For most women, the decision at menopause is the most important health choice in their individual lives, even if they do not know it.

Symptoms tend to lie, in the sense that their severity does not equate with or reflect the severity of the hormonal changes that underlie them or of the menopausal health risks that they directly fuel.

The menopause is associated with serious long-term consequences, some of them driven by falling, and others by persistently low sex hormone levels.

Menopause occurs spontaneously around age 50 or at any age due to surgery, chemotherapy or some other contrived insult.