During menopause, women are often left struggling with the unpleasant signs and symptoms of hormonal imbalance. Hot flashes, weight gain, and vaginal dryness are all symptoms that can leave women struggling to continue with their normal lives. As a consequence, they are then often left looking for ways to help them overcome these unpleasant side effects of menopause. This is when many women use bioidentical hormone therapy to help relieve their problems.
What Are Bioidentical Hormones?
Bioidentical hormones are hormones that are biologically identical to the hormones that are naturally produced in the body. As a consequence, when bioidentical hormones are introduced into the system they are able to easily integrate themselves, supposedly without causing harm to the body.
What Is Bioidentical Hormone Therapy?
Bioidentical therapy can help women to cope with their adverse menopausal signs and symptoms. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is the blanket term that describes women receiving foreign hormones in their systems. HRT can either be with synthetic hormones or bioidentical hormones.
During bioidentical therapy, women receive foreign hormones into their system, which have been extracted from a plant and are biologically identical to hormones produced by the body. These hormones work in the body in exactly the same way as natural estrogen and progesterone do. As a consequence, bioidentical therapy prevents women from experiencing unpleasant side effects of hormonal imbalance.
What Are the Side Effects of Bioidentical Hormone Therapy?
Unfortunately, there can be unpleasant side effects of taking this hormonal therapy. Although medical practitioners have said that bioidentical therapy is superior to receiving synthetic hormones, this is not proven. For example, some menopausal women have reported that they have experienced the following side effects when using bioidentical hormone replacement therapy:
- Fatigue
- Weight gain
- Facial hair growth
- Hair loss
- Depression
All of these side effects can distress women and leave them upset about the changes that are occurring in their bodies.
What Are the Alternatives to Bioidentical Hormone Therapy?
Fortunately, there are alternative therapies that women can turn to if they do not want to use this therapy. Natural supplements and healthy lifestyle changes can be extremely effective in helping women to overcome the unpleasant signs and symptoms of menopause.
There are a number of different natural supplements that are readily available for women to buy; for example, ones that are often used to treat hormone imbalance contain:
Black cohosh- Red clover
- Soy
- Ginseng
- Ginkgo biloba
- Macafem
As well as taking natural supplements, women should strive to live a healthy lifestyle. This is because a body that is fit and healthy is better able to cope with the stresses of hormone imbalance. Furthermore, an unhealthy body can actually worsen the adverse signs and symptoms of hormone imbalance during menopause.
Thus, for some women, the risks associated with bioidentical therapy may not be worth the benefits that accompany it. Click here for more information about treating the adverse signs and symptoms of hormone imbalance.
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