Oral Contraceptives: New Hormone Therapy for Perimenopausal Women

In the past, women who suddenly noticed a lack of menstrual migraines and skipped periods knew that there was a bodily change afoot. Similarly, women who underwent an endometrial ablation or vaginal hysterectomy and suddenly noticed that they experienced hot flashes, an overactive bladder, extreme mood swings and other perimenopausal symptoms understood that it was time for a blood workup at their doctor’s office. For others the change in the body’s chemistry snuck up unawares and instead of charting monthly periods as part of their fertility awareness program, they were suddenly brought face to face with the reality that premature ovarian failure induced menopause in them. Whatever the reason behind the menopausal symptoms might be, women then and now find themselves on the thresholds of a bodily change that is lengthy, far from unnoticeable, and at times downright uncomfortable.

While doctors in the past almost immediately resorted to hormone replacement therapy, the fact that these medicines received a lot of bad press in recent years had caused physicians to ease off considerably. Thus a new trend began to emerge when treating perimenopausal women for the hormonal imbalance symptoms that go hand in hand with diminishing levels of natural progesterone, natural testosterone and estrogen dominance: the use of oral contraceptives. At face value the use of oral contraceptives to not only alleviate the most frustrating symptoms that perimenopausal women have to deal with while also providing a safe method of birth control during early menopause appears to be a good idea, yet when further researching the matter, it becomes obvious that the side effects associated with oral contraceptives are serious enough to warrant a second look at this methodology.

When used with progesterone cream and in some cases also testosterone cream, perimenopausal women have found that hot flashes, sleeplessness, night sweats, irritability, and cognitive problems would diminish. Yet some women who also used questionable herbal extracts that featured black cohosh as well as a mix of hawthorn flower and elemental calcium to ensure a favorable bone density test result were made aware that side effects of the oral contraceptives were compounded. Blood clots, potential for stroke, and the very real danger of hypertension would rise sharply, while the risk of atypical bleeding and also increased breast cancer rates was also noted.

Eventually, menopausal women began looking elsewhere for help with their estrogen and progesterone deficiency symptoms, and once again natural remedies were favored. Yet instead of favoring the fad substances sold by the long list of compounding pharmacy outlets found online, perimenopausal women began looking for relief in places that provided safe, natural compounds. Thus far Hot Flash Freedom has found a great following of women who had enough acting as guinea pigs for oral contraceptive treatments that are not supervised or approved by the FDA and who are not willing to take the risk of using hormone replacement therapy to alleviate symptoms.