Hormone therapy was once the most popular option for menopausal women. It was widely practiced to relieve menopause symptoms. It was advised and recommended. But nevertheless, more and more women were getting conscious about hazards that this kind of treatment poses and came to conclusion that hormone replacement therapy isn’t the best method to resolve to. It turns out that there are a great deal of options to treat symptoms of menopause. And natural and herbal treatment seems to become the most popular at present time. It happens because herbal remedies are considered to be quite effective in treating menopause and because they have little or no side effects at all.

There are 2 main types of herbs that can be used as menopause remedies – non estrogenic and phytoestrogen. Non estrogenic herbs don’t help to produce estrogens in the woman’s organism. What they really do is nurturing the hormonal glands, so the latter start to produce estrogenes in more quantity. So non estrogenic herbal remedies help the body produce natural hormones.

Phytoestrogen herbs have estrogenic properties so that they produce additional estrogens in the body of a menopauseal woman. Among those herbs are black cohosh and dong quai. Nevertheless, phytoestrogen herbs are not the best option for treating menopause. Because if a menopause woman takes something that’s already increasing the production of estrogen, her body might decrease its own natural production of it. So in the end of it there will be a general decline of hormones in the organism.

So if you are looking for a safe menopause treatment that has almost no side effects, consider taking the non estrogenic herbs. Though it can take much more time before first results will become evident (in comparison with traditional over the counter drugs and phytoestrogen herbs), they are really safer, cheaper and quite reliable.

Whatever your opinion and attitude towards beer may be, it works as a natural menopause and early menopause treatment and it is proved scientifically.

Accoording to recent studies, phytoestrogens that are contained in beer are the key component that have relation to menopause symptoms. They are estrogen-like plant compounds, so they bind to estrogen receptors and, thus, provide a mild estrogenic effect on the organism. Or course, they are not as strong as regular estrogen, but as estrogen levels decline in menopausal women, this boost of estrogen has a balancing effect on the organism. So, phytoestrogens in hosp (of beer) can alleviate hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, improve bone density and the general quality of life for menopausal women.

The phytoestrogen in hops is called 8-prenylnaringenin (8PN), and is stronger than other estrogens studied so far. It is present in beer, but levels are low compared to levels in plant extracts. 8PN is a flavone. It has been found in the animal model to have milder but similar effects to estradiol. The hops flavone also had a stimulating effect on the uterus.

Scholars have also found hops to have an anti-inflammatory effect. Compounds in hops have an effect similar to regular pain killers like ibuprofen, but with less of a disturbing impact on the gastrointestinal system.

Hops has also been proved to be an antioxidant. It reduces insulin resistance and, possibly, can have anti tumor properties. Hops was found to inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells ‘in vitro’, or in the lab, paving the way for further studies to be done. Hops should not be taken by people with depression however, according to traditional herbalists.

And by traditional herbalists hops has more typically been used by for its sedative effect. It’s great for sleep disorders, and also for nervous gastrointestinal and stomach disorders. It is stimulating to the stomach, and has been used for anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, dysmenorrhoea and amenorrhoea, etc.

This time we will talk about interrelation between menopause and the brain.

The female brain depends greatly on sex. But it would be better to and more correct to say, that without sex hormones the brain will grow old earlier. It is well-known and statistically proved, that women more often than men fall victims of senile aphrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. As a matter of fact, we got use to explain it empirically: this difference is the price for longer lifetime of women. This rule works more often in case with women of about 80 years, widows or lonely women, which usually have neither public nor cultural interests that help to train the brain.

And what about menopause and menopause symptoms then? Until now menopause was connected with psychosocial palindromias, but never with the real causes of menopause. However now more and more doctors and scholars believe that estrogens (female hormones produces by ovaries) play a decisive role in development of the brain and good health maintenance. Researches prove this assumption.

A group of scientists carried out a large epidemiological research with participation of 4600 women. The main results are the following: first, the earlier estrogens stop to be produced, the greater is the risk of neurodegenerative diseases; second, replacement therapy to protect the brain is reasonable and important at the age of 50-55. Of course it’s the matter of risk-and-favor balance, as replacement therapy has serious side effects concerning cardiovascular system and tumors in females. In other word, replacement therapy of women after 60 can promote occurrence of other pathologies and cancel positive influence of estrogens on neurons. Replacement therapy is necessary, first of all, for protection of the brain in the age from 50 till 55 in case of ovariectomy. It is important even for those women who have only one ovary, but who haven’t entered menopause yet.

Now let’s have a look, whether it concerns women that are healthy from the hormonal point of view. The thing is that with menopausal women after 60 replacement therapy may not have any positive effect. Even in spite of the fact that new hormonal cocktails in more “reasonable” dosages became safer. As for side effect, they may become more evident. So take it into account.