How to Delay Menopause: Is It Possible? Is It Safe?

Some women look forward to the freedom of life after menopause – no more periods (and no more pads and tampons to buy), no danger of an unexpected pregnancy.

But for others, the thought of starting a new chapter is something that they’d rather postpone.

It might be that you’re not ready to leave your reproductive years behind, you’re having early perimenopause symptoms that you could frankly do without, or early menopause runs in your family.

Whatever the reason behind you trying to find out how to delay menopause – you’ve come to the right place.

In this article: 📝

Can you prevent menopause?

Let’s start with the bad news.

Ultimately, no.

It’s not possible to prevent menopause completely.

Menopause is a natural process that everyone who menstruates will go through.

Our bodies aren’t designed to be able to carry babies forever.

So when it retires, menopause happens.

So if you want to know how to avoid menopause (and the associated symptoms) completely, we’re sorry, but there’s just no way to do it.

You can manage symptoms, but you can’t completely avoid them.

Can you delay menopause?

Although it’s pretty clear that you can’t stop menopause from happening, the question of whether you can delay it is more open.

You might want to delay menopause because you can’t face the idea of dealing with hot flashes and mood swings when you’re at the height of your career.

Or maybe because you’re part of the growing group of women waiting until later to have their first children, and you’d like to know that you still have a few reproductive years in front of you.

Whatever your reason, it’s totally valid.

So here’s what we do know about delaying menopause:

The biggest factor in deciding when you begin menopause is your genes.

You’ll probably reach menopause at about the same age your mother or grandmother did.

So while we know that the average age of menopause is 51 (and has been for a while), if the women in your family tended to have symptoms at 45, or if they were still having regular periods in their late 50s, there’s a high chance that the same thing will happen for you.

There’s not a lot you can do about changing what’s written in your genes, but you’re not completely powerless.

Even if genes play a role, they don’t fully account for the timing of menopause.

Actually, instead of looking at the things that might slow down your biological clock, the best thing to do is to keep an eye on the things that might be speeding it up.

Smoking

If there’s one thing that can make menopause start sooner, it’s regular smoking.

If you’re a smoker, you have a higher chance of going through menopause early – by as much as two years.

So if you want to delay menopause, the best thing you can do is concentrate on quitting.

Diet

It’s not as clear-cut as the link between smoking and earlier menopause, but there are some signs that your diet can affect the age you start getting menopausal symptoms.

This isn’t totally surprising, since so much of the advice around TTC and fertility revolves around a healthy lifestyle and making sure that your body has all the vitamins it needs.

One study found that eating fewer daily portions of carbohydrates, and more fish and legumes (like beans and peas) seemed to postpone menopause by as much as two years. In terms of vitamins and minerals, the most important appeared to be vitamin B6 and zinc.

Can you delay menopause with hormones?

In the simplest terms, menopause happens when your ovaries stop producing the estrogen that’s constantly being produced to regulate your menstrual cycle.

Estrogen is really important for ‘ripening’ and releasing your eggs each month.

No estrogen = no ovulation.

No ovulation = menopause.

It’s easy to see where the question does taking estrogen delay menopause? comes from.

And it’s true that estrogen plays a major role in hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which aims to make menopause symptoms more manageable by replacing the hormones that your body is no longer making for itself.

But there’s less evidence that taking estrogen will actually delay menopause.

What’s more, we don’t have proof that hormonal birth control, also based on estrogen (and progesterone), will delay menopause.

In fact, there are studies that suggest otherwise as well.

Women who used high-dose contraceptives for 3 years or more were seen to experience menopause at a slightly younger age compared to women who didn’t or used low-dosage contraceptives.

It makes sense — the pill suppresses FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone), which is needed to grow an egg every month.

This stops your body from releasing an egg, so this should mean more eggs are left over in the ovaries = delayed menopause, right?

Not quite, no.

Our bodies just have a way of doing what they want to do, when they want to do it, sometimes.

So the studies seem to show that, if FSH is suppressed by oral contraceptives for a longer period of time, it accelerates menopause, rather than delaying it.

(The science behind it? In the absence of FSH, the cells surrounding the eggs decide to release particles that lead to the death of egg cells. FSH withdrawal syndrome, much? 🤔)

The bottom line? There’s not such a strong link between taking hormones and postponing menopause as there is between your lifestyle and the age it all starts.

Hormones and TTC before menopause

While it seems that even the hormones in fertility drugs wouldn’t be enough to let you avoid menopause, there are some treatments that allow women to carry children after menopause.

The most common is IVF using a donor egg, or an egg or embryo that was frozen before menopause.

Fertility doctors have also been researching whether some advanced techniques for preserving a woman’s fertility while she goes through cancer treatment might one day be able to postpone menopause by as much as 20 years.

These procedures are expensive and not widely available, but, in the future, they might become more common.

Especially to help women going through early menopause or going through menopause as the side effect of a medical procedure.

How can I delay menopause naturally?

While there don’t seem to be any sure-fire answers to the question of how to delay menopause naturally, there are definitely natural ways to make the early symptoms of menopause more manageable.

These would be the main places to start:

• Eat healthily, with a balanced menopausal diet.
  
• Exercise regularly, because this helps your body to stay balanced and destressed, and can also help to regulate your hormone levels.
  
• Get some quality sleep, and set up your bedroom to make sleep as easy as possible.
  
• Explore your options for supplements and essential oils, if you’re not ready for medication or if HRT isn’t an option for you. There are a few essential oils and supplements, even menopause teas, that our Peanut Community swear by.

And remember, you don’t have to go on this journey alone.

Whether you’re dealing with the confusion of early menopause, TTC later in life, or you just want to symptom spot with women who’re going through the same thing, the Peanut Menopause community is here for you.