Every day in the United States, 6,000 women start their journey into menopause, which adds up to two million women each year. While each woman’s experience with this hormonal transition is unique, there are some common complaints that we tackle here.
Whether you’re trying to figure out how to handle night sweats or you want to find solutions for vaginal dryness, we’ve got you covered. Here at Tahoe Women’s Care, Dr. Gary Willen and the team help women through every stage of their reproductive health, from puberty all the way through menopause and beyond.
While menopause is nothing new and an inevitable part of the aging process, women no longer have to suffer this transition in silence. Today, there are more tools and tips than ever before for helping women to maintain their wellness through this often bumpy transition. Let’s take a look at a few of the therapies our patients appreciate most.
At the core of menopause is a loss of reproductive hormones — estrogen and progesterone — which occurs because your ovaries shut down and cease releasing eggs.
These hormones are mainly responsible for your reproductive health, which is why you can experience vaginal dryness, which affects more than half of women between the ages of 51 and 60. But estrogen and progesterone also influence other systems, causing symptoms that may include:
Depending on how many symptoms you’re experiencing and their severity, an effective systemic approach to offset the side effects of menopause is hormone replacement therapy. There are many ways to deliver HRT — pills, patches, pellets, creams — and we can work with you to figure out which method works best for your goals.
While vaginal dryness affects more than half of postmenopausal women, other changes can occur, such as thinning vaginal tissue and a shortening of your vagina, both of which can make sex uncomfortable.
To get your sex life back on track, we offer vaginal rejuvenation using an exciting laser technology called MonaLisa Touch. Treatments are pain-free and take only minutes. As your intimate tissues absorb the laser energy, it creates a call for collagen that can greatly improve your vaginal health.
If hot flashes and night sweats are your primary complaint, there are specific medications that can turn down the heat on this symptom.
So, if you don’t want to try hormone replacement therapy, we can prescribe drugs that tackle vasomotor symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats.
When you transition through menopause, your pelvic floor can weaken, which places you at greater risk for pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence. To avoid these serious complications of menopause, it’s important to keep your pelvic floor strong through Kegel exercises. Here’s a link to get you started on these easy strengthening exercises that you can do while you’re watching TV or driving your car.
Stress can impact your health at any stage of your life, but menopause is particularly tricky. The changes that come with menopause can lead to added stress, and many women who make the transition experience an uptick in anxiety levels.
To combat stress and anxiety, it’s important to do what you can to keep stress levels down, which can help with sleep issues, weight gain (no stress eating!), and even vasomotor symptoms like hot flashes, which respond to stress.
So, pick something that relaxes you — a walk, meditation, deep breathing exercises, listening to music — and carve out time during your day to relax and decompress.
Of course, there are plenty more tips that we can provide to help you make a smoother transition through menopause. For a personalized menopause management plan, we invite you to contact our office in Carson City, Nevada, to schedule an appointment.
