"We Have Been Misled About Menopause"

[IcyPeas]

this is a NYT article from Yahoo news so there's no paywall.

Long article but interesting perspective.

Now imagine that there was a treatment for all these symptoms that doctors often overlooked. The scenario seems unlikely, and yet it’s a depressingly accurate picture of menopausal care for women. There is a treatment, hardly obscure, known as menopausal hormone therapy, that eases hot flashes and sleep disruption and possibly depression and aching joints. It decreases the risk of diabetes and protects against osteoporosis. It also helps prevent and treat menopausal genitourinary syndrome, a collection of symptoms, including urinary-tract infections and pain during sex, that affects nearly half of postmenopausal women.

Menopausal hormone therapy was once the most commonly prescribed treatment in the United States. In the late 1990s, some 15 million women a year were receiving a prescription for it. But in 2002, a single study, its design imperfect, found links between hormone therapy and elevated health risks for women of all ages. Panic set in; in one year, the number of prescriptions plummeted. Hormone therapy carries risks, to be sure, as do many medications that people take to relieve serious discomfort, but dozens of studies since 2002 have provided reassurance that for women under 60 whose hot flashes are troubling them, the benefits of taking hormones outweigh the risks. The treatment’s reputation, however, has never fully recovered, and the consequences have been wide-reaching. It is painful to contemplate the sheer number of indignities unnecessarily endured over the past 20 years: the embarrassing flights to the bathroom, the loss of precious sleep, the promotions that seemed no longer in reach, the changing of all those drenched sheets in the early morning, the depression that fell like a dark curtain over so many women’s days.

About 85 percent of women experience menopausal symptoms.
...
Too many doctors are not equipped to parse these intricate pros and cons, even if they wanted to. Medical schools, in response to the W.H.I., were quick to abandon menopausal education. “There was no treatment considered safe and effective, so they decided there was nothing to teach,” says Minkin, the Yale OB-GYN. About half of all practicing gynecologists are under 50, which means that they started their residencies after the publication of the W.H.I. trial and might never have received meaningful education about menopause.

article continues here:

https://news.yahoo.com/misled-menopause-154103700.html

[emulatorloo]

1. Thanks so much for the link.

[Native]

2. K&R

[ShepKat]

3. I refused to take it

my mother died of estrogen fed breast cancer in January of 1984 after menopause. She took the hormone therapy. Be careful.

[valleyrogue]

10. You are absolutely correct. The fact is HRT IS risky.

It isn't just linked to breast cancer, but it is also linked to stroke, heart disease, dementia, incontinence, and whole host of other problems if taken long term. This is indisputable. Some of these diseases have been touted by the HRT industry as actually preventatives by HRT. HRT should NEVER be taken as any kind of preventative.

The ONLY women who should be taking it long term (more than five years) are women who are at risk for severe osteoporosis, and HRT does help prevent it.

[NJCher]

4. interview with author

I missed this posting (thanks, IcyPeas, and especially for the no paywall option). I was alerted to it by an interview with the author, Susan Dominus, this morning on WNYC, our local NPR affiliate. I was only half paying attention because of phone calls and other disruptions, so I will go back and listen again, plus read the article.

I want to post the interview tomorrow when they turn it into a segment anyone can listen to because there were so many callers who had valuable information. In the meantime, if anyone wants to check the page for where the interview will appear, it is:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/all-of-it-2023-02-07

For example, one woman called in and talked about two items that interested me:

1) hot flashes can be treated with Chinese herbs
2) menopause can be the cause of dizziness!!

I didn't know about the second one. As for the first one, not sure how to find a Chinese herbalist, but I'm certainly going to check.

I know there are some around here because I've heard people talk about successful treatments through them. In addition, I had a friend who worked for the Chinese in a technology area and he learned about how to order "real Chinese" from a Chinese restaurant--AND how to use Chinese herbs for a hangover and other problems. He had success with these various herbal treatments, and believe me, he was not the "herb treatment" type.

In addition, on the show the author listed other sources for help, which I will check out and add to the post when I come back tomorrow, after the station has posted the show. Apparently there is a new non-hormonal treatment coming out and it has the medical people excited about its potential.

We should cross post this in the Health forum, too.

[IcyPeas]

5. thank you so much. I look forward to listening to this.

just be careful with the Chinese herbs.... if you are taking any other medication. do your research.

[NJCher]

6. link to program is up

The audio for the program is up:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/all-of-it-2023-02-07/

IcyPeas, thanks. It's a good point. I will talk to my doctor before I go to the Chinese herbalists.

[truddy777]

7. CBD?

Sorry for reviving this one. Does anyone think that CBD can help with menopause?

[MStager]

8. Research

Last edited Mon Aug 19, 2024, 03:31 AM - Edit history (1)

Searched online and found that CBD can improve sleep quality and reduce anxiety, stress levels, and pain in menopause. And surveys of women who have used cannabis treatments for menopause symptom relief display positive results.
Source: medical cannabis for menopause

[valleyrogue]

9. HRT is not designed to be taken for the rest of your life.

The article is an out and out lie. And that study? Lots of lies surrounding it by those vested in HRT. The reason "the study" was discontinued was not because it wasn't valid--it is because it WAS, and the researchers stopped when the evidence this stuff was poison was overwhelming. HRT deserved to be tossed into the trash bin by most women as something to be taken long term.

Almost all of the alleged "health benefits," except for the protection against osteoporosis, of HRT are actually risks one takes in taking it longer than one is supposed to. The current recommendation is to take the lowest dosage possible for the fewest years possible. Five years is what I had most recently read was the maximum number of years to take it. Women should NEVER start taking it after age 60. At some point, women have to come off HRT, and those despised symptoms will return. For me, it was much better to simply tough it out. I am 69 years old now, and almost everything in menopause but occasional night sweats have passed. I haven't shriveled up, and I am far more active than most women my age.

Too many women have been brainwashed to think that HRT is somehow the "fountain of youth." Many women are taking it LONG after they are supposed to be taking it for some mistaken idea that HRT is a cure for "aging." Often, there is a man behind the scenes who is whining he isn't getting any or isn't getting enough.

It's like people still believe in the garbage peddled by the Wyeth Labs' sponsored book, Feminine Forever, back in the 1960s proclaiming menopause a disease and that women going through the change were basically not women anymore.