GynoFiles

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...

Do you have hot flashes? If so we'd like you to come and discuss as there are some very interesting new studies that can help design more effective therapies for this. Exactly the cause we aren't really sure yet. But they aren't necessarily good in our modern society as they have been linked with stroke, cardiovascular disease, dementia and even earlier death! Hot flashes disturb sleep and can even cause sleep apnea. White spots that appear in the brains of aging women are more common with diseases like diabetes and hypertension, but occur in menopause. It's these spots that can lead to more thought disruption in older women.  Menopausal hot flashes can be so miserable, and so harmful to health, yet are so universal, it's always perplexed gynos as to why they exist. The numbers of serious medical consequences: more cognitive impairment, more heart disease, less sleep, more depression, and other unwanted consequences of hot flashes have belied the thinkin...

Were you ever on hormone therapy? Were you ever taken off hormone therapy? Were you ever too scared for hormone therapy? All of this is understandable in light of new findings that politics, and 'alternative interpretations' hampered the interpretation of the Women's Health Initiative study findings. To read about this perspective here are some editorial comments . The good news is that there has been aggressive study of the following menopausal helpful strategies because of this 'misinterpretation' of the risks of hormone therapy: 1. A search for effective bust even safer dosages 2. A search for alternative therapy 3. A better understanding of long term bone health and the risks of alternative therapies 4. Nutritional and fitness management of menopause 5. Non-medication laser therapy for sexual pain with menopause 6. Non-hormonal management of irregular bleeding in perimenopause All of these have significantly helped women, and thus we have to argue tha...

Menopausal hot flashes are so miserable, yet so universal, it's always perplexed gynos as to why they exist. The numbers of serious medical consequences: more cognitive impairment, more heart disease, less sleep, more depression, and other unwanted consequences of hot flashes have belied the thinking that these hot flashes could be beneficial for women. Were they just the obvious signal to males of paleolithic times that this woman was no longer fertile? Since few women lived to the age of menopause until the 20th century, it's hard to figure that this was the 'societal reason' that favored the survival of women with hot flashes. T wo anthropologists at the University of Mass have come up with their own theory about hot flashes in menopause .  This study was also reported in the journal Menopause volume 22, 2015. They have postulated that low estrogen post delivery triggers these heat surges that would warm newborn babies in their mother's embrace. Many studies do ...

Hot flashes can be both due to estrogen lows, and be experienced by women long before menopause. When you have hot flashes in your 30s if they are not treated they will have long standing consequences on your health... oddly both positive and negative. They can disrupt sleep and memory, but perhaps they can be just the heart challenge that you need. We are sorting through new information as it comes. Hot Flashes elevate blood pressure in an article published in Menopause Vol 19 2012. In fact the authors from Canada and Australia in this report noted that for each additional night sweat the blood pressure climbed 2 mm of Hg. Interestingly there was a drop in blood pressure by 2 mm of Hg for each time a woman had a day time hot flash. Other studies say these changes may be accompanied by other changes, such as worsening cholesterol, and that these risk factors will vary by your age, your weight, your menopausal status (how long from your menopause you are), and your ethnicity....

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...

Many women are being under treated for hot flashes according to the North American Menopause Society . As a result of no treatment, inadequate treatment, and treatment discontinued earlier than it should be women are suffering from a variety of health effects, including depression. According to the May 27 JAMA Psychiatry online report depression can recur when postmenopausal women discontinue their estrogen therapy, according to results from a randomized clinical trial. "Some women are at risk for developing depression after hormone therapy (HT) discontinuation, and the presence of a past depression during perimenopause increases that individual risk," Dr. Peter J. Schmidt, from the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland,was quoted to say in a Medscape report . The numbers of women suffering just because of inadequate hormone therapy is not known. But if you are experiencing hot flashes or other menopausal symptoms in menopause, please see your heal...

Newest guidelines have been released for treatment of menopause, based on the scientific studie s. can work to modify hot flashes. Diet, the composition of that diet, your overall nutritional health, and your hormonal state all factor into whether you are going to have moderate or severe hot flashes. For some women this is merely adjusting her diet to be a bit less bothered; for other women eating right to control hot flashes can be a matter of significant health consequences. GynoGab was watching that great movie on one of our favorite shows, and there they were trying to use diet to control the hot flashes. And it was fun watching Samantha try to treat her menopause symptoms with massive yam consumption. And GynoGab wishes someone would tell Samantha in STC2 that our body just cannot metabolize yams into hormones. You do need a laboratory to do that. And while they're doing the telling, make sure she knows progesterone is not well absorbed from the skin, so if...

Hot flashes in a menopausal woman comes from the aging ovaries inability to ovulate any longer and finally the shortage of eggs and withdrawal of and then chronically low levels of estrogen. Mostly hot flashes occur in women transitioning through menopause,, but women who have low estrogen for other hormone imbalance reasons can have hot flashes as well. Many women will have only months to just a few years of significant hot flashes, but we know they occur over many years for some women, and the average is much longer than the 5 years we used to assume they occur. Hot flashes can be completely eliminated by appropriate hormone therapy. Although not a 100% of women will respond with a complete treatment response and never have hot flashes. Most all women will respond with enough effect to be satisfied. Using modest and low dose hormone therapy makes it take awhile to treat. It is possible to successfully treat mild to moderate hot flashes with non-hormonal methods as well, and there ...

As with all bothersome symptoms, there are factors that make it worse and factors that improve the condition. We have said for a long time that being overweight and not exercising consistently will worsen the vasomotor symptoms of menopause including hot flashes. We now we also note that caffeine can worsen hot flashes as well according to a new study just published in the journal Menopause . If doing these symptomatic treatments do not help, and if you are suffering up to 7 of these episodes per day, or 50 or more a week you may want to consider treatment with either estrogen or non-hormonal medical therapies. Of course dressing in layers, drinking water and avoiding caffeine will work as well. A hot flash treatment medication called Brisdelle is a very low dose of paroxetine that is approved in larger doses for treatment of psychiatric conditions. Of women having a mean of 10 hot flashes a day, they only reported 6 a day by the first week, and only about 4 episodes a day by the 12...

Menopause has an official definition, a definition that patient's use, and a definition that is useful for treatment purposes. And for treatment, looking at clusters of symptoms has allowed for more customized therapy. Defining the menopause has been easy in terms of last period: a year with no bleeding in a woman who has stopped ovulating: you are menopausal.It is not necessarily a quick process the definitions also vary as to when a woman moves beyond menopause to post menopause. Or in another way of asking : how long does your menopause last? There are some standard definitions, and then there are ones in more flux. The current thinking is that in your mid 40s you have about a 4-7 year period of transition. But another way to define menopause is to look at how the periods are, menstrual change is pretty much a given for those with a uterus. And defining menopause by flashes or other changes has been easy to define as per the symptoms groups of menopausal women experienc...