Hormone therapy can offer a lot of good, but it comes with risks, like increased rates of dementia and some cancers.
Going through menopause isn’t like taking a meandering train ride through the mountains, back home. If that train is hot, and then cold, and then hot again, has a dry vagina and also displays on-the-whole irritable without warning, OK, maybe. But in many people’s experience, train rides are a great time to catch up on lost sleep and menopause isn’t.
Taking hormone therapy might be something you’re considering, as you approach or live through menopause. It can reduce your symptoms overall as well as things like your chances of fracturing a hip, if you happen to fall and reduce the risk of developing breast cancer.
Hormone replacement therapy doesn’t come without its pitfalls, though. According to the National Cancer Institute, it depends on whether you’re going to simply take estrogen on its own, or in combination with progestin.
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In studies conducted on the issue, postmenopausal women age 65 and older who took estrogen plus progestin sadly doubled their risk of developing dementia.
Women who have a uterus have experienced an increased risk of developing endometrial cancer, urinary incontinence, and breast cancer, and of having a stroke, blood clots and a heart attack.
These risks don’t mean that every patient who starts hormone therapy will experience all these drawbacks. Hormone therapy used to be prescribed routinely to women going through menopause as a way to protect their body as it aged.
The risks associated with the therapy were discovered in studies completed some time later, and the results led doctors to stop prescribing the drugs regularly.
Talk to your doctor about what could be best for you. Click here for more information.
