A Journey in Life into Menopause

Many women want to know more about their body, how it functions and enables natural family planning, how to better plan pregnancy and parenthood, managing own fertility and possibly how to cope with infertility issues.

This learning experience culminates in the natural aging process and menopause, which takes us through a woman’s reproductive life and is characterized by rhythmic hormonal changes, culminating in the significant transition known as menopause, preceded by perimenopause.

While many associate tracking ovulation primarily with the goal of conception, there is a profound use for this practice: monitoring the physiological shifts during the approach to and experience of menopause.  Tools like the “KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit” become not just aids for achieving pregnancy, but vital instruments for understanding and navigating the perimenopausal and menopausal phases.

Perimenopause: The Prelude to Change

Natural menopause is commonly defined as 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period and this doesn’t happen overnight. It is typically preceded by a transitional period of two to eight years called perimenopause.

This prior phase happens normally through ageing and is the body’s gradual winding down of the normal and natural reproductive functional state, driven by hormone levels becoming increasingly irregular, particularly the two main female hormones called oestrogen and progesterone.

This stage can also mark a new lease of life, where the female now feels free to make changes in life, to enjoy new found freedoms and address challenges, making sure they keep the grey matter engaged and increase their vitality.  This means being on top of their ovulation cycle and fertility generally during perimenopause, making sure of when not to engage in baby making activities thereby avoiding pregnancy whilst still enjoying life to the full.  They do this by using the KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit.

The Hormonal Rollercoaster – How it Happens

In the years leading up to menopause, the ovaries become less responsive to the pituitary hormones, Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing Hormone (LH), which are responsible for triggering follicular development and ovulation.

This reduced responsiveness leads to a chaotic fluctuation in hormone production.

• Oestrogen: Levels may actually surge at times, leading to heavier or longer periods, or plummet, causing classic menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats.
• Progesterone: This hormone, produced after ovulation, often declines sooner and more consistently, as ovulation becomes less frequent. A relative lack of progesterone can contribute to irregular bleeding and mood swings.

This hormonal rollercoaster is the direct cause of the most noticeable sign of perimenopause: irregular periods.  This is when the cycle might be shorter one month, longer the next, or even skipped entirely and this variability is directly linked to the variable and unpredictable timing of ovulation.

Ovulation: A Changing Metric

If you’ve previously used a method like the “KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit” and the KNOWHEN® App to track ovulation, perhaps through Basal Body Temperature (BBT), cervical mucus observation, or ovulation predictor kits (OPKs), you will understand that ovulation is the central event of the menstrual cycle. It is the release of an egg, which in turn triggers the production of progesterone, and the travel of the egg through the fallopian tube.

Tracking Irregularity and Keeping Control

During the perimenopausal transition, the ovulation days shift around dramatically. Early in perimenopause, cycles might still be regular, but the luteal phase (the time after ovulation) may shorten due to decreased progesterone.

As the transition progresses, some cycles become anovulatory which is when no egg is released. In these cycles, menstruation may still occur but it’s often more sporadic or heavy because the endometrium (uterine lining) built up over a long period is shed irregularly, lacking the steady influence of progesterone to regulate its shedding.

This is where continued ovulation tracking proves its value

• Identifying Anovulatory Cycles: Tracking methods, especially those that confirm ovulation (like a sustained rise in BBT), can reveal how frequently ovulation is actually occurring.
  Knowing you’ve had an anovulatory cycle can explain an impending late period or unusually heavy bleeding.
• Predicting Bleeding: Even in an irregular cycle, recognizing when ovulation did occur provides a rough timeline for the subsequent bleed.
  Since the luteal phase remains relatively constant (though potentially shortened), confirming ovulation can give a window of 10-14 days until the next period, offering a small measure of predictability in a chaotic time.
• Understanding Symptoms: The fluctuations in oestrogen are often easier to tolerate when they are counterbalanced by progesterone.
  Confirming whether or not ovulation occurred helps in linking specific symptoms (like severe mood swings or breast tenderness) to the hormonal profile of that cycle.

Contraception in the Perimenopausal Years

We have found that one of the most critical reasons not to overlook the utility of ovulation tracking during this time, is the need for reliable contraception—or rather, the lack thereof.

While fertility declines significantly as a woman approaches menopause, it doesn’t drop to zero instantaneously. Pregnancy can still occur during perimenopause, as long as ovulation is still happening, however sporadically. A woman may go months without ovulating, leading her to believe she is infertile, only for a surprise ovulation to occur, resulting in an unexpected pregnancy.

Many of our customers have thanked us for giving them the chance to understand their fertility cycle better, especially with the onset of perimenopause and the increasingly chaotic nature of their cycle.  They have valued our KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit and the KNOWHEN® App that we provide for free, which enables fertility tracking.

The Value of KNOWHEN® for Achieving Non-Conception

If a woman has successfully used a natural family planning method (often known as Fertility Awareness Methods, or FAMs) like “KNOWHEN®” to prevent pregnancy earlier in life, she is already familiar with the rigorous tracking required.

She understands that the rules of FAMs require a high degree of certainty before unprotected intercourse is deemed “safe.”  During perimenopause, the safe window for intercourse is dramatically affected by the unpredictable nature of the cycles. By meticulously tracking:

1. Cervical Mucus Changes: Observing the fertile, egg-white quality mucus can signal the approach of a potential ovulation.
2. Basal Body Temperature: A sustained temperature rise is the most reliable indicator that ovulation has passed, providing a retrospective confirmation.
3. Cervical Position/Firmness: Changes here can also provide complementary data.

A tool that collates and interprets this data, like the “KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit,” can help a woman accurately identify the increasingly infrequent fertile windows, allowing her to either use barrier methods or abstain during those few fertile days, thus providing a natural, hormone-free method of contraception in the years leading up to menopause. This is especially valuable for women who cannot, or prefer not to, use hormonal contraceptives or IUDs due to age-related health concerns or personal preference.

KNOWHEN® Gives Empowered Health Monitoring

Beyond contraception and cycle prediction, continued tracking is an act of empowerment. The menopausal transition can often feel bewildering. Hot flashes, insomnia, anxiety, and unpredictable bleeding can make a woman feel disconnected from her body.

Maintaining a detailed chart or log using the KNOWHEN^® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit’s App, transforms confusing symptoms into useful data points. This data is invaluable for several reasons:

• Communication with Healthcare Providers: When a woman consults her doctor about irregular bleeding or severe symptoms, she can present a detailed chart showing exactly when she bled, when she may have ovulated, and when symptoms were at their worst.
  This replaces vague reports of “irregular periods” with precise physiological evidence, allowing the medical professional to give a more accurate diagnosis and a more tailored treatment plan, whether that involves hormone therapy or other interventions.
• A Sense of Control: By understanding the underlying hormonal reality—the ‘why’ behind the chaos—a woman can regain a sense of control over her bodily experience.
  This is essential in today’s life, where the female may be the single breadwinner in a busy and pressured job role, having to balance many things simultaneously, needs to the personal space and having that feeling of being in control.
  Knowing that a hot flash spike correlates with a sudden oestrogen drop revealed by tracking, or that an intense emotional period occurred during a confirmed anovulatory cycle, can reduce anxiety and worry.
• Recognizing the End: Finally, continuing to track provides clear evidence of the cessation of ovarian function.
  When an ovulation tracking method consistently shows anovulatory cycles followed by 12 months without a period, you can be more certain that you have reached menopause, marking the definitive close of those reproductive years.

Making the Natural Transition into Perimenopause

The wisdom gained from using the KNOWHEN^® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit and App during the reproductive years shouldn’t be cast aside as the perimenopausal transition begins.

Why should I continue to use of find relevant the KNOWHEN® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit and App for myself when entering the perimenopausal transition? 

This is a question that someone asked me and I said:

Far from being obsolete, the practice of ovulation tracking transforms into a sophisticated method for navigating hormonal turbulence, ensuring continued contraceptive effectiveness, and providing a powerful source of data for empowered health management during a woman’s final reproductive chapter.

The KNOWHEN^® Advanced Saliva Ovulation Test Kit and App is a natural tool that once helped bring life into the world becomes an indispensable guide for embracing the next phase of life.