Yoga of Menopause - Alternatives to Hormone Therapy

Stroke and heart attack are actually increased by use of ERT/HRT, though modern medicine has long proclaimed the opposite. Every major double-blind study done to date has created a larger and larger gap between ERT/HRT's supposed ability to help cardiovascular health and its actual results. Protect your heart with nourishing and tonifying herbs and foods such as motherwort, hawthorn, and cherries.

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) tincture helps the heart. The Japanese claim it is their secret of longevity. A dose is 5-15 drops, twice a day. Motherwort also relieves hot flashes, calms tachycardiia, and eases anxiety. It's an all-in-one remedy for menopausal women.

Hawthorn (Crataegus oxycantha) flowers, leaves, and fruits are all used to maintain heart health and control fluid build-up in heart tissues. A dose is 20- 30 drops of tincture 2-4 times a day, or a cup of tea with meals. This widespread shrub is considered one of the finest heart tonics in the world.

Cherries are even better than apples at keeping the doctor away. Dried cherries and cherry juice, even tincture of cherries.

More than three-quarters of the women in America over the age of fifty have refused ERT/HRT. If you want to join them, taper off your dosage slowly, while continuing to use nourishing and tonifying herbs such as dandelion, motherwort, red clover, oatstraw, and seaweed.

THERE ARE MANY TYPES OF ESTROGENS

• Women make estrogens.
  
• Plants make estrogens and estrogen-like compounds.
  
• Chemicals, especially organochlorines, act like estrogens (xenoestrogens).

Pharmaceutical companies make estrogens from substances such as horse urine, wild yam roots, and petrochemicals. Tamoxifen, used to treat and prevent breast cancer, is a type of pharmaceutical estrogen.

Women make at least thirty types of estrogen, including estradiol, estrone, and estrace. Estradiol is the strongest; it is turned on at puberty and turned off at menopause. Estradiol is positively linked with breast cancer; other human estrogens are not. Anything that reduces the amount of estradiol a woman produces (such as pregnancy, lactation, early menopause, and late puberty) also decreases her risk of a breast cancer diagnosis.

Phytoestrogens counter the detrimental effects of estradiol by competing for the same receptor sites.

Estradiol is a strong estrogen and is metabolized by the long path. The other estrogens our bodies make are weak estrogens and are metabolized by the short path. Alcohol turns off the short path. Phytoestrogens are weak

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