Post-Menopausal Hormones: Do You Need Them or Not?

Picture this: you’re in your 20’s, it’s a bright sunny day and you’re feeling
healthy and strong. Your 50 year old mother suddenly starts sweating,
complaining of hot flashes, night sweats and menopause in general, and
you say “Oh, too bad,”,not giving it a second thought.

A quick thirty years later and you haven’t had a period for a year, which is
great. However, other things are happening that aren’t that positive. You
wake up 1-3x/ times at night sweating through your nightie, disturbing your
sleep and making you tired during the day. If you drink coffee or wine or if a
room is too warm, you’ll have a hot flash during the day, making you feel
that a radiator is in your chest, pouring heat out all over the top half of your
body. You’re getting moody and weepy. You don’t know how to share it
but your vagina seems dry and being intimate with your husband is more
painful than fun, which is fine because your libido is now at rock bottom.
You play the Google game and learn that menopause can be treated with
herbs and bioidentical hormones, although you’re not sure which herbs and
what are bioidentical hormones. You speak with a slightly older friend, who
refers you to a naturopathic physician.

It resonates with you—you eat pretty well, exercise, do yoga and would
love to find a more natural way to treat your menopause. Hopeful but a
little wary you make an appointment, with Dr. Mona Morstein, an expert on
treating menopause.

You appreciate that the first office visit is 1.5 hours long, so you have time
to share all your health concerns, and a thorough history is taken, including
your family history, your stresses, your exposure to toxins. Dr. Morstein
does a physical exam, suggests comprehensive labs, sends you home with
a diet diary,
In the second treatment visit, Dr. Morstein discusses your diet, and gives
helpful advice on how to make it healthier. This helps increase and
stabilize your energy, and prevent cardiovascular disease, bone loss,
abdominal weight gain; all things a post-menopausal woman has a higher
risk to experience.

She’ll go over your lab results, including your liver, kidneys, glucose, lipids,
adrenals, thyroid, Vitamin D3, red and white blood cells, and make
suggestions regarding enhancing those organ system and vitamins.
Next, she explains your reproductive hormone labs—estradiol and estrone,
progesterone, DHEA and testosterone—going over your baseline values;
ths may help her decide on dosage for your botanicals or hormones. .
Dr. Morstein will then discuss specific treatments for menopause
symptoms. She’ll explain that bioidentical hormones are laboratory made
hormones that are exact replicas of actual female hormones. They can be
prescribed by a regular pharmacy, but when ordering through a
compounding pharmacy, the specific hormones, dosing and strength can
be precisely individualized for each woman.

All the menopausal hormones—estrogens, progesterones, testosterone, and DHEA–
can be dosed as needed, either through topical patches, oral capsules or
lozenges, topical creams, suppositories, or injected pellets. Estrogens in
the vagina can immediately help eradicate the dryness of menopause as
estrogens are needed for the vagina to produce it’s soft, mucousy lining.
There are also botanical medicines to consider, for women who cannot or
choose not to use hormones. Many can be considered including Black
Cohosh, Dang Quei, Dandelion, Alfalfa, Sage, Oats, Red clover, Licorice,
and herbs that give adrenal support;

Your health after menopause is vitally important; after all the average
lifespan of a woman is 81, so that is typically at least 30 years after
menopause occurs. Those years can be full of health and vibrancy, or
unfortunately filled with disease and distress. You’ll want to find a
naturopathic physician who has been treating women for menopausal hormones for
decades, as Dr. Morstein has. With her caring and experience, you can be
more assured that your care will be helpful, complete and help bring peace
to your post-menopausal years.

Please call 480-833-0302 to schedule with Dr. Mona Morstein.