Thank goodness, you no longer have to whisper about *The Change*, or perhaps even worse, *The Change of Life* behind closed doors with women of the same age or older… And, thank goodness, you no longer have to soldier on with subtle and not so subtle side-effects!
The omertà surrounding menopause – an important, yet perfectly normal transition – is publicly dissolving and that is a good thing. Physicians are no longer quite as dismissive of menopausal challenges as they used to be. You can now open the window or use a fan at work before you reach boiling point, and you can easily purchase all manner of menopause-tailored supplements and creams. If you’re really lucky, you may have a sympathetic entourage. And they may even cut you some slack when you bark at them for the umpteenth time or cry on their shoulder when the hormonal ebb leaves you feeling overwhelmed...
Nevertheless, despite a recent blossoming of books, TV programs or campaigns that have contributed to a de-stigmatisation of the process, a lot remains to be done to understand the ramifications of this transition as well as support women on their individual menopausal path. Because “individual” is the keyword here: there is no *one* way to experience it. Some seem to sail through it without a care in the world, while others experience earth-shattering physical and/or psychological breakdowns. Moreover, for some, the journey will last a couple of years, while for others it may turn into a decade-long battle.
Hence, epiAge is eager to start a conversation about lived menopause and its potential effects on biological ageing!
Today’s test person is not a classical biohacker who monitors her biological age regularly, but she values and practices a (mostly) healthy lifestyle and occasionally tests with epiAge. She was curious to see if the onset of menopause had had any impact on her biological age, since the very scarce research on the topic (cf. mainly Levine & al., 2016) suggests menopause can cause epigenetic age acceleration.
The first epiAge test our test person took was in December 2021 at a chronological age of 51.25. The result was a biological age of 46.57 years. At the time of the first test, she was still menstruating relatively regularly without any particular symptoms. So, she was technically in the perimenopausal phase. In January 2024 (hence roughly 2 years later) at a chronological age of 53.35, she took her second test, obtaining a biological age of 50.96. This means that a positive discrepancy remained, but it shrank from 4,68 to 2,39 years (or roughly halved) between Test 1 and Test 2.
This came as a really positive surprise to our test-person since her menopausal journey, while perhaps not earth-shattering, did not prove a breeze either. Indeed, by the autumn of 2022 her period had already ceased for many months, and she suddenly began to experience a number of very unpleasant symptoms, such as dry eyes, dizziness, intense joint pain, heart palpitations – not to mention temporary incontinence. Also, over the next months she gained a few pounds, which proved difficult to shake off. Psychologically, it did not prove a smooth ride either, with episodes of low mood or intense frustration. But, overall, our test person managed to mitigate most side-effects with a herbal supplement tailored to menopausal needs.
Of course, as is usual with our epiAge experiences, the evidence at this stage is limited as well as purely anecdotal and, beyond the individual variables of a given menopausal journey, there are other everyday life factors such as nutrition, supplements, sleep, stress, movement as well as personal and environmental circumstances that play an important role. Hence it may prove difficult to convincingly disentangle the menopause phenomenon from all these other elements.
As always, we are curious about your personal experience! Have you experienced biological age acceleration with the onset of menopause (or even perimenopause)? And has there been stabilisation in post-menopause?
If you haven’t reached menopause yet, why not try to monitor potential changes with epiAge?
Source
Morgan E. Levine, Ake T. Lu, Brian H. Chen, Dena G. Hernandez, Andrew B.Singleton, Luigi Ferrucci, Stefania Bandinelli, Elias Salfati, JoAnn E. Manson, Austin Quach, Cynthia D. J. Kusters, Diana Kuh, Andrew Wong, Andrew E.Teschendorff, Martin Widschwendter, Beate R. Ritz, Devin Absher, Themistocles L. Assimes, and Steve Horvath. „Menopause accelerates biological aging“, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Volume 113, Issue 33. Aug 2016. Online: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.1604558113
Illustration
LinkedIn Sales Navigator / pexels & epiAge
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