Okay.

You know? So for instance, um, if you had, um, if you were sick a lot as a kid, so were taking certain medications, that could affect your ability to build bone, then that would make you think, "Well, maybe my peak bone mass isn't quite as high as someone else's." Um, or if for some reason you were less active, or, um, in the case of, uh, women, you know, the regular menstrual cycles is critical to accreting bone mass when you're an adolescent.

And so if your periods were less regular for whatever reason, or if they started very late.

So those would be some risk factors to consider when you're in that younger adult category.

[laughs]

Um, but it turns out that the menopause is really a, a, a multi-year transition period that, um, starts a couple of years before you have your final menstrual period, and then continues for several years after that.

Um, and during this multi-year transition, um, uh, it affects all of your organ systems, including the bone.

Now, in the case of the bone, um, estrogen levels start to, to, to go down somewhere between two to five years before that final menstrual period, and then a year to two after that, um, bone density starts to go down.