Menopause symptoms can be startling when experienced for the first time. Sudden waves of heat can leave you red-faced and dripping with sweat. Vaginal dryness can make sex uncomfortable.
Are you considering taking estrogen to relieve your menopause symptoms?
If you are entering menopause prematurely because of an illness or because you’ve had your ovaries surgically removed, your doctor may recommend you take estrogen until you reach the age of natural menopause.
Hormone therapy is also helpful for some women to help slow bone loss or to improve mood and thinking.
Hormone therapy varies according to the type and dose. Prescription estrogen comes in pills, gels, creams, vaginal rings, and patches. Which method you pick depends on your medical history, preferences, and the problem you are trying to solve. Most of these types of products are prescribed if you’re looking for relief from hot flashes. There are also other products that send estrogen locally to your vaginal area. You would use these if vaginal dryness is the only issue.
If you still have a uterus, the hormone progesterone or the synthetic hormone progestin is used to make sure there’s no uncontrolled growth of the tissue in your uterine lining. This lining is called the endometrium. Progesterone causes the endometrium to shed every month. Women that have had a hysterectomy need only estrogen.
Who is hormone therapy for?
Generally, hormone replacement is for women who are on the verge of menopause or who are postmenopausal. Perimenopausal women that need hormone supplementation often get contraceptives. Contraceptives help regulate periods, control bleeding, and protect against the possibility of pregnancy.
Progesterone is popular for relieving menopause symptoms.
Progesterone is an important hormone that basically protects the body from negative effects of estrogen. In many ways estrogen is toxic to the human body. You can think of progesterone as the anti-estrogen hormone. The effects of progesterone help menopausal women regain hormonal balance.
Progesterone is commonly used to treat menopause symptoms and comes in different forms.
Natural progesterone is produced by the ovaries after ovulation and by the placenta during pregnancy. In bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, the hormones used are derived from soy and/or yams. This type of progesterone is considered natural progesterone because these hormones are made to be identical to the moleculer structure of the progesterone produced by the human body.
Synthetic progesterone is a term used to describe progesterone that isn’t chemically identical to the progesterone produced by the human body. Synthetic progesterone is the progesterone used in HRT and is considered the one size fits all approach to hormone replacement. There are various side effects to HRT. Having a compounding pharmacist customize a bioidentical hormone replacement with the exact hormones that you need in the lowest effective dose may likely be a much safer alternative.
Progestins are synthetic hormones that mimic almost all activity of progesterone, but don’t have the same chemical structure. Since the chemical structure isn’t exact, progestins are known to have various side effects.
Progestogens include both naturally occurring and synthetic progesterone. Synthetic progestins are also sometimes placed in the category of progestogens. Progestogens are mostly made from plant sources and resemble the naturally occurring progesterone.
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Menopause Maggie is a compounding pharmacist with 13+ years of pharmacy experience. Maggie specializes in correcting hormone imbalances naturally using bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. For more information on hormone replacement, visit http://www.bhrt-resource.com.
