Treatment Options for Hot Flashes
March 6, 2008 – 4:37 amWomen of all different types experience hot flashes during menopause. Menopause is a condition that all women go through, but the symptoms will vary from one to the next. Hot flashes can cause lots of problems, including irritability and stress. Have no fear though, as there are lots of hot flash treatments available.
Treating the condition, rather than the symptom, is always the best way to go. By doing this, you can treat more than just the one symptom. In fact, you may be able to get rid of numerous symptoms with a single treatment. This is a great place to start, as menopause has a vast array of symptoms associated with it.
The threat is called Hormone replacement therapy, it is not a perfect cure and will not simply stop hot flashes. Furthermore it has sever side affects such as increased chance of breast cancer and stroke. There are also many more long term and short term side effect.
The treatment is not very popular due to it’s risks and side effects. There is a lot more people that choose to try and improve their diets and do regular exercises. Research show that Asian women have less hot flashes then others, researches believe that this is due to their healthy diets.
Estrogen is the most common prescription for hot flashes. They call this kind of hot flash treatment hormone replacement. This is defined as such because the estrogen you take is replacing the estrogen your body lacks. You can take estrogen in a couple different ways; a patch and orally.
There is one big downfall to the long term use of estrogen therapy. Long term research has shown us that women who use this treatment over a long course of time have a higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, and breast cancer, than a woman who has not taken this treatment for a long time. Consult your doctor to find out if this is a good medication for you.
If estrogen is not a good fit, there are lots of other treatments on the market that you can try. Your doctor can give you information on alternative prescriptions such as SSRI’s, clonidine, Megace and Gabapentin. The effectiveness of these drugs rely on your personal body chemistry, so they may work for some people and not for others.
Hormone replacement therapy should be a last resort solution. It is very dangerous and should not be chosen as a solution to this problem. Before doing any type of surgery you should first try to get your body working try to get your testosterone up and you may be happy with the results.
Tags: Women
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