Hot flashes, night sweats, bone loss, vaginal dryness — these are just some of the unwelcome side effects of the journey through menopause. It used to be that women simply gritted their teeth and soldiered through, but, thanks to hormone replacement therapy, life during and after menopause can be far more pleasant.
If your transition through menopause is fraught with serious quality-of-life issues, Dr. Scott Lafferty and the team here at Lafferty Family Care are pleased to not only offer hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but also bioidentical hormone pellets that are a breeze to use.
Here’s how this innovative approach to hormone replacement works.
The transition through menopause is fueled by one event — the shutting down of your ovaries — which signals the end of your reproductive years. Not only will your ovaries no longer release eggs, they won’t produce any more estrogen hormones, and this sudden drop can leave you with considerable side effects.
Among the more common symptoms, 75% of women experience hot flashes and night sweats as they transition through menopause and beyond. Another common side effect is vaginal dryness, which affects about half of postmenopausal women.
Whatever you’re faced with, the odds are good that HRT can offset some of these changes by restoring your reproductive hormone levels.
HRT is not new, and we’ve been replacing hormones for decades, usually in pill form. These days, however, we can deliver hormones in multiple ways, including patches, injections, and pellets.
If you want to restore your hormone levels with the least amount of hassle, bioidentical pellets may be the perfect solution. With this option, we use pellets with hormones that are chemically identical to your natural ones, and we insert them just under your skin. The pellets slowly release the bioidentical hormones into your body.
With this form of HRT, you don’t have to worry about pills or messy vaginal creams. Instead, the pellets keep your hormone levels balanced, day after day, for about four months, at which point you return for another insertion.
With bioidentical HRT pellets, we tailor the hormone levels to your needs, so we start with a blood test. Once we determine your existing hormone levels, we choose the correct dosage for your pellets, which include estrogen as well as testosterone. And we may supplement this with oral progesterone.
We place the pellets just under your skin, usually in your hip or upper buttock area. We first apply a topical anesthetic, and then we quickly insert the pellets and place tape over the tiny incision.
For the first 72 hours, we ask that you avoid baths and any heavy lifting or squatting to allow time for the pellets to settle in. After three days, you’re free to get back to your normal routine.
After your first insertion, we may test your hormone levels at the six-week mark to make sure that they're within the desired range. We generally only do this for the first round.
If you’re pleased with your results after four months, we insert a new set of pellets. If you’re encountering any issues, we can adjust your HRT to find a dosage that works best for your symptoms.
For more information about how our bioidentical hormone replacement pellets work, please feel free to contact our office in Bentonville, Arkansas.
