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Dr. Angela Stengler: The most common symptom women experience with menopause here in America, and what I see with patients first, are hot flashes. Certainly 75 to 90 percent of patients that come to my clinic have problems with hot flashes — it disrupts their activities during the day and makes it hard to sleep at night. Fatigue can be a common symptom associated with menopause. Certainly a lot of women get low libido with their menopause, and other systems of the body are affected, with hair loss or hair thinning, dry skin, and mood changes. Depression, anxiety, mood swings, irritability — these are the most common symptoms we see with women.
Host: So, Dr. Mark, if someone goes into their general doctor, they're going to be prescribed synthetic hormones. Let's first describe what those are before we go into the natural hormones.
Dr. Stengler: Right. Well, synthetic hormones are defined as a hormone which is not identical in structure and function to what the human body produces. And you already see the answer for what bioidentical hormones are — bioidentical, meaning identical to what the body produces. It's identical in its structure and in function. So it just makes logical sense: if you're going to use a hormone with a patient, in my estimation, you should use the same as what your body produces.
Up to 90% of menopause patients we see at the Stengler Center suffer hot flashes. It's a very common symptom. A lot of doctors out there would prescribe synthetic hormones to regulate and relieve symptoms. But synthetic hormones are exactly that -- synthetic. They are not the same as what your body produces. Bioidentical hormones, on the other hand, are identical to your body's hormones in structure and function. Bioidentical hormones are the logical choice for treating the most common symptoms of menopause. We discuss what those symptoms are, and a little more on bioidentical hormones, in this video. Are you suffering any of these menopause symptoms? If so, call the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine in San Diego!
