Clinical Practice Guidelines for Menopause: *An Executive Summary and Recommendations: Indian Menopause Society 2026

*This is a summary and recommendations from the detailed monograph on Clinical Practice Guidelines for Menopause 2026, available at the Indian Menopause Society Website: www.indianmenopausesociety.org. RESOURCE FACULTY Akrishti Gupta Alka Kumar Anjan Pyal Anita Kant Annil Mahajan Anita Shah Asha Kapadia Asif Sultan Atul Munshi Bipasa Sen Bina Tandon B Chandrashekar Reddy Chellamma VK Cherunur Ambuja Ch Ratna Kishore CH Trivedi Duru Shah Hara P Pattanaik Hepshiba Khurabani Jagmeet Madan Jaideep Malhotra Jignesh Shah Jyotika Desai Jyoti Hak Jyoti M Shah Jyothi Unni K Madhulika Agarwal Lakshmi Ratna Madhu Babu Madhukar Reddy Mala Raj Maninder Ahuja Monal Shah Navneet Takkar Neelam Agarwal Nidhi Gupta C Nikhileshwar Reddy N. Vivek Padma Kurada Pooja Shah Prem Blaise Rejula Pushpa Sethi Rama A Vaidya Rashmi Shah Rashmi Banerjee Ravi R Hebballi Rohit Raina Saroj Srivastava Sabahat Rasool Sai Deepak Yaranagula Sai Praveen Haranath Saket Kumar Sharad Kumar Sheela Mane Shobhana Mohandas Smrity Shailly Bagde Sonia Malik Sudha Sharma Sunila Khandelwal Suvarna Khadilkar Tanmaya Talukdar Thanuja Mannava Tripti Nagaria Tushar Patel Usha Rani Poli Urvashi Prasad Jha Urvashi Yavalkar Vishal R Tandon Yashodhara Pradeep SECTION 1 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS Definition and biosociocultural aspects of menopause 1. Menopause is a dynamic physiological transition from the reproductive to the nonreproductive stage of a woman’s life. It involves systemic physiological adaptations affecting the neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, metabolic, musculoskeletal, genitourinary, and immune systems.[1,2] 2. Each woman experiences menopause uniquely, with distinct symptom trajectories varying in timing, severity, and duration. This individualized nature of the menopausal experience underscores the need for personalized care and understanding.[3,4] 3. All mammals undergo reproductive senescence and oophause, the irreversible depletion of ovarian follicles, and typically progress until the end of life, but only humans and a few cetaceans experience true menopause, the loss of fertility decades before death (