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Delaying menopause is an incredible medical feat for some – but I wouldn’t be who I am if I’d halted mine

Yes, parts of it have been uncomfortable and annoying, but it has also been interesting, it has changed me as a person and it has made me so much more aware of myself

Jenny Eclair
Monday 05 August 2019 18:40 BST
Comments
Viola Davis explains menopause to Jimmy Kimmel

Modern medicine is an incredible thing and a recent breakthrough in the field of fertility means that a simple 30-minute surgical procedure can halt the menopause for up to 20 years.

This has fantastic benefits for women who, for many reasons (including cancer treatment), are catapulted into a premature menopause years before the average age of 51. Other likely candidates are those with a family history of osteoporosis who are unable to take hormone replacement therapy due to medical reasons, and young women who have needed hysterectomies due to diseases such as endometriosis. If anything can spare these women further trauma, then brilliant. I’m also all for helping women who are genetically predisposed to an unfairly early menopause and find themselves in hormonal free-fall before they’ve had a chance to have a family.

The procedure, called ovarian tissue cryopreservation, is said to be straight forward and relatively painless. It simply involves removing a small piece of the ovary via keyhole surgery when a woman is in her twenties or thirties, which is then frozen at -150C and re-implanted as she enters the menopause, be that medically or naturally. At this point, the re-implanted tissue kick-starts her hormones back to normal (premenopausal) levels and it’s all systems go.

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