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Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz

Pat Wingert’s enthusiasm for her craft has not waned over her 45-year career in print journalism. A natural leader, Wingert was the editor in chief of The Daily Illini and then segued into the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. As a 25-year correspondent for Newsweek, she delved into a wide range of issues, including politics, social trends and education. Wingert was named a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University, where she spent a year researching and writing about education. She is currently a reporter for the nonprofit Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.

Barbara Kantrowitz is an award-winning magazine editor and writer. She worked at Newsweek for nearly 25 years in the magazine’s society section, where she wrote and edited dozens of cover stories on health, education, religion and women’s issues. Kantrowitz has also worked at People, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday and The Hartford Courant, and has freelanced for many national publications. She is a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she has been an adjunct professor since 2009.

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Test for Menopause

Pregnancy tests can tell if you're pregnant. Can a menopause test tell you that you're not going to have any more periods?

Ask the Expert

Q: Pregnancy tests can tell if you're pregnant. Can a menopause test tell you that you're not going to have any more periods?

A:

Neither a single blood test at the doctor's nor one over-the-counter kit can definitively confirm that you've reached menopause. What you can learn is whether you have an elevated FSH level at the exact time of the test. But because FSH levels fluctuate considerably during the course of a month (and because your cycles become less predictable during perimenopause), no single test can give you the whole picture. You might just happen to test on a day when your FSH is high, and it could fall again the next day. As a result, clinicians look for more than an elevated FSH level to determine whether or not you've reached menopause.

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