Hormone Therapy: What It Is and How It Can Help You

Sally, one of my senior colleagues was in her mid forties when she experienced night sweat for the first time in her life. It was cold inside, yet she was all covered up with sweat. The story does not end there; she shares with us more of her experiences like depression, anxiety, hot flash, vaginal dryness, low sex drive and few more. Well, sally was going through the symptoms of menopause. It literally meant a sudden 'change of life' for her. She suddenly started look different and started talking about strange things like 'getting everything in order'. Any way, the cheery, confident Sally was gone and as if a different person came to work with us. It was evident that Sally failed to accept this natural transition of life with grace. It was then somebody broached the topic of hormone therapy to Sally. After a brief phase of indecision, sally decided in favor of hormone replacement therapy and today she is her active, enterprising self again and most importantly finally she came to realize that menopause meant only the end of reproductive life of a woman; it is not the end of life.

So what does a hormone therapy mean that brought about such a positive change in the life of Sally and why only Sally? Millions of women all across the USA, every year take recourse to the hormone replacement therapy to live a life happier and healthier in their post menopausal days.

No matter by what name you call it-- Hormone therapy or hormone replacement therapy or ovarian hormone therapy, it is a treatment involving the use of estrogen and progesterone to supplement the declining levels of these hormones in female body during the days of menopause. The modern medical sciences are of the opinion that the term , "hormone replacement therapy" is contradictory to the very spirit of the treatment as the name suggests that menopause is a disease caused by hormone deficiency. But menopause is just a natural phase of a woman's reproductive life and the entire life cycle as puberty is. So the term "hormone therapy" has become more popular over time.

Although menopause is just one of the phases of life, its symptoms often prove to be detrimental to a normal and active lifestyle of a career woman of today. So most of the women today undergo hormone therapy to get rid of these symptoms like hot flash, moderate to severe vaginal dryness and related discomforts. There are cases where even the younger women take the help of hormone therapy to treat the conditions in which ovaries do not produce sufficient estrogens naturally.
In its more advanced stage, hormone therapy is also being recommended for reducing the risk of heart disease and the debilitating disease of osteoporosis.

Part II

In order to alley the risks as far as possible, doctors suggest a continued treatment for 10 to 20 years or even throughout one's lifetime.

Hormone therapy is a procedure for receiving additional estrogen and progesterone in the body and there are several ways to take these hormones into your body. You can pop hormone pills. You can use them as topical medicines for your vaginal treatments. They can also get inside your body as implants or you can take the hormones through injections.

The normal women who have their uterus have to take a combination of estrogen and progesterone. This is because estrogen alone greatly increases a woman"s risk of uterine cancer. The progesterone neutralizes this risk factor. The women who have had their uterus removed however are prescribed estrogen alone. This is known as "estrogen replacement therapy" (ERT).

There are many women who experience menopause before they are forty. Sometimes this happens naturally. Sometimes it is the result of surgery to remove the ovaries. Radiation or chemotherapy are also sometimes responsible for advancing menopause in the lives of certain women. Whatever may be the cause, in these cases of early menopause hormone or estrogen therapy becomes particularly essential to counter the effects of a premature drop in estrogen levels.

Menopause is natural, but it is not that easy to deal with its symptoms. So it is no wonder that more and more American women are considering a hormone treatment as they reach the menopausal period in their 40's and 50's. But giving a consideration and taking the actual decision are not same and so there are considerable dilemma between the thinking and ultimately taking the decision. Most of the women swing between the question: to do or not to do? They can not be blamed for this indecision for making an informed decision about hormone therapy is difficult. One comes to read about so many benefits of this therapy only to be contradicted by a sea of risk factors written in another book or magazine or website. So before taking the decision you have to weigh carefully the pros and cons of this treatment.

However, there are some women who are not considered ideal candidate for hormone therapy. They include the Women with certain conditions should not take hormone therapy. These include the women diagnosed with breast cancer, active liver disease, a history of blood clots or vaginal bleeding without any apparent reason.

Any decision regarding hormone therapy must be taken after through discussion with your physician who will decide after taking into consideration such factors as your age, medical history, overall health and Current symptoms.