All women will experience menopause differently. You may have several symptoms, or you may suffer relatively few. Of all the various symptoms that women experience the most common ones include:
• Hot flushes and night sweats
• Irregular periods and/or heavy bleeding
• An inability to sleep at night
• Vaginal dryness and discomfort during intercourse
• A loss of sex drive
• Bladder problems, such as incontinence and urinary tract infections
• Mood swings, depression, and anxiety
• Poor concentration
• Short-term memory problems
• Feeling tired and lethargic
• Dry and itchy skin
• Thinning hair
• Weight gain
• Headaches
• Palpitations.
See your doctor if your symptoms are causing problems.
What next?
If you are having uncomfortable menopausal symptoms, or want to know if you are still fertile, talk to your doctor. He or she may be able diagnose menopause by your symptoms, age, and patterns of your period. Sometimes doctors use hormone tests, but none of these is definitive. They include a follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) test to measure the level of FSH – the hormone that stimulates ovulation – in your blood.
My treatment options
There are many ways to deal with menopausal symptoms, from lifestyle changes to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and complementary therapies. Your doctor can advise you on the best course of treatment. You may find one particular treatment that suits you, though many women get good results by using a combination of therapies together with self-help measures.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT): This is the most effective way to treat the symptoms of menopause, including hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and infections of the urinary tract.
The therapy works by replacing some of the hormones that your body stops producing during and after menopause. It usually means you take a combination of estrogen and progestogen (synthetic progesterone).
If you've had your uterus removed in a hysterectomy you can take estrogen-only HRT. So long as you don't have any contraindications. This was commonly offered to any woman thought suitable for HRT until the 1970s; at that point, researchers found that women with a uterus were more likely to develop uterine cancer if they only took estrogen. To make HRT more closely resemble the natural menstrual process, when the ovaries make both estrogen and progesterone, progestogen was added to the hormone medication. The increased risk of uterine cancer disappeared.
HRT was extremely popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and was used not only to treat symptoms of menopause, but also to reduce the risks of heart disease and osteoporosis. However, some studies done in the UK and the US, and released in 2002 and 2003, showed that women who take HRT with the combination of estrogen and progesterone for more than five years have a slightly increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Many experts feel that the increased breast cancer risk is greatest after taking HRT for more than five years and that in otherwise healthy women with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms, the benefits may exceed the risks. Women considering HRT should discuss their risks and benefits carefully with their doctors.
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Excerpted from Women's Health For Life, copyright 2009 Donnica Moore, MD and DK Publishing. Used by permission of DK Publishing.All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
