Relief of menopausal symptoms; Why is medicine failing to help women get relief according to the NY Times.

Premenopause and then the symptoms associated with it are well known but are also individual to the patient.  For many patients, finding relief is a frustrating endeavor as many gynecologists and obstetricians are usually offering poor guidance, even though some medical treatments help.

What a woman experiences during menopause is highly variable depending on the person.  One size fits all treatments just done cut it.   Some women get many hot flushes while others don’t.  Some have cramping and long periods while others don’t.  Some have emotional roller coaster symptoms while others don’t. Acupuncture and herbs sometimes work to relieve it and sometimes don’t.

According to the NY Times, there are treatments proven to help but often they are not recommended.   Some psychotropic drugs help relieve hot flushes but are highly difficult to get off of due to withdrawal symptoms which worsen the flushes.

A word of caution; what they suggest may not work either or may actually increase the risks of other problems.

Older women know the frustration as do their spouses who go through it with them.

Check out what the NY Times has reported on regarding treatments and what is understood about going through menopause.

Women Have Been Misled About Menopause

Hot flashes, sleeplessness, pain during sex: For some of menopause’s worst symptoms, there’s an established treatment. Why aren’t more women offered it?

For the past two or three years, many of my friends, women mostly in their early 50s, have found themselves in an unexpected state of suffering. The cause of their suffering was something they had in common, but that did not make it easier for them to figure out what to do about it, even though they knew it was coming: It was menopause.

The symptoms they experienced were varied and intrusive. Some lost hours of sleep every night, disruptions that chipped away at their mood, their energy, the vast resources of good will that it takes to parent and to partner. One friend endured weeklong stretches of menstrual bleeding so heavy that she had to miss work. Another friend was plagued by as many as 10 hot flashes a day; a third was so troubled by her flights of anger, their intensity new to her, that she sat her 12-year-old son down to explain that she was not feeling right — that there was this thing called menopause and that she was going through it. Another felt a pervasive dryness in her skin, her nails, her throat, even her eyes — as if she were slowly calcifying.

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