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Minkin MJ
Menopause: Hormones, Lifestyle, and Optimizing Aging
This paper outlines the key benefits and risk factors for hormone therapy and what our health practitioners should know.
Why Does Herstasis Love This Paper?
Because it’s easy to read and has loads of useful information about symptoms and therapies.
- Provides a great and thorough overview of multiple symptoms, includes information on typical age of menopause onset and typical length of symptom experience.
- The target audience is women experiencing menopausal transition, plus their clinicians – aiming to educate everyone on the current state of menopause management for both symptomatic and asymptomatic women.
- Digs into current research on Hormone Therapy (HT) to provide an accurate, up-to-date understanding of the health implications of HT.
Abstract
This is a review article intended to give guidance on multiple symptoms including uro-vaginal symptoms, hot flashes, mood swings and cognitive symptoms (among others), and how to manage them. It details basic clinical guidelines for the different types of HT and highlights benefits as well as major and minor health risks associated with them.
The paper is aimed at both perimenopausal women and their clinicians. Twenty percent of women have no symptoms of menopause, while 20% have severe symptoms. The average age of menopause is 51.5 years in the US. The classic symptoms of perimenopause are hot flashes (usually early in perimenopause) and vaginal and urinary system symptoms (usually later in perimenopause). Most women and most healthcare providers do not recognize non-classic symptoms such as achiness or changes in skin and hair.
Hormone therapy for perimenopausal symptoms was introduced in 1942 and estrogen was considered a ‘vital substance’ for all women by the 1960s. In 2002 negative findings from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study caused the use of HT for menopausal women to decline by 80%, despite the fact that the WHI study was NOT looking at HT for symptom management, rather for its impact on cardiovascular disease in post-menopausal women which was found to be negative. As such, this paper brings together the current state of knowledge on HT to correct the bias against HT that is prevalent amongst clinicians.
Keywords
- Vasomotor symptoms
- Genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM)
Citation
Minkin MJ. Menopause: Hormones, Lifestyle, and Optimizing Aging. Obstet Gynecol Clin North Am. 2019 Sep;46(3):501-514. doi: 10.1016/j.ogc.2019.04.008. Epub 2019 Jun 21. PMID: 31378291.
Summary
- The possible underlying causes of many perimenopausal symptoms.
- The broad range of HT options available and how they can be used.
- The key benefits and risk factors for HT (e.g. what can and cannot be used by women with different types of cancers)
- What our health care providers should know about perimenopause in order to provide good care for women.
- Explores the classic perimenopausal symptoms caused by variable levels of estrogen as well as other symptoms that may be affected by aging as well as perimenopause (such as decreased libido and weight gain).
- Management of those symptoms via HT or other means.
- Summarizes the recommendations of the hormone therapy position statement of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) (menopause.org), considered to be the most comprehensive and current summary of HT in all its forms.
- The author, Mary Jane Minkin, is a medical doctor (MD) with a private practice for over 40 years. She is also a clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale University School of Medicine.
- The journal, Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America, is a reputable journal started in 1987.
- It has a Cite Score of 4.7, ranking it 37th out of 176 comparable journals in the 79th percentile. (Note: this is pretty good!)
Related Symptoms & Therapies
About The Author
The author, Mary Jane Minkin, is a medical doctor (MD) with a private practice for over 40 years. She is also a clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale University School of Medicine.
About The Source
The journal, Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America, is a reputable journal started in 1987. It has a Cite Score of 4.7, ranking it 37th out of 176 comparable journals in the 79th percentile. (Note: this is pretty good!)
