Demystifying Menopause

(CBS)  Menopause, while daunting, isn't necessarily as bad as many women may have heard it is, according to two experts on The Early Show Wednesday.

Dr. Michelle P. Warren, Medical Director of the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders and Women's Health at Columbia University Medical Center, and More magazine Editor in Chief Peggy Northrop, sought to dispel, and confirm, common notions about the midlife change for women.

In The Early Show's "Reaching for More" series, co-anchor Rene Syler says she's among the women who've heard mostly bad things about menopause, with night sweats, hot flashes, low sex drive, and weight gain among the symptoms it can cause.

"The good part is most women say they feel way less anxious, much more self-confident," Northrop says. "Your brain is still developing, and that kind of emotional maturity, a lot of women talk about this as incredibly creative, wonderful time in their lives. So, it's certainly not all bad."

Warren says 50 is the average age of the onset of menopause, "plus or minus one or two years. … Around age 45 to 47 is when you start experiencing some of the changes, which include moodiness and irregular periods, sometimes hot flashes and night sweats."

One problem most women may not be aware of isn't physical at all, Warren says. It's that there simply isn't much taught about menopause in medical school.

"You get about one lecture in medical school and maybe one lecture if you're lucky after that," she says. "That's a problem for women. You have to go to a doctor who's 'menopause-friendly.' Those are doctors who have gotten some training after they finished their traditional training."

Syler wanted to know is weight-gain was a certainty.

"No," Warren says. "Actually, if you're on hormones, you're apt to gain less weight. That's a very interesting thing that they've just published, that you can attenuate the weight-gain that occurs after menopause by taking low doses of hormone."

What about a decreased sex drive?

"There is loss of libido," Warren says. "It's very individualized and related to the loss of hormones. Some women suffer from it more acutely than others. The estrogen lack leads to it, but also low testosterone in some women can lead to that."

So should women go on hormone replacement therapy?

"The answer," Warren says, "isn't yes or no. But if you're symptomatic, the answer is probably definitely yes for most women, because that's the best way to treat the symptoms."

Exercise is important during menopause, Northrop stresses.

"We have to get serious. … You need to change what you do," she says. "If you've been doing mostly cardio, you have to add strength training because bone loss is an issue for women. You really do have to get serious about that. You also have to do a little bit more of everything.

"You're not going to get rid of what Dr. Pamela Peak calls the 'meno-pot.' Learn to love it because it never goes completely away. Even marathoners apparently will have it. But you can really mitigate the effects of that."

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