My MD says the average age is 52.

menopause isn’t the sudden stopping of your periods. For most women, it’s a gradual happening called “perimenopause“, then “menopause” is defined as having gone a year without periods.

Some women in perimenopause don’t reven realize what’s happening. It often starts happening in the 40’s. Periods will get longer or shorter, or heavier or lighter, or more/less often, as hormones start declining.

Perimenopause can be triggered by running out of usable eggs in your ovaries. Before a baby girl is born, she can have millions of eggs in her ovaries. At birth, she may have 400,000-500,000 eggs. Most of these die; some are ovulated (released from the ovaries). So it can be true that later menarche (first period) can result in later menopause.

My own perimenopause started at age 38, and now at 47 I’m in true menopause.