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Overview
Many women use natural hormone replacement therapy to bring immediate relief from menopausal symptoms. These symptoms can include night sweats, weight gain, mood swings, loss of interest in sex, painful intercourse and trouble sleeping. According to a study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), after 45, women might produce only a tenth of the amount of estrogen that they produced prior to menopause. Synthetic hormone replacement therapy (HRT) became less popular when the NIH halted a five-year study after learning HRT increased the risk of heart disease and breast cancer in women.
Estrogen
During menopause, a woman's estrogen levels generally decline. When estrogen levels decline, there is more than one type of estrogen that is involved. A woman produces estridial, estrone and estriol. Doctors must administer saliva, urine or blood tests to determine which hormones are low before prescribing bio-identical hormones.
Effects
To relieve the unpleasant symptoms of menopause, a woman can choose to use bio-identical hormones or consume estrogenic foods to increase the levels of estrogen in her blood.
Natural sources of estrogen can come from bio-identical hormones or from food sources that contain phytoestrogens, compounds
similar to estrogen.
Estrogenic foods include tofu, alfalfa, carrots, beets, eggs, dairy foods, fennel and flax seeds. Some women also use wild yam-based creams externally to boost their estrogen levels.
The effects may include a return of a normal sex drive, lessened depression and less vaginal dryness.
Considerations
Unlike HRT, bio-identical hormones have yet to be tested on thousands of women in a multi-year study. Using bio-identical hormones and consuming foods that contain phytoestrogen increase the levels of estrogen in a woman's body to close to premenopausal levels.
Women who are open to using alternative methods might also try acupuncture and Chinese herbs such as black cohosh and bupleurum.
Cost
Bio-identical hormones are only available by prescription and can cost as much as $350 per month.
Using adjunct therapies such as acupuncture and nutrition is not as expensive. For example, insurance pays for acupuncture treatments and a patient may pay only a co-pay for a treatment.
Consuming foods high in phytoestrogens is not expensive.
Using wild yam creams is also generally available at a reasonable cost: less than $50 for a month's supply.
Misconceptions
Perhaps the greatest misconception is that menopausal women need estrogen supplementation. This is not true: some women produce too much estrogen and not enough progesterone. Other women may actually produce too much testosterone.
Every woman will have different hormone levels during menopause.
While it is possible to take one of the many online popular quizzes to help you determine what hormone levels may be in decline, blood or saliva tests are more reliable.
