If you’ve been frightened by the potential side effects of estrogen therapy to treat the symptoms of menopause, then perhaps progesterone is the answer.

The risk of stroke and cancer from estrogen replacement therapy has left women alone to deal with hot flashes and night sweats, often depriving them of sleep and daytime productivity.

Progesterone has been used in hormone replacement therapy to treat menopausal symptoms, but it is typically thought of as an add-on to estrogen therapy to help protect the uterus from abnormal thickening. It is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to for that use, and for abnormal menstrual bleeding symptoms.
A few studies have looked at whether progesterone alone can also help relieve menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes (also called hot flushes), but the findings have not been very promising.

It seems that women vary greatly in which therapy work best.

Consult your physician to find the best solution for your menopause symptoms.

For middle-aged women searching for a safe alternative to hormone therapy to prevent bone loss and ease the symptoms of menopause, they are in for another letdown.

The latest in a series of disappointing studies finds that soy supplements, an increasingly popular substitute for hormone therapy, do not stave off hot flashes, night sweats, and other uncomfortable menopausal symptoms.

Nor did the supplements reduce the aging-related bone loss that can lead to osteoporosis, the study found.

“Isoflavones, the plant-derived estrogens found in soy, are very weak estrogens, so it is not surprising that they have not shown to be as effective…as hormone therapy,” says the lead author of the study, Silvina Levis, MD, the director of the osteoporosis center at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

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