The Doctor Is In: Understanding and treating menopause

All right, the doctor's in. It is a condition that affects every woman at one point. Eventually, it doesn't get a lot of attention, but that is changing. And we do have to thank social media, I think, for that, right, doctor? Because it used to be we didn't even say the word menopause. Now we're talking about menopause real loud, too. Dr. Suzanne Archer and OB-GYN from Trinity Health IHA Medical Group is here. Doctor, thank you for being here. Thanks, Dana. Let's just recap. Last hour, we talked. It can start. There's three phases. and can start even in your 30s, the symptoms. And menopause, just define it for us real quick. Things just start happening, stop happening, I should say. Yeah, so it can start at the earliest age 35, but most women, it's in their early 40s that start perimenopause. And then menopause is defined as the final period after 12 consecutive months. And then after that, we have postmenopause. And it's your body, basically your ovaries stop making these two hormones. that are meant for, to have children, right? For reproduction. Yes. The lack of hormones affects you from cognitively, physically, you name it, spiritually, mentally, in every which way, right? The symptoms can be vast. Yes, I think the most common symptoms we see and that we want to treat and like to treat is the hot flashes, the night sweats, the sleep disturbances, what we call fragmented sleep, the mood changes that happen, those are probably the worst that women experience. And then there's a plethora of others, right, with estrogen receptors all over the body, so we see lots of other symptoms that women come in. And some people talk about a frozen shoulder, right? Yes, I was just doing that, you know, so. And it's something you wouldn't think, what's that have to do with my, you know, but it's all related. Doctor, one of the things I do want to point out, because I've even done this myself, is we all want a blood test. We all want to know what levels are my hormones right now and what do I need to do to boost them or what am I dealing with? And that's not really a super effective way to diagnose, right? Right, there is not a serum level that we're looking at. There's no saliva test that we're looking at, urine tests we're looking at. We treat the symptoms. We want women to come in and tell us what's happening. We want to listen to them and we want to help them. Okay, because the blood tests are just too up and down and variable. Okay, let's talk about treatments. And I mentioned in our last hour, I do do hormone replacement therapy. I have for years. And that has become the go-to treatment in recent times. Initially, it was said, yeah, don't do it. We were all afraid of it because of some bad research. But now, what is it doing for women? Yeah, I think it's talked about freely now in the sense, and we we use the new term menopausal hormone therapy instead of hormone replacement therapy oh okay yeah menopausal hormone therapy and i think we we know because of declining estrogen levels what is going to help it the most is estrogen we know that um we use progesterone to protect the uterus so anyone woman that has a uterus we need to do progesterone as well um women will also talk about you know declining testosterone levels that's a whole nother topic But with the estrogen levels changing, we know we have to treat women accordingly. And for me, so I wear a patch that gives me the estradiol, and then I take a little pill that gives me the progesterone. So that's my routine, just in case anyone's wondering. Okay, so that's become, is that the most popular treatment at this point? It is, and it's thought to be probably the safest as well, doing the transdermal route with the patch. There's also estrogen creams and gels that you can use, but the patch is the most common right now that we, so common that you can't get it. The pharmacies are struggling with it. We know that. We get the calls every day at our office, but it is what works best for women. Okay, and we only have 30 seconds left, so you've got the menopausal, what are we calling it, doctor? Hormonal therapy. Okay, so you've got that to talk to your doctor about. Antidepressants, if you don't want to do the hormones, that's also a route. Yep. And then you're going to say always pay attention to lifestyle, pay attention to stress, sleep, diet, exercise, all those things too, right? Absolutely. Yes. All right. I think we got it. The bottom line, ladies, is do not be suffering with these symptoms. It's a new day. And if you don't have a doctor that understands that, find a different doctor. Absolutely. Dr. Archer, thank you so much. We appreciate you.