5 Menopause Symptoms Hormone Therapy Can Help
5 Common Menopause Symptoms That Hormone Replacement Therapy Helps
Menopause – the end of a woman’s reproductive years – comes usually around the age of 51. However, the onset of menopause is extremely varied, ranging from the late 30’s to the early 60’s in some women. In the time before menopause, referred known as perimenopause, the ovaries begin releasing less of the so-called “sex hormones” (including estrogen) that regulate reproduction.
However, estrogen and the other hormones are involved in more than simply fertility regulation. Indeed, virtually every bodily function of a woman is affected to some extent by sex hormones. Estrogen has an effect on metabolism (the capacity of the body to burn calories and store fat), weight growth, bone strength, mood and mental state, and libido, among other things.
As a result of the reduction in hormone production during menopause and perimenopause, the majority of women suffer a range of unpleasant side effects. Menopausal hormone decline manifests itself in a variety of ways, including hot flashes, sleep difficulties, decreased sexual desire, dry and itchy vagina, painful intercourse, urine incontinence, weight gain, mood swings, tiredness, and bone loss.
The good news is that, recent advances in hormone replacement treatment may provide long-lasting relief from many of menopause’s unpleasant or painful symptoms. Dr. Ali, a hormone replacement expert in the Troy, MI region, discusses how hormone replacement therapy may help relieve some of the most prevalent symptoms of menopause in this article.
#1. Hormone Replacement Therapy for Hot Flashes
Hot flashes are perhaps the most prevalent perimenopausal and menopausal symptom. These abrupt increases in body temperature may be both unpleasant and humiliating, since they are often accompanied by flushing and copious perspiration.
As women approach menopause, up to 75% suffer hot flashes, commonly known as hot flashes. Hot flashes are a “vasomotor symptom,” meaning they are caused by an abrupt dilation of blood vessels. Increased blood flow results in excessive body heat and sweat.
Experts at Harvard School of Medicine and Mayo Clinic think that estrogen replacement therapy is the most effective and safest way to treat severe hot flashes and night sweats associated with menopause.
In a clinical study including 3,329 participants, administering oral estrogen or estrogen plus progestin significantly decreased hot flashes in menopausal women by 75%.
#2. Hormone Replacement Therapy for Tiredness
Although testosterone is more often associated with males, it plays a critical role in both men and women in terms of energy production. Testosterone is a hormone that performs a variety of tasks in addition to sexual drive and performance. It also aids the body in producing the proteins necessary for muscle upkeep and energy production in both men and women. Thus, decreased testosterone levels associated with menopause may result in severe fatigue in women.
But by managing a woman’s estrogen levels throughout menopause with HRT, vitality and energy can be restored.
#3. Hormone Replacement Therapy for Vaginal Dryness and Painful Intercourse
Estrogen is a female “sex hormone” that helps maintain the thickness and health of the vaginal walls while also producing natural lubrication to keep them moist and supple. Estrogen also plays an important part in a woman’s libido or “sexual desire.”
Following menopause, more than half of women suffer vaginal dryness, as well as pain during intercourse as a result of decreased estrogen levels. When estrogen production declines throughout menopause, the vaginal walls become thinner, lose flexibility, and generate less lubrication. Additionally, a decrease in estrogen levels may result in a woman losing desire in sex.
However, estrogen replacement therapy may assist a woman’s body in rebuilding stronger, more elastic, and lubricated vaginal tissue, enabling her to reclaim sexual intimacy! Additionally, hormone replacement treatment to restore estrogen and other sex hormones may rekindle a woman’s sex drive, rekindling her desire in sex.
#4. Hormone Replacement Therapy for Menopausal Weight Gain
Weight gain – particularly around the middle or belly – is often a result of menopause’s hormonal decline and imbalance.
To begin, when estrogen levels are low, the metabolism slows, resulting in an increase in body fat storage. Additionally, low estrogen levels impede fat cell breakdown, resulting in fat accumulation, weight gain, and an increased waist circumference (“belly fat”). Additionally, when an excess of androgens (male hormones) exists, the risk of obesity is raised.
Fortunately, hormone replacement therapy may assist perimenopausal and menopausal women in reversing weight gain, increasing muscle mass, and decreasing fat accumulation – especially in the abdominal area.
#5: Hormone Replacement Therapy for Osteoporosis
One of estrogen’s many essential functions is to promote bone-forming cellular activity. As a consequence of the decrease in estrogen levels after menopause, the bones lose calcium.
Numerous recent studies have shown that hormone replacement therapy, rather than bisphosphonate medicines, is the most effective strategy for preventing osteoporosis-related fractures. Along with fracture prevention, estrogen has been shown to maintain spinal discs in a manner that non-hormonal therapies do not.
Most “synthetic” medications that are now available to treat osteoporosis (e.g., Fosamax and Boniva), but have unpleasant – and in some instances, deadly – side effects. As a result, the majority of medical professionals feel that if feasible, it is better to treat the underlying cause of osteoporosis, which is estrogen deficiency, with hormone replacement therapy.
Hormone Replacement Therapy for Menopause – Troy, MI
Along with addressing many of menopause’s most visible symptoms – tiredness, painful intercourse, vaginal dryness, weight gain, hot flashes, and osteoporosis — hormone replacement therapy helps prevent a variety of severe illnesses.
Menopausal therapy with hormone replacement has been proven to help prevent severe diseases such as heart disease, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.
There is no longer a need to suffer in silence from the painful and unpleasant symptoms of menopause, thanks to recent advances in bioidentical hormone replacement treatment. If you are a woman in the greater Troy, MI area who is experiencing perimenopause or menopause, consult with Dr. Ali to see if hormone replacement therapy is right for you.
