early menopause possibly

[threeangels]

Im just curious if anyone of you guys have started going through menopause early. I guess before 40. I am 32 and wondering if I could start it early. I started having my period at age 13 and up until 2 months ago I had an almost perfect menstrual cycle. This is as far back as I can remember. I have always been 28 days in my cycle. Once in a while one day early. Last month I had a period only 2 weeks after I finished one. This has never happened. Now I started a week and a half late. This period is not spotting but half in amount than I normally have. My period is no doubt different and Im wondering if I could be going to start menopause early. Maybe you might know of someone who started early. Im not worried about having anymore children. I just know I would rather keep having my period then start early menopause. It took my mom almost 5 years to complete this and she said it was not fun much of the time.

Most women don't go through menopause until their late 40's/early 50's. There are a variety of reasons other than menopause that could cause what you are describing. I don't mean to be alarmist, (maybe you are just pregnant), but you should get yourself to the gp asap. Cervical cancer and other such nasties have the same symptoms as you are describing. Also, don't worry too much about menopause, my impression is that there are a variety of drugs and hormones to help one through it that were not available in our mothers' day.

My mum and my sister both had early menopause - at 37 and 32 years. If you go to your GP there are blood tests they can do.
My sister had completed her family and was so relieved to be told she was going through the menopause as she spent half the time worrying that she was pregnant again.
There are health risks, particularly osteoporosis, for women with early menopause but the most important thing is to get to the GP and have some tests. There are many things that can mess up your periods - stress being one of them, so the more you worry about them the more likely they are to be late! Hope this helps!

My 30 year old friend has just been through a worry that she was going through an early menopause. The doctor tested for a few things including anemia and pregnancy. Surprise, surprise she's pregnant! You should go and get it checked out as certainly her doctor thought anemia (sp?) could have caused some of the problems.

At what age did your mother have her menopause? It's inherited, so if she had an early or late menopause you may well do so too. Fewer than one in 100 women have a menopause before 40, but it is possibly I suppose. As a previous contributor says, a simple blood test could let you know, but there are an awful lot of non-serious causes of irregular periods including thyroid imbalances, minor ovarian cysts etc. I'm sure it's nothing serious!

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