What is the best thing to relieve menopausal symptoms?  Natural cures?  Prescription drugs?  Hormone therapy?  It seems like there are as many answers as there are symptoms, but it may take some investigation on your part and you and your doctor working together to find out what may work best for you.  Along with any treatment be sure to be getting plenty of exercise, eating a healthy diet and getting good rest which will improve the response of any kind of other treatment you may try. 

Different kinds of prescription medications are used in menopause including hormone therapy, birth control pills, antidepressants and vaginal creams.  Hormone therapy (HT or HRT) is a combination of estrogen and progesterone, or just one of these alone, which can very effectively relieve the symptoms of menopause for many women, but it comes with greater risk for breast cancer, heart attack and stroke.  Some of the prescription HRT’s include estrogens like oral Estrace and Premarin, transdermal Climara, Estraderm and Vivelle, vaginal Vagifem and Femring.   There are also oral progesterones like Prometrium and Provera.   The combination of estrogen and progesterone is distributed as oral Activella and FemHRT to name a few, as well as transdermal Climara Pro and Combipatch.  Be sure to weigh out your medical history and family history when deciding your risk for taking these drugs for your menopausal symptoms.

Many women find the use of antidepressants helpful, including Effexor (venlafaxine), Prozac (fluoxetine), Zoloft (paroxetine) and Celexa (citalopram).  Many of these medications may help the symptoms of hot flashes and mood swings, but may also bring with it decreased libido or sexual dysfunction.  There have even been a few other medications that are not specifically for hot flashes, but have shown to help some women with them, including Neurontin (Gabapentin) and Clonidine, a drug used to treat high blood pressure.

If you prefer to try some more natural remedies you may want to increase your intake of soy beans, chick peas and lentils which have a high concentrate of isoflavones, specifically genistein and daidzein, as they have the same chemical structure similar to estrogens naturally produced by the body.   Vitamin E supplements also seem to help many women, but taking a dose greater than 400 IU may not be safe due to increased risk of cardiovascular disease.  Black cohosh has been used for years in Europe and now recently the U.S., but it is recommended that it only be used for six months as the long term affects have not been evaluated completely.  Other natural remedies used are licorice, dong quai, chasteberry and wild yam, but the safety and effectiveness of these products have not been studied in depth yet. 

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