WHAT IS MENOPAUSE IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Ajumma Wellbeing Clinic is about women’s wellbeing, specifically for those beyond the reproductive stage of their lives. The R&D phase of the project delves into biological, psychological, social, and cultural (Aus-Korean) perspectives. Under the guidance of my science collaborators, I sifted through a lot of information to identify the right information amid not-so-legitimate claims.

Here are some of the basic things I have learned, translated into plain English, as I understand them. Also, the link below summarises them nicely, except for the photo that comes with the link here…

A happy middle-class white couple with no stress in their lives

…as if menopause is only for middle- to upper-class white women in a bob with perfect false eyelashes, happily married to a happy, relaxed white old guy in his white linen shirt, surrounded by a beautifully tidy, dry, mould-free patio, staring into some happy place far ahead. They are also perfectly slim. Ooh, wait, he’s not wearing a wedding ring. God forbid, who is he to her?! I digress. Here is the link.

https://www.healthyhormones.au/c/handouts-4fbd8d/menopause-23adc6e7-06f0-4bb4-9020-a80297519efe

Another link to define and summarise menopause:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507826/

Plan English version of the above link:

https://mdsearchlight.com/womens-health/menopause/?utm_source=pubmedlink&utm_campaign=MDS&utm_content=24984

• A random white guy in 1821 coined the term ‘menopause’. This French physician wanted a clear medical term for women in the post-reproductive stage. Did any women get to have a say in defining this terminology? Of course not. Unsurprisingly, this ‘clear word’ made things more confusing. This rando’s word has now evolved to refer to Menopause as the one single day – exactly 12 months after the last period. Because perimenopause occurs well before this 12-month date of the last period, many women think they are not in the transition because they are still bleeding. Perimenopause is when a shit ton of symptoms bomb them hard or surreptitiously eat them away bit by bit over a longer period of time. The presentation of these symptoms can be so varied and inconsistent that women often think the symptoms are unrelated to perimenopause. After this single day of the 12th-month, it is called post-menopause until we die.
• Studying menopause is messy and patchy because this post-reproductive stage has been so neglected by most societies and the scientific world.
• Menopause has largely been outside the scope of study. Although women have existed alongside men for a long time, most of our ancestors didn’t live long enough to thrive in the post-reproductive age, so there are still many things we don’t know about this stage of women’s lives. What we do know, however, is contentious, and shrouded in misinformation and disinformation.
• In most cultures until recently, women were considered the same as men, just a smaller, weaker, and inferior version.
• When people refer to menopause nowadays, including in my project, it often means the whole transition from peri-menopause to post-menopause, which is the second half of their lives.
• Menopause is a biological process that occurs in every human born with ovaries, and no amount of meditation or CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) can get people out of menopause.
• Depending on your age, the current generation (or our parents’) is generally considered the first to outlive the lifespan of our ovaries. The average life expectancy for women is 85, and for men, 80.
• Our ovaries contain the highest number of eggs while we are in our mothers’ wombs, and we gradually lose eggs thereafter until none remain, on average around 40+ years of age.
• Perimenopause is when women’s hormones slowly begin to taper off from the reproductive phase. It can start in their 30s, or, in some cases, even in their teens. Every woman’s body does its own thing, and that’s ok. This tapering-off phase can last from several years to over a decade. During this time, their hormones fluctuate drastically, resulting in many subtle and crazy symptoms.
• Women of colour and/or those with endometriosis/adenomyosis start the menopause transition several years earlier than healthy Anglo-Saxon women, with slightly different symptom profiles, but not enough research has been done to know why or how.

Advocating for women’s health and well-being has become my passion and lifelong pursuit. I wish my mum and all the women in my life had known some of what I have learned. I dream of all women being better educated and empowered. Knowledge is power. Truly. I grow each day, thanks to other women’s deeply shared lived stories and to evidence-based research. Little did I know that researching menopause meant delving into the entire second half of women’s lifespan, encompassing every aspect of human experience.

When I started pondering the concept of menopause in 2024, I thought it would be relatively straightforward. When I started writing grant applications about it, I was surprised by how tricky it was to find a so-called menopause expert in Australia. From my own experience, I knew it involved pain, fatigue, mood, and disrupted immune functions, so based on my experience, I formed my team of researchers I already had relationships with :

Dr Carolyn Berryman (Image credit:

Dr Carolyn Berryman (Clinical Neuroscientist & Senior Physiotherapist)

Jane Miskovic-wheatley

Dr Jane Miskovic-Wheatley (clinical psychologist)

Prof Mark Hutchinson, Dr Carolyn Berryman, Eugenie Lee in his office

To the team, Carolyn also brought in Prof Mark Hutchinson, who leads the Neuroimmunopharmacology lab at Adelaide University. His role was to guide me on all aspects of immune regulation and inflammation.

With the support of two successful grants from Creative Australia for the first stage of the project, I embarked on initial research with my collaborators and conducted community interviews with menopausal women with lived experience early this year.

However, within the first few days, it became overwhelmingly evident that I knew very little about menopause, despite being menopausal. Furthermore, my collaborators brought their expertise in their respective fields to the project, but we explored menopause together, approaching it from the peripheries. This was because no one had learned about menopause as a primary subject of research. No one does to this day.

Why? No medical students learn much about menopause during their years of training, possibly less than they do about persistent/chronic pain. Menopause is rarely taught in medical schools worldwide, typically for about 30 minutes over the entire course, or sometimes only as a footnote in some universities. This explains why I couldn’t find a suitable menopause expert before – no clinicians had ever studied menopause as their primary subject because such a subject never existed. It still doesn’t.

No discipline owns menopause. Menopause, as a field of study, is an orphan. Gynaecologists are primarily concerned with the reproductive organs of women in their reproductive years. Endocrinologists deal with hormones, but not with an overarching, vast human experience such as menopause. GPs are better trained to see the full range of human diseases, but, like other medical practitioners, they are simply not taught much about menopause. The very few doctors who are well-versed in supporting menopausal women are those who have done extra training outside their practice. They are self-taught. Thank goodness for these troopers. There are more of them now than a few years ago.

Valid knowledge about menopause is out there, but it is scattered. There is more misinformation about menopause than solid, evidence-based knowledge. Everyone seems to be talking about menopause these days, compared with when I first thought of this topic for my art project two years ago. Part of the collaborators’ and my tasks at this stage of research have been to identify who, what, and where to turn to obtain the right sources to jigsaw-puzzle this enormously complex topic of menopause.

Menopause care is multifactorial – no single discipline, treatment, or approach can address every aspect of women’s post-reproductive lives over their 30-40 years. That is why I had to bring in additional researchers to this project. They are:

Dr jenny Bromberger

Dr Jenny Bromberger (Integrative GP, Woolloomooloo, NSW)

Ann Trager-Spees in her clinic

Ann Traeger-Spees (Sexologist, pelvic physiotherapist, Kaurna/Adelaide, SA)

Prof David MacIntyre

Prof David MacIntyre (Professor of Reproductive Systems Medicine, Adelaide Uni)

So far, my research with them have been incredible. All female researchers passionately bring their lived experience and expertise, and the male researchers bring their allyship and expertise to the project. This project doesn’t just belong to me. It belongs to all of us involved.