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| Menopause |  |
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Menopause starts as the ovaries begin to fail and are not able to produce an egg or ovum every month. Since the process of producing and ripening the egg is also what creates the key hormones involved in the monthly cycle, this in turn interrupts the regular pattern of the hormone cycles and gradually leads to the somewhat chaotic and long-drawn out shutting down of the whole reproductive system.
The break-up in the pattern of the menstrual cycles not only causes the levels of most of the "reproductive hormones" to drop over time, but also causes the reproductive hormones to fall out of phase with one another, which often leads to extreme and unpredictable fluctuations, causing numerous symptoms in most women, such as hot flashes . After a number of years of wild fluctuation, the ovaries gradually stop producing hormones including estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. The reproductive system then ceases to function.
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