Change of Life

The menopause (also called climacteric, but commonly known as change of life) is an experience every woman goes through, if she lives long enough. In the U.S. about 13 million women between 40 and 55 are now experiencing, or about to begin, the menopause. Men go through a change of life too, but usually in their late 50s and 60s, and the experience is more emotional than physical. However, men sometimes have ' "typical menopausal symptoms like loss of energy, assorted aches and pains, even the famous hot flash."

These familiar facts and some interesting new observations about the menopause are included in a new book, You'll Live Through It (Harper; $2.50), by Seattle's Dr. Miriam Lincoln. Greying Dr. Lincoln, who is 50 herself, attacks many old wives' tales about the menopause.

A Woman's Machinery. Change of life means that a woman is through with her childbearing days, but not necessarily her sexual life. In fact, says Dr. Lincoln, with the fear of pregnancy removed, many women relax completely and really enjoy sex for the first time in their lives.

A Stendhal character once said of women that "there's always something out of order in their machinery." Dr. Lincoln disagrees. A woman's life, she says, is roughly divided into three parts: childhood, womanhood and the years during and after the menopause. This final phase is not caused by any breakdown in a woman's machinery, says Dr. Lincoln; it is merely a part of the natural process of aging, and means that the hormone-secreting ovaries are getting tired.

Typical symptoms of the menopause, which usually lasts from one to three years for the average woman, are listed by Dr. Lincoln:

Loss of energy "without apparent reason"; hot flashes,* with or without chilling or sweating; vasomotor (blood vessel) instability, causing occasional dizziness, numbness, faintness and heart palpitation; headaches; mild digestive disorders; vague temporary aches & pains; insomnia; nervousness and moodiness.

The Whole Business. Until 20 years ago, a woman going through the climacteric suffered these symptoms as best she could. Today synthetic hormone shots or hormone pills can reduce the discomfort to a point close to zero. Author Lincoln is careful to point out that most women don't need synthetic hormone treatments. The hormones, she writes, may be dangerous and sometimes produce unpleasant "side effects" such as "sore full breasts . . . dull aching or a kind of premenstrual congestion in the lower abdomen."

When her menopause begins, a woman usually menstruates irregularly, and eventually not at all. Says Dr. Lincoln briskly: "I have never seen any woman who wasn't delighted to be quit of the whole business of menstruation and childbearing by the time she came to the menopause." For the average woman, Author Lincoln declares, "the change of life is most emphatically not the end of sex . . ."

* Also called hot flush. Dr. Lincoln notes that the best description of this symptom was given to her by an ex-logger, a 200-lb. man of 65: "Suddenly a wave of heat sweeps up from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. I get kind of faint and I can't think straght. It only lasts a few seconds." Injections of male sex hormones, Author Lincoln reports, gave him "dramatic relief."

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