Menopause Factoids

• You are one of 40 million American women who is experiencing menopause
• Hot flashes occur in 75% of menopausal women and impact quality of life
• The average age for menopause is 51 years with the normal usual range being from 45 to 55 years
• Between 10 and 20 percent of women have no menopausal symptoms, 60 percent experience mild to moderate symptoms and 10 to 20 percent severe symptoms
• In a telephone survey of 886 women 22.1% used an alternative therapy to manage menopausal symptoms and of these women 89-100% found them to be somewhat or very helpful
• In a survey of women attending a San Francisco health conference only 29% of menopausal women surveyed use HRT alone. Many of them (32%) used dietary supplements alone and the most commonly used were soy (29%), ginkgo biloba (16%), and black cohosh (10%)
• Between 10 and 20 percent of women who have had a hysterectomy have early menopause, referred to as surgical menopause, between 1 - 4 years earlier than their expected menopause
• Some types of chemotherapy, common treatments for breast cancer patients, have been known to cause menopause-called medical menopause-in women. Whether temporary or permanent, it is estimated that 50% of CMV chemotherapy patients under 35 go into menopause and the number jumps to an astounding 100% for women over 45