Getting Steamed About … Menopause?

By Chris Gardner

No two women are the same. Puberty. Pregnancy. Childbirth. Ask any two women about these experiences and you’ll get two different stories. Menopause is no different. While some women glide through this life-changing period with ease, others grapple with a host of symptoms that can feel overwhelming.

“Every one who continues to live is going to go through this,” said Laurel Mode, a menopause educator with the BroMenn Women’s Center. “We need to have a sense of humor about it. We need to do things that can put us in optimal health.”

Like other changes in life, menopause is an inevitable process that shouldn’t be regarded as something to fear or avoid talking about. After all, most women will spend a third of their lives after menopause.

“Menopause is not a sickness,” said Dr. Lisa Emm, an obstetrician/ gynecologist with OSF Medical Group. “It’s not a disease in any way. It’s not something that has to be medicated away.”

Real changes

Menopause officially starts after a full year of missed periods. But menopause isn’t a dot on the calendar that arrives and then ends.

“It is a long process,” Mode said. “Some women are symptomatic for many years and some are not.”

Hormonal changes happen throughout a lifetime and a woman in her mid-30s and early 40s might begin to see changes such as periods becoming irregular.

Then the hot flashes arrive. There’s such a variety in the symptoms, it’s difficult to predict how any one woman will react. Trouble sleeping, brain fog and night sweats are just a few of the uncomfortable side effects women might experience.

Because the level of estrogen decreases during this time, women will experience some permanent changes, not only to their fertility but also to their whole bodies.

Emm said a woman’s skin becomes less elastic because of these hormonal changes, which could lead to wrinkling. The vaginal walls also become thinner and could lead to discomfort.

There’s no magic pill to remove these symptoms, but that doesn’t mean women have to stand by and wait for the next hot flash to sweep over them. Hormone replacement therapy, a popular option scrutinized several years ago because of a study to health risks, is again being viewed as a helpful tool in reducing symptoms, Emm said.

“They recommend using the lowest dose necessary for the least amount,” Emm said.

But there are other precautions woman can take.

Antidepressants might help with changing moods. Dressing in layers can provide relief during a sudden hot flash. Exercise and not smoking have been linked to having fewer hot flashes and sleeping better, Emm said.

A more intimate change

That little blue pill and all its successors have made male sexuality, and the problems associated with age, a common issue. Changes for women are not quite as commonplace.

Mode taught a seminar last year about menopause and the topic of sexual health kept coming up among the participants. Like most everything else associated with menopause, it’s different for every woman.

“Some women have a decrease in sex drive. They say it’s more difficult to achieve a sexually aroused state,” said Mode. “Some women will say this is the best time of my life.”

How can this be? For women, in particular, sex is not always a biological response, Mode said. It has an emotional component.

For women in their late 40s and 50s, many with older children, it can be a relief to finally have time alone with a spouse. This alone might make sex more enjoyable.

Whatever the response to a woman’s libido, hormonal changes have wide-reaching implications for the whole body, Mode said. The female hormones estrogen and progesterone provide protection to the cardiovascular system and to bones. Once a woman goes through menopause, the protection decreases and can lead to brittle bones and heart disease, Mode said.

After age 60, heart disease is just as common in women as in men.

“Taking care of our hearts is very, very important,” Mode said. “And understanding from an early age how to protect our hearts is important.”

Talking about it

Helen Wright, program manager at the Women’s Center, said menopause is a time of life that comes with a lot of questions.

In the last two years, she organized seminars for women to receive an overview of menopause. This year she created a program that offers a series of classes to address topics individually.

Wright is hoping to make this an annual series.

“We really wanted to provide ongoing menopause education,” she said. “We want to provide a place for a form of discussion with health-care providers. A place for women to come together and realize they’re not losing their minds.”

Today’s women hitting menopause are from the baby boomer generation. There is much more openness to talking about these changes than there was from the previous generation. Wright said there’s camaraderie among women who come together for these classes to share stories.

“Women before may not have been as ready to talk about it,” she said. “We see more published about it, just in women’s magazines. There is more of an openness. There’s an I don’t have to just sit by and let this happen to me” attitude.”

Women have a world of information available to them. The Internet has made researching and sharing ideas an invaluable resource.

But there’s a danger in it too.

“Women come in with their own set of questions,” Wright said. “It’s good we have access to this information, but we need to make sure we are relying on the correct information. It’s good to be able to present (information) to the clinical experts. We want to create an atmosphere where we’re here to answer their questions.”

————————————Helpful classes

Both BroMenn Regional Medical Center and OSF St. Joseph Medical Center are offering classes related to menopause in August.- “Open Forum – Managing Menopause” will be a presentation and discussion led by nurse practitioner Jackie Deffenbaugh on managing symptoms of menopause and health risks associated with menopause. The forum will be from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Aug. 26 at BroMenn Regional Medical Center, Normal. Register for the free class at (877) 270-4968 or at www.bromenn.org.- “Fighting Fat After 40″ will be a class on changes that occur in bodies as they age and tips to fight fat and improve overall health. The class, led by registered dietitian Kim McClintic, will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28 in the Center for Healthy Lifestyles at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, Bloomington. Cost of the class is $15 and includes a light meal. Register at (888) 627-5673.

SOURCES: BroMenn, St. Joseph

(c) 2008 Pantagraph. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.