Early menopause cannot be fully stopped once ovarian function has significantly declined, but there are meaningful ways to slow the process, protect your health, and in some cases partially restore ovarian activity. The approach depends on whether you’re trying to prevent early menopause before it starts, manage a diagnosis you’ve already received, or protect your ovaries during medical treatment like chemotherapy.
It helps to understand what’s actually happening. Early menopause refers to menopause occurring before age 45, while primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is diagnosed when ovarian function drops before age 40. These aren’t the same thing. With POI, your ovaries may still occasionally produce eggs and hormones, and periods can come and go unpredictably. About 25% of women with POI ovulate at least once after diagnosis, and 5% to 10% become pregnant spontaneously without fertility treatment.
What You Can Control: Diet and Lifestyle
Your daily habits have a measurable effect on when menopause begins. A large study published through researchers at the University of Leeds found that each daily serving of oily fish, beans, or other legumes was associated with a 3.3-year delay in the onset of menopause. That’s a significant shift from something as simple as eating more lentils or salmon. Higher intake of vitamin B6 and zinc also appeared to push menopause later, though by smaller margins of roughly half a year each.
The likely explanation is that antioxidants in legumes and omega-3 fatty acids in fish have a protective effect on eggs, helping to preserve them longer. This isn’t a cure for someone already diagnosed with early menopause, but for women with a family history or declining ovarian reserve, building these foods into your regular diet is one of the few evidence-backed preventive steps available.
Smoking is the single biggest modifiable risk factor. It accelerates menopause by one to two years on average, and for heavy smokers with certain genetic variations, the onset can shift by as much as nine years earlier than nonsmokers. If you smoke and are concerned about early menopause, quitting is the most impactful thing you can do.
How AMH Testing Predicts Your Timeline
Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) is a blood marker that reflects how many eggs your ovaries have left. It’s the most useful tool for estimating how far away menopause might be. Women with AMH levels below 0.20 ng/ml reached menopause in a median of about 6 years, while those above 1.50 ng/ml had a median of nearly 13 years before menopause.
Age matters in interpreting the number. A 36-year-old with very low AMH (below 0.20) still had about 10 years before menopause on average, while a woman in her late 40s with the same level had closer to 6 years. If you’re worried about early menopause, getting your AMH tested gives you a concrete sense of your ovarian reserve and how urgently to act on fertility or health planning.
Hormone Therapy for Early Menopause
When early menopause has already begun, hormone replacement therapy is the cornerstone of treatment. This isn’t about reversing menopause. It’s about replacing the hormones your body would normally produce until the typical age of menopause (around 50 to 52), which protects against the serious long-term consequences of estrogen loss.
The benefits are substantial. In women under 60 who start hormone therapy near the onset of menopause, all-cause mortality drops by 39% and coronary heart disease risk decreases by 32%. Hormone therapy also prevents the accelerated bone loss that comes with early estrogen depletion, reducing fracture risk. For women who enter menopause early, the years of “missing” estrogen exposure create outsized risks for osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, making hormone replacement particularly important in this group compared to women who reach menopause at the typical age.
DHEA Supplementation
DHEA is a naturally occurring hormone that your body converts into estrogen and testosterone. Several studies have examined whether supplementing with DHEA can improve ovarian function in women with diminished ovarian reserve or POI. The results are promising but not definitive.
In clinical research, DHEA supplementation for three to four months improved egg counts, embryo quality, and pregnancy rates in women undergoing fertility treatment. One notable finding is that AMH levels (the ovarian reserve marker) increased in parallel with the duration of supplementation, and the improvement was more pronounced in younger women with POI than in women with age-related decline. This suggests DHEA may help “wake up” remaining follicles rather than creating new ones.
DHEA is available over the counter in many countries, but the doses used in studies (typically 75 to 80 mg daily) are well above what’s in most retail supplements. This is something to discuss with a reproductive endocrinologist rather than self-prescribe, since DHEA affects multiple hormone pathways.
Protecting Your Ovaries During Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy, particularly regimens containing cyclophosphamide, can damage ovarian tissue and trigger early menopause. For women facing cancer treatment who want to preserve ovarian function, a class of medications called GnRH agonists can temporarily “shut down” the ovaries during chemo, essentially putting them in a protective dormant state.
A meta-analysis of 11 randomized trials involving over 1,200 women found that 78.6% of those who received ovarian suppression during chemotherapy resumed ovarian function afterward, compared to 55.8% in the control group. Pregnancy rates also trended higher, with 10.7% of women in the protected group conceiving naturally after treatment versus 6.6% without protection. If you’re about to start chemotherapy and haven’t been offered this option, it’s worth raising with your oncologist. Egg or embryo freezing before treatment is another established preservation strategy.
Experimental Treatments: PRP and Stem Cells
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection into the ovaries is an emerging approach that has generated attention in fertility circles. PRP is made by concentrating growth factors from your own blood and injecting them directly into ovarian tissue. In the largest study to date, 510 women with poor ovarian response (average age 40.3) received PRP injections. The overall pregnancy rate was 20.5%, and 12.9% achieved a sustained pregnancy or live birth. Some women (4.3%) conceived spontaneously without IVF after the procedure.
The best candidates appeared to be women under 40, with at least some remaining ovarian reserve (AMH above 0.23 ng/ml and at least one visible follicle on ultrasound). For women with completely depleted reserves, results were less encouraging. Stem cell transplantation into the ovaries has also shown early promise in improving follicle counts, but both PRP and stem cell approaches remain experimental. Neither has been validated in randomized controlled trials, and neither should be considered a reliable treatment at this point.
The Realistic Picture
If your ovaries have fully stopped functioning, no current treatment can reliably restart them. But “early menopause” covers a wide spectrum, and many women diagnosed with POI still have some residual ovarian activity that can be supported. The practical steps break down by where you are in the process. If you’re at risk but haven’t yet reached menopause, diet changes (more fish and legumes), quitting smoking, and monitoring your AMH give you the best chance of delaying onset. If you’ve been diagnosed, hormone therapy protects your bones and heart while DHEA supplementation may support remaining ovarian function. If you’re about to undergo chemotherapy, ovarian suppression during treatment significantly improves your chances of retaining fertility afterward.
Early menopause is not a single event with a single fix. It’s a process, and at most stages of that process, there are evidence-based options that can meaningfully change outcomes.