Menopause, also known as the climacteric, is the time when menstrual periods permanently stop, marking the end of reproduction. It typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, although the exact timing can vary. Menopause is usually a natural change related to a decrease in circulating blood estrogen levels. It can occur earlier in those who smoke tobacco. Other causes include surgery that removes both ovaries, some types of chemotherapy, or anything that leads to a decrease in hormone levels. At the physiological level, menopause happens because of a decrease in the ovaries' production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. While typically not needed, a diagnosis of menopause can be confirmed by measuring hormone levels in the blood or urine. Menopause is the opposite of menarche, the time when a girl's periods start.
Maria Mandl was an Austrian SS-Helferin and a war criminal known for her role in the Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she is believed to have been directly complicit in the deaths of over 500,000 prisoners. She was executed for war crimes.
Hot flashes, also known as hot flushes, are a form of flushing, often caused by the changing hormone levels that are characteristic of menopause. They are typically experienced as a feeling of intense heat with sweating and rapid heartbeat, and may typically last from two to 30 minutes for each occurrence.
Gerald Leo Posner is an American investigative journalist and author of thirteen books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), which explores the John F. Kennedy assassination, and Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A plagiarism scandal involving articles that Posner wrote for The Daily Beast and his book Miami Babylon arose in 2010.
Marina Nikolayevna Oswald Porter is a Russian–American former pharmacist. Born in the Soviet Union in 1941, she immigrated to the United States after marrying American military veteran Lee Harvey Oswald in 1961. On November 22, 1963, Oswald, who had left the United States Marine Corps and defected to the Soviet Bloc in 1959, assassinated American president John F. Kennedy in the city of Dallas. Porter was widowed two days later, when Oswald was murdered by American nightclub owner Jack Ruby, and subsequently testified against Oswald for the Warren Commission. However, she ultimately came to believe that Oswald was innocent.
Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), also known as bioidentical hormone therapy (BHT) or natural hormone therapy, is the use of hormones that are identical on a molecular level with endogenous hormones in hormone replacement therapy. It may also be combined with blood and saliva testing of hormone levels, and the use of pharmacy compounding to obtain hormones in an effort to reach a targeted level of hormones in the body. A number of claims by some proponents of BHT have not been confirmed through scientific testing. Specific hormones used in BHT include estrone, estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and estriol.
Macel Patricia Leilani Wilson is an American beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss USA 1962. Previously crowned Miss Hawaii USA 1962, Wilson was the first entrant from Hawaii, first Asian American, and first woman of color to win Miss USA. Later in life, Wilson relocated to Denmark and became a film editor for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and a visual artist.
Dame Jennifer Susan Murray, is an English journalist and broadcaster, best known for presenting BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour from 1987 to 2020.
Patricia Era Bath was an American ophthalmologist and humanitarian. She became the first female member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and the first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American to serve as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University. She was also the first African-American woman to serve on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. A holder of five patents, she founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.
Barbara Seaman was an American author, feminist activist, and journalist, and a principal founder of the women's health movement.
Evelyn Lorraine Rothman was an American activist. She was a founding member of the feminist self-help clinic movement. In 1971, she invented the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit to make abortions available to women before Roe v. Wade. She was an advocate of self-induced abortions.
Malka Zimetbaum, also known as "Mala" Zimetbaum or "Mala the Belgian", was a Belgian woman of Polish Jewish descent, known for her escape from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She is also remembered for her lifesaving acts in favor of other prisoners during her captivity at Auschwitz and for the resistance she displayed at her execution following her being recaptured, when she tried committing suicide before the guards were able to execute her, then slapped the guard who tried to stop her, before eventually being killed. She was the first woman to escape from Auschwitz.
Victor Capesius was a Nazi SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) and KZ-Apotheker in the concentration camps of Dachau (1943–1944) and Auschwitz (1944–1945).
Kate Muir is a Scottish writer and documentary maker. Her book, Everything You Need to Know About the Menopause was published in 2022, and she is the creator and producer of two documentaries on the menopause including Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause for Channel 4 current affairs. Her latest book is Everything You Need to Know About the Pill and will be published in 2024, following the Pill Revolution documentary, also for Channel 4. She was chief film critic of The Times for seven years, and is the author of three novels. She is an activist for The Menopause Charity.
Marla Ahlgrimm is an American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, pharmacist and expert in women's hormonal health. She is the author of The HRT Solution: Optimizing Your Hormone Potential, which details the benefits of bioidentical hormone therapy and the book Self-Help For Premenstrual Syndrome. She is a frequent lecturer, has been featured as an expert in numerous professional journals and consumer magazines and has appeared on regional and national television and radio broadcasts.
Maryon Stewart is a British author and broadcaster known for her work in the field of non-drug medicine. Specialising in educating and coaching women in how to control menopause symptoms without hormone replacement therapy (HRT), she is sometimes referred to as a pioneer of the "Natural Menopause Movement".
Estelle Rosemary Ramey was an American endocrinologist, physiologist and feminist who became internationally known for refuting surgeon and Democratic Party leader Edgar Berman, who stated that women were unfit to hold high public office because of "raging hormonal imbalances." Ramey's balanced approach to life was embodied in a later quote, "I have loved. And been loved. And all the rest is background music."
Ellen Hodgson Brown is an American author, attorney, public speaker, and advocate of alternative medicine and financial reform, most prominently public banking. Brown is the founder and president of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly run banks. She has appeared on cable and network television, radio, and internet programs and podcasts. She ran for California Treasurer in the California June 2014 Statewide Primary election.
Andrea C. Gore is a neuroendocrinology professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Division of Toxicology and Pharmacology, where she holds the Vacek Chair of Pharmacology. She is a prominent contributor to the field of reproductive endocrinology. Her research interests span from the neurological basis of reproductive aging to endocrine disruptors in the nervous system. From January 2013 through December 2017, she was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Endocrinology. She has also been elected into the Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Patricia Engel is a Colombian-American writer, professor of creative writing at the University of Miami, and author of five books, including Vida, which was a PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award Finalist and winner of the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, Colombia's national prize in literature. She was the first woman, and Vida the first book in translation, to receive the prize.
