I had always heard a woman can judge when menopause will occur based on when her mother went through it. I, however, don’t have that luxury because my mother died before going through menopause. And, I also think I have read that that’s an old wives tale anyhow.
So what can we know about menopause and when it will hit us? If a new study is correct, the lifestyle we lead in our early years can dictate when menopause occurs.
The study was conducted at the Institute of Cancer Research in the United Kingdom by Dr. Danielle Morris and colleagues.
They studied around 51,000 women who were in the Breakthrough Generations Study. Breakthrough Generations enrolled women between 2003 and 2011 to study the causes of breast cancer. For their study, Morris and colleagues used only women between the ages of 40 and 98, with around 21,500 of them having already undergone menopause. The subjects were asked questions about their weight, exercise habits, diet, etc.
The study, published in the April 10th issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, turned up some interesting results. Smoking was a big issue. Women who smoked on average experienced menopause two years earlier than those that didn’t.
Weight was also a factor but not in the way you might think. Women who gained around 30 pounds during their 20s and 30s went through menopause about a year later than the women of a normal weight did.
The study also found that women that had a couple of alcoholic drinks a day between the ages of 25 and 49 also went through menopause a tiny bit later, as did those that exercised regularly between the ages of 30 and 49 or were vegetarian.
Of course, Dr. Morris did say that the menopause age is affected by many different things and it is difficult to say precisely what can bring it about.
What the study does tell us is that lifestyle choices such as smoking, exercise, and weight make affect menopause. These are factors that can be modified.