With the dawn of endocrinology in the early twentieth century, scientists had finally got a grip on what was actually happening during the menopause. The biological mechanism turned out to be quite simple. Every month or so, ball-shaped pockets called follicles grow inside a woman’s ovaries. They release the eggs that are needed to make babies, and secrete oestrogen and progesterone. Girls are usually born with somewhere between one and two million follicles, although most of these are gone by the time they hit puberty. Over decades, all of the follicles eventually disappear, and it’s their
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