« 
 »
Nov 14 2009

Hot Flashes Replacement Hormone

Posted by admin in Uncategorized, tags: , , , , , ,

Any natural remedies to control hot flashes after total hysterectomy?

My partner had a total hysterectomy (uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix) on February 1 and is struggling with constant hot flashes. She generally has about one per hour, 24 hours per day, and is not finding any relief.

We do NOT want hormone replacement therapy due to the risks involved. Anyone know any tried and tested methods of naturally relieving hot flashes?
@Her – When a woman gets a hysterectomy she is all of a sudden not producing estrogen, and it’s that lack of estrogen that contributes to hot flashes. Hormone replacement therapy, I believe, is generally just estrogen. So wouldn’t eating soy be a good thing, seeing as it’s a more natural and less risky means of getting estrogen into your body?

Whether or not estrogen is risky for her is not clear from your question. Unless one has a problem like endometriosis (a common reason to have a hysterectomy), estrogen can be better for your health than no estrogen, if you are under age 45. If you are older than that, it might not be ideal, but still, the risks are small, and it’s up to you whether or not you want to assume those risks. The risks are worse if one takes estrogen plus artificial progesterone (natural progesterone appears to be safter than Provera, an artificial type). Since your partner has no uterus, she can probably just take estrogen (unless she has endometriosis, in which case she’d need to take progesterone too).

see: http://public.nhlbi.nih.gov/newsroom/home/GetPressRelease.aspx?id=288

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/471025

Also, clarification: Hormone replacement therapy is usually estrogen plus progesterone. And maybe testosterone. It’s only estrogen alone if there’s no uterus, which is the case with your partner. Estrogen without progesterone greatly increases risk of uterine cancer in women who still have a uterus and/or cervix.

As for soy: women who are trying to avoid estrogen should also avoid soy. It does come with estrogen risks. The full story isn’t known, there needs to be more research. Some have said that soy is not as risky as the estrogen that comes in prescription form, but the research studies haven’t been done to back that up. “natural” is a word that sounds good but is ultimately meaningless when assessing risks.

Treating Hot Flashes with Bioidentical Hormone Therapy

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 1:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Comments are closed.