It may interest you to know that menopause is a word that is not in the TCM vocabulary. In ancient medical texts, menopause does not even appear. What does appear are many of the symptoms relating to women who reach this transitional age.

Menopause is basically a Western concept. TCM recognizes menopausal symptoms as Menstrual Cycle Ending Symptoms. In other words, TCM recognizes that the menstrual cycle has a beginning and it has an end. This is nature’s way

TCM has extensive experience in treating menstrul cycle symptoms. Today in the medical texts taught in all TCM medical colleges, there are 22 specific menstrual cycle symptoms. These include conditions like delayed periods, early periods, fever during cramps, cold sores during the menstrual cycle, breast tenderness and pain during menstruation, PMS, or even specific kinds of menstrual headaches, among others. Interestingly, only one of the 22 symptoms relates to what we call menopause. This is the above-mentioned Menstrual Cycle Ending Symptoms – the last set of problems a woman can have with her menstrual cycle before it ceases entirely.

Menstrual Cycle Ending Symptoms is then what we in the West call menopausal symptoms. From the TCM perspective, if a woman doesn’t suffer from menstrual irregularities during a lifetime of cycles, it is highly unlikely that she will experience any symptoms during her last cycles. This brings us to the concept of prevention – a unique specialty of TCM and one of its most important principles.

TCM believes that the best cure is prevention. If you’ve reached menopause and have many uncomfortable symptoms, or are suffering greatly, your body has been out of balance from some time. Not every one has a difficult transition; why is this happening to you? It’s most likely that many warning signs appeared when you were younger, but you just didn’t have the right information to decode them. If we could see more women when they’re in perimenopause, if we could work together then, their menopause transition would very likely be a smooth and happy one.

If you take in hormones from the outside, your own power to produce them from within is diminished. These drugs can weaken the body’s energy system. Your own Qi gets lazy, and the longer you take them, the less chance you have to heal yourself, and reactivate your ability to produce enough estrogen during your later years.

On the other hand, if you take the opportunity to become balanced during menopause, you can reach a new level of health. If you can strengthen and harmonize your Kidney and Liver functions, your menopausal symptoms will not appear. Remember when you do this, you do not cover over your symptoms like you would do by taking a drug, but you will eliminate them so that they do not exist. When your body is healthy, disease or sickness does not enter. And if you are healthy, you can heal yourself.

Testimonial

“I was on estrogen therapy for about six months, when I read an article about potential side-effects from using hormones. I began to worry, if this was the right thing to do for me for the long term. I told my doctor I wanted to stop taking the drugs and gradually began to wean myself off of it. During this time I began taking your herbs. Within a month I began to feel something, I wasn’t quite sure what it was but all I know I felt good. Now I am feeling great, and I am completely off of the drugs. Your herbs are now my program and I have not had ANY side effects. Thank you for changing my life.”

Denise – FL