So the most common symptoms that women come into my office for around peri-menopause and menopause is if there is still peri-menopause then it’s a lot of abnormal bleeding problems.\u00a0 That could be light, that could be heavy, that could be long, that could be short.\u00a0\u00a0 Any way, shape, or form.\u00a0 Once the periods have stopped, then peri-menopause or menopausal we are talking about hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, depression, anxiety, overreacting, overwhelmed.\u00a0 You used to be able to handle twenty feet of stress before you got pissed off.\u00a0 Now you can only handle ten feet of stress before you’re triggered.\u00a0 Just the reserves aren’t there.\u00a0 Also, changes in vaginal tissue.\u00a0 Vaginal dryness, pain with sexual activity in the genital area.\u00a0 That’s pretty common, as well as less libido.\u00a0 So, changes in sexual function from all kinds of angles.\u00a0 A little less common would be maybe headaches, body aches, fatigue, heart palpitations, dry skin, itchy skin, urinary leakage.\u00a0 These are not as common, but pretty darn common.\u00a0 And then there is some less common, or even rare things, like ringing in the ears, like frozen shoulder, like burning mouth syndrome, dry eyes.\u00a0 These are things we don’t hear about as often, but clearly can be related to menopause.\u00a0\u00a0 The gas and bloating, changes in bowel habits, that might be sort of a less common, but certainly not rare.\u00a0 The list goes on.\u00a0 There is hair thinning, hair loss, there is changes in the voice, the voice becomes deeper.\u00a0 We could probably come up with something unusual that someone has experienced.\u00a0 Tingling is another one that might come to mind.\u00a0 Even coldness.\u00a0 We talk about hot flashes, but coldness is sort of a subset, you might say, hot flash, kind of a chilled feeling.<\/p>\n
So amongst all these symptoms, the woman and the practitioner has to decide which is best for her.\u00a0 The way I approach this is, in taking the history and doing the physical exam,\u00a0 maybe there are some tests that are ordered.\u00a0 Basically determine what…are her symptoms mild, moderate, or severe.\u00a0 So, symptom category is one issue.\u00a0 Then are the risks for certain major diseases, mild, moderate, or severe.\u00a0 Risk for osteoporosis, risk for heart disease, risk for diabetes.\u00a0 So we have to determine these to the best of our ability, subjectively and objectively.\u00a0 So after I’ve kind of made some kind of determination there, then I look at my whole list of \u201cokay, what are we going to do about the symptom relief\u201d.\u00a0 Is there anything in diet, exercise and lifestyle category that could improve some of these symptoms?\u00a0 Is there anything in the nutritional supplement category that could improve some of these symptoms?\u00a0 Herbal medicines.\u00a0 And then we have all different kinds of hormones, whether we call them…there are bioidentical hormones that are derived from a natural substance and then made into a hormone that is biochemically identical to our hormones, those are bioidentical. Those can be compounded at a special pharmacy to come up with very customized formulations and combinations and dosings that pharmaceutical companies don’t make.\u00a0 But pharmaceutical companies also have a small selection of bioidentical hormones in a patch or a pill or a vaginal device.\u00a0\u00a0 And then there is synthetic or semi-synthetic hormones.\u00a0 So, we have all kinds of hormonal options to choose from.\u00a0 And not all practitioners know about all, or are skilled, or are educated about all those hormonal options.\u00a0\u00a0 Your typical conventional minded practitioner is going to mostly use the hormones the pharmaceutical companies make.\u00a0 And it’s usually the alternative minded practitioner, whether it is a naturopathic physician or a medical doctor that’s going to be using the customized, compounded hormone combinations.<\/p>\n
But the last category I want to mention is non-hormonal options.\u00a0 So if you have insomnia.\u00a0 This is why a doctor might prescribe Trazodone or Ambien, or those kinds of medications.\u00a0 Pharmaceuticals for depression or anxiety.\u00a0 There are even non-hormonal pharmaceuticals for hot flashes.\u00a0 Some of the blood pressure drugs are actually used for that. Some of the anti-depressants are even used for that.\u00a0 So we have all these categories.\u00a0 In the herbal category maybe Black Cohosh. Maybe a Maca Extract.\u00a0 Maybe a combination herbal formula that can… either one of those three choices can address kind of a nice array of menopause symptoms.\u00a0 But perhaps you specifically have insomnia.\u00a0 So we’ll use Black Cohosh and Valerian for example. But there are lots of specific nutrients and specific herbs for specific menopause symptoms.\u00a0 And then the hormones are nice because they target a broad array of symptoms.\u00a0 You can have kind of almost any menopause symptoms and a good menopause practitioner can determine what’s the best hormonal approach for this particular situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the most common symptoms that women come into my office for around peri-menopause and menopause is if there is still peri-menopause then it’s a lot of abnormal bleeding problems.\u00a0 That could be light, that could be heavy, that could be long, that could be short.\u00a0\u00a0 Any way, shape, or form.\u00a0 Once the periods have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,12,13],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-menopause","tag-menopause-signs","tag-menopause-symptoms","tag-tori-hudson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbrehm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}