Natural remedies help treat symptoms of menopause
Posted: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:00 pm | Updated: 10:33 am, Wed Feb 22, 2012.
Heidi Rula, Special to Tribune |
Menopause is a normal transition in a woman’s life – not a disease that must be medically treated. Transitions, however, don’t always go smoothly. When they don’t, women look to their doctors for help.
In my last column, I addressed hormonal options for menopause. For many women, however, hormones are not a good choice – for either medical or personal reasons. The good news is that there are many natural remedies to help women with the symptoms of menopause.
Lifestyle issues can play a role in the severity of a woman’s hot flashes. The more stress a woman is under, the more likely she will experience severe hot flashes. For many reasons, including hot flash reduction, it is important to minimize stress in one’s life.
I like all my patients to incorporate some type of relaxation practice in to their daily routine. Therapies like breathing exercises, meditation and yoga help the body manage stress.
Nutrition is an integral part of any wellness plan. A whole foods diet is recommended for all women. Minimizing processed foods, fried foods, saturated fat and excessive sugar not only will make you feel better, but it will also decrease your risk for chronic diseases.
I like all my patients to add 1-2 tablespoons of freshly ground flaxseed to their diet because of the anti-oxidant and anti-cancer benefits.
Incorporating soy foods such as soy milk, edamame and tofu can be helpful for cancer and disease prevention and may have a minor effect on reducing hot flashes.
Nutritional supplements
A few of my favorites are as follows:
Bioflavonoids (1,000 mg daily along with 1,200 mg of Vitamin C) has been shown in a small study to reduce hot flashes by more than 50 percent.
Vitamin B6 (50 mg daily). Inadequate levels vitamin B6 can cause depression, irritability and insomnia.
Botanical supplements offer the best alternative to hormone and prescription medicines for menopausal symptoms. The ones that I have found to be of greatest benefit:
Siberian Rhubarb (4 mg daily) has been used in Germany since 1993 for hot flashes and recently became available in the U.S. For many of my patients, it has dramatically reduced their hot flashes and overall symptoms of menopause.
Panax Ginseng (100-300 mg of 5 percent ginsenosides daily) has long been used to address fatigue and depression.
Black Cohosh (40-80 mg daily of a standardized extract) is one of the most commonly used herbs for menopausal symptoms. Many women find it beneficial in reducing hot flashes and improving mood.
St. John’s Wort (300 mg three times daily of a standardized extract) can be beneficial for mood, and some studies have shown that, when combined with black cohosh, it significantly improved mood as well as hot flashes.
Each woman’s experience of menopause is unique; there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to menopausal therapies. Find a practitioner who can work with you to find a treatment plan that is customized to your needs.
They were young males on the make, and they struck out not once, not twice, but a dozen times with a group of attractive females hovering nearby. So they did what so many men do after being repeatedly rejected: they got drunk, using alcohol as a balm for unfulfilled desire.
Science/AAAS
Rejected, male fruit flies turn to alcohol, a new study finds.
Science/AAAS
A molecule tied to alcohol was similar in flies and humans.
And not one flew off in search of a rotting banana.
Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like many humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons, scientists reported Thursday. Male flies subjected to what amounted to a long tease — in a glass tube, not a dance club — preferred food spiked with alcohol far more than male flies that were able to mate.
The study, posted online in the journal Science, suggests that some elements of the brain’s reward system have changed very little during evolution, and these include some of the mechanisms that support addiction. Levels of a brain chemical that is active in regulating appetite predicted the flies’ thirst for alcohol. A similar chemical is linked to drinking in humans.
“Reading this study is like looking back in time, to see the very origins of the reward circuit that drives fundamental behaviors like sex, eating and sleeping,” said Dr. Markus Heilig, the clinical director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Dr. Heilig, who was not involved in the research, said the findings also supported new approaches to treating alcohol dependence. Researchers are investigating several compounds aimed at blunting alcohol urges.
Scientists have long known that other species have their methods of stress reduction. In lab studies, mice, rats and monkeys drink more after periods of isolation, studies suggest; the same is true of mice that are bullied or are victims of aggression.
To test the relationship between stress and alcohol in fruit flies, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, allowed one group of male flies to mate freely with available virgin females. Another group of male flies had the opposite experience: the females they mingled with had already mated, and were thus indifferent to any approach.
After four days, the flies in both groups fed in glass tubes outfitted with four straws, two providing a regular diet of yeast and sugar and two containing yeast, sugar and 15 percent alcohol.
Fruit flies as a rule will, like many humans, develop a taste for alcohol and, in time, a preference for the 15 percent solution. But the rejected flies drank a lot more on average, supping from the spiked mixture about 70 percent of the time, compared with about 50 percent for their sexually sated peers.
The researchers conducted several additional experiments to rule out other explanations. The flies were apparently using the alcohol as a way to compensate for their frustrated desire.
“It’s the first time we have shown this link between a social experience that involves reward and a drug-related behavior” in these flies, said Ulrike Heberlein, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the paper.
The other authors, all neuroscientists, were Galit Shohat-Ophir, Karla R. Kaun and Reza Azanchi; all four authors now also do research for the Howard Hughes Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, in Ashburn, Va.
The researchers found that levels of a chemical active in the brain called neuropeptide F, or NPF, correlated strongly with the flies’ appetite for alcohol: when levels of NPF were low, alcohol consumption was high, and vice versa.
The NPF molecule in flies is thought to be analogous to the action of chemical called neuropeptide Y in humans, or NPY.
Previous studies have found that NPY is involved in a wide range of behaviors, like eating, sleeping and response to stress. But the new study, and others, suggest that scientists could reduce drinking by developing drugs that enhance the activity of NPY, said George Koob, a professor of neurobiology and addiction at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
“The study implies that it is this system that goes haywire in addiction,” Dr. Koob said, “and that it’s very sensitive to stress. For instance, after you lose a loved one, or a relationship has crashed, you get dysphoric, your NPY goes down, and this provides a strong urge to drink a lot — whether you’re a mammal or a fruit fly.”
Doctors could soon be able to predict the type and duration of menopausal symptoms an individual woman is likely to experience thanks to new findings from The University of Queensland (UQ)
Working in collaboration with the UK Medical Research Council, the UQ research team expects the discoveries will allow doctors to give patients more details on the symptoms they experience leading up to menopause, as well as an idea of their likely duration after menopause.
The research team, led by Professor Gita Mishra from UQ's School of Population Health, found that the severity and range of health symptoms experienced through midlife formed into groups and distinct patterns, but only some of these, such as vasomotor symptoms (hot flushes and cold or night sweats) were related to the timing of the menopause. “Women who experienced only minimal symptoms before their last period were unlikely to develop severe symptoms later, while for others the timing of symptoms relative to menopause was key to understanding the likely duration of their symptoms,” Professor Mishra said. The UK study used annual surveys from more than 600 women with natural menopause to identify four groups of symptoms: psychological (eg. anxiety and depression), somatic (eg.headaches and joint pain), vasomotor (eg. hot flushes and night sweats), and sexual discomfort. Women who had undergone hormone treatment or hysterectomies were excluded from the study. Researchers found that by examining the timing and severity of symptoms, they were able to classify women according to different profiles for each group of symptoms. For instance, with some women the severity of vasomotor symptoms increased leading up to menopause and then tended to decline, while for others whose vasomotor symptoms started and peaked later, symptoms were likely to last four years or more into postmenopause. The UK study also found that women with higher education levels and social class were less likely to experience vasomotor symptoms than other women. The UQ study was based on multiple surveys of mid-age women from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Professor Mishra said that she was reassured that, in spite of differences in the surveys used, both studies had identified similar groups and profiles for the severity of symptoms experienced through the menopausal transition. “While we would still like to see findings from other studies, we do think that symptom profiles are part of a move towards a more tailored approach – where health professionals can make a clearer assessment of what women can expect based on their history of symptoms – and this may be worthwhile not only in terms of reassurance but in selecting treatment options.” More details on the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development used in the UK study can be found at www.nshd.mrc.ac.uk. The UK study is published in the BMJ (GD Mishra, Kuh D. ‘Health symptoms during midlife in relation to menopausal transition: British prospective cohort study. 344:e402).
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(Reuters) - A few sessions of behavioral therapy, even a "self-help" version, may help some women find relief from menopausal hot flashes, according to a British study.
Researchers writing in the journal Menopause said that after six weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, more than two-thirds of the women who underwent, through group sessions or self-help, had a "clinically significant" drop in problems related to hot flashes and night sweats.
Hormone replacement therapy is considered the most effective treatment of hot flashes, but since hormones have been linked to increased risks of heart disease, blood clots and breast cancer, many women want alternative remedies.
Some antidepressants have been found to cool hot flashes, but "natural products" -- such as black cohosh, soy and flaxseed -- have generally failed to meet the test of clinical trials.
"These results suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy delivered in group or self-help format is an effective treatment option for women during the menopause transition and postmenopause with problematic hot flashes/night sweats," wrote senior researcher Myra Hunter, at King's College London.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a treatment option for problems ranging from depression to sleep problems to digestive disorders. It aims to change the unhealthy thinking patterns and behaviors that can feed mental or physical symptoms.
Hunter said the therapy "involves developing helpful, accepting approaches to hot flashes and also using breathing exercises to focus attention away from the flashes and negative thoughts."
Hunger recruited 140 women who had been having hot flashes and night sweats at least 10 times a week for a month or more, randomly assigning them to either group-based therapy, a self-help version or no treatment.
Group therapy sessions took place four times a month. Self-help therapy involved one meeting and a phone call with a psychologist, but otherwise they used a book and CD.
After six weeks, 65 percent of women who underwent group therapy reported a meaningful drop in how problematic their hot-flash symptoms were. The same was true of 73 percent of women in the self-help group. That compared with 21 percent of women who had had no treatment.
The benefit was still apparent after six months, though by then one-third of the untreated group had also improved.
Women in the therapy groups said they were having fewer hot flashes -- but women who had received no treatment reported a similar drop, the study said. Instead, the benefit seemed to come from changes in how women perceived their symptoms.
"Women say that they might still have hot flashes but not notice them, and then they feel more confident about coping with them," Hunter said. SOURCE: bit.ly/yyB3cz
(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies and Ron Popeski)
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The area of the low back is governed by the energy or the kidneys and so, in the winter, with cold weather, long dark nights and our winter coat of extra weight to keep us warm, the low back can be strained at this time of the year.
In Chinese Mediine, pain is the result of blockages in the energetic system of the body. This system is mapped out in pathways or channels, also called meridians which flow thru the body. These channels consist of many points. When the points are stimulated with acupuncture, the channel is effected and the energy flow in the meridian balances out. In this way, Acupuncture moves stagnant energy, increasing the circulation in the area of the low back, opening up stiffness and discomfort that slows us down in the winter season.
Keeping your Kidney energy strong , especially in the winter months, is a priority. If you’ve ever suffered from urinary problems, teeth or bone issues, cold knees or a sore low back, it’s important to know that these energies are all part of the Kidney system. Often these conditions worsen at the start of winter or with exposure to cold weather. The reason for this is that the Kidney energy is easily effected and most vulnerable in the winter.
Staying strong during and before the winter months is important. Here are a few ways to protect that energy:
- Eat warm, cooked foods, such as stews and soups, so the nutrients are somewhat broken down before digesting and are easily absorbed.
- Stay warm, especially the back of the neck and the lower back and feet. Cold enters the body through these areas and effects the Kidney and Bladder meridians.
- Drink warming drinks and teas, such as ginger and light cinnamon tea to improve digestion and also to improve circulation
Starting the day with Qi gong is so beautiful! The air is soft and the garden is blooming with colorful flowers of all kinds and roses. Breathing in the cool morning air and the glorious way the light illuminates colors, brings the energy alive outside of myself and within my own heart. It's a peaceful place to awaken early in the day and bring it with me in a morning hike or just running errands. If the heart is in a gentle place so will the day be in a gentle place.
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