Natural menopause....

[Karma]

I have been feeling bad for a while now, mood swings, insomnia, breast tenderness....etc and it finally dawned on me to look into menopause symptoms, yep, text book. I thought you had to be skipping periods or something to be going through the change, not so.

I went to a natal food store and bought a bio-identical cream to try. Anyone have any luck doing this on there own? If I can avoid the DRs I will, and I don't want another pill that the insurance company will grill me over if I try to change plans.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated books to recommend or other products or diet.

[redfox]

Karma, go see a Naturopath. The variances of hormone fluctuation are hard to self-diagnose, and having some support is totally worth it, IMHO. I did a natural menopause, except for one year of sleeplessness when I took a very low dose of bio-identical hormones. (The turns out to have been sleep apnea, not menopause, so I didn't need the hormones after all.) Menopause was not fun, but not dreadful either.

[Wildflower]

Currently going through menopause myself. Seriously, I think this has been going on since I was about 45 and I'm 53 now. I have found that taking extra B6 and B12 vitamins have been helpful, and I recently started taking D3 which has been extremely helpful in allowing me to sleep normally again. A good diet with next to no sugar or caffeine has been helpful as well, along with moderate exercise. Chocolate, coffee or alcohol all give me hot flashes, but if I avoid them as much as possible I rarely hot flash. Sometimes I experience the old PMS symptoms for a few days, but they seem to be tolerable. I am skipping periods now, and when I do have one it is either light or torrential. I never know what to expect or when to expect it these days. I find that to be the biggest drawback to the whole thing.

Truly, I haven't yet found this phase in my life to be the horror story that I have read about and heard from others. Although, that's not saying that other women may have a terrible time with it. I don't plan to take any hormones and will go through this entirely naturally. The last time I saw my Doc she gave me some estrogen cream for my vaginal health. What?!! I don't plan to use it either. My vagina is doing just fine, thank you very much. ;)

[Sad Eyed Lady]

I had a natural menopause as well. Like you Karma, I started reading everything I could - especially about doing it natural. My biggest symptom was sleeplessness and I found that black cohosh helped with this.

[redfox]

This is reminding me a lot of the Natural Childbirth convos I've had over many years. IMHO, if someone needs medical assistance to navigate menopause, blessings on them We're each so different, and how we go through any major hormonal transition is unique.

[Karma]

I already know that my GYN doesn't believe in bio-identical hormones and I refuse to do Premarin. I will try the vitamins and black cohosh thanks.

[poetry_writer]

I used the Vivelle Dot patch with great success after a hysterectomy that yanked out everything including my ovaries . I am now using estriol vaginal suppositories, available online. they are great! available from askdrhelen.com.

[KayLR]

+1 with Redfox. I seem to be navigating this new life stage ok, with the worst so far being weight gain (no matter what) and catfish whiskers.

[pinkytoe]

Hmmm.my little adventure with this has taken at least ten years starting in my mid-40s. I never found that anything really helped for long as there were always multiple things going on. Just time and patience in the end. And if I had put my faith in doctors, I would have lost all my parts too since that is usually how they deal with it. Thankfully, I hung on and got through it and feel better than I ever have.

[treehugger]

I'm 36, but interested in this topic now because I have been dealing with what appear to be perimenopause symptoms for at least a year, and they've been getting worse. Very heavy bleeding, week-long headaches, backaches, hormone-related depression, etc.

I just tried to ignore it until very recently, when I finally saw my GYN NP about it. She I and both think that my stress is greatly exacerbating the hormonal changes and symptoms. I prefer a natural route in general, and I have really been happy to be off birth controls for the past 4 years (since I got my tubal), but she and I decided that a low dose BC pill would probably help a lot of my issues. So, I have already "failed" my attempt to go through this process naturally. *sigh*

Kara

[redfox]

The Wisdom of Menopause by Dr. Christine Northrup is fabulous. She talks about her personal experience as a women's health care specialist, covers lots of non-allopathic approaches, and talks about the overall picture of peri-menopause & menopause. It can be a 15 year process, starting with lighter/heavier and/or irregular periods, culminating in what is medically a single event which isn't noted until a year later; one's final period.

Kara, no one "fails". I hate the subtle pressure we put on ourselves & each other to some how do this "correctly", what the heck ever THAT is! That kind of spiritual materialism is BS, and destructive... please don't judge yourself, my dear! (I could invoke the perspective that human beings are natural, and the things we do are also natural.)

We each make the best choices we can given all the information, and the truth of our body experience. There is no wrong... only being.

[treehugger]

Kara, no one "fails". I hate the subtle pressure we put on ourselves & each other to some how do this "correctly", what the heck ever THAT is! That kind of spiritual materialism is BS, and destructive... please don't judge yourself, my dear! (I could invoke the perspective that human beings are natural, and the things we do are also natural.)

I know, I promise. That's why I put it in quotes. I don't actually feel like a failure. I just prefer not to take artificial hormones, and I only lasted 4 years without them. I'm still not sure that the pill is going to help me now since I've only been back on it for a month, but I'm just looking down the road. I don't want to have to keep taking artificial hormones for the forseeable future.

But for my first cycle on BC, I actually could manage the amount of blood, so that was a plus. We'll see how it handles my other symptoms.

Thanks for the advice, but I am really not beating up on myself. It's cool.

Kara

[kally]

I decided to ignore it and mostly it ignored me. Mostly I think I am just lucky.

[janharker]

I was on depo-provera for almost 5 years. I noted an occasional "warm rush", not strong enough to call it a 'hot flash'. So I got a blood test. Yep. Menopause. Age 54. So off the depo, saving that money for 8 months now. And now occasionally a 'temperature fluctuation', almost not enough to notice. And often not sure if it might instead just be warm in the house.