Menopause, sometimes called the change of life is when a woman stops having the monthly menstrual cycle. It can occur between a fairly wide range of ages from 30's to 60 years but the average is about 50 years. It can be a fairly difficult time for the woman concerned with a wide variety of uncomfortable and sometimes serious affects, which can make life quite uncomfortable.
What happens during menopause?
During the normal cycle the pituitary gland in the brain controls a release of hormones, which lets the ovaries release an egg each month and produces the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. As a woman gets older eventually the level of the hormones decreases and the ovaries fail to release eggs and menopause occurs.
Often this process occurs over several years with irregular periods happening as the normal operation of the ovaries starts to fail. Until the periods die out completely this can result in heavy bleeding. If you are looking for natural menopause secrets then please visit Here - Highly Recommended
Symptoms
1) Hot Flushes are the most common, where the woman becomes excessively hot and sweats in a flush that can last several minutes and can occur several times an hour.
2) Osteoporosis occurs due to a loss of bone density, which occurs from the reduction in oestrogen production that stimulates bone cell production. Eventually this can cause bone fractures.
3) Physical changes occur in that the risk of heart disease can rise as lower oestrogen causes increased cholesterol levels, bladder problems and sexual problems may also be present.
4) Heavy bleeding can occur when the irregular periods start and medical advice should be taken immediately.
Treatments
There are a number of treatments which can help the affects of menopause but care and advice needs to be taken as there can be some side affects. The main ones are:-
1) Hormone Replacement Therapy known as HRT which as the name suggests replaces some of the oestrogen and progesterone in drug form. This reduces osteoporosis, hot flushes and several of the other symptoms but there is a small increased risk in breast cancer for use of HRT over 5 years. There is also an increased risk of heart disease and strokes. There are claims that HRT helps Alzheimer's Disease and reduces bowel cancer but there needs to be a longer period before the Alzheimer's Disease claim is proved or disproved. Often HRT is now prescribed for short periods of time (less than a year) to mitigate the problems, which may occur.
2) There are ranges of drugs such as synthetic steroid hormones, which can relieve individual symptoms to some extent, such as hot flushes and others that may relieve some of the physical changes.
3) There are a number of treatments for the heavy bleeding problems experienced in the time before menopause and these can be drug related or in the worse case may require a hysterectomy where the uterus is completely removed. This is a major operation carried out under general anaesthetic but it performed on about 20% of all women.
The important thing is to get good medical advice from experienced people with expertise in the problems associated with menopause. There is not a cure all and the difficult problem is to get the best balance for you.
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