Hot Flash Treatment Alternatives.

Hot flashes are generally self limiting, and yet some women will persist in having them. You and your gnyo can decide if you should treat. Non-hormonal lifestyle changes will be very beneficial to many women as well. Hormones are thought to be the most effective, and there are hundreds of safe and effective dosages. Be wary of dosages and forms that are not safe, and be sure you have a health check clearance before you begin on any. There are many women who can not find relief with hormones, and many who cannot safely take hormones. There are a variety of medications used for depression, anxiety, and hypertension that are used off label for the treatment of Hot Flashes. Women want to know the comparison of effectiveness of these forms of treatments, and yet few trials actually do include all the approaches to treatment.

New studies have looked at some of these therapies as compared with placebo and lifestyle changes.f Menopausal women with moderate vasomotor symptoms may find relief from escitalopram, low-dose dose oral 17-beta-estradiol (E2), or venlafaxine, according to a recently published group analysis of individual data from three randomized clinical trials that tested drug and non-drug interventions.

When applying this data to your symptoms, be sure to discuss with your health care provider. "A single trial designed to provide direct head-to-head comparisons of all six interventions would have required considerably larger samples sizes that were not possible within time and cost constraints." Furthermore, intervention-specific exclusion criteria and women's preferences would have made recruitment to a single trial testing all interventions impractical," the researchers have been quoted to say.

Katherine A. Guthrie, PhD, from the MsFLASH Data Coordinating Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Group Health Research Institute, and the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and colleagues present their findings in an article published online in July of 2015 in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The trials included 899 perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with 14 or more bothersome vasomotor symptoms per week. The study interventions included 10 to 20 mg escitalopram per day, nonaerobic yoga, aerobic exercise, 1.8 g per day omega-3 fatty acid supplementation, 0.5 mg low-dose E2 per day, and 75 mg low-dose venlafaxine extended release per day.

The study showed benefit from all the medications tried, and in this study researchers found no significant effects on vasomotor symptom frequency or bother with aerobic exercise, yoga, or omega-3 supplements. It is possible that trial participants had different symptoms than the average person who does report relief from these lifestyle changes since most studies of lifestyle changes show a lot of benefit. Also there may have been flaws in these studies as most research only studies women with 50 or 60 hot flashes per week.

"These data suggest use of escitalopram, oral low-dose E2, or low-dose venlafaxine based on individual risk profiles and side effect concerns is a reasonable starting point for treating women with bothersome hot flushes" the authors conclude. But, according to us,
it cannot replace individual consultation.

Obstet Gynecol. Published online July 8, 2015. Abstract

Passing Your Uterine Lining, Menstrual Period Norms

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously. It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

Post-Endometrial Ablation Syndrome

If you have had an endometrial ablation and have developed symptoms of pelvic pain you might have post endometrial ablation syndrome. What is post-endometrial ablation syndrome? It is a constellation of symptoms due to entrapped blood or tissue within a uterus that has previously undergone an endometrial ablation. We are able to diagnose this at Women's Health Practic e but occasionally other conditions are causing similar symptoms. Other complications of endometrial ablation include pregnancy, risks from pre-existing conditions such as a polyp or fibroid, an infection of the uterus, or a pregnancy. If you have had a tubal ligation then it is possible that the condition could be post-ablation tubal sterilization syndrome. The ablation procedure is designed to destroy all lining tissue, but in fact there is no way to confirm the completeness of the ablation. It is thought that either residual or regrowth of the tissue is producing the symptoms of post-endometrial ablation syndrom...

You Have an IUD: But a Positive Pregnancy Test

Fortunately IUD pregnancy failures are rare. But if you have an IUD for contraception, and you get a positive pregnancy test, you probably ask yourself, what next? Well, make your gyno appointment promptly, this is a condition that is not typically an emergency, but it can be and it’s not handled over the phone or on a blog, or through self diagnosis! That being said, some researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas decided to look back at over 4100 women who had IUDs and of those 42 cases who became pregnant in their institution, over about a year period of time, to help understand what these women could expect when they got to their gyno and what actually happened to their pregnancies. Accurate pregnancy diagnosis, pelvic examination, and pelvic ultrasound were the cornerstones of the evaluations. They had very specific ways they looked at their ultrasound to prove there was no pregnancy in the fallopian tube, or partially in the fallopian tube...

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