Medication For Menopause?
Menopause is widely regarded, especially in the Western society as a loss of fertility, of youth, of the ability to have more children, as the Western society overall seems to see things in oppositions, this can be regarded as quite natural. As opposed to this, many other cultures see the time of menopause as the time of getting wiser, as the time from which women do not have to concentrate on their everyday tasks and chores. Naturally, connected to the Western tendency to prescribe medication for everything, there are many drugs to counter the symptoms of menopause, and though severe symptoms of menopause can require medication, many problems could be solved more naturally.
Different Types Of Medication For Menopause
The most common menopause medication is hormone treatment. Women can take medication that increases their estrogen levels to the levels before the start of menopause, while others decrease the production of testosterone, thus, the ratio between the two hormones is more or less maintained. Hormone menopause medications can effectively help to prevent many menopausal symptoms. However, some research shows that hormone treatment, if used on a long-term basis can have many risks. Moreover, when you go to your doctor with menopausal symptoms, he will often automatically prescribe some kind of a hormone treatment, even though that may not be the best solution for you, or you may not even have those symptoms as the sign of menopause, so on the whole, try to research other available solutions before going for a hormone treatment.
There are many prescription drugs that target different symptoms of menopause, you can ask your doctor for these if you have just one or two specific but really annoying symptoms. For example, to counter and relieve the feeling of depression and sudden mood swings, you may be given antidepressants, some of them can reportedly also help with your hot flashes.
However, I would advise to take antidepressants only if you are sure that you do not have any other alternatives, as they may help you directly, but it would not be advisable to take them on a long-term basis. For example you could start taking an antidepressant because of your menopausal depression and then you might not be able to stop taking it, for the rest of your life. Another usual symptom of menopause is for example incontinence; anticholinergic or antispasmodics drugs are often given as menopause medication to help this specific problem. They can relax your bladder muscle and help prevent involuntary bladder contractions.
As a general rule, though I would suggest that you only take menopause medications as a last resort, as they can have many risks and side-effects, like dry mouth, drowsiness, nausea, dizziness or headache, and if these side-effects get too dominant it may be the case that instead of increasing your quality of life, they just cause more problems.
