Ladies...I need advice from fellow females

Hot flashes. How do you control them without HRT. I would prefer a natural alternative for hormone replacement and also a good calcium supplement.

Aunt Minnie Pause has finally made her arrival. :-(

It sucks to have cold feet and hot flashes at the same time.

In any of its forms.

not takin' hrt. i know some people have it worse than me, but i have survived so far. (although it is a little warm in here right now) the first couple of cycles were the worst. they have gotten milder and farther apart with each cycle. i have been wondering if this isn't why a lot of women swear by whatever remedy they are using. this too shall pass.

:bounce:

group in the meeting room or something. I refuse hrt, refused before it was found to be bad. My hot flashes were pretty bad for a while but eased off on their own. Now if everything else would stop I would be very happy. I just figure this is what is meant to happen to my body so I let it happen but I do agree, if something can be found to help we should all at least have the knowledge because hot flashes are not fun.

My mom refused hormones. She had two solutions.

She used one of those creams with natural estrogen-like substances in them. I want to say it was made from yams or something like that. They have that kind of thing at most health-food stores.

Her other solution - "If I'm having a hot flash and it's winter, I go open the front door and stand in front of it. If it's summer, I go open the refrigerator door and stand in front of it." :)

My mom is a little weird.

You've made it to the age of liberation! I started the big M when I was 40. The doctor told me to try to get through without medication and I did and now I'm very grateful for his good advice. I had a hot flash an hour at the beginning. I dealt with it by trying to control my environment...no heavy clothes, no heavy blankets at night, a good big glass of cold water. That worked for me and they do get less and less. Some of the herbs may be good but I really believe that much of this is your attitude. If you think the world has ended, it will be difficult. If you see this as a door to a new phase of your life...one without worries about pregnancy, PMS and the like, then you will probably do ok without medication. My only caveat would be that if your sleep is really disturbed by this, go see a doc and see what might work short of HRT. Good luck! :-)

I've done the soy and it isnt right for everyone. I've had excellent results with black cohosh, women in europe have been using for years and years. Go to health food store and you have a choice, soy or black cohosh, either one should be under $9 for a month or so

I always have a friend that swears by the wal mart (I hate walmart by the way) brand, its about $5.

The remifen brand is black cohosh as well.

How do you take it? I was thinking about one of those natural supplements that have soy in it. I want the estrogen to keep pumping as long as possible. I know oriental women who have had great success
taking soy.

You are in Florida, right?

I got some Cohosh at Publix for under $9 and it's lasting me well over a month. 'Course, I've been treading this track for about seven years.

no harmones, no doctors messing about.

you sweat

you can feel it coming and it rolls over you (like you can feel milk coming into your breasts without the heat)

I kept hand fans in the car, in the bed, everyplace. joked I had fanner's forearm.

and then one day it was over. wonderful!

I lived in South Florida at the time and I could have thought it was the heat.

and I think that's it

So far, all I've noticed have been occasional hot flashes. I feel them come on, I sweat, and they go away. They haven't been bad enough to talk to a doc about. They happen in the evenings so I try to avoid drinking anything hot and I always dress in layers so I can remove some.

Good luck! :)

This is important and if it happened to guys, this thread would be No#1 for years! :-)

There'd be a cure. it would be cheap. It would be available everywhere.

there may be things that can be used to alleviate some symtoms but it is a natural event in women's lives the world over.

"The Wisdom of Menopause" by Dr. Christine Northrup.

I cant do the HRT and I can't do the soy or herbal stuff (something about this darn chronic fibrocystic condition), so I heard this doctor on PBS and went out and bought her book.

I am liberated! The worse thing about hot flashes to me, is having them in public! Fortunately that doesn't happen much.

Plus, I'm dating a gentleman and when we have a glass of red wine, I feel it coming on. It's like having a heater on your face. I do tell him I'm having a power surge which he thinks is hilarious since he's the manager of the utility company here.

Mine were so bad I was getting under two hours of sleep a night. At the end of two weeks I though I was going to go crazy from the lack of sleep!

So, I'm not a woman. Shoot me.

That's what you want, isn't it??? :hi:

but I was preemptive with soy products (part of being a more-or-less vegetarian for years and years) and had not one single hot flash or any other problem.

So maybe that can help younger women avoid future problems...or maybe I was just lucky. :shrug:

High doses, like 1000-1200 mg a day. It will take several weeks, IF it's going to work, so give it 2-3 months.

I get insomnia.

So far, I'm using those plant-based estrogen and progesterone creams. I ate and drank lots of soy products until about two years ago, but I must have overdone them, because I became sensitive to them. I'm back to the point where I can tolerate the amount in a bowl of miso soup, but the days when I used to eat firm tofu as a snack or make tall soy smoothies are gone.

...a cereal made by General Mills with flax seed? I was raised on this; ate it before I could read the label. It has 10 grams of fiber per serving. I love it!

I know this is rather off the subject, but if flax seed helps, then this cereal may be helping me do this change of life thing naturally.

It is sometimes hard to find, but lately I've seen it in every grocery store.

The label states it is a laxative cereal, which I think may be a real turn off to an inquisitive shopper.

www.power-surge.com

It is a sight by women for women and they have an excellent library of articles and transcripts on every type of peri/meno symptom.

They also have a gret discussion board where you can find out what other gals are doing for their problems.

I thought I was the only gal with a flashing vagina, hot flashes so bad they were almost constant and triggering panic attacks, a weird premenstrual pain in my left leg, and miserable depression.

Surprise! I'm not. :)

I tried natural, didn't want hormones, so I am on a Clonidine patch for the anxiety and Celexa for the hot flashes and depression. I was very reluctant and sceptical at first, but I'll be darned if they don't work.

Don't drink alcohol. Those are the only things that have helped me. I'm 35, but I've been dealing with this for a year. There's something wrong with my hormones.

Sometimes I feel like I alone could be contributing to global warming. :shrug:

we could heat a building!

I tried the soy products and black cohosh because I thought they might prevent symptoms, but both supplements made me feel creepy inside -- kind of like the time I tried magnets for carpal tunnel.

I didn't have but a half-dozen mild hot flashes. What "Aunt Minnie Pause" did for me was to ruin my figure. In my younger days I never imagined having no waist and a huge barrel gut. Oh, and stick-straight legs. (I'll have to look up advice for this problem on the power-surge site.)

I got my first hot flash the day Pappa George invaded Panama. (Called in late to work that day and all the women understood.) I swear it lasted until the beginning of Operation Desert Storm.

I hugged my wall-banger air conditioner for three f*cking years!

Since then I've moved to central air conditioning and ceiling fans. I also discovered Black Cohosh. My hot flashes are normal now, whatever that means. They are coming few and far between. If I take the Black Cohosh capsules every day, they don't even come to visit. If I don't, they won't last long enough for me to digest the capsules.

I've taken dolomite and bone meal as a calcium supplement when I wanted the calcium to bind with Strontium-90 wafting in the air where I worked. Now that the only radiation I get is from the sun (that causes other problems), I'm using oyster shell calcium. Make sure you get enough other vitamins and minerals to make sure your body can make the most of the calcium you ingest. There's an "M" mineral you need for optimum absorption. Manganese? Magnesium? I make sure I get both - along with a vitamin D supplement since I'm not only allergic to milk products, but also to ultra-violet light.

Things'll get better.

Only lasted less than a year. I did birth control pills to help get me through it. I have enough problems in my life with an autistic child to put myself through more suffering and sleeplessness. It is much less now, very manageable.

She had uterine cancer and a radical hysterectomy 4 years at 50 (hadn't reached menopause on her own by then as women in my family tend to keep going until closer to 60). She eats a very healthy diet and has had very little hot flash problems. (Cancer's stayed in remission as well.)

I was having a horrible time with hot flashes till I decaffeinated myself over Thanksgiving. I had a killer headache for three solid days, then I felt great.

After a while, I realized my hot flashes had pretty much gone away. What a relief. Of course I have the thermostat set at 62 degrees and I still wake up hot at night, but at least I'm not having that horrible hot flush moving up to the top of my head feeling.

:kick:

go to www.powersurge.com for more info and a great community.