Bioidentical Hormones for Menopause T...

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.