symptoms that you'll actually experience would be what we call "hot flashes". Now, this is caused because of the body's decrease in the natural production of the estrogen hormone and when that happens, it increases the woman's body core temperature by one or two degrees. The hot flashes come intermittently; it's not a constant condition, it comes when you're totally not expecting it. Some women experience the hot flashes more frequently than other women and I will talk in detail later on about how you can deal with hot flashes, situations of hot flashes, what you could do to cope with that and live with that. Anxiety and depression, mood swings, some of the psychological effects of decreased estrogen hormone in the body will express itself in mood swings, and anxiety, and depression. There are a lot of ways that you can actually tackle and find support mechanisms to deal with these psychological and emotional changes for a woman - especially at the early changes of menopausal stage. Bleeding, some bleeding occurs especially at the beginning of menopause; you'll get bleeding - spotting bleeding - some are heavier than others. When you go on especially some treatment called H.R.T or hormonal treatment, then some women experience bleeding continually and then it stops. So, bleeding is one of the symptoms sometimes; not all women experience it. One of the things that happen in women in later age with decreased estrogen is that they start building body fat, as adipose tissue. So, increased body weight is a factor for most women entering menopause, but we'll discuss that; how to deal with that, how to tackle it, and why that happens. Fatigue and lethargy, of course, is something that, besides the fact that you have all these other physiological and physical changes in your body, it's the stress and just the factor that you don't understand what's going on, and adjusting to a menopausal period in your life. For women, it's a very energy-draining, so we'll deal with certain ways to attack our fatigue and lethargy."