Menopause can be a difficult time for a woman. The symptoms that accompany menopause can make life nearly unbearable, which leads many women to seek medication to alleviate these symptoms. The problem is that most of the commonly recommended drugs for menopause are made with synthetic hormones that can pose a variety of dangers for the people taking them.

These discomforts include:

Bloating sexual dysfunction possibly cancer

The following is an explanation of symptoms associated with menopause, a summary of the dangers, and the various benefits of natural menopause treatments.

Menopause strikes most women between the ages of 48-55 and brings with it hot flashes, night sweats, problems urinating, and discomfort during sexual activity. While most of these symptoms are merely annoying, some of them create a major disruption in the lifestyle of the women who suffer from them. Hot flashes are the most common and are often accompanied by headaches, nausea and heart palpitations (irregular heartbeats).

The problem with using synthetic or man-made hormones to treat the symptoms of menopause is that the body does not recognize the artificial hormones and will not readily absorb and accept the hormones. In fact your body may activity work against these artificial hormones, which will cause more problems with your body. Common results from using the synthetic hormones include weight gain and water retention, discomfort during sex or lack of sex drive, and may be a contributing factor for some cases of breast, uterine or ovarian cancer. This is mainly due to the fact that the body does not recognize the artificial hormones.

Additionally, these synthetic hormones are only designed to deal with the specific symptom whether it is:

hot flashes water retention insomnia

Therefore regard for the entire body or potential side effects are disregarded in the desire of these companies to create a medication that will target and control one single (or possibly two or three) symptom.

If synthetic hormones are so dangerous for menopausal women, why then do the drug companies use them? Simply so they can obtain a patent through the FDA that will allow them to better market their drugs. The regulations of the FDA do not allow drug manufactures to get a patent on natural materials, so the companies must use artificial substances in the making of their medications. So for the good of the drug companies, the general public is lead to buy potentially harmful drugs containing man-made hormones.

The alternative to synthetic hormones is products containing natural hormones derived from plants that your body will recognize as natural and readily absorb the products. With natural hormones, many of the undesirable side effects are eliminated. Better yet, the natural hormones work to deal with a variety of symptoms of menopause, instead of just the few that synthetic treatments affect. Although you won't find FDA approval on natural treatments, you can find medical professionals and written reports of the benefits of naturally produced hormones on women dealing with symptoms of menopause.

About the Author

Richard Smart writes for Natural Health Products, Inc and online natural health company specializing in Hot Flash and Menopause Relief.