Dear friends: Just want you to be familiar with this interesting piece so you can better "understand" your spouse. hahaha... A close friend passed it to me.

Menopause is when your wife have not had a period (or even light spotting) for 12 consecutive months. Let me repeat: Only after 12 months of no periods will your wife be officially in menopause or post-menopause, UNLESS she have had a hysterectomy (surgical menopause) or cancer (chemical menopause)..

35 Possible Symptoms Associated with various Stages of Menopause

1. Hot flashes, flushes, night sweats and/or cold flashes, clammy feeling
2. Bouts of rapid heart beat
3. Irritability, Mood swings
4. Sudden tears
5. Trouble sleeping through the night (with or without night sweats)
6. Irregular periods; shorter, lighter periods; heavier periods, flooding; phantom periods, shorter cycles, longer cycles
7. Loss of libido
8. Dry vagina
9. Crashing fatigue
10. Anxiety, feeling ill at ease
11. Feelings of dread, apprehension, doom
12. Difficulty concentrating, disorientation, mental confusion
13. Disturbing memory lapses
14. Incontinence, especially upon sneezing, laughing; urge incontinence
15. Itchy, crawly skin
16. Aching, sore joints, muscles and tendons
17. Increased tension in muscles
18. Breast tenderness
19. Headache change: increase or decrease
20. Gastrointestinal distress, belching, indigestion, flatulence, gas pain, nausea
21. Sudden bouts of bloat
22. Depression
23. Exacerbation of existing conditions
24. Increase in allergies
25. Weight gain
26. Hair loss or thinning, head, pubic, or whole body; increase in facial hair
27. Dizziness, light-headedness, episodes of loss of balance
28. Changes in body odor
29. Electric shock sensation under the skin and in the head
30. Tingling in the extremities
31. Gum problems, increased bleeding
32. Burning tongue, burning roof of mouth, bad taste in mouth, change in breath odor
33. Osteoporosis
34. Changes in fingernails: softer, crack or break easier
35. Tinnitus: ringing in ears, bells, 'whooshing' buzzing etc

If your wife have two or more of the following symptoms, it COULD be the onset of peri-menopause. Many of the symptoms could indicate other problems too (such as thyroid), so it would be a good idea to make note of what she is experiencing and see her health care professional, who can then help her determine the best course of action for her personally. And remember, some of these are normal effects of the aging process where the only treatment is acceptance and taking good care of yourself! (this is where the laughter comes in handy!)

Just to calm your wife's fears..... Peri-menopause (before menopause) is when she start noticing something is a little "off", (usually with her periods) or maybe it seems like she's more irritable than usual. Everyone has different symptoms at different times (and at different ages) so it's really hard to determine exactly when she started into the peri-menopause phase, but when you can start putting 2 or 3 or more of these symptoms together and they're hanging around for more than a month, it's pretty safe to assume that your wife is starting the process of change that every woman will go through in her lifetime.

One last thing, not all of her symptoms go away after her periods stop.