MENOPAUSE RELIEF USING BLACK COHOSH

One of the natural remedies available for menopausal hot flashes/flushes is a herb called Black Cohosh. Menopause relieving Black cohosh has been found to be successful in the treatment of many menopause symptoms but the most relief seems to have been from the dreaded hot flashes/hot flushes. Scientific studies are underway at the moment, but as of now the report states that woman using Black Cohosh reported an 80% decrease in the number of hot flashes/flushes during menopause. Now anyway you look at it that's worth a try!

What is Black cohosh?

Black cohosh (known as both Actaea racemosa and Cimicifuga racemosa), believe it or not is a member of the buttercup family, it is perennial and grows in North America.

This is what it looks in the wild:



Please always check with your Doctor or Homeopath before you take any remedies, natural or not. Just to be on the safe side. The research I've done revealed that millions of people are taking Black Cohosh without adverse health effects. But please check with your MD first! One thing I read was that you couldn't take it if you're pregnant or have kidney trouble.

ALTERNATIVE MENOPAUSE REMEDIES

I promised I'd share a few of the menopause remedies that I'd researched and appeared to help many women. Of course you can go the route of hormone replacement therapy, and as a last resort, I must admit, it has it's attractions. But honestly for me I feel that menopause is a natural process and I see no point in interfering. I can't see the point of replacing hormones. If you aren't producing them, I guess there is a reason. But that said, if menopause became unbearable for me as it has for many, I'd definitely explore HRT. Even with its' health risks.

But in the meantime as I plod along still functioning in a generally sane manner I've been researching natural menopause remedies. The menopause remedies I've been looking at help alleviate symptoms. They do not cure menopause, but can definitely ease the symptoms.

One of the natural menopause remedies Id like to share with you is a product made by
Native Remedies called Mellowpause. This is what they say it does...

MellowPause Benefits:

* Reduce hot flashes commonly associated with the change of life
* Support balanced mood and routine calmness
* Maintain healthy sleeping patterns
* Support hormonal balance during perimenopause and menopause

There are so many natural menopause remedies that include all manner of herbs, one
that appears to really help is Motherwort. To alleviate menopause vaginal dryness, there seems to be no option other than a natural progesterone cream. There are many brands available and the majority seem to work well as menopause remedies. Basically you take the cream and rub into your skin either once or twice a day. It gets absorbed into your body and makes a huge difference to the way you feel.

MENOPAUSE VAGINAL DRYNESS

Yesterday I blogged about various early menopause symptoms. One of the most common, in fact it affects about 80% of perimenopausal,menopausal and postmenopausal woman, is menopause vaginal dryness.

If you haven't had any menopause vaginal dryness then you may think it isn't such a big thing. It is! It can be quite awful in fact. Not only does it often ruin sexual intercourse, but vaginal dryness is often accompanied by a pretty severe itch.

So what causes menopause vaginal dryness? Every vagina is kept moist by a range of mucus membranes that sit at the opening of the uterus. Estrogen helps your body produce lubricant. Which in turn keeps the vagina, not only moist, but supple as well.

Now that explains why during menopause you may experience vaginal dryness due to a drop in Estrogen. But why the itch? While the mucus membranes produce lubricant to prevent vaginal dryness, they do a second, even more important job of making that lubricant slightly acidic! The slight acidity acts to protect the vagina from any foreign bacteria. Hence no infection can set in.

Obviously during perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause Estrogen levels have dropped, hence the vaginal dryness and the lack of acidity. So we itch on occassion. This drop in acidity not only causes a nasty itchy but can increase the risk of a urinary tract infection.

But the good news in respect of menopause related vaginal dryness is that there are remedies that can allievate the symptoms, and if used regularly can help with both menopause vaginal dryness and the onset of infections related to it. I'd like to share some of these remedies with you in a later blog post.

WHAT ARE THE EARLY MENOPAUSE SYMPTOMS?

This is one of first things I want to share with you. Honestly I missed most of the early menopause symptoms as I wasn't aware of them! When I say early menopause symptoms I'm referring to menopause, premenopause and perimenopause, it' s just easier to say menopause else the post gets looooooong.I'd also like to share my personal experiences of these early menopause symptoms as they are not typical and can give you a good idea of how varied early menopause symptoms can be.

You'll read a stack about the changes in your monthly menstrual cycle as being an early symptom of menopause. For me this only happened about 6 months after I had experienced a few of the other menopause symptoms. I went from having slightly short periods to missing one completely. I got such a shock, as I thought I may be pregnant, which wouldn't be a great idea at this point in my life. What I'm getting at is that the change in your menstrual cycle is not always the earliest menopause symptom.

Another (and from research I've done - quite common) early menopause symptom is mood swings and irritability. And I mean IRRITABLE! I remember of few months back smashing a dinner plate in the kitchen I was so angry. Really out of character for me...All the more frightening because of it. But no, we're not going insane it's just an early menopause symptom.

Headaches are another of the awful early menopause symptoms. I find I have them for 3 days at a time, and then they go. Hot flashes/flushes, chronic tiredness, depression are all part of early menopause symptoms.

Aches and pains and cramps come and go at will, and I must admit I find these some of the most depressing of the early menopause symptoms. They make me feel old. I usually spend time running around the park with my kids, or playing soccer with my son (badly let me add :o)) But often now I just don't feel up to it. Which leaves me feeling depressed.

Now to end on a light note the most horrid early menopause symptom happened to me nearly a year ago. Changes in body hair. I started to get the odd hair growing on my chin. I swear by all things holy, I nearly had a heart attack. I had visions of having to join the circus as the bearded lady. My husband promptly told me to calm down. It was just a hair. The thing at the back of my mind though was, what if it gets more and more....aaarggggh! So far so good, but still I check every morning.LOL!

I'd like to explore a few of the other early menopause symptoms like vaginal dryness and yeast infections in a seperate post as there are remedies for them and they can be life changing.

WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF MENOPAUSE?

Now this is where I got stuck personally. I had no clue that the menopause symptoms I was having were truly signs of menopause. Often the signs of menopause can be mistaken for reactions to stress.So when I found I was struggling to sleep I assumed I was stressed and not that it was a sign of menopause. I guess the best way to put it is that single symptoms may not mean that you are menopausal, but if you're experiencing a few of the signs of menopause below, then you may be perimenopausal.


Changes in temperature are a sure sign of menopause. We often hear about hot flashes or hot flushes, but night sweats are also common and believe it or not...coldness.

Other signs of menopause are irregular periods, which are either heavier, lighter, shorter or longer. In other words when your periods become unpredictable in any way.

Now mood changes, anxiety, feelings of depression and difficulty sleeping are further signs of menopause. This is often accompanied by your heart beating in what feels like an odd way. (Always check with your MD when you experience ANY irregular heartbeat.)

Dry skin and hair loss are often signs of menopause. If you're experiencing this drink lots of water and treat yourself to really yummy body lotion. Now's the time to spend a bit of time making yourself feel better, so buy the nice body lotion, you need it after all.

Loss of or decreased sexual desire and vaginal dryness seem to go hand in hand when it comes to signs of menopause. But that said, it is not always the case. When I first researched the signs of menopause I thought, okay I don't have vaginal dryness or loss of desire so I can't be menopausal. Well surprise, surprise in some cases it is the exact opposite. There is a distinct increase in sexual desire.
So basically what I'm getting at is after researching all the signs of menopause what became clear to me is that when there is a change in any of the areas of your body that we've discussed above, you could at the least be perimenopausal. If you've always had trouble sleeping and now all of a sudden you need to sleep all day, it could be a sign of menopause. Every human is different and yes we experience the same changes, but every single body reacts differently.

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ALL ABOUT EXPLORING MENOPAUSE

This is the first of many blog posts that I'd like to share with you over the next few weeks.But first let me tell you why I decided to start the Exploring Menopause blog. It was on a warm winters day that I realised that I was perimenopausal. I'd had various menopause symptoms for a while and hadn't realised it. The menopause symptoms I was experiencing were mood swings, insomnia, appetite loss and then a huge appetite increase. And these were just a few of the menopause symptons.

One of the most troubling menopause suymptoms for me was an increase in libido. It was shocking! I was petrified I was going nuts! My behaviour of the past few months was so out of the ordinary for me. Needless to say I "googled" my symptoms and found to my great relief that I was normal...Perimenopausal but normal. I wasn't going crazy, I wasn't going to die, I didn't have some rare disease!

Strangely enough this is when I realised how little I knew about menopause, perimenopause, pre-menopause and post-menopause. The thing that astounded me was that my close friends, my family, even my mother, never spoke about it. Not a whisper. And when I tried to speak to them about their experiences it was like extracting teeth, not pleasant and not one of them was willing to chat about it comfortably. That's when I thought it would be great to take all the information I had gathered so far and put it all into a website or blog about menopause. It turned into a blog about everything from menopause symptoms to menopause remedies and even natural menopause remedies.

For me menopause is not something to hide and a huge thing that is going to change me life for ever. It's perfectly natural and I feel blessed to be healthy enough to be going through this. Yes the menopause symptoms are all there, all day a lot of the time, but they're normal and I'd like to share some of the menopause research I've done with you. From the very basic question of "What is menopause?" to the more personal yet desperately needing answers questions like"How to stop menopause itching?" Now you may read that and think, please just an itch what's the hoo-ha!Let me tell you it is way past itchy and it's all over! Now I know why my dog rolls around on the grass to get her back scratched! (Not that I recommend rolling on the lawn!!)

Maybe more important for most of us is "Which menopause symptoms are normal?" Because honestly you can drive yourself crazy with these questions! Join me over the next few weeks as I put up page after page of menopause questions and answers, menopause remedies, and honestly, it's just nice to chat about it and celebrate the fact that we're healthy, cranky, illiogical, but healthy and above all else normal!We're all going through the same thing, menopause symptoms vary greatly but we're all in it together. And that kind of makes it easier, don't you think?