"menopause and treatments"

I didn't know that menopause was a disease/affliction/condition.

I'm sorry if my terminology didn't please you, I meant HRT. Every once in a while I need to be reminded not to post or start threads, thanks. I should just read to learn.

Don't get defensive. I wasn't jumping on you, just the notion that menopause is an affliction to be dealt with.

Just like the start of menstruation, unless there are real health problems, it's just one of life's passages. I, personally, don't know a lot of girls/women who started mucking around with hormones and medications when they started getting their periods and their bodies were undergoing immense changes.

This, too, shall pass.

Hey you two...I didn't realize that menopausal women still got PMS! LOL (Really learn a lot on this forum, don't we?) :)

Oh yes... PMS from HELL! (is it a mood swing? No! It's pms STILL!)

Had to jump in with a thought that struck me last night, as I watch a commercial for some pill that will help women who "don't always get to the toilet in time".

Maybe it's my generation (I'm 55), but it seems that every little thing (headache, depression, sleeplessness, stress, adult ADD, menopause, etc) is an affliction, and that we MUST have some relief from the affliciton, usually in pill form.

I am NOT critisizing any woman who needs something for her menopause symptoms! I was on HRT for over 10 years! But with the heart study, I decided, that for me, enough is enough!

But at some point we women must take control of our own bodies. While it's an individual decision, we should remember that hundreds of generations of women before us had nothing to get them through this "phase".

Take the lowest dose of HRT to relieve your symptoms, and take HTR for the shortest amount of time possible.

To paraphrase what Helen Reddy said: "We are women! We are strong!"

I am very conservative about taking medications of any kind, even aspirin which I take only occasionally if I have a headache that is making me feel really uncomfortable.

That said....

I think to compare women today with women hundreds of years ago who had nothing to get them through this phase isn't a completely fair comparison. I work outside the home and believe me, some of the peri-menopausal symptoms are annoying/uncomfortable enough to make me consider quitting my job. For one, poor sleep. I can function on 5 hours sleep for only so long until I am just not able to do very well anymore. Coupled with a job that is very mental and requires concentration and attention to detail, and life gets very frustrating and it's easy to resort to desperate measures.

Some women have leaky bladders -- imagine how that must feel when you are at work in a meeting or giving a presentation, or walking to someone's office to meet with them. Those are not situations that women generations ago had to deal with -- and they are enough to make women like me reconsider my conservative approach to medications, just to get through the day without extreme embarrassment.

I've made every lifestyle change I can think of. When you are faced with situations like those above and those lifestyle changes aren't working -- then what?

I'm not taking medication yet but if it meant sleeping at night so I can function the next day, I may reconsider. Meanwhile, I will continue my healthy lifestyle changes and hopefully they will one day kick in.

I want to clear up something said....being "bio-identical" has nothing to do with herbs...it is the estrogen (and progesterone) that is identical to the estrogen and progesterone made by your body.

I agree with NelleS...buckle up, Women!
Our great-grandmothers did. âº

I personally think we'd all be better if none of us ever started HRT. I started it when I was 48, to keep from re-bleeding after a D&C. I had an absolutely horrible time going through perimenopause. I thought I would die. It wasn't little stuff either.........overwhelming fatigue, panic, muscle aches and pain, headaches, phobias, diarrhea, sleep problems, etc. No fun at all. But.....in retrospect, I realized that, for me, I essentially became dependent on the HRT. It held me hostage, and I couldn't get off of it. All my horrible symptoms would come back.......the worst of which were horrible migraine headaches. To make a long story short, after several years of pure hell, I finally got off HRT, by weaning off of it very slowly. If I had it to do over again, I would NEVER have started it. It gave me problems that only the HRT could keep me from having.
People on HRT don't seem to realize that they will always HAVE to go through menopause eventually ......whether it's now......or later, unless they stay on the HRT forever.
I know our grandmothers and greatgrandmothers didn't have any help......but I do feel that life is quite different now, and may present a few more challenges for us. For example, all the additives and preservatives in food, the less active life many of us have, environmental toxins, etc.........plus, we live longer now. But I agree........there's too many drugs out there, just waiting for us to buy into them, and then we have to deal with side-effects and coming off of them.

Some women can take HRT and feel great on it, and stop it without any problems. But for people like me, it was absolutely hell for me to ever get off. I hope women appreciate how awful it can be to get off of it before they start up on it.

I've been on some combination of estrogen & prosterone for 15 years, had my ovaries (but not uterus) removed some years ago, tried weaning off hormones after the Womens Health Initiative, went back on that same year, am now worried again. My gynecologist is pro hormone replacement therapy while most others worry about it. Does anyone have useful information to add to the mix?

In defense of women who are on HRT (and I use progesterone cream solely, no any estrogen replacement so far) in my grandmothers' day and my mother's day, most women were not working to help support a home. They were housewives who had the luxury of being able to be nutty or reclusive when need be and the hormones were swinging, so comparing the impact of menopause on women today and that of years past is a bit of a stretch. In my profession, I have to have all my mental capacities and emotional stability intact to perform my job well. I can't be slacking on the job caused by emotional or mental distress because my doing so could endanger someone. I hope I'm not coming across as excessively critical, but if I were a housewife whose main responsibility was to keep a household running, hormone swings would not be nearly as much an issue. I am not in any way being critical of housewives. I would love to be in their shoes, but that's not feasible. Many women do breeze through menopause without any problems, but there are plenty of us who have hell with it. It's all a very individual thing.

To the original poster, thanks for the link.
Mrs H

Well, being disabled and homebound.... though not a housewife, maybe a housegirlfriend? I can say that well... I dunno... I occasionally have to drive a car... sometimes us non-working people do that. During that drive, I became a homicidal maniac. Really... once this lady drove on the sidewalk to get infront of me and I flipped and chased her down. This was before I discovered yoga breathing. :)
I understand what you're saying, so I am being sarcastic in a humorous way... but still... people who are menopausal and not working have our problems too... I can see myself in court... "Your honor, I killed that person driving on the shoulder because I had a mood swing... because women without jobs aren't allowed HRT's". :D I don't take HRT's because I saw my mother being a slave to them and it scares me. Course she's neurotic anyway and menopausal, she's afraid she'd get put away. But she's still on them, and here I am, her daughter, menopausal.

heathen1, that's kind of what I'm referring to. You may feel homicidal when out driving to run an errand. Women who have to work to support a home and themselves, are subjected to that kind of crap on a daily basis. I would much rather be able to stay at home and hibernate more than I do.
Mrs H