Email
Print
FeedTaming Menopause
HRT can help—but it’s not without controversy.
(page 1 of 3)
Thirty years ago, menopausal women were the stuff of TV sitcoms, with the likes of Edith Bunker and her liberal cousin, Maude, suddenly in the same boat and getting no sympathy.
No more. These days, an increasing amount of medical attention is being devoted to menopause—or more specifically, perimenopause, the life stage when you experience the telltale symptoms. And that’s great news for women between the ages of 45 and 54.
In many ways, improved knowledge about nutrition, daily exercise and general good health has made it easier for women to cope with the changes that occur when their ovaries begin to shrink and hormone production decreases.
“It’s a time when you should be saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I’m not ready to crumble and die,’” says Anthony J. Bazzan, co-director of Jefferson University Hospital’s Great Life Program, geared toward men and women “crossing into middle age.”
For women, hormone replacement therapy remains both a popular and controversial way to smooth the bumpier stretches of this crossing. To understand HRT, it helps to know a bit about how hormones function. Produced by the ovaries, progesterone is often the first to have an impact on emotions, as fluctuating levels disrupt its characteristically calming, feel-good effect on the body.
Estrogen, meanwhile, comes in at least three different varieties produced in parts of the body aside from the ovaries—like the adrenal glands, liver and kidneys. It’s also one of the major symptom-producing hormones. During menopause, the ovaries struggle to produce more of the hormone, causing irregular or unpredictable menstrual cycles.
Efforts to remedy the symptoms that accompany menopause—everything from night sweats and insomnia to hot flashes and depression—have been rife with complications and controversy. In fact, HRT’s rise and fall in acceptance seems to mirror menopause’s emotional roller coaster.
Recent lawsuits have called into question HRT’s efficacy and safety. But there have been positive developments, fueled in large part by actress Suzanne Somers and her promotion of natural, plant-derived bioidentical hormones. Somers’ February 2009 appearance on Oprah was one of the show’s most watched episodes.
While some in the medical community are concerned that Somers is placing too much emphasis on hormones as an anti-aging elixir, others are thrilled that she’s touting bioidenticals. That’s mainly because a majority of them aren’t FDA approved, so they haven’t gained the acceptance of their synthetic or pharmaceutical-grade counterparts.
“Every time you see an article about bioidenticals, you always read how they’re not FDA approved,” says Ann McCloud Sneath, a nurse practitioner who uses them exclusively in her integrative women’s health practice in Wayne and West Chester. “Well, chemotherapy is not FDA approved, and that’s become the standard for cancer treatment.”
