Doctor Talk Hormone Therapy
On a YouTube Video on Doctor Talk with the University of Virginia Health System titled Hormone Replacement Therapy, Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, MD, Executive Director for the North American Menopause Society discusses hormone therapy for older women. When women begin menopause in later life, they experience night sweats, bone loss, sleep problems, mood swings, and other unpleasant symptoms. Hormone therapy can replace the hormones you lose when your ovaries stop making them.
Hormone therapy is most effective for women under sixty that have just begun their menopause symptoms, not those that have already gone through menopause.
Dr. Pinkerton says that in the early days, hormone replacement therapy was feared because it caused other illnesses in older women that took it. These diseases were heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and dementia. She says younger women in their 50’sor early 60’s going through menopause are good candidates for this therapy. Those that have gone through menopause already in their late sixties and seventies are not good candidates for home replacement therapy.
Hormone replacement therapy often prescribes estrogen using skin patches, pills, gels, creams, and sprays. It is absorbed through the body. Those experiencing hot flashes, night sweats, and other unpleasant symptoms of menopause may benefit by using hormone replacement therapy to help them cope better with these symptoms.
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