While you may experience the misery of hot flashes and mood swings as you enter menopause, one thing you can’t blame on the “change” is memory loss.

In the latest study that exonerates menopause as a cause of impairing the ability to recall, Taiwanese researchers compared the memory of hundreds of women before they had any menopausal symptoms to their memory as they entered menopause.

They found the women who were going through the menopausal process scored as well or nearly as well on five different cognitive function tests. Results of the study are to be presented Oct. 4 at the American Neurological Association annual meeting in Toronto.

“When women go into perimenopause, they don’t need to worry about cognitive decline,” said Dr. Jong-Ling Fuh, an attending physician at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and an associate professor of Yang-Ming University School of Medicine.

The researchers said the myth of memory loss during menopause is a perception some women have because as they went through menopause, they felt their memory wasn’t as sharp as it had been before. Studies suggesting that hormone replacement therapy might protect against dementia strengthened that belief. However, a large study later found that in older women, hormone replacement therapy not only didn’t help protect women from dementia, but could actually increase the risk.

To try to answer the question of whether menopause did have any effect on memory, Fuh and her colleagues studied nearly 700 premenopausal women living on a group of rural islands between Taiwan and China. The Taiwanese government restricted access to these islands until the 1990s, so the authors report that the study’s population was nearly homogeneous, which would help rule out other potentially causative factors of memory loss.

The women were between the ages of 40 and 54. None of them had had a hysterectomy, and none took hormone replacement therapy during the study.

All took five cognitive tests designed to assess their memory and cognitive skills at the start of the study, and then again 18 months later.

During the study period, 23 percent of the women began to have symptoms of menopause.

The researchers then compared the memory of the women who had entered menopause to those who had not, and found very little difference. In four of the five tests, there were no statistically significant differences in the two groups of women.

Only on one test was the difference statistically significant, and that difference, said Fuh, was very slight. This test was designed to assess verbal memory and involved showing the women 70 nonsensical figures. Some of the figures were repeated during the test, while most were not. The women were asked whether they had seen the figure earlier.

“For women, menopause does not mean you’ll develop memory loss,” said Dr. Raina Ernstoff, an attending neurologist at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. As you’re going through perimenopause and experiencing symptoms like hot flashes, she said, you may feel lousy and have trouble sleeping, which might temporarily affect your cognitive skills.

“I don’t think declining estrogen levels are what causes memory loss,” said Dr. Steven Goldstein, an obstetrician/gynecologist at New York University Medical Center in New York City. “It’s not like your memory is bopping along, doing fine and then takes this big dive during menopause, like bone density can.”

Both Ernstoff and Goldstein said they weren’t aware of many women who believed that menopause might cause significant memory loss. They also both felt that results from this group of women who were so homogeneous might not apply to different groups of women, such as those living in more industrialized society. And they both said that other factors that weren’t studied could play a role in memory loss, such as hypertension, which can contribute to vascular dementia.

Nathen Aswell is owner of Herbal Products Inc.
with resource on Menozac Articles and Womens Health Products . For more information on visit Herbal Products Inc.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/women’s-health-articles/menopause-symptoms-and-memory-loss-984559.html

The menopause is something that all women go through. For most it occurs when they are in their late forties or early fifties but others can experience it in their thirties or even younger. Menopause basically means the end of menstruation or the date of your final period. It is actually defined as starting 12 months after your last period. There are different stages associated with the menopause perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause.

The transitional stage of the menopause is known as perimenopause and it usually begins a few years before the actual start of the menopause. The ovaries start to produce less estrogen when a woman reaches her forties and is in the perimenopause stage. This stage lasts about four years on average but can be as little as a few months or as long as ten years. Near the end of this stage when the estrogen levels start decreasing rapidly you start to see menopausal symptoms. These range from hot flashes and irregular periods to loss of sexual appetite and mood swings plus a whole host of others. When this stage is over the ovaries have stopped releasing eggs and the menopause begins.

The symptoms of menopause and hypothyroidism can be similar and so easily confused. A thyroid screening may be ordered by your doctor in order to to determine which condition is actually affecting you so be sure to discuss all symptoms with your doctor. When the symptoms of menopause start to wear off you may have increased risk of longer term health problems which are related to low estrogen and you may need to consult your doctor about managing your hormone levels.

HRT, or Hormone replacement Therapy to use the full name, is a very well known menopause treatment. It is used widely ad one of the benefits associated with it is that it is good for heart disease and osteoporosis. The downside to using HRT is that it carries an increased risk of getting Endometrial cancer, strokes and blood clots with it so not all women want to use it. The alternative is to opt for a more natural treatment such as Menozac which is a botanical remedy which contains many of the herbs known for their positive effect on menopausal symptoms.

Some of the ingredients which Menozac incorporates include Black Cohosh which has long been known for it’s ability to alleviate, symptoms related to the menopause, Soy which contains natural plant estrogens and Damaiana for relieving anxiety and helping to induce a state of relaxation. Damiana is believed to be very helpful to those women who are suffering from sexual anxieties and problems related to the menopause.

One last thing to consider is that just because you may be experiencing symptoms of the menopause, it does not mean that you cannot become pregnant. So if you are sexually active do continue with your birth control methods for at least twelve months after the menopause has started.