Health complaints change over the decades. What worries us at 25 is very different than our concerns at 40. We asked the HuffPost Lifestyle Facebook community to tell us what they worried about most and then conferred with experts. Here's what we learned. (Find all ages here.)
Experiences with hormones vary widely
An informal HuffPost Healthy Living survey revealed that many of our 40-something readers have concerns about their changing hormones, particularly about the onset of menopause (other top health worries included heart disease, cancer, weight gain and health care costs). While the forties seems young to worry about menopause, according to the National Institutes of Health, this is the decade when the first changes due to hormone levels begin to be noticeable:
As a woman ages and especially as she gets closer to menopause, her ovaries get smaller. This time of changes in hormone levels and menstrual cycles is called the menopausal transition. You might also hear it called perimenopause. It usually lasts several years until 12 months after your last period. Once a woman has gone a full 12 months without a period, she can be fairly sure that she has been through menopause and is now in postmenopause.
While the average woman has her last menstrual period at 51, many women start experiencing changes in their menstrual cycle in their forties, meaning hormone management is an issue.
"I think hormone therapy is always a big concern," said Dr. Cheryl Iglesia of the MedStar Washington Hospital Center of women going through menopause. "So many people are concerned about whether or not they should be on it."
Hormone replacement therapy can treat some of the symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, but also carries an increased risk of blood clots, heart attacks, stroke, breast cancer and gall bladder disease. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently recommends limiting the use of hormones -- using the lowest dose for the shortest period of time -- and reevaluating your needs every few months.
Hormones and cancer
On a basic level, hormones are chemical messengers, controlling nearly every aspect of mental and physical health.
When a person's hormonal balance is off, those changes can trigger depression, or, in the case of women who produce estrogen without also producing enough progesterone, can put them at risk for cancer.
The readers in our survey worried about getting cancer more than any other disease. You can't change your genes, but understanding your family's health history (and associated disease risk) allows you to make educated choices about your health.
According to Dr. Charis Eng, a cancer geneticist at the Cleveland Clinic, we all need to be aware of so-called genetic red flags. Woman who have two or more first-degree family members with breast cancer; a first-degree family member who developed early-onset breast cancer; or a male relative with breast cancer before age 70, should take their genetic risk seriously.
It's a misconception that breast and ovarian cancers can't be passed through the male side. "Your father carries all the genes," Eng said. "Male breast cancer is relatively rare, so he manifests nothing. That gene can be passed on in a 50-50 fashion to the daughter, and the daughter then is at risk for those cancers related to the gene."
On the other hand, it's important to know that when you don't have a history of a disease in your family, more testing isn't always better. In fact, both Eng and Iglesia say that overscreening is a significant problem in America. "Overtesting can lead to a lot of false positives and interventions that also are anxiety provoking," Iglesia said.
Beyond menopause and cancer risk, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Iglesia is a past chair of the group's Committee for Gynecologic Practice) put together an informative checklist of screenings, immunizations and evaluations that are important for women in their 40s.
The Cleveland Clinic's Health Maintenance Guidelines for women is another great resource.
