Most middle-aged women going through menopause are not receiving the proper treatment for their symptoms, a new study finds.
Menopause symptoms include hot flashes, mood swings, night sweats, fatigue, weight gain, hair loss/thinning, brain fog, insomnia, and more.
The large review found that most drug and natural treatments for menopause don’t work, according to DailyMail.com.
Menopause care costs U.S. employers over $27 billion a year, the study found.
The review analyzed over 200 studies going back 70 years. According to the review, most menopause treatments are bogus.
Just 15 percent of middle-aged women receive the proper treatment to alleviate their symptoms.
The average age of onset of menopause in the U.S. is mid-40s to early 50s. Symptoms usually begin during perimenopause.
Postmenopause — when a woman stops having periods and experiences hot flashes, vaginal dryness and low sex drive — lasts for the rest of a woman’s life.
The study authors found that herbal supplements such as Black Cohosh and licorice root don’t work at all to relieve symptoms.
The researchers found that SSRI antidepressants like Citalopram, Fluoxetine, and Paroxetine reduced symptoms by 25 to 70 percent.
But women who took antidepressants experienced many side effects, including nausea, insomnia, dry mouth, sexual dysfunction, headache, high blood pressure, constipation, and dizziness.
The study doesn’t mention hormone replacement therapy (HRT) which is very effective at alleviating symptoms.
“The road to menopause is not difficult for all, but for some, symptoms may be severe or even disabling and disruptive to work and family,” the researchers wrote.
“Recognition that menopause, for most women, is a natural biological event, does not exempt the use of interventions to alleviate symptoms. Despite decades of research pertaining to menopause, more work is needed.”
