GynoFiles

Hot flashes secondary to menopause used to be treated ubiquitously. In other words, it was a rare woman in the late 20th century that wouldn't get treatment should she desire treatment. In fact, it was a woman's call as to whether she need treatment. Anyone can blush a bit for lots of reasons, and we can occasionally feel warm when everyone else is cold, or wake up feeling a bit sweating, and pointing this out to your gyno used to get you a prescription fairly easily.  This is discussed in the book  Making Peace With Change . But needing treatment for these symptoms is a discussion on its' own. Hot flashes are a symptom of menopause but up to 55% of women have hot flashes prior to any sign of menstrual irregularities. Hot flashes should be treated if they are moderate or severe, and only rarely should be treated if they are relatively mild. Often this will mean estrogen although many women who are candidates for estrogen are even taking the estrogen they are prescribed. O...

The condition of premature menopause is a potentially serious disorder with consequences on more than just the ovaries, but can affect the thyroid gland as well as the adrenal gland. A working group from European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology drafted the first international guidelines for managing premature ovarian insufficiency trying to address this issue. They have pointed out that some individuals who have POI  actually have chromosome disorders such as Turner's syndrome (X0 ) that should be identified prior to undergoing IVF or other fertility procedures like donor eggs. A young woman having irregular periods or occasionally hot flashes, in her 30s, may be given a diagnosis of menopause, but it's not always true that she's actually transitioned permanently though menopause. The normal age of menopause is menopause occurring the age of 40. Menopause before 40 has been called premature , or premature ovarian failure (POF), or Primary ovarian insuffi...

Many studies have looked at the age of menopause, after all, it is a natural process, and many women transition easily through it. But having menopause very young, or very old can have medical consequences. Although genetics is one component, having your ovaries removed is another, actually diet contributes to the age you transition from cycling into menopause. A healthy low meat and high vegetable diet can change your age of menopause to make it come earlier according to research. If you can have an earlier menopause, you can lower your risk of breast cancer. Within certain parameters, early menopause is a benefit to women. The age of your ovary is the determining factor as to when your menopause will begin. For most women it's a slow loss of eggs from the ovary until there are no viable eggs and the woman will formally be in menopause. Genetic factors are a big part of the determinants of whether you will go into an early or late menopause, but we have learned that many other ...

Estrogen has far reaching consequences as discussed in Menopause, Make Peace With Change . It has been know for awhile that premature menopause may cause more widespread health consequences including cardiovascular disease and problems with the immune system. These clinical problems are due specifically to low estrogen levels, and a new study out says that even women who go through menopause at a natural age will be have some degree of  immune system malfunction once they do become menopausal. It is uncommon for women to have premature menopause, but loosing your menstrual cycle prior to the age of 40 is considered premature. women under the age of 35 who lose their menstrual period have 7 times the risk of heart attacks, and a much higher risk of osteoporosis and hit fractures. Fortunately, this is rare to happen in under the age of 35 although premature menopause can happen to 10% of the female population. The formal name for premature menopause used to be premature ovarian fa...

The newest study looking at the effect of smoking on menopause confirms what we have been saying for years: smokers have earlier menopause. It has something to do with the direct toxic effect of smoke on the ovaries. The study didn’t actually prove that stopping smoking helped this much. In fact the opposite: most studies looked at “ever smokers” and notice the same earlier menopause trend as noted by Dr. James Lacey Jr of the Beckman Research Institute in Duarte California . Interestingly, early menopause has been tied to about a 2% greater risk of dying, and the risk is mostly associated with increased cardiovascular diseases. Breast, liver and uterine cancers are actually less in smokers: presumably due to their lower overall estrogen numbers. But ovarian hormones do so much as we know that women with premature surgical removal of the ovaries will lead to increased overall mortality, coronary heart disease dementia, osteoporosis and other cancer mortality. Premature menopause, ...

Obvious signs of low estrogen are hot flashes. Less obvious signs are things like painful intercourse, hair loss or hair growth on the chin. Women usually get fewer painful ovarian cysts as they near menopause and even the signs of male hormone excess may actually conversely resolve during menopause. For more information on excess male hormones see the Androgen Excess Society Site . Most people think that polycystic ovaries (PCOS) stabilizes or resolves iwth menopause and this is likely true. Paradoxically a sign of menopause may be a normalization of your cycles if you were always regular before! Keeping tract of you cycles and any change in symptoms can be very helpful when you go to your gyno and gab. Do you have any unusual signs that turned out to be menopause or that you want to ask about? Send in a comment!

A young woman, in her 30s, may be given a diagnosis of menopause, but it's not always true that she's actually transitioned permanently though menopause. The normal age of menopause is menopause occurring the age of 40. Menopause before 40 has been called premature, or premature ovarian failure (POF), or Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI). The understanding physicians have had previously was that the ovaries have a set number of eggs, and when a woman’s eggs are all used up then we go into menopause. We have a preset number of eggs (genetically), we can lose eggs when we have disease of the ovaries or surgery of the ovary, and those things can cause individual cases of premature menopause. But something was discovered to be off in the thinking of most cases of POF. As far back as 1996 we discovered that even if the whole picture appears to be premature menopause, in research settings when the patients underwent ovarian biopsies they were actually found to still have eggs...

Women often will have hot flashes during menopause. When a woman has a hot flash we wonder exactly what level of estrogen is circulating in a woman's body. About 30 years ago Dr. D. Meldrum studied women between the ages of 34 and 83 who were in menopause, but did still have ovaries. The average estrogen level, of the main estrogen from the ovary (estradiol), was 13.4 pg/ml. Only two subjects had levels over 25, and in general women who weighed more had higher estrogen levels. Interestingly, he was also one of the first physicians to notice that the male hormone levels were not so much different than women's levels before the menopause. So if a woman is having symptoms it's not likely due to male hormone lack, we think it's directly related to the level of estrogen hormones. Also they noticed that once menopause was reached, a women's hormone levels didn't really drop any further as she aged into post-menopause. So if you had hormone level tests at one tim...

You are talking to an important client, all of a sudden, a hot flash hits you. Or you think a hot flash hit you. Red, sweating, flooding, shakin'? A hot flashed defined medically is a set of 'vasomotor symptoms' triggered by 'thermoregulatory dysfunction.', don't even try to say "thermoregulatory" fast  Medically speaking this is a set of electrical signals that we regulate this through a circuit of information: the core of our body sending temperature signals to the various centers that contribute to temperature regulation in the brain, the brain it self and the peripheral vascular system (your blood arteries and veins) which the brain signals to make the blood vessels dilate, i.e. release heat, and release it rapidly, or contract: conserve it, save it, store it, which as you know, goes more slowly. The core temperature is a powerful influence on how we feel and how we sweat. Our core temp has an upper threshold, called a set point, beyond which ...

The traditional way women have detected menopause was a set of hot flashes followed by a year of no menses. But understanding when that day is approaching, and if the symptoms that you are having may mean that menopause is near menopause has been a bigger challenge. Using FSH testing and estrogen testing had come into wide use almost 4 decades ago. In the past decade there has been more widespread use of the inhibin B tests. And now we have gone further with blood stream tests of a woman's serum anti-Mullerian hormones (AMH). Inhibin B rises, but AMH decreases as ovaries age towards menopause. In fact in a new study they have found that AMH decreases so evenly and steadily with aging that whether you are still fertile or not can be predicted with using this tes t.  decrease steadily with age - and researchers who quantified the changes say their work can help predict a woman's chances of pregnancy. In a November 2010 online paper in Fertility and Sterility, Dr. Seifer of Mai...

Women realize that after menopause women do not have periods. We technically run out of eggs to form the structures such as the follicle and corpus luteum which produce hormones and we are unable to ovulate or produce an egg at all. So there are no more cycles and at menopause women stop having these monthly bleeds called periods. But many of us have just come to call any bleeding episodes that act like periods and feel like periods: a period. It is true there might be that last fling ovulation or so. But then again, technically, that is not really menopause, but perimenopause. Your gyno will call this post-menopausal bleeding, and in the back of her mind, a bit of a red flag. She will want to know more. Statistics show that 10 to 15% of women who bleed  during menopause, when bleeding should have already stopped, will have lining cancer of the uterus. So investigations must be undertaken to make sure you don't have a treatable condition of the uterus that is causing bleeding. ...

Infertility due to premature ovarian failure is not common, but when it occurs it could be a sign of a genetic disorder. The two most common genetic causes are that of Fragile X and Turner's syndrome, both of which could be tested by blood or even cheek tests. In fact the Premature ovarian failure infertility cases due to Fragile X gene disorder has it's own initals: FXPOI!  Some women may not actually stop having periods, they may have irregular bleeding, cramping, no ovulation. We learn more and more about Fragile X testing, and it is a fascinating disease with apparently many of the sufferers carrying what is known as a premutation disorder. In other words, some day you will express the mutation, but you haven't yet, and the mutation often will not express until adulthood in many individuals. Genetic testing is percolating through all aspects of medicine, gradually. It is expensive, and sometimes difficult to interpret, and not always possible to treat. Some doctors sa...

When it comes to women in menopause, and what symptoms to expect and how long to anticipate they will last it's important to understand what phase you are in. The physicians of an important workshop in 2001 developed a formal list of the menopause transition phases. The physicians call these special phases the Stage of menopause you are in. Which 'Stage' is important to help you and your physician understand how symptomatic you are, how much bleeding there is, and how long this is going to continue. Specifically they rely on definite menstrual period descriptions and actual recommendations regarding the FSH levels.  There are Five Stages before the final period (FMP, Final Menstrual Period), and two after the Formal “Menopause.” The fie stages are labeled from -5 to -1 and after menopause the stages are +1 and +2. In 2011 a group met to fine tune the stages and their conference was called "ReSTAGE". ReSTAGE took information from the TREMIN study, the Melbou...

World Health Organization organizes women who do not ovulate into class 1, 2 and 3. Class 1 : Due to poor function of the pituitary gland. Estrogen levels are low, and so are the levels of the pituitary hormone FSH. These women might be the runners, those suffering from stress. Class 2 : The second group is the most common, and includes the women with PCOS. Their pituitary hormones like FSH are normal, usually the estrogen levels are normal too. It is thought that the ovary may be resistant to the normal cycles of hormones from the controlling centers of the brain. Other factors make make the ovary resistant for instance insulin or male hormone levels may be abnormal. Class 3: High levels of pituitary hormones. These are women who usually have one of two types of problems. Either they have prematurely gone into menopause and their FSH is high. Or, they have other pituitary over production of hormones, such as high prolactin, which is a treatable condition. Like other medical condition...