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?Hormonal Changes-Can these Really Contribute to Cancer in Menopausal Women?

All women go through menopause at some point in their lives. For health women with no medical problems, she can expect to begin menopause around the age of 50. However, this can vary a great deal and start as early as 35 or 40. In addition, women that have had surgery to remove her ovaries and uterus can go into menopause at any time after the surgery. There is much talk about whether or not changes in a woman’s hormones during this time can contribute to cancer in menopausal women. Some believe that it does, while others believe that it there is no correlation. However, most doctors will argue that while older women going through menopause do have increased risk of cancer due to age, it is not related to changes in hormone levels.

Menopause is a time in a woman’s life when her ovaries stop producing eggs and her periods become irregular and eventually stop. It does not happen suddenly. Rather, it happens gradually over a period of about one to two years of time. The body has a marked decrease in hormones and estrogen and progesterone. Some women choose to face menopause naturally, without the use of prescriptions or hormone drugs. Other women feel that the symptoms are so severe, that they need help by taking prescription medications. Medications can help a women deal with no-so-pleasant side effects that are often associated with menopause. Not all women do well with these medications, but most women do feel that they help.

Menopause certainly has side effects. They can be debilitating to some women. These side effects include everything from night sweats, to fatigue, to decrease sexual drive to hot flashes. Most women going through menopause also report vaginal dryness, an inability to sleep at night and mood swings. Menopause can certainly affect a woman’s ability to function on a daily basis and mood swings can affect her relationships with her loved ones and co-workers. It is definitely not a fun time in a woman’s life.

However, the question still remains, do the changes in hormones during menopause led to cancer or an increased risk of cancer? Most doctors and researchers say no. Menopause is not considered a risk factor for cancer. Instead, what happens is that age is a risk factor. As a person gets older, he or she does indeed have an increased risk for various types of cancer. This means that because menopause happens to women in her 50s, then she is older and therefore, has an increased risk of cancer. Besides cancer, getting older also gives a woman an increased risk for osteoporosis, arthritis and a whole host of other medical problems.

So, the age that a woman starts menopause does increase or affect her cancers for cancer, but not all types of cancer. When a woman starts menopause later, generally considered after the age of 55, and if she started her periods earlier than normal, she does have an increased risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer. However, it is not menopause that is causing the increased risk. Instead, both breast and uterine cancers are increased by increased exposure to estrogen. So it would make sense that these women, who have experienced menstrual cycles longer than a normal woman, would have an increase exposure to estrogen, causing her risks of cancer to increase.

In addition, ovarian cancer is directly related to the number of times that a woman ovulates. So, if a woman has more periods because they started their period years earlier than most other women, or started menopause much later, then she has ovulated many more times than most women. She now is at an increased risk of ovarian cancer. Again, this is not caused by hormone changes or menopause. It is simply her own risk factors.

So, for the most part, doctors and researchers do believe that women are not at an increased risk for cancer because of menopause or hormone changes. Instead, each woman has risk factors based on family history, age of menstruation and menopause and medical history. The risk of cancer has little to do with menopause or hormone changes. This is good news, because all women experience menopause either naturally or because of surgery.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 2:32 am and is filed under Arthritis Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.