Can you delay menopause? New research suggests it may be possible.
Delaying menopause could help to extend a woman’s health and lifespan, researchers say.
This could also help to delay age-related infertility.
Menopause is a natural life phase, but it can come with a slew of uncomfortable symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, and vaginal dryness. But, can you delay menopause? New research suggests that it may be possible—and potentially boost a woman’s overall health and longevity in the process.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature, conducted RNA sequencing on flash-frozen human ovarian tissue from four people between the ages of 23 to 29, and four “reproductively aged” people between the ages of 49 and 52. The researchers discovered that ovaries could be a strong model for studying aging, as well as testing drugs that could help extend human health—especially for people who are around 50 years old. “This atlas provides a valuable resource for understanding the cellular, molecular, and genetic basis of human ovarian aging,” the researchers wrote in the conclusion.
The researchers are also investigating the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin to see if it has the potential to slow down ovarian aging and delay menopause. In that study, women between the ages of 35 and 45 were either given rapamycin once a week or a placebo. Early results suggest the medication may decrease ovarian aging by 20% and even extend fertility by five years. How? Rapamycin slows the ovaries down, so they release less than the usual amount of eggs a month. (But, again, this study is ongoing.)
It’s important to point out that this is all preliminary, and that scientists still have a long way to go before they’re able to delay menopause. But the findings are definitely interesting.
Meet the experts: Jessica Shepherd, M.D., an ob/gyn in Texas and author of Generation M: Living Well in Perimenopause and Menopause; Zev Williams, M.D., study co-author and director of Columbia University Fertility Center; Piraye Yurttas Beim, Ph.D., women’s health researcher and founder of women's health biotech company Celmatix; Yousin Suh, Ph.D., study co-author and professor of reproductive sciences at the Columbia University Department of Genetics and Development
Here’s what doctors want you to know about ovarian aging, plus what slowing it down may mean for the future of menopause.
What happens to the body during menopause?
Menopause is a time when women naturally stop having periods. The ovaries also stop making estrogen, a hormone that helps to control the menstrual cycle, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). The average age that women go through menopause is 51, per the organization.
The estrogen produced by the ovaries helps protect against heart attacks and stroke and, when less estrogen is made, women lose this protection, according to ACOG. That can raise a woman’s risk of heart attack and stroke.
Women also tend to lose bone more rapidly in the first four to eight years after menopause due to lower levels of estrogen, per ACOG. And, if too much estrogen is lost, there is a higher risk of osteoporosis.
What might slowing ovarian aging do?
This is still being investigated, but doctors generally agree that slowing ovarian aging may help women be healthy for longer periods of time.
“Slowing ovarian aging has profound implications for women’s health,” says study co-author Zev Williams, M.D., director of Columbia University Fertility Center. “The ovaries are central to reproduction, but they also play a critical role in overall health, producing hormones that regulate numerous systems, including the heart, bones, and brain.”
It could also improve quality of life, says Jessica Shepherd, M.D., an ob/gyn in Texas and author of Generation M: Living Well in Perimenopause and Menopause. “The ability to impact women’s health to be sustained or not decline as much as it does currently after menopause would allow health care costs to be improved, quality of life factors to be heightened, and women to have better longevity,” she says.
The ovaries “age prematurely compared to other organs, but they’re very important because they talk to other organs in the body,” says study co-author Yousin Suh, Ph.D., a professor of reproductive sciences at the Columbia University Department of Genetics and Development. “The ovaries really influence our overall health,” she adds.
Delaying ovarian aging has the potential to extend a woman’s fertility, too. “Fertility naturally declines as a woman’s ovarian reserve diminishes with age,” Dr. Williams says. “Slowing this process could extend the window of natural fertility and improve outcomes for assisted reproductive technologies like IVF.”
Dr. Williams says that this is “particularly meaningful” since many women are waiting to have children for personal, educational, or professional reasons.
Still, “delaying menopause doesn’t necessarily mean extending fertility,” says Piraye Yurttas Beim, Ph.D., women’s health researcher and founder of women’s health biotech company Celmatix. “Extending ovarian function would theoretically extend fertility by a few years. However, egg cells age on their own timeline because of DNA damage that accumulates in these cells over time,” she explains. “This is why women continue to have normal periods for up to a decade after they can no longer get pregnant with their own eggs.”
But Dr. Williams stresses that this is about more than fertility. “Our goal is to develop interventions that promote not just longer reproductive health, but also longer overall healthspan,” he says. Suh agrees. "Maybe as a side effect, you would have longer fertility,” she says. “But that’s totally out of focus; ovaries aren’t just for reproduction.”
How could this impact the future of menopause?
If ovarian aging is slowed, Dr. Williams says it may “fundamentally change the experience and timing of menopause.”
“By delaying menopause, women could avoid or reduce the severity of symptoms like hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and mood changes, and decrease their risk of postmenopausal conditions like osteoporosis,” he continues. “This research opens the door to reimagining menopause not as an inevitable decline but as a phase that can be managed and perhaps delayed for better health outcomes.”
What happens next?
Dr. Williams says he and his fellow researchers are continuing to study how to slow ovarian aging for fertility and overall health. “We envision combining advances in molecular biology, genetics, and regenerative medicine to further enhance ovarian health,” he says. “We’re committed to translating these breakthroughs into clinical practice, ensuring that women have access to cutting-edge care that improves their lives in meaningful ways.”
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