Testing It Up

Menopause can bring a wide range of symptoms that spell discomfort to women. Among the most common symptoms include hot flashes, mood swings, irritability, restless sleep, anxiety, irregular periods, fuzzy thinking, and weight gain. While hormone replacement therapy is available, the approach can also increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. Here are some natural remedies that provide safe and effective alternatives to hormone therapy.

Calcium and Vitamin D. When estrogen level drops during menopause your bones begin to lose minerals and strength. Too little dietary calcium and vitamin D can only worsen the problem. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, women age 50 and above should get 1,200 milligrams of calcium daily from their diet and 800 to 1,000 IU of vitamin D each day.

Deep Breathing. Dr. Richa Sood of the Mayo Women’s Health Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota explains that stress affects the area of the brain that regulates the body temperature, thereby, exacerbating menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes, night sweats and related sleep disturbances. The simple solution: practice deep breathing.

Exercise. A daily walk, bike or jog can do wonders to relieving your symptoms. Regular aerobic exercise is effective in short-term menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and insomnia, and reduces the long-term risks of postmenopausal heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer and stroke.

Hormonal imbalance, once a condition seen as a problem solely affecting menopausal women, is now a growing concern that afflicts both men and women. The one way by which it can be determined if a person has a hormonal imbalance is by going through hormonal imbalance testing.

Testing for hormonal imbalance has its pros and cons. Among the advantages of testing for hormonal imbalance is that you would know at once whether you are afflicted by it or not. It is not invasive and it can easily tell you indicators about your health and fertility.

However, it also has disadvantages, which include the fact that blood tests can be inaccurate because of many different factors such as stress. Your doctor can also generalize the problem instead of using the results of the test to pinpoint what exactly is causing the hormonal imbalance. Also, hormonal imbalance testing is not exactly cheap.

For full version of this article, please visit “Pros and Cons of Hormone Imbalance Testing“.