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Today am going to base my post on a study that gives some not so good news. According to a study led by Nancy Avis, a professor in health policy and social sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, US, women experiencing menopause may have the uncomfortable symptoms for as long as 14 years! The research that was conducted on what is described as a "large sample size" suggest that half of the women in the study experience the distressing symptoms - the hot flushes and sleep problems - for more than 7 years on average. This is very disheartening and I feel that a lot needs to be done to find new ways to help women at the menopause stage of life. Most of the ways available today are either ineffective or very expensive. We, women, are not well educated on the vasomotor symptoms - night sweats and hot flushes. We are not aware that these symptoms may last longer than we normally anticipate. Doctor Nancy says, "The 7 years duration spotlights the limitations of the us...

Many women suffer from dyspareunia, or painful intercourse, but they may not realize the condition has a name and more importantly treatments. Women "often feel like it's their fault," Dr. Lynne T. Schuster, a physician at Mayo Clinic's Women's Health Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said to CBSNews.com. "There could be so much less suffering." Dyspareunia -- which can occur just before, during or after intercourse -- can be caused by many physical and psychological conditions. Schuster estimates that the condition is so pervasive that at least 40 percent of all women will experience it in their lifetime. For many women of all ages, vulvodynia may the culprit for their condition. Women with vulvodynia experience chronic burning or irritation at the opening or inside of the vagina. This could be caused by involuntary contractions of the vaginal muscles. Yeast infections or pelvic inflammatory disease can lead to painful sex as well. Women who have just given b...

Madison, Wisconsin - UW Health Family Medicine physician Jacqueline Gerhart writes a column that appears weekly on madison.com and in the Wisconsin State Journal. Columns are re-published here with permission. UW Health Family Medicine physician Dr. Jacqueline GerhartDear Dr. Gerhart: I think I'm going through menopause because I have hot flashes. But I'm not sure because I've had a hysterectomy. How do I know? Dear Reader: Menopause is defined as the loss of your period (or absence of menstruation) for 12 months. Since you have had your uterus removed, you no longer have periods. So you can't use that as a guide to when you are going through menopause. Because of this, you need to look for other signs and symptoms associated with menopause, and sometimes may need further testing to rule out other disorders. Almost on a daily basis I have patients come in to ask me about testing for menopause. Usually, they ask me to test their hormone levels in hopes of determining if ...

A dapper older gentleman spurns his mate of a certain age to take a fresh-faced young lover. You've seen that movie before, right? Well, this choice of youth may turn out to be more than a Hollywood trope. Researchers say decisions like that one may have been the evolutionary source of menopause. While conventional wisdom says that men prefer younger women because they're fertile, a recent report in PLOS Computational Biology suggests that it's precisely this preference for younger mates that caused older women to become infertile in the first place. Computational biologist Jonathon Stone of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, spoke with Shots about the mathematical model he and some colleagues used to come up with that hypothesis. First, for the sake of computation, they assumed that women have infinite capacity for both fertility and survival. Then, they slowly introduced common genetic mutations into the math mix and observed how those changes led women to become inf...

A team of evolutionary geneticists have determined what really caused menopause in women: men. It was previously thought that women evolved to become infertile after a certain age so that they could care for their grandchildren and coddle the next of kin. But evolutionarily speaking, that turned out to be a load of crap because, according to the laws of natural selection, our fertility should continue for as long as possible to keep the species going. The new working theory is that men and their preference for young mates is what caused us to evolve to become infertile after a certain age. Researchers think that over time, men’s competition for young women made older women’s reproductive organs feel unappreciated therefore causing them to crawl under the bed and die, so to speak. “If women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing like men are for their whole lives,” said Rama Singh, the biologist leading the study. Singh a...

Washington: A new study has revealed that more than half of middle-aged women who still have regular cycles have hot flashes. According to a survey of some 1,500 women, Asian and Hispanic women are less likely to have them than white women, but compared with previous studies, the figures are surprisingly high. The survey, conducted by researchers at Group Health (a large healthcare system in the Pacific Northwest) and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, consisted of a diverse group of women, including whites, blacks, Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, women of mixed ethnicity, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Japanese, East Indians, Chinese, and other Asians. The women were 45 to 56 years old, had regular cycles, had not skipped periods, and were not taking hormones. A surprising 55 percent of them reported having hot flashes or night sweats. (Previous studies pegged the highest rates at below 50 percent.) The groups with the highest proportions reporting hot flashes or night...

According to a recent study published in the journal Menopause, many women and their sex partners suffer needlessly from a lack of sex following menopause. The chief reason behind this lack of sex is due to a condition called “vulvovaginal atrophy” (VVA)--the drying and thinning of vaginal tissue resulting from hormonal changes initiated by menopause. However, before menopause, hormonal changes do just the opposite and make women more sexually receptive. Vulvovaginal atrophy is a well-studied medical condition that is typically remedied in some cases with hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but more often with vaginal lubricants and moisturizers. In some cases women also use a female Viagra pill to increase blood flow to their vaginal tissue. Loss of feelings of intimacy and loss of libido are typically associated with discomfort or pain during sex due to the vulvovaginal atrophy. However, what is less studied is the emotional and physical impact of vaginal atrophy on postmenopausal wom...

A satisfying sex life is an important contributor to older adults' quality of life, but the sexual pain that can come after menopause can rob women and their partners of that satisfaction. Treatment can help restore it, shows a global survey including some 1,000 middle-aged North American men and women, published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Sexual pain at this stage in a woman's life is usually the result of the typical drying and thinning of tissues in and around the vagina after menopause, called vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA), coupled with a decrease in sexual activity. Vaginal lubricants and moisturizers, vaginal estrogen, and ospemifene, a recently approved oral drug that is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), can all be used to treat it. Known as Clarifying Vaginal Atrophy's Impact on Sex and Relationships (CLOSER), the survey was commissioned by Novo Nordisk, the maker of a vaginal estrogen treatment...

The menopause foggy brain study conducted by researchers found that a menopause foggy brain, hot flashes, and mood swings are connected. To deal with the symptoms of the menopause foggy brain and other menopause symptoms, researchers suggest quality sleep, to address emotional problems such as anxiety or depression, and to use little tricks to support a menopause foggy brain such as writing down lists or things to do, reported Yahoo! News on May 27, 2013. "Memory problems are a common complaint of women going through menopause, and now a new study provides more evidence linking mood and hot flashes to loss of memory abilities during menopause." The menopause foggy brain study which was published online in the journal Menopause included 68 women, ages 44 to 62, who experienced moderate to severe hot flashes. During the menopause foggy brain study, the women were given eight tests of attention and memory and women completed questionnaires about their menopause symptoms, mood, a...

Don't doubt it when a woman harried by hot flashes says she's having a hard time remembering things. A new study published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS), helps confirm with objective tests that what these women say about their memory is true. In the past, some studies showed that hot flashes were related to memory problems, and some didn't. Other studies showed that, even though there was a relationship between hot flashes and what women said about memory problems, objective tests didn't confirm it. That's why researchers from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University in Chicago gave a battery of eight tests of attention and recall to 68 women age 44 to 62 who had at least 35 hot flashes a week. The women also completed questionnaires about their menopause symptoms, mood, and memory. Women who said they had trouble with memory really did. Also, those who had more trouble with hot flashes did worse on the...

New Rochelle, NY, May 9, 2013—Insomnia and other sleep disturbances are common among perimenopausal and postmenopausal women and may increase their risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Evidence that a combination of altered sleep duration and insomnia among women ages 50-79 doubled their risk of both CHD and CVD over a period of more than 10 years is presented in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. In "Sleep Duration, Insomnia, and Coronary Heart Disease among Postmenopausal Women in the Women's Health Initiative," Megan Sands-Lincoln, PhD, MPH and a team of researchers from leading medical institutions across the U.S. gathered self-reported data on sleep duration and insomnia in 86,329 women 50-79 years of age. Shorter (<5 hours) and longer (>10 ho...