Knicker magnets, breast pillows, exotic herbs... women desperate to avoid HRT are fuelling an industry in bizarre menopause treatments

For Edy Reilly, they came every half-hour without respite. The tyranny of her menopausal hot flushes disrupted every aspect of her life and caused her agonies of embarrassment, discomfort and tiredness.

'I hit the menopause at 54, and immediately the hot flushes started. They were horrendous. Every time I had one I felt as if I'd run ten miles in a fur coat which I couldn't remove,' recalls Edy, a soft furnishings adviser from Hertfordshire.

The 57-year-old adds: 'My heart raced; sweat dripped down my back. Then the furnace heat would subside and I'd be cold. I'd wear layers of clothes and take them on and off to accommodate my constantly changing temperature.

Feeling flush: Many women are seeking alternative remedies for the menopause, no wonder companies are cashing in

'The flushes affected every aspect of my life, at home and at work, during the day and at night. I never had a restful night's sleep and I was constantly exhausted. I felt absolutely desperate.'

Edy - like many women suffering similarly debilitating mid-life symptoms - had briefly tried and rejected hormone replacement therapy. HRT, once heralded as a cure-all for every malaise that accompanies the menopause, suffered a huge drop in demand in 2002 when a Women's Health Initiative study linked it with an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease.

It is still on the GP prescription list, and is used by an estimated 50 per cent of menopausal women, but will usually be prescribed for just five years - and only if a patient does not have other risk factors such as family history of heart disease or breast cancer.

However, eight years after the WHI study, research has focused on safer alternative ways of minimising symptoms. 

 

Lower dose and more localised HRT are often prescribed, but the drive today among experts is away from HRT altogether.

Instead women are encouraged to see what impact lifestyle changes might have, and also to try alternative therapies. This shift in emphasis has produced growing numbers of converts to natural or bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

'The hot flushes were horrendous. I felt desperate'

EDY REILLY, 57

It has also spawned a baffling range of over-the-counter remedies and a huge array of products, from the functional to the frankly freakish, which profess to offer hapless mid-life women relief from night sweats, mood swings and low libido.

Take the dubious invention of the knicker magnet. This 50p-sized device - for which you will pay £20 - is attached to the front of your pants below the belly button. There, its 'patented static magnetic technology' purportedly controls menopausal symptoms.

How does it work? Experts haven't a clue. But apparently some women find it useful - although it does have at least one disconcerting side-effect: it sets off the metal security alarms at airports.

Among the plethora of other aids is a cushion, called the Kush, that helps those whose ample breasts have become enlarged in middle age to sleep more comfortably.

Celebrity hairdresser Denise McAdam is a devotee of the Kush, which costs around £15.

'I've always had a large bust - and it grew a little with the menopause - so I found the cushion, which supports the weight of my breasts and so relieves pressure on my neck, helps me get a better night's sleep,' she says. (As an added bonus, she says it also helps prevent cleavage wrinkles.)

Lightweight nighties made from fabrics designed to wick away moisture from the body, quick-drying sheets and featherweight duvets are all aimed at improving the restive sleep of the hot-flushing female.

Lifestyle changes: Yoga is recommended to lessen symptoms of the menopause (posed by model)

And if women are in any doubt about whether they have hit this disruptive period of their lives - and I suspect if they are, they haven't got there yet - they can even buy home diagnosis kits.

The global market in such products, plus the vast array of nutritional supplements, is a highly lucrative one, estimated to be worth £1.8 billion a year. And it's growing.

By 2011, it has been assessed, around 40 per cent of the female population in Britain will be menopausal.

And although the precipitate decline in the use of HRT has had a huge impact on the pharmaceutical companies - figures show a £600million worldwide drop in sales between 2002 and 2003 - the industry in alternative and complementary remedies is burgeoning.

So how did Edy Reilly tackle the disruptive effects of her infernal hot flushes? Actually, she opted for an ancient remedy based on the herb sage.

'On the recommendation of a friend, I took 30 drops of Viridian's Organic Sage Tincture twice a day,' says Edy, who is married to Patrick.

'After only a few days, the flushes were gradually becoming further apart and less intense and distressing. I continued with the tincture and after one month they had all but disappeared. After seven months, they had gone altogether,' she says.

How could a garden herb succeed while pharmaceuticals failed? Sage appears to have a rebalancing effect on the hypothalamus, an area of the brain responsible for maintaining hormone levels, and helps block the vasodilators - which widen blood vessels - that cause hot flushes.

Consultant nutritionist Dr Marilyn Glenville, author of The Natural Health Bible For Women, often sees patients who have opted to take such natural remedies as alternatives to HRT.

She has prescribed sage in conjunction with exotic plants such as milk thistle, black cohosh (which grows in North America) and dong quai (which grows in China and can be used as an aphrodisiac), but avoids using herbs - and there are many on the market that purport to have beneficial effects - that have not been tested in clinical trials.

Maca Powder, marketed as 'a super food providing nutritional support for those experiencing uncomfortable change-of-life effects', is one such supplement.

'It seems to be the latest thing, but I haven't used it because I haven't seen the evidence that it actually works,' she says pragmatically.

'I didn’t want to become a bad-tempered older mum'

KIMBERLEY MACK, 51

She also cautions against using the traditional menopause remedy evening primrose oil.

'Research has shown the Omega 6 oils contained in it can, in fact, have inflammatory properties which would actually exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the joint pain that can be a mid-life symptom,' she says.

She advises against excessive doses of any remedy and sounds a note of warning, too, about self-prescription: 'People sometimes assume that if a little of something is good, then more will be even better, but this is not necessarily the case.'

While she says the soya that naturally occurs in foods has been shown to help symptoms such as hot flushes, she is wary of soy isoflavones or compounds - the concentrated extract of soya - which have an oestrogenic effect that may not be safe for women who have had breast cancer.

However, for Kimberley Mack, 51, a nutrition and skin consultant from Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, her mood swings - the most worrying of her menopausal symptoms - were alleviated by a product containing soy isoflavones, which act on the body like oestrogen (levels of which fall during the menopause).

She has benefited from a supplement, Perfect Harmony - which costs around £20 for a month's supply - which also contains a Mediterranean flower called chaste tree, red clove, wild yam and dong quai.

'My daughter Amber was six when I reached 48, and I felt worried that I - rather than she - was the one having the childish strops.

Natural remedy: Sage is said to have a rebalancing effect on hormones

'I'd flounce out of the room at the flimsiest provocation and storm away from the table at mealtimes,' she recalls.

'My husband Steve and Amber would roll their eyes in disbelief. I realised I'd have to do something if I didn't want to become a depressed and bad-tempered older mum.'

She began to take a tablet a day, but did not recognise how effective they were in calming her until she went abroad on holiday and forgot to pack them.

'Within days, I was edgy and explosive,' she says. 'The slightest thing would make me start shouting. Yet when I got home and started taking the tablets again, I felt much more relaxed - so I've continued with them and feel they help to stabilise my mood swings.'

Lifestyle changes have also helped, says Kimberley. Smoking, stress and inactivity are known to worsen menopausal symptoms.

Many doctors recommend a programme of exercise and relaxation, such as massage or yoga.

Certain foods and drink can also trigger hot flushes (such as hot, spicy curries or fizzy drinks; large meals and alcohol) and keeping blood sugar levels steady through eating slow-release complex carbohydrates can help.

There are many proponents of bioidentical HRT - one of the most high-profile is Oprah Winfrey - as an alternative to conventional HRT. Instead of a one-size-fits-all synthetic blast of traditional HRT, this is a customised prescription of bioidentical hormones which have a matching molecular structure to the hormones found in each human body, and which therefore act most efficiently to rebalance each woman's hormone levels.

Dr Marion Gluck has been prescribing it at her London practice for 15 years. 'It has been the most gratifying advance of my medical career,' she says.

'Women now have the option of a safe alternative to synthetic HRT.'

One of the synthetic hormones used in bio-identical HRT is DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), which has been hyped with extravagant claims that it will impede the ageing process, melt away fat, enhance memory, prevent osteoporosis and increase libido.

Normally, DHEA is produced in the body and released by the adrenal glands, then ultimately converted into oestrogen (the female sex hormone), which helps to combat menopausal symptoms.

But when the levels produced naturally by the body fall, it can be taken as a treatment tailored to each woman's needs.

Grandmother Maria Somers, 64, director of the HB Health clinic in London, is an enthusiastic advocate of the treatment, which she has had for the past five years.

'People joke I’m like the battery advert that goes on and on'

MARIA SOMERS, 64

'It's a joke at work that I'm like the advert for the battery that goes on and on,' she says.

'I've always been quite energetic - I tend to have an over-active thyroid - but now I'm able to work 15-hour days without feeling remotely tired,' she says.

Detractors are concerned that there is not yet sufficient data to show up potentially damaging side-effects of bioidentical HRT.

Dr Gluck counters that it is a matter of far greater concern that - since the 2002 scare stories associated with synthetic HRT - some GPs have reverted to prescribing anti-depressants instead, to counter the effects of the menopause.

'When women suffer from hot flushes their nights are disturbed,' she says. 'They become more and more tired and start to get depressed, and some GPs are taking the retrograde step of prescribing anti-depressants. In my view, this is an absolutely frightening development.

'We're reverting to the Sixties when women were diagnosed with nervous breakdowns if they went to the doctor with menopausal symptoms.

'They were then prescribed drugs with unpleasant side-effects, such as valium, to which so many became addicted.'

So, given this baffling range of choices, what should late-40s and 50-plus women do?

Historical accounts show that in previous generations women only knew they were menopausal when their periods stopped.

Some experts believe that if we lived like our ancestors - or like many women in the East today, where menopause symptoms are mild and rare - eating healthily, keeping active, and bereft of the toxins and stresses of 21st-century life, we would hardly notice our menopauses either.

It's an idea that could send mid-lifers scuttling en masse to the countryside in search of a tranquil, anxiety-free life.

Alternatively, we could save ourselves a lot of money and choose what some doctors have called the 'tincture of time' and accept that, over the years, the symptoms of the menopause - the hot flushes, the irritability, the loss of libido - will, eventually, just go away of their own accord.

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