Homeopathy is Safe & Effective for Menopausal Complaints

Homeopathy pays the greatest attention to the precise symptom-picture and personality portrait of each individual presenting with menopausal symptoms and concerns, while evaluating every woman’s likes and dislikes, emotional and psychological patterns, sensibilities and sensitivities in the process.

Many women who expect menopause to set in at an accepted point of time are caught on the wrong foot. They may not, for the most part, become aware of certain subtle changes happening inside their bodies all through as they wait for the classic symptoms of menopause, or complete cessation of the menstrual cycle, to occur.

Nature is an extraordinary mechanism. For a woman, her last periods are usually presaged by an extended phase of changeover. This can begin in one’s late 30s, extend up until one’s late 40s, varying from 2-10 years, or longer, before the final onset of menopause. This confusing or misconstrued, long-drawn out switch over stage in a woman’s life, at times, is called perimenopause. Ironically, however, the arrival of perimenopause for a woman heralds the process of regaining one’s individual authority, following a phase of self-doubt.

Cumulative Effect

From time immemorial, cultural dogmas have prompted every generation to believe that a woman’s mood swings before menopause are consequences of emotional spikes or variations. The fact, in medical terms, is just the opposite.

Research evidences that repetitive stress, moody blues, bringing up children, job pressures or job loss, or any life concern, can activate a glut of hormonal changes in the brain and body. All of these have a cumulative effect on the perimenopausal hormonal divergence - perhaps, much more than cultural beliefs. It is also a fact of life that all aching symptoms get amplified before menopause - more so, when a woman is stuffed, or overburdened, with excess emotional baggage. This can lead to a state of denial too - that what she’s going through can’t be menopause yet.

Forty-eight-year-old Mita, a dynamic company executive, presented with hot flashes and excess overnight sweating, which literally soaked her bed and pillows. She seemed the worrying type with anticipatory anxiety. When we asked about her periods, she said that they were, more or less, regular and consistent.

When we began to record her case in detail, she admitted that lately she had not been feeling the same person any more - for a fitness freak, she had added more than a padding of fat to her waist. She would get upset at small things at home and at work. She felt that for no real reason, she had started to look at people, who she’d known for years, in a different light.

Her husband confirmed this when he told us, “For a loving person, Mita seems to be becoming someone distant and even aloof. She is not as affectionate as she was to me and our two children as before.”

Oestrogen Dominance

During case-analysis, we explained to Mita that certain bodily and hormonal changes begin at perimenopause. This could include a slow but sure decline in progesterone, although oestrogen remains more or less the same, or may markedly increase. The latter often leads to what is called as ‘oestrogen dominance,’ bringing on symptoms such as bloating (water retention, leading to weight gain around the waist), irregular periods, diminished sex drive, mood swings and ‘migraine-type’ headaches before periods, which Mita complained of, albeit in passing.

Nature has fabricated a woman’s physiology so marvellously that the body endeavours to counterbalance the resultant oestrogen surplus during perimenopause.

It is, therefore, a travesty that when women report symptoms of oestrogen overload, conventional (allopathic) medicine prescribes more oestrogen. The effect is counterproductive: what were mild symptoms earlier only get worse.

Homeopathy with Homeopathy

Homeopathy is mind-body medicine. It looks not merely at a given illness nor does it catalogue our body as a collection of parts. Instead, it looks at the sum of the parts as one whole. In other words, homeopathy treats our mind, body and soul. Not just the complaint or illness state.

Homeopathy pays the greatest attention to the precise symptom-picture and personality portrait of each individual - in this context, Mita presenting with menopausal symptoms and concerns. In order to treat, it evaluates every woman’s likes and dislikes, emotional and psychological patterns, sensibilities and sensitivities.

This includes their family and medical history, such as age of menarche (first menstrual cycle), age of onset of symptoms, sudden or gradual menstrual problems, pregnancy, change in weight, environment, occupation and lifestyle. In addition, specific symptoms such as moods, or hot flushes - what makes them better or worse, when, or at what time do they occur and so on, besides eliciting information on the use of conventional or other medications, including oral contraceptive pills.

Homeopathy also understands that each of us is unique. Hence, we present with certain characteristic, or distinctive, patterns of any given illness that are as personalised as our own distinguishing autograph, or signature.

We prescribed Mita, the homeopathic remedy, which is primarily linked to the female sexual and reproductive organs - vagina, uterus and ovaries. From the emotional context, women who show the ‘remedy-picture’ are all by themselves. They are aggressive to the point of being intimidating or even aloof to those closest to them, like family and children. They appreciate life’s natural rhythms but possess the detachment to let go, even if they ‘let go’ of hurt with difficulty. They may forgive but they will never forget.

When Mita came for one of her follow-up visits four months later, her hot flashes and sweats had eased considerably. She was sleeping well and looked much more relaxed than she was before. Her snappy mood swings were also much better; she said that she was now accepting of certain unresolved emotional issues. She reported that her angst - ‘not being what she was before’ - wasn’t as intense as it was earlier in her relationships with her family, friends and colleagues.

This is how homeopathy works, subtly, and from deep within to correct observable or non-observable bodily and emotional imbalances and restore harmony effectively and without side-effects.