Is Hormone Replacement Therapy Helpful for Women Going Through Menopause?

Understanding Menopause and Its Symptoms

Menopause is a stage when a woman’s body stops having menstrual cycles. During menopause, a woman goes through four stages, including premenopause, perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause.

Perimenopause is the phase wherein the body transitions into menopause. A woman experiences various symptoms, including hot flashes, mood swings, weight gain, more irregular menstrual cycles, night sweats, etc. Menopause begins when the body stops producing estrogen and doesn’t release eggs for at least twelve months. Finally, the postmenopause stage is when a woman’s reproductive years come to a finish, and the symptoms gradually reduce.

Understanding Hormonal Cascades during Menopause

Menopause affects various hormones apart from testosterone and estrogen, which are commonly known. Although estrogen can alleviate symptoms, it may not cure hormonal imbalances during menopause. Hormone therapy, such as estrogen-progestin pills, can increase health risks such as breast cancer, blood clots, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and inflammatory markers.

However, before supplementing with estrogen, it’s crucial to understand the role of hormone precursors in menopause-related wellness. Hormone precursors are converted directly into hormones affecting the body’s hormone levels. These hormones are considered vital for the proper functioning of the body. Therefore, without hormone precursors, the hormonal cascade necessary for optimal health and wellness may not function correctly, leading to the body not experiencing other hormones’ benefits.

The pituitary and adrenal glands, particularly the former, are responsible for producing hormone precursors.

Hormones Produced by Pituitary and Adrenal Glands

The pituitary gland, located in the brain, produces luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone. These hormones regulate a woman’s menstrual cycle, control egg growth in the ovaries, and increase estrogen levels during menopause. Increased FSH levels cause hot flashes.

On the other hand, adrenal glands, positioned atop the kidneys, produce estrogens, cortisol, and thyroid hormones. These hormones play a critical role in a woman’s sexual and reproductive function, influence metabolic functions, help manage inflammation and the immune response, and regulate mood, sex drive, cognitive function, and bone health.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) v/s Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT)

Understanding HRT

Conventional and integrative physicians have relied on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as a standard treatment for menopause-related symptoms for women. HRT supplements estrogen with synthetic hormones to balance hormone levels, which may ease most symptoms.

There are two types of HRT, namely estrogen therapy (ET) and estrogen/progestin hormone therapy (EPT).

Synthetic v/s Bioidentical Hormones

However, women availing synthetic hormone HRT treatment face increased risks of various complications, such as gallstones, endometrial cancer, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and stroke. Hence, more and more women prefer bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), which uses plant-based substances such as yam or soy to recreate the human body’s natural hormones, decreasing the body’s risk of health complications.

Drawbacks to BHRT

However, as there exist no long-term trials establishing the safety of BHRT, it is more prone to certain drawbacks. Although women prefer BHRT, there is always a risk of it being overly processed or chemically altered during pharmaceutical integration, diminishing its natural properties.

HPTAG Axis Suppression

Long-term usage of BHRT can cause complications related to the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid-adrenal-gonadal axis