Robin Buckson / The Detroit News Dee Adams draws the "Minne Pauz" cartoon strip, whose faceless characters bring humor to women who are experiencing menopause.

'The change'
Baby boomers are researching treatment options for menopause concerns

By Susan R. Pollack / The Detroit News

Robin Buckson / The Detroit News Dr. Judith Brysk of Farmington Hills Women's Group educates women on herbal alternatives to help them through menopause. On the web    Get the lowdown on menopause, or join an online chat room on the topic, at these web sites:    * www.menopause.org    * www.power-surge.com    * www.ivillage.com    * www.minniepauz.com Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

   The signs are everywhere:
   * Women of a certain age fan themselves in offices, shops, concert halls and cafes.
   * Drugstores stock a confusing assortment of vitamins, herbal mood-enhancers and soy supplements, all marketed as female-friendly.
   * Actress Lauren Hutton, in a prime-time TV commercial, touts hormone replacement therapy to fight osteoporosis.
   * A California travel agency offers women-only "Menopausal Tours" on the Internet.
   
They're all harbingers of menopause, that hormonally imbalanced, transitional time of life -- average age 51 -- that signals the end of a woman's childbearing years. And while our mothers endured virtually in silence the hot flashes, mood swings and other unmentionable symptoms of "the change," today's unprecedented millions of baby boomers are bringing their mid-life menopause concerns into the open and researching treatment options.
   
"In the past, it was a closed issue, women didn't talk about it," observes Dr. Jerrold Weinberg, who changed his general obstetrics and gynecology practice to the Birmingham Menopause Institute a few years ago. "Nowadays, it's a movement. This is the same generation that, 25 or 30 years ago, wanted to know more about labor and delivery, more about natural childbirth, than their mothers ever did. These women are now 50 years old and they know change is happening in their bodies and they want to have information so they can deal with it."
   
With U.S. women living much longer (generally into their 80s) and destined to spend about one-third of their lives beyond menopause, it's not surprising that new products and information are everywhere, from a spate of "Not Your Mother's Menopause" magazine articles to such Internet sites as www.power-surge.com and the North American Menopause Society's www.menopause.org. But choosing a treatment for pre- and post-menopausal symptoms remains confusing.
   
Locally, women in their 40s and 50s gather in menopause support groups to explore the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy and herbal supplements. They discuss the role estrogen plays in fighting osteoporosis, promoting cardiovascular health and even, possibly, protecting against Alzheimer's disease, despite a slight increased risk of breast cancer.
   And, they learn that low-dose estrogen patches and even birth control pills are now standard treatment for some women in their 40s whose symptoms start as much as five or more years before actual menopause, defined as 12 consecutive months after the last menstrual period.
   
Yet doctors say not all women need hormone replacement therapy. Certain women get symptomatic relief with such supplements as black cohosh, red clover, chasteberry and soy, combined with better diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes. Still, doctors emphasize few of the dietary supplements are backed by solid, scientific research and caution that just because a product is promoted as "natural" doesn't mean it's safe.
   
"There's no question that a lot of women are really miserable in their mid-40s," says Dr. Charla Blacker, a reproductive endocrinologist at Henry Ford Somerset, adding that various hormonal therapies -- and some supplements -- can make a huge difference in quality of life.
   "Today we have enough choices that we can really design a regimen to suit the individual woman. But women have to look hard sometimes to find knowledgeable physicians."
   
Nearly three dozen women explored their options at a recent six-week menopause seminar at Providence Hospital in Novi. They ranged from Kathryn Mattson, 49, a trucking company owner in Westland, who attended out of curiousity -- "because I know I'm going to go through it" -- to Cathy Chapman, a retired human resources director from Farmington Hills seeking relief from bothersome symptoms.
   Now 60, Chapman says she stopped hormone replacement therapy and is trying other regimens recommended by her internist and an herbalist, including vitamins and supplements. She's also walking an hour each day and attending early morning yoga and meditation sessions.
   
Recently, after another torturous round of hot flashes, she couldn't bear it any more. "I was standing in the kitchen, and I just started to cry," Chapman recalls. "I was so glad nobody was home."
   Dressed in layers (known in certain circles as "menopause fashion"), Chapman also is experiencing sleep disturbances and says she feels compelled some nights to issue this bedtime prayer: "I just need a good night's sleep, Lord."
   
Like Chapman and Mattson, women throughout Metro Detroit are comparing notes. In Novi, a group of teachers younger than 50 meets each Thursday morning at a restaurant to exchange news of their menopausal moments and share treatment tips. The waitress rushes over with tall glasses of ice water when she sees them coming.
   
In addition to hot flashes, insomnia, night sweats, irritability, anxiety, forgetfulness, breast tenderness, loss of libido or even worse are part of the catalogue of common symptoms.
   "Many women feel as if they're going crazy and that they're falling apart at the seams," says Mimi Kuykendall, a certified physician's assistant at the Birmingham Menopause Institute in Beverly Hills.
   She believes more men should attend menopause seminars for insight into what's happening to their wives or girlfriends. "It can just be overwhelming," she notes.
   
A current joke circulating on the Internet suggests sending peri-menopausal American women to Afghanistan to root out Osama bin Laden: "Our anger quotient alone ... is formidable enough to make even armed men in turbans tremble ... We've spent years tracking down our husbands or lovers in bars, hardware stores or sporting events -- finding bin Laden in some cave will be no problem."
   
Dee Adams, an Oxford grandmother of three, also turned to humor to survive her own traumatic menopause and to help others through the transition. "I call it the 'middle rages,' " says Adams, who four years ago designed and manages a popular Internet web site, www.minniepauz.com, featuring her own cartoon creation, Minnie Pauz. In one of the site's 150 cartoons, Minnie is shown taking a water-bra out of a freezer; in another, she's bending over a supermarket vegetable counter near a sign that says: "We mist our vegetables every hour with ice cold water."
   
Describing it as HRT, "humor replacement therapy" for midlife women, Adams boasts more than 5,000 web site subscribers annually -- or, as she puts it, "I've got 5,000 to 6,000 hot-flashing women here," and adds: "We're in a unique time of our life, and we need to feel we're not alone. I'm truly overwhelmed at how many women need information, some kind of connection or encouragement to get a new doctor. "Humor brings it out in the open and makes it easier to talk about and laugh about."

You can reach Susan R. Pollack at (313) 222-2665 or srpollack@detnews.com.