Over the next decade, an entire generation of women will pass through the normal transition called menopause. While Western medicine typically offers hormone replacement therapy for the discomforts which may come with menopause, many women cannot or do not wish to take hormones. Traditional Chinese medicine has a great deal to offer these women. Instead of the standard hormone replacement therapy offered by most Western gynecologists, Chinese medical practitioners treat each woman individually, taking into account the whole pattern of each patient's physical and mental-emotional symptoms. Treatment may include either one or a combination of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, dietary suggestions, and/or specific exercises or lifestyle recommendations.
Because treatment is so specifically tailored to each person, if the diagnosis has been correct, the treatments prescribed by Chinese medicine should have no side effects. Any mild side effects that may arise in the initial stages of herbal treatment can be corrected by adjustments to the herbal formula and acupuncture rarely has any unwanted side effects at all. In contradistinction, most drugs listed in a Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) have at least some expected and normal side effects and many have potentially serious, irreversible ones.
