14 DAY TRIAL // What should you know about menopausal hormone therapy from the renowned Harvard doctor who helped to pioneer the latest research?
Menopause is a normal physiological stage when a woman passes from her fertile time to the unfertile period of her life. A quarter of the women will pass through the transition with relatively few problems, but the rest will suffer from various symptoms due to high fluctuations in the female sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone.
And in the cases of 25 % of the women of this group, these symptoms will be quite severe, including bothersome hot flashes, drenching night sweats, disturbed sleep, mood swings, vaginal dryness, concerns about sexuality, and worries about memory slippages, factors that may impair a woman's social, home and work relationships and her laboring abilities.
Recent researches on menopausal hormone therapy, also called hormone replacement therapy (HRT), came with unclear results about the benefits and side effects of the treatment.
A mega-synthesis about all the knowledge in HRT is made by Dr. Jo Ann Manson, a professor at Harvard Medical School, one of the leading authorities on menopause research and former lead investigator on two of the largest and most comprehensive researches in the field: the Harvard Nurses' Health Study, which has investigated more than 121,000 female nurses over three decades, to assess the impact of hormone therapy on a lot of health outcomes, and the Women's Health Initiative, that investigated more than 27,000 women on HRT over 5 to 7 years.
In her world, entitled "Hot flashes, hormones and your health" she warns that either the alarmist or uncritical opinions of HRT are both incorrect and harmful to the women's condition. Most importantly, she points that HRT can be beneficial when started early after menopause, and harmful when started late after menopause.
Manson pleads for a step-by-step, personalized framework for making the most proper HRT decision for your own symptoms and health profile, answers questions like which women are good candidates for HRT and who should avoid it at all costs; how can we calculate the personal risk for common conditions likely to be affected by HRT, like heart disease, stroke, blood clots in the legs and lungs, breast cancer, and hip fracture; for women who are good candidates the best formulation of estrogen to take, the preferred progestogen, and the optimal duration of treatment; for those who don't make suitable patients for the therapy, or prefer not to resort to it - the best options for symptom relief.