Alert! Early menstruation and childless women to face early menopause

Women who never have children and girls who started menstruating at 11 or before are at higher risk of early or premature menopause claims a new study, the risk increases if they do not bear children.

According to the study that was published in Human Reproduction, women who have early periods or no babies are at higher risk of early menopause or premature.

This risk increases five-fold in women who have early periods than women who had periods before 12 years and those having two or more children.

“If the findings from our study were incorporated into clinical guidelines for advising childless women from around the age of 35 years who had their first period aged 11 or younger, clinicians could gain valuable time to prepare these women for the possibility of premature or early menopause,” said lead researcher Gita Mishra from Queensland in Australia.

“It provides an opportunity for clinicians to include women’s reproductive history along side other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, when assessing the risk of early menopause and enables them to focus health messages more effectively both earlier in life and for women at most risk. In addition, they could consider early strategies for preventing and detecting chronic conditions that are linked to earlier menopause, such as heart disease,” Mishra added.

In the study, it has been seen that around 51,450 women were born before 1960 out of which two-thirds born were born between 1930 and 1949.

The findings showed that women who had early menstrual periods aged at 11 or before that had an 80 percent higher risk of experiencing a natural menopause before the age of 40 and a 30 percent higher risk of menopause between the ages of 40-44, when compared with women whose first period occurred between the ages of 12 and 13.

Why are periods painful?

• Uterine Fibroids which are non-cancerous growths and are painful as hell only if they touch the uterus lining.
• Endometriosis is the disorder where the (inner) lining of your womb grows outside the uterus. It thickens and bleeds with each menstrual cycle. 
• Pelvic Inflammatory Disease which is an infection of the female reproductive organs. It is the most serious complication of a sexually transmitted disease.
• Other reasons which can be blamed for are no exercise, bad diet or age factor.