How To Manage Menopause

Professor Kerryn Phelps reveals her menopause journey and the latest advice on HRT, herbal medicines and other medications for relieving symptoms.

- Professor Kerryn Phelps

Imagine the moment I saw the films of my own lung scans placed up on the light box in the specialist’s office. Because of my years of experience as a doctor, I did not need to be told the result, or read it in a report.

Spontaneously and uncharacteristically, tears began to roll down my face. Blood clots. All through my lungs. Within minutes, an emergency trolley had arrived and I was surrounded by a team of intensivists and physicians, an oxygen mask appearing as a cannula was inserted into a vein in my arm. I remember feeling as though I was observing all the drama from a distance. It wasn’t really happening. This must be a mistake. The denial phase passed fairly rapidly as I was wheeled into the intensive care unit. The thoughts going through my mind bounced between sheer terror and a strange sort of faith in divine protection.

I was given two strong pieces of advice in the following days: exercise every day, no matter what. And when you get to menopause, you won’t be able to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT). As you can imagine, that led me on a path of looking for evidence for managing menopause when the time came. And when it did eventually come, it was a nightmare. I became my very own one-woman medical experiment.

HRT – the easy fix?

Until the early part of this century, managing menopause seemed like it had become a very easy prospect. Whether you had symptoms or not, you took hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Simple. Not only were we told that HRT would delay the ageing process and prevent hot flushes, but it would allegedly prevent heart disease, especially in smokers. It would prevent the onset of dementia. It would save the inconvenience and embarrassment of incontinence.