Hormone Replacement Therapy To Alleviate Menopausal Symptoms

If you have not yet experienced menopause then the terms hormone replacement therapy may sound foreign to you. As the terms suggest, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a treatment aimed at easing the symptoms of menopause by hormonal replacement.   Menopause is the period in a woman’s life when her body is going through significant changes that manifest themselves through symptoms like hot flushes, mood changes, depression, insomnia, and night sweating.   A woman in menopause can opt for hormonal replacement therapy to alleviate these symptoms. There are sectors who believe that hormonal replacement therapy can be used to treat depression or other complications that arise from female menopause like diabetes, osteoporosis and heart ailments.   However, some women experiencing menopause do not go for hormone replacement therapy because of the possible side effects. There are those who believe that women taking HRT have high risks of developing breast cancer. HRT has also been blamed for blood clot formations that can result in heart disease.   There are experts, including Dr. Langenderfer and Dr. Bailey, who believe that HRT exposes menopausal women to greater health risks than if they were not taking the therapy. The risk of getting cancer is one of the reasons why most women experiencing menopause opt for natural and alternative treatments for the many symptoms of menopause.   During menopause, the production of a woman’s estrogen and progesterone levels become erratic. These hormones play important roles in maintaining the proper functioning of a woman’s body like bone strengthening and blood cholesterol level maintenance. The production of these hormones decline and this causes bone problems and other ailments. Hormone replacement therapy can bring back the proper levels of these hormones in women and can prevent the risk of getting various menopause-related diseases.   While estrogen replacement has been found effective as a treatment for many years, medical research has shown that it increases a woman’s chances of getting breast and uterine cancer. This led the way to the addition of progestin to hormone treatments.   Women who eat the proper food and lead healthy lifestyles are the ones who are most probably able to experience menopause normally, even without hormone replacement therapy. For those who are thinking of availing of this therapy, it is important to talk this over with their doctors as the latter can give them the pros and cons of getting HRT.