UPSURGE IN EARLY MENOPAUSE

MORE INDIAN WOMEN ARE REACHING MENOPAUSE EARLIER THAN BEFORE, GOING THROUGH A WAVE OF PHYSICAL PAIN, EMOTIONAL TURMOIL AND SILENT SUFFERING THAT CALLS FOR GREATER AWARENESS AND BETTER TREATMENT

- SONALI ACHARJEE

Forty-three-year-old Ritika Mehra, a school administrator in Gurugram, did not know what had hit her. She would wake up in the middle of the night, gripped by anxiety, joints on fire, and struggling to grasp once familiar things. Stress was the first culprit that came to mind. It seemed to have taken a toll on her period, too, and also manifesting in falling bone density and rising cholesterol levels in recent health scans. It came as a rude shock, therefore, when she was told things were the other way round—that early menopause was the cause of all her troubles. The biological clock her body had lived with for 30-odd years was winding down. It was an eventuality Ritika expected to encounter in the future, but not this soon. It left her curiously depressed.

Ritika’s story is one a growing number of women in India are experiencing. The average age of women going through menopause in India—46-47 years—is already lower than around 51 in the West. Findings from the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) suggest a more troubling trend: many women are experiencing early (between 40 and 44) or even premature menopause (before 40). Surgical menopause is one factor, but even if you discount it, 16.2 per cent of women in India aged 40-44 may be undergoing early natural menopause, while 2.2 per cent of women aged 15-39 may be experiencing premature menopause, according to a 2024 study in Scientific Reports. In absolute numbers, that translates to nearly 7.8 million women aged 40-44 and another 6.4 million under 40, or well over 14 million women altogether who may be affected. Doctors report the change at their clinics. Dr Lipi Sharma, obstetrics and gynaecology consultant at ShardaCare—Healthcity, notes how women in their early 40s or even late 30s are now suffering from the kind of trauma Ritika has been experiencing.