Menopause: Black Cohosh may be Safer than other Herbal Treatments

Menopause: Black Cohosh may be Safer than other Herbal Treatments Author: Philip Burt

For many women, menopause can be a discomforting stage of life. More than seventy five percent of women experience one or more unpleasant symptoms of menopause, which can include lethargy, hot flushes, anxiety, depression, insomnia, vaginal dryness and mood swings.

The underlying event that triggers these symptoms is a woman's declining production of oestrogen hormones that starts to occur at the age of forty five or sometime thereafter. The orthodox treatment for menopausal symptoms is hormonal replacement therapy which involves administering replacement doses of the "missing" hormones- oestrogens. One of the problematic aspects of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women is that oestrogens can increase breast cancer risk. Because of this increased risk, many women have turned to natural therapies to reduce the unpleasant symptoms of menopause.

Commonly used natural treatments include herbal therapies such as dong quai, ginseng and black cohosh. Now a study published in the April edition of the respected medical journal "Menopause" has cast doubts on the safety of two of these herbal remedies - dong quai and ginseng. In this study both dong quai and ginseng were found, just like the oestrogens used in hormonal replacement therapy, to accelerate the growth of breast cancer cells. This finding means that women using these herbs may not be avoiding the negative effects of hormonal replacement after all.

It should be noted that this study was conducted in test tube cultures using breast cancer cells. Test tube studies do not always translate into real world effects, although prudent women will probably choose to avoid these herbs until more intensive studies are completed.

On the other hand, the study contributes to the growing acceptance of black cohosh as a viable treatment for menopausal symptoms as, unlike the other herbs tested in this study, it was not found to exert oestrogen-like stimulating effects on breast cancer cells.

Black cohosh is often prescribed by doctors in Europe to their menopausal patients on the basis of at least ten clinical studies that have demonstrated its effectiveness, tolerability and safety for the treatment of menopausal symptoms. In the most recent study, published in the current issue of The Journal of Women's Health and Gender-Based Medicine, 150 women with menopausal symptoms were treated with Remifemin (a standardised extract of black cohosh) for six months. Seventy percent of women reported a decrease in their menopause symptoms. The study confirmed that black cohosh caused no oestrogen-like effects and suggests that black cohosh works via mechanisms other than those influenced by oestrogens.

Earlier studies on black cohosh indicate that it improves all of the known symptoms of menopause, and is particularly effective against hot flushes, sleep disturbances, sweating, headaches, depression, vaginal dryness, anxiety and mood swings.

Most women begin to notice the beneficial effects of black cohosh after two weeks, with more pronounced effects after twelve weeks of black cohosh use.