What is the most common change in quality of life of the menopausal women?
In 80 per cent of women hot flushes in more or less intensity, but can be fixed. Professionals have to hear what women say and see to what extent affects them to tailor treatment to your profile.

Is the treatment always pharmacological?
In general, it is a hormone therapy or derived medicinal herbal medicine has now increased acceptance by minor side effects. Hormone therapy reduces the hot flashes within a week or ten days. But there are women with cancer using soy isoflavones. Although is important to take enough doses and take them with meals because otherwise they are not absorbed. Its effect is not immediate and has to spend at least a month.

Is it still related menopause and cancer?
It is hormone therapy which relates to breast cancer. But there is no associated whenever you do it to low doses and only for as long as it takes.

Why women fear to face menopause?
Woman enters a stage in life where you don’t know what happens and is afraid to go to more the feeling of discomfort, insomnia or hot flashes. But there is positive because the period disappears and that is a relax condition and know that you can become pregnant. It is also positive because women reach an age where it is more secure for itself.

What misconceptions continue listening today about menopause?
There are women who think that they become the old by not having the rule and that is not true because they are the same six months ago. Another myth is to believe that the first failure of the rule are already menopausal and childbearing age through menopause is not suddenly and so to be considered must have spent an entire year without rule. They also consider that they are already concerned about not being able to become pregnant. It is normal to occur between 45 and 55, less than 40 is considered to be early. These women they must be given a differentiated treatment because ultimately we know that osteoporosis is due to the repeated lack of estrogen.

Can the pace of life today influence in an increase in cases of early menopause?
In principle has nothing to do because there is a genetic components that you make, and above all, the follicles that women have in the ovary at birth. When just reach menopause.

Is a somewhat negative still talk about menopause?
Menopause is still somewhat pejorative. Even when you are rare character your own children reach you say you are menopaúsica. That women are affected and need to understand that it is a stage of life and point.

What about sex after menopause?
There is a decrease in sexual desire due to hormonal changes and vaginal dryness, and does not follow a local estrogen therapy will cause vaginal atrophy that will make painful penetration. But that doesn’t mean that sexuality is finished or a lot less, what happens is that many women manifest lack of sexual desire to reach menopause and is used as a safety valve to express a situation that often come back.

Does menopause fattening?
We do know that there is a change in the metabolism and the feeling of satiety we usually diluted by the lack of estrogen. We must influence most diets because it is much harder to lose kilos.

What power do the female hormones have that always are blamed for the changes in women?
The problem is that many times women accept blame intercourse to fail to reach menopause. What is not taken into account is that many men have early ejaculations or erection problems and do not recognize.

The message for these women is that there is life after menopause…
We must take it with a positive attitude because it is a period of change who need to know redirect and explain it in your environment to understand it.

Q: Why do women need progesterone?

A: Progesterone is needed in hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women for many reasons, but one of its most important roles is to balance or oppose the effects of estrogen. Unopposed estrogen creates a strong risk for breast cancer and reproductive cancers. Estrogen levels drop only 40-60% at menopause, which is just enough to stop the menstrual cycle. But progesterone levels may drop to near zero in some women. Because progesterone is the precursor to so many other steroid hormones, its use can greatly enhance overall hormone balance after menopause. Progesterone also stimulates bone-building and thus helps protect against osteoporosis.

Q: Why not just use the progestin Provera as prescribed by most doctors?

A: Progesterone is preferable to the synthetic progestins such as Provera, because it is natural to the body and has no undesirable side effects when used as directed. If you have any doubts about how different progesterone is from the progestins, remember that the placenta produces 300-400 mg of progesterone daily during the last few months of pregnancy, so we know that such levels are safe for the developing baby. But progestins, even at fractions of this dose, can cause birth defects. The progestins also cause many other side effects, including partial loss of vision, breast cancer in test dogs, an increased risk of strokes, fluid retention, migraine headaches, asthma, cardiac irregularities and depression.

Q: What is estrogen dominance?

A: Dr. Lee has coined the term “estrogen dominance,” to describe what happens when the normal ratio or balance of estrogen to progesterone is changed by excess estrogen or inadequate progesterone. Estrogen is a potent and potentially dangerous hormone when not balanced by adequate progesterone. Both women who have suffered from PMS and women who have suffered from menopausal symptoms, will recognize the hallmark symptoms of estrogen dominance: weight gain, bloating, mood swings, irritability, tender breasts, headaches, fatigue, depression, hypoglycemia, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and fibrocystic breasts. Estrogen dominance is known to cause and/or contribute to cancer of the breast, ovary, endometrium (uterus), and prostate.

Q: Why would a premenopausal woman need progesterone cream?

A: In the ten to fifteen years before menopause, many women regularly have anovulatory cycles in which they make enough estrogen to create menstruation, but they don’t make any progesterone, thus setting the stage for estrogen dominance. Using progesterone cream during anovulatory months can help prevent the symptoms of PMS. We now know that PMS can occur despite normal progesterone levels when stress is present. Stress increases cortisol production; cortisol blockades (or competes for) progesterone receptors. Additional progesterone is required to overcome this blockade, and stress management is important.

Q: What is progesterone made from?

A: The USP progesterone used for hormone replacement comes from plant fats and oils, usually a substance called diosgenin which is extracted from a very specific type of wild yam that grows in Mexico, or from soybeans. In the laboratory diosgenin is chemically synthesized into real human progesterone. The other human steroid hormones, including estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and the cortisones are also nearly always synthesized from diosgenin. Some companies are trying to sell diosgenin, which they label “wild yam extract” as a medicine or supplement, claiming that the body will then convert it into hormones as needed. While we know this can be done in the laboratory, there is no evidence that this conversion takes place in the human body.

Q: Where should I put the progesterone cream?

A: Because progesterone is very fat-soluble, it is easily absorbed through the skin. From subcutaneous fat, progesterone is absorbed into capillary blood. Thus absorption is best at all the skin sites where people blush: face, neck, chest, breasts, inner arms and palms of the hands.

Q: What is the recommended dosage of progesterone?

A: For premenopausal women the usual dose is 15-24 mg/day for 14 days before expected menses, stopping the day or so before menses. For postmenopausal women, the dose that often works well is 15 mg/day for 25 days of the calendar month.

Q: What amount of progesterone do you recommend in a cream?

A: Dr. Lee recommends the creams that contain 450-500 mg of progesterone per ounce, which is 1.6% by weight or 3% by volume. Daily, a good dosage would provide about 20 mg/day.

Q: How safe is progesterone cream?

A: During the third trimester of pregnancy, the placenta produces about 300 mg of progesterone daily, so we know that a one-time overdose of the cream is virtually impossible. If you used a whole jar at once it might make you sleepy. However, Dr. Lee recommends that women avoid using higher than the recommended dosage to avoid hormone imbalances. More is not better when it comes to hormone balance.

Q: Wouldn’t it be easier to just take a progesterone pill?

A: Dr. Lee recommends the transdermal cream rather than oral progesterone, because some 80% to 90% of the oral dose is lost through the liver. Thus, at least 200 to 400 mg daily is needed orally to achieve a physiologic dose of 15 to 24 mg daily. Such high doses create undesirable metabolites and unnecessarily overload the liver.