United States: Research indicates that numerous post-pubescent girls face unnecessary menopausal symptoms during their transition according to new findings.
According to research findings more than half of women between ages 30 to 35 display moderate to serious predisposition symptoms that indicate menopause onset.
The symptoms affecting young women in transition include mood swings and delayed or skipped menstrual periods, and hot flashes together with vaginal dryness, which causes pain during intercourse as well as heart palpitations and more frequent urination.
The mistaken notion that menopause symptoms occur only in the 50s makes most women wait unduly long periods before seeking medical help according to researchers.
Misconceptions Delay Medical Help
“We had a significant number of women who are typically thought to be too young for perimenopause tell us that they have high levels of perimenopause-related symptoms,” senior researcher Liudmila Zhaunova, director of science at Flo Health Inc., a London-based company that offers a pregnancy and ovulation tracking app.
Women experience the period called perimenopause as a natural transition before menopause starts according to researchers.
Research Details and Findings
The research analyzed symptoms recorded by over 4,400 American women older than 30 who submitted responses to questions found online through the Flo app.
According to researchers who published their findings in npj Women’s Health about half of all women within the age group 30 to 35 met severe or moderate threshold levels for menopause symptoms.
An analysis revealed that symptoms worsened as women moved from age 30 to age 36 to 40, where they reached 64% of the study group experienced significant issues, according to researchers.
The study data reveals that 4% of women between 30 to 35 and 7% of those 36 to 40 monitored menopause symptoms yet avoided visiting healthcare professionals.
Hesitancy to Seek Medical Advice
“We also demonstrated that over a quarter of respondents in the youngest age group (30–35 years) had been told by a medical professional they were perimenopausal,” researchers wrote in their study.
The findings, according to the researchers, should help close a “scary gap” in knowledge on perimenopause symptoms in younger women.
Bridging the Knowledge Gap
“This study is important because it plots a trajectory of perimenopausal symptoms that tells us what symptoms we can expect when and alerts us to the fact that women are experiencing perimenopausal symptoms earlier than we expected,” researcher Dr. Jennifer Payne, an expert in reproductive psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said in a news release.