Menopause, Me and You

Book excerpt: Menopause, Me and You will help you put menopause in proper perspective--as a normal and natural developmental process in the lives of women, not as a disorder or state that causes disease. This informative book gives you self-monitoring tools for collecting information and monitoring changes in your body during menopause. These tools will also help you understand the dynamics of the change process. A guideline as to how to best use this information when interacting with care providers--especially those who view menopause as a disorder to be treated--is also included. Menopause, Me and You is filled with information-gathering tools, scientific facts, and stories from the true “experts” on menopause--the women themselves who have experienced or are experiencing menopause. In chapter after chapter, you’ll gain valuable information for viewing menopause from a woman-centered perspective. Specifically, the book includes: detailed information on conception and fertilization, reconceptualizing these events from a woman-centered, feminist perspective a description and reconceptualization of the menstrual cycle and menstruation, providing the knowledge base--the physiological, endrocrinological, and biochemical mechanisms that regulate the menstrual cycle and menstruation--to understand menopause as the closure of menstrual life and not the end of life a journey into the steroid hormone target cell--shows, at a scientific level, that women were genetically programmed to end the production of reproductive hormones a description and clarification of some of the terms used to describe menopause common menopausal changes and diseases attributed to being estrogen-deficient tools for gathering information, for “discovering knowledge,” about yourself--a menstrual calendar card, hot flash body diagrams, a basal body temperature record, a body composition record, a menstrual bleeding scale, and factors to consider when choosing a care provider The women who share their experiences in Menopause, Me and You represent women at various stages of menopause. They describe for you what they are feeling as well as what it means to be a mid-life woman at the closure of reproductive life; they celebrate the end of menstruation but curse the changes--including mood swings, hot flashes, and vaginal/bleeding changes--they are experiencing. These changes are normal and expected, however, and need to be understood in that context. They are not symptoms of disease or an excuse for care providers to instantly prescribe hormones or drugs. With the information in Menopause, Me and You, women nearing or experiencing menopause, health care providers, such as nurses, health educators, and physicians, and counselors will better understand how women view this transition and come to accept it as another normal, necessary, and beautiful process in the lives of women.