On paper, the transition through menopause may seem straightforward enough — your ovaries stop releasing eggs and producing hormones. How this seemingly simple process plays out, however, can be anything but smooth.
Hot flashes during the day, night sweats that prevent sleep, vaginal dryness that renders sex uncomfortable — these are some of the more common side effects of menopause that can have no minor impact on your quality of life.
Luckily, we can smooth this often bumpy transition out of your reproductive years with hormone replacement. At No Mercy Sports Medicine, our team, led by Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román, offers hormone replacement therapy for both men and women.
Here, we explain what hormone replacement therapy can do for women who are having a rough time with symptoms of menopause.
It’s not until your reproductive hormone levels drop that you truly understand everything that these tiny chemical messengers influenced, such as:
Your estrogen made sure your vaginal tissues were healthy and well lubricated to facilitate both childbirth and intercourse. When these hormone levels drop, more than half of post-menopausal women are left with vaginal dryness.
Some women also experience thinning vaginal tissues and a lack of elasticity that can make sex uncomfortable.
Your estrogen hormones work with a brain chemical called NKG to regulate your internal body temperature. When the hormones dry up, the chemical imbalance in your hypothalamus tells your body you're hot, which is what creates hot flashes and night sweats for 75% of women going through menopause.
Outside of vaginal health and body temperature, your reproductive hormones also influence bone mass, blood vessel health, your skin, your urinary tract, and more. In other words, they cast a fairly wide net; and it’s only when they start to disappear that you appreciate just how wide.
Because a hormone deficit is responsible for your symptoms, it makes sense that we start there to restore your quality of life, by bringing your hormones back into balance.
Many different types of hormone replacement therapy are available to improve symptoms, including:
To figure out which approach is best for you, you first need to schedule an appointment with Dr. Irizarry-Román so he can order blood tests and review your symptoms. If your symptoms are broad, we may recommend a broad approach, such as a patch, injection, or pill.
If you have a specific symptom, such as vaginal dryness, we can try a more targeted approach with a vaginal cream or suppository.
No matter which approach we use, we’re confident that we can remedy some of the more significant side effects of menopause to help ease this reproductive transition. To get started, please contact No Mercy Sports Medicine today by calling our office in Miami, Florida, at 305-614-6757.
