Every woman goes through menopause differently and treatments vary based on symptoms.

In general, menopause is the transitional change in a woman's life where she moves beyond her childbearing years and is no longer concerned with her menstrual cycle or the possibilities of getting pregnant. Many misconceptions abound about this transition including that everybody has unpleasant symptoms including night sweats and hot flashes, mood swings, vaginal dryness, sagging breasts, and weight gain.

Because menopause is a natural part of a woman's life, experts agree that treatment may be unnecessary since many women fail to have any menopausal symptoms. However, experts say that some women do have disabling symptoms that affect the quality of their lives.

Therefore, the ultimate goal is to find the best and safest treatment for highly symptomatic women. But in 2002, the Women's Health Initiative found evidence that hormone replacement (estrogen-alone or estrogen- plus-progestin), used for years as the most effective treatment for menopausal side effects, was unsafe because long-term use increased the risk for certain diseases and/or cancers. The FDA now recommends that these therapies be used in the lowest dosage and for the shortest duration possible - if at all. Now many people are turning to alternative or so called "natural" treatments, but because of the lack of research on their effectiveness and safety, they should only be used if your health practitioner's feels it would be beneficial.

A panel of experts concluded during a three-day "state-of-the-science" conference on menopause held in March 2005 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland, that treatment options for menopause are ambiguous, many more clinical trials need to be conducted and that much more needs to be learned about this transitional period in a woman's life. However, federal spending on research is down and these studies are very expensive to undertake.

Because there is no longer an all-or-none approach to treating menopause, experts agree that it is important to give women a choice of treatment options along with the possibles risks and benefits of each.

Source: American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.