October – Menopause Awareness Month

What is the Menopause?

When oestrogen levels reduce in a women’s body around the rage of 50, although symptoms may start up to 10 years before, it causes menstruating to stop. This is when women move into a phase of their lives called the menopause.

Symptoms vary from women to women and can include hot flushes, headaches and memory loss. There are lots of other symptoms too many to list here and every women will make this journey differently.

But you don’t need to go through this alone. The purpose of Menopause Awareness Month is to do just what it says. This includes creating greater awareness at your workplace and amongst your friends and family

The History

As can be imagined the ‘remedies’ given to menopausal patients in the 1800’s often made the condition worse or brought about an addiction to things like opium and cannabis.

HRT was originally started in the1960’s but it wasn’t until the 1990’s that the USA started clinical trials into the effectiveness of various hormone combinations. In 1996 the NHS started a study called ‘The Million Women’ looking in to the affect of HRT on certain issues of women’s health, the results of this study were released in 2003. However, the NHS were prescribing HRT as early as 1965.

If you would like to learn more about the history of HRT then this website has lots of interesting information.

In October 2012 the first World Menopause month was launch by the International Menopause Society. This started with a campaign called ‘Prevention of Diseases after Menopause’.

Treatments

As well as HRT there are various other therapies that can help with the symptoms associated with the Menopause.

At Theale Wellbeing both our reflexologist, Samantha Robinson and Dr Sarah Bryan provide therapies that can help.