Hormone Patch Found to be Safer than Pills for Menopause

Thursday, September 6, 2007

A recent study shows that women who struggle from the symptoms of menopause should use a hormone patch or gel before resorting to pills in order to protect themselves from the dangerous blood clots.
Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said, “The French study, while not the final word, is the strongest proof yet that this may be true.”
The French study compared Wyeth’s Prempro and Premarin, which contain synthetic estrogens made from the urine of pregnant horses. Two hundred and seventy-one women from forty-five to seventy years old suffered blood clots while on the patch compared to six hundred and ten women taking hormone pills.
Dr. Karen Bradshaw, director of women’s health and an endocrinology specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center said, “Part of the reason we think oral estrogens do cause clots is that they pass through the liver and can cause some clotting factors to be produced, hormones through skin patches are directly absorbed into the bloodstream, and therefore can be given in far lower doses to be effective.”
This comes as a sigh of relief to the millions of women that experience painful menopause symptoms who abandoned the medication after a 2002 review which stated that hormone pills increased the risk of blood clots, as well as breast cancer and stroke. Patches and gels are already known to an affective means to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and sleep-interrupting night sweats that plague menopausal women.
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NLP and CBT Can Help You Be Free From Agoraphobia
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is considered to be extremely effective in helping people to overcome panic disorders, and this can usually be achieved within 8 sessions. I use CBT at my practice in Hertfordshire and have found it very useful in treating agoraphobia, particularly when used in conjunction with a newer cognitive therapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). This article details some of the ways in which CBT and NLP are used during NLP Herts to help clients achieve freedom from agoraphobia.
1. Cognitive Therapy – At NLP and CBT Herts, people are supported to identify and change the distorted thinking patterns that maintain anxiety. Behind panic attacks and anxiety are negative thoughts. These thoughts alone cannot cause anxiety, but the belief that they are true does cause anxiety. The therapist works with the client to reduce belief in such thoughts, this in turn reduces anxiety.
2. Behavioural Therapy – This involves desensitizing your anxiety through gradual exposure to your feared situations. The therapist offers practical support and activities may be carried out in the community, during these sessions.
3. Learning cognitive techniques to beat your panic – clients that come for NLP and CBT Herts are taught specific techniques that can be used and that must be practiced in between sessions. The challenge is using these techniques during times when you are experiencing panic and clients are supported to become competent at this. Of course, once clients are competent they become panic free!

4. Practising – You will get out of therapy what you put in and mastering your panic will involve you carrying out practice in between sessions. Typical practice assignments include keeping a ‘Beating Panic’ Journal’, carrying out practice related to your ‘going out and about’ goal and creating a routine that involves empowering ‘calm’ activities. You will also be required to practice any coping techniques taught to you by the therapist, such as using your anchors (see below).
5. NLP Communication Model – Clients are taught NLP clean language techniques. This means learning to think and communicate with your self in a way that supports being safe, confident, and relaxed.
6. NLP Change Techniques – NLP, which is an understanding of how we code experience in our brain, has a range of techniques, which can be used to reduce or eradicate the intensity of remembered experiences. Its possible to take an unpleasant memory, examine how it is coded and then make changes so that it is no longer unpleasant and the emotion can just drain away. If you suffer from unpleasant memories or fears, an NLP therapist can help you deal with this, via submodality work. These treatments are available from my therapy practice, where I use NLP Herts. You can also learn to be aware of the impact of how you code experience yourself.
7. Anchoring For Emotional Balance - Anchors are naturally occurring associations between an external stimulus and a behavioural or emotional response. They occur because the human mind constantly seeks to make sense of the environment by looking for patterns and associations between things. People learn to make negative associations between things. In the case of agoraphobia this may be associating going for a walk to the corner shop with fear and panic. NLP deliberately makes use of anchors in order to empower people to have control over their emotional states. There are specific NLP techniques in which a stimulus is used to trigger and link an emotional state. The stimulus is usually external and may be a sound or touch. Through these techniques it is possible to for an individual to build up a resource of positive emotional states, which they can access in any situation in which they need them. It is also possible to completely collapse negative anchors so that external stimuli that cause you negative emotional states will no longer be a problem.
These are just some of the ways that NLP and CBT Herts can be effective at empowering people to overcome agoraphobia and other panic disorders.
Karen Hastings is a mental-health Occupational Therapist and Master NLP practitioner. She has worked in the NHS with people experiencing chronic and acute mental-health issues. Karen practices privately in Aldbury Hertfordshire and also offers home-visits throughout Herts. Please visit http://www.karenhastings.co.uk for more information.

Allergy Season is Coming
Spring is that wonderful time of year that's associated with rebirth. After a long winter, all the flowers and plants begin to bud and bloom. There's nothing like the beauty of new leaves and the sights of fresh flowers everywhere. That is, unless you or a loved one suffers from allergies.
Then, the thoughts of spring are more about just being able to breath and the misery of constant allergy symptoms. While there are many people allergic to a lot of things, even people who usually do not suffer from allergies can be affected in the springtime. This is no doubt due to the explosive growth of various pollens and natural substances that make for those spring flowers and growth.
Well, we can't do much about the various pollens in the air, it is possible to get some relief from constant sneezing, runny nose and watery eyes. One such way to help limit the symptoms is to better control your indoor environment. Allergies can actually become worse indoors due to the potential of increased concentrations of these natural allergy triggers.
A good way to help limit the amount of allergens in your home is to keep your windows and doors closed as much as possible. If not practical, you may want to consider shade screens. Shade screens have fewer and smaller holes than regular screens. This in turn may keep some of the dirt and pollen out of your home. At the very least, you should consider washing your window screens to remove the buildup of allergens on the screen material itself.
You may also be interested in a free report on how to eliminate asthma triggers in your home that is available at the link below. Asthma and allergy sufferers have many of the same triggers in common.
Though many people suggest the use of air conditioning during high allergy season. This really doesn't work if you don't change or clean the filters regularly. If you or a loved one has been having an especially difficult time during allergy season, you may want to consider using high efficiency particulate air or HEPA type filters in your equipment.
While air conditioning cools and dries the air, many of us simply cannot afford this luxury. An alternative is to get a high quality dehumidifier for use indoors. An air purifier can even be used to help limit the allergy triggers inside your home.
The key to living with allergies in the springtime is to limit your exposure to the allergens that bring on the symptoms. To that end, when possible don't venture outdoors during windy periods. Doing your own lawn work is also not a great idea. Consider hiring a landscaping company to handle the plant and landscape chores such as cutting the lawn, pulling weeds, etc.
If you find that your allergy problems are out of control, you should seek help from your doctor. While many of the over-the-counter nasal sprays etc. do work many are habit-forming and create more problems than they solve.

Abigail Franks has done extensive research into Asthma,Allergies, and their triggers. Visit the Asthma site for more information on Asthma Triggers and info on Allergies and Asthma