Menopause marks the end of a woman’s reproductive life. While it’s believed that menopause liberates older women from hormonal upset and child rearing, others suggest it is simply set by how long a specie needs to raise infants into being independent.
To understand why women go into menopause, there’s need to consider some basic biological levels. Chromosomes determine a baby’s gender. X and Y chromosome means a boy, while Two Xs mean a baby girl is on the way. When a girl is born, she has around two million eggs. But when she attains puberty, she will be lucky to have 400,000 left due to factors like childhood illness, accidents or sometimes environmental pollution.
For every period she undergoes, one egg is released. Thousands of eggs will also continue to die every month, but there are still plenty left to last for decades. At age 37, a female has around 25,000 eggs left, and it goes down to about 1,000 eggs when she turns 45.
A woman will continue to have monthly bleeding or menstruation unless she becomes pregnant and the cycle temporarily stops. Follicle stimulating hormones are released by the pituitary gland which controls the biological clock in a female system.
Menopause is attributed to many factor – even possibly the time of the year a girl was born. In a research by Italian experts, they discovered that menopause can be determined by the month of birth. Babies born in Spring (March to June) reach menopause earlier than those born in Autumn (September to December). Over 3,000 women in four various university hospitals in Central Italy were examined as part of the research.
They therefore concluded that only genetics seems to be the only thing that determines the timing of menopause in women.