Hormone therapy can help with the symptoms of menopause – hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and mood swings. But how do you know if it’s right for you?

A normal part of aging is the start of menopause – another milestone in every woman’s life. Men, too, face midlife changes, but the changes for women are more dramatic. Women are considered “postmenopausal” when your menstrual periods have stopped for one year. This usually happens sometime between the ages of 45 and 54, and the average woman will begin menopause around age 51. A woman can also go through menopause at an earlier age if she’s had to have surgery to remove her ovaries. Around the time of menopause, your body starts to produce less of the female hormones, estrogen and progesterone. When this happens, you may start to develop some symptoms. But menopause is different for every woman – not everyone experiences the same symptoms. The most common ones include hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, trouble sleeping and mood swings.

Estrogen also helps to keep your bones strong, and when estrogen levels fall, your bones become weaker and can break more easily. So, it’s important to take steps to keep your bones strong and healthy. Sometimes, the symptoms of menopause go away after a few months without treatment, but there’s no way to know if and when they’ll stop. If your symptoms are bothersome, there are many treatments available. It’s a good idea to talk to your doctor about the options. One such treatment that is often prescribed for the symptoms of menopause is hormone therapy.

How hormone therapy works

When a woman is on hormone therapy, she takes regular doses of estrogen alone or estrogen with progesterone to replace the falling levels of the hormones in her body. Women who have a uterus should take estrogen and progestin (the synthetic form of progesterone). Progestin protects a woman from uterine cancer. Women who have had a hysterectomy – who do not have a uterus – can take estrogen alone. Hormone therapy can be taken in several ways, including orally, through a patch on the skin, with a vaginal cream or gel or with an intrauterine device (IUD ) or vaginal ring. Your doctor will discuss which one is best for you based on your symptoms. For instance, if you are having vaginal dryness (but not hot flashes), you may be prescribed therapy as a vaginal cream or gel. The schedule for what days you take the hormones vary, depending on whether you’ve had a hysterectomy and need to take
progestin. The two common schedules are:

Cyclic therapy: estrogen every day and progestin added for 10 to 14 days out of every four weeks

Continuous-combined therapy: estrogen and progestin every day

Precautions

Like any medication, hormone therapy does carry some risks. Long-term use of hormone therapy may increase a woman’s risk for heart attack, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. Because of these risks, hormone therapy should be used only for a short time – never for long-term treatment of menopausal symptoms and only if your symptoms are severe. Talk with your doctor about how long you should continue hormone therapy. Some women may need to continue therapy longer than a year, but only you and your doctor can make that decision.

did you know?

Until you have gone a full year without a period, it is still possible for you to get pregnant. So be sure to keep using birth control while you’re going through menopause.