Menopause is a time of change; as your body gets older and you pass by your childbearing years, your hormones attempt to adjust and can put your body in a state of flux. But did you know that there are other side effects of menopause other than it playing with your ability to regulate temperature and giving you drastic mood swings? If you're interested in how menopause will affect some other areas of your body, then here's what you need to know.

Hair

Hair thins naturally when you start getting older (no matter what your sex), but when you hit menopause, your hair can start thinning at an alarming rate, almost like the first phase of male pattern baldness. This is actually because your estrogen drops during menopause and your level of androgens (male hormones) rise. Women have androgens normally, but when their level increases during menopause, it gives you thinner hair with less body. Talk to your doctor (or a trichologist) about figuring out a treatment plan that will keep your hair full bodied and gorgeous throughout menopause.

Skin

Moving down the body, the next place you're likely to start noticing the effects of menopause is on your skin, which can become excessively oily (or excessively dry, depending on what you're more prone to), acne-riddled, sagging, and prone to age spots. Age spots specifically come as a result of you not producing enough estrogen anymore to regulate your melanin production; when your melanin production isn't kept in check by estrogen, it is allowed to go forth unhindered, and it can cause brown age spots to appear on your face, arms, chest, and other sun-exposed areas. Your acne upswing is more due to the higher amounts of testosterone in your body (and lower amounts of estrogen), which can cause acne. Increasing the amount you moisturize, staying out of the sun, and using products with collagen in them can all help give you a no-surgery facelift to make you look younger.

Nails

One of the bigger changes menopause will bring will be in your nails. During menopause, your nails can become brittle, breaking and cracking easily due to the decreasing level of estrogen in your body. Brittle nails can be both painful and dangerous; if bacteria get in a crack in your nail, it could become infected if you don't give it the proper care. To strengthen nails that have become brittle due to menopause, increase the amount of fat, protein, and Vitamin C in your diet. You should also mix some natural remedies (such as mixing a capsule's worth of Vitamin E and a half-cup of olive oil together and massaging it into your hands and nails) in with these diet changes in order to boost your nails as much as possible.

For a gynecologist, contact an office such as Naples OBGYN.