Menopause Herbal Remedies for Hot Flashes
Are there menopause herbal remedies that work for hot flashes? Many women experience normally symptoms of menopause from the ages of 45 to 55. Hot flashes are a common symptom that occur when women experience a feeling of intense heat with sweating and rapid heartbeat. One hot flash may typically last from two to thirty minutes for each occurrence.
Symptoms of Menopause
The sensation of heat usually begins in the face or face and chest, although it may appear elsewhere such as the back of the neck, and it can spread throughout the whole body. If the effect is strong enough, some women may faint or pass out. In addition, skin of a woman’s face can become hot to the touch.
Many women experience unpredictable and uncomfortable episodes of hot flashes from a few times each week or constantly throughout the day. Hot flashes may begin to appear several years before menopause starts and last for years afterwards.
Some women undergoing menopause never have hot flashes. Others have mild or infrequent flashes. The worst sufferers experience dozens of hot flashes each day. In addition, hot flashes are often more frequent and more intense during hot weather or in an overheated room, the surrounding heat apparently making the hot flashes themselves both more probable and more severe.
Menopause remedies include a number of treatments, which include hormone replacement therapy, or taking drugs such as selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERM) or antidepressants of the selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRI) class.
Menopause herbal remedies can provide herbal relief. Dietary changes that include a higher consumption of phytoestrogens such as soy, red clover, ginseng, black cohosh and yam may relieve hot flashes. However, there are reports that using Black Cohosh can cause severe side effects of liver function.
Herbal therapy using Ginseng
There are very few good quality studies on the effect of ginseng for relief of menopausal symptoms. However, hundreds of years of anecdotal evidence exists using ginseng as part of tonics made by Chinese herbalists. In a large double-blinded randomized controlled trial, reduction in hot flashes was not statistically significant but showed a strong trend towards improvement.
Does St. John’s Wort Really Work?
St. John’s wort has long been used to treat symptoms of depression. There is ample evidence that the mechanism of action of this herb is similar to that of SSRIs. In a research pending publication, physicians presented a report at this year’s American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s Annual Clinical Meeting shows that Tao Formulations’s Harmony product relieves hot flashes in 83.5% of women with a 89.4% reduction in hot flash severity.
So keep your ears open. The first viable case of menopause herbal remedies may soon be available.
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Posted: September 25th, 2008 under Herbal Remedies.
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