If your secondary amenorrhea has been going on for more than one year already, then you are likely to have entered menopause.
Traditionally, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been recommended as an effective treatment for hot flushes resulting from reduced hormone levels as a result of the menopause. This is usually a temporary treatment as for most patients, these hot flushes will tend to resolve over time and will not require further treatment.
As HRT has been associated with the increased risk of developing breast cancer especially with its long term use, increasingly more patients are beginning to be adverse to taking HRT. Other treatment modalities which have been tried and shown to work to a certain extent (the effects vary from patient to patient) include:
- lifestyle changes (meditation, yoga, relaxation and breathing techniques, acupuncture),
- natural herbal remedies,
- evening primrose oil,
- black cohosh,
- vitamin E,
- phytoestrogens,
- and foods rich in soy (plant-derived oestrogen).
For these alternatives to HRT, there is no one treatment that works for everyone and it is pretty much a trial and error for most women.
