Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Protections Against Flu

Protect Yourself from the Flu and the Vaccine
July 15, 2009

By Melanie Segala, Managing Editor, Total Health Breakthroughs

Have you noticed that the media chatter regarding the expected flu pandemic has been ramping up lately? Could it be because pharmaceutical giants like Baxter and Novartis are moving full speed ahead to prepare for mass inoculations around the globe of H1N1 (swine) flu vaccines by this fall?

I hope the name Baxter rings a bell. In the April 15 issue of Undercover, I wrote about how Baxter’s seasonal flu vaccine had been contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus at one of their facilities in Austria . This “mistake” would very likely have resulted in millions of deaths if it was not caught in time by a lab in the Czech Republic .

Since I researched that article, I made a personal decision to avoid a flu shot at all costs. I have also warned friends and family that a mild case of the flu may ultimately be safer than the long term health effects of the vaccine.

But now I have some news to share that may even protect you from the flu itself, thanks to an enlightening article I recently read by John J. Cannell, MD.1 Dr. Cannell is a psychiatrist at Atascadero State Hospital in California , a maximum security hospital for psychiatric patients. In 2005, an influenza A epidemic broke out in the hospital. One by one, each ward became infected as patients came down with chills, fever, cough, and severe body aches.

Only one ward in the hospital remained free of infection — Dr. Cannell’s. Why was this so? His patients intermingled with patients from other wards and were not noticeably different in their age, health, or medical treatment.

The only difference that could be discerned was that Dr. Cannell’s patients had been receiving a daily dose of 2000 IU of vitamin D for several months. That’s it. All of his patients took vitamin D and not one caught the flu!

Dr. Cannell’s research then led him to some remarkable discoveries about the effectiveness of vitamin D as a potent antibiotic and antiviral. Vitamin D boosts the body’s production of antimicrobial peptides, a class of proteins that quickly destroys the cell walls of bacteria, viruses (including influenza) and fungi. These peptides also keep the lungs free from infection.

But that’s not all. While vitamin D is destroying flu-causing viruses, it simultaneously performs another life-saving function. It prevents the immune system from producing a dangerous amount of inflammatory chemicals (cytokines) that attack sensitive respiratory membranes. In severe cases of the flu, this inflammation can destroy the normal cell lining of the respiratory tract.

In the early history of mankind, we wore loin cloths and spent most of our time out of doors. With only 20 minutes of full body exposure to the sun, we were able to synthesize 20,000 units of vitamin D within 48 hours. Our exposure to the sun gave us built-in immunity to contagious diseases. Compare that to how society has evolved over the centuries. We spend most of our time indoors and perhaps get a few hundred units of vitamin D from our diet. In the past couple of decades we even started slathering our skin with sun block and now get even less vitamin D in our already deficient bodies. No wonder influenza continues to be a plague.

It is an established fact that most of us are deficient in vitamin D. Knowing this, I recently began taking 2000 units per day in supplement form, which is a safe yet effective dose. Living in Florida , I also get year-round exposure to the sun — although like most people, I’m not outdoors as much as I would like to be. While I can’t advise you on how much vitamin D you should be taking, I can say that if you are dark skinned, elderly, or live in a northern climate, you are at a higher risk for catching the H1N1 flu due to vitamin D deficiency.

If you are in one of these high risk groups, make it a priority to have your levels checked. Dr. William Davis recommends vitamin D dosing to his patients so that they stay in the normal range of 60-70 ng/mL.2 According to Dr. Davis, since he began prescribing vitamin D, viral and bacterial infections have become a rare occurrence. Depending on your health and other factors, your doctor may determine that you need up to 5000 units of vitamin D per day, especially in the winter.
I can’t think of an easier or safer way to protect yourself from the flu and the vaccine.
References

Note from Amma Ra:
Get out of doors as much as possible, walking and gardening is grounding, plus you get free Vit D. Personally I do not feel Swine Flue is a great threat at all. But someone has spent an awful time and money training the army, the police and the medical profession to make sure that we all get vaccinated. During the last epidemic in the early 1900’s the vaccines killed far more people than the Flu itself. Check these things out for yourself.
Seems they couldn’t get the Avian Flu scare off the ground, so an expensive and determined effort is being put into Swine Flu. Apparently the vaccine will be ready for use in Great Britain in late September or early October. Forced vaccinations certainly ought to ring alarm bells. Use the tools of discernment and intuition and inner guidance. Remember that fear is a great magnet and can kill you without even contracting a disease.


Thursday, August 13, 2009

Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake!


Without inflammation, cholesterol would not accumulate in wall of blood vessel and cause heart disease

Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake!
By Dwight Lundell, MD
Source of this article from
totalhealthbreakthroughs.com


Part 1 of a 2-part article (See Part 2 below)

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled "opinion makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible.
The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However,
if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet that has been recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

In Part 2 of this two-part article, I'll discuss which foods cause inflammation, how those foods trigger the inflammatory process, and the foods to eat that will cure inflammation.

Part 2 - By Dwight Lundell MD 02/06/2009

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let's say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall.
Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades.
These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell.
When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation?
Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator - inflammation in their arteries.

Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell - they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables.
Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak.
Since we now know that
cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.
Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods.
By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.]

There you have it, the above article were forwarded to me and I have includes here some links to the said surgeon.

The Heart Scan Blog

PR Web


Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Say NO To Mammograms

I have received this interesting article. Upon searching on the net, here are few websites supporting this.


Well for starters mammograms expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray,which poses risks of cancer. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, and often painfully, which could lead to a lethal spread of cancerous cells, should they exist.

"The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 radiation exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade's screening," points out Dr. Samuel Epstein, one of the top cancer experts.

Dr. Epstein, M.D., professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, has been speaking out about the risks of mammography since at least 1992.

As for how these misguided mammography guidelines came about, Epstein says :

"They were conscious, chosen, politically expedient acts by a small group of people for the sake of their own power, prestige and financial gain, resulting in suffering and death for millions of women. They fit the classification of "crimes against humanity.""

Not surprisingly, as often happens when anyone dares speak out against those in power, both the American Cancer Society and NCI called Dr. Epstein's findings "unethical and invalid." But this didn't stop others from speaking out as well. In July 1995, The Lancet again wrote about mammograms, saying "The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous ..."

Dr. Charles B. Simone, a former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute, said, "Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth."

"The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation-induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with Xray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who were mammogramed annually," wrote Dr. Epstein.

Safe Screening Methods do Exist : The Benefits of Thermography.

But you're not likely to hear about them from your general practitioner. " ... The establishment ignores safe and effective alternatives to mammography, particularly trans illumination with infrared scanning,"

Dr. Epstein points out. Most physicians continue to recommend mammograms for fear of being sued by a woman who develops breast cancer after which he did not advise her to get one. But I encourage you to think for yourself and consider safer, more effective alternatives to mammograms.

The option for breast screening that I most highly recommend is called thermography.

Thermographic breast screening is brilliantly simple.It measures the radiation of infrared heat from your body and translates this information into anatomical images. Your normal blood circulation is under the control of your autonomic nervous system, which governs your body functions.

Thermography uses no mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and can detect signs of breast cancer years earlier than either mammography or a physical exam.

Mammography cannot detect a tumor until after it has been growing for years and reaches a certain size.

Thermography is able to detect the possibility of breast cancer much earlier, because it can image the early stages of angiogenesis (the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumors of size).

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

PCOS

Check out http://irregularmenses.blogspot.com/ for complete information gathered from the internet sources about PCOS.

Amenorrhea

Healthscout.com

Definition of Amenorrhea
Amenorrhea is the name given to the condition when a woman fails to have menstrual periods. The condition is known as "primary amenorrhea" when the woman has never menstruated; and "secondary amenorrhea" if her periods cease after having been regular for months or years.

Description of Amenorrhea

If you are reaching the age of 16 years without ever having menstruated, the chances are that you are developing normally, but a little later than most girls. If you are very athletic or quite thin, menarche could be delayed.

However, because there is a small possibility that you have a hormonal abnormality, consult a physician, especially if other sexual changes also have been delayed - if your breasts and pubic hair have not yet begun to grow, for example.

If you have been menstruating for years and suddenly miss periods for a few months, you have secondary amenorrhea. Many women of reproductive age experience this at some point in their lives. There are several possible explanations for this.

You might be pregnant, perhaps you lost a lot of weight rather quickly or have been exercising a lot, or you may have been under stress. Very obese women sometimes fail to menstruate. You also could be taking a medication that suppresses menses as a side effect.

If you just quit taking oral contraceptives, you may not have a period for several months. In addition, breastfeeding can delay menstruation, and if you are reaching the age of menopause, it would be normal to begin skipping periods.

Secondary amenorrhea due to the above causes is quite common. More serious problems, such as tumors or disorders of the pituitary gland, also can cause amenorrhea, but they are rare.

Failure to resume menstruation after childbirth, particularly if lactation does not take place, may mean that the pituitary gland failed either partly or completely at the time of delivery, a condition called postpartum pituitary necrosis.

If you have been menstruating regularly and your period is more than two weeks late, you may want to see a physician to find out if you are pregnant. However, if you are sure that you are not pregnant and you have no other symptoms, there is generally no harm in waiting several months before consulting a physician. Keep in mind that even if you are not menstruating, you could still become pregnant if you do not take precautions.

Causes and Risk Factors of Amenorrhea

The most common cause of amenorrhea is pregnancy, and this is always excluded before other possible causes are considered.

Female ballet dancers, female joggers and women involved in vigorous sports frequently find they skip menstrual periods or stop menstruating altogether. This is more likely to happen if you are young, especially if your cycle is generally irregular. In fact, teenagers who train heavily are often in their late teens before they actually have their first menstrual period.

Medical experts believe that several factors are involved, including stress, and perhaps the ratio (proportion) of fat cells in your body to other cells. Going on a crash diet and losing a large amount of weight very rapidly also can interfere with menstruation. In both cases, you stop menstruating because your ovaries do not produce enough estrogen in the cyclic manner that causes the uterus lining to thicken and then shed.

If you reduce your exercise schedule or gain weight, you probably will begin to menstruate again. If that does not work, or if you do not want to exercise less or gain weight, your physician may suggest that you take estrogen in low doses.

Some medications such as phenothiazines (used for psychiatric disorders) and some narcotics can cause amenorrhea. So can anorexia nervosa, Cushing’s disease and other conditions related to pituitary insufficiency or thyroid problems. A thorough medical history can usually reveal the cause of amenorrhea in about 85 percent of cases .

Treatment of Amenorrhea

Your physician may prescribe various types of hormones to see whether your ovaries are functioning normally.

Provided no underlying disorder is causing the amenorrhea, treatment is generally unnecessary. However, because women who are not menstruating seem susceptible to osteoporosis, your physician may suggest that you take estrogen and a calcium supplement.

If an underlying disorder is to blame for either primary or secondary amenorrhea, the treatment will depend on the nature of the disorder.

Questions To Ask Your Doctor About Amenorrhea

Do any tests need to be done for diagnosis and to determine the cause?

What is the cause?

What treatment do you recommend?

Will you be prescribing any medication?

What are the side effects?

What's likely to happen if no treatment is undertaken?

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emedicinehealth.com

Amenorrhea Overview

Amenorrhea is the absence of menstrual bleeding and may be primary or secondary.

  • Primary amenorrhea is the absence of menstrual bleeding and secondary sexual characteristics (for example, breast development and pubic hair) in a girl by age 14 years or the absence of menstrual bleeding with normal development of secondary sexual characteristics in a girl by age 16 years.

  • Secondary amenorrhea is the absence of menstrual bleeding in a woman who had been menstruating but later stops menstruating for 3 or more months in the absence of pregnancy, lactation (the ability to breastfeed), cycle suppression withsystemic hormonal contraceptive (birth control) pills, or menopause.
For a woman to have regular menstrual cycles, her hypothalamus, pituitary gland (seeAnatomy of the Endocrine System), ovaries, and uterus should all be functioning normally. The hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland to release follicle-stimulating hormone(FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). FSH and LH cause the ovaries to produce the hormones estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen and progesterone are responsible for the cyclical changes in the endometrium (uterine lining), including menstruation. In addition, a woman’s genital tract should be free of any abnormalities to allow the passage of menstrual blood.

Amenorrhea Causes

Amenorrhea can result because of an abnormality in the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, anatomical abnormalities of the genital tract, or functional causes.

Hypothalamic causes

  • Craniopharyngioma (a brain tumor near the pituitary gland)

  • Teratoma (a tumor made up of a mixture of tissues)

  • Sarcoidosis (a chronic disease of unknown cause characterized by the formation of nodules in different parts of the body)

  • Kallmann syndrome (deficiency of gonadotropins, which are hormones capable of promoting growth and function of reproductive organs)

  • Nutritional deficiency

  • Low body weight
Pituitary causes
  • Prolactinemia (high blood levels of prolactin, a hormone that stimulates secretion of milk from the breasts during breastfeeding) - Possibly caused by prolactinoma (a tumor of the pituitary gland secreting the hormone prolactin)

  • Other pituitary tumors (for example, Cushing syndrome, acromegaly, or thyroid-stimulating hormone)

  • Postpartum pituitary necrosis (death of pituitary cells after a woman delivers a baby)

  • Autoimmune hypophysitis (cells of the pituitary gland destroyed by the body’s own defense system)

  • Pituitary radiation

  • Sarcoidosis
Ovarian causes
  • Anovulation (lack of the release of an egg)

  • Hyperandrogenemia (high blood levels of male hormones)

  • Polycystic ovary syndrome (hormonal disorder affecting women of reproductive age)

  • Premature ovarian failure

  • Turner syndrome (a genetic disorder characterized by underdeveloped ovaries, absence of menstrual onset, and short stature)

  • Pure gonadal dysgenesis (defective development of the ovary)

  • Autoimmune oophoritis (cells of the ovaries destroyed by the body’s own defense system)

  • Fragile X premutation

  • Radiation or chemotherapy

  • Galactosemia (an inherited disorder in which galactose, a type of sugar, accumulates in the blood)

  • Anatomical abnormalities of the genital tract

  • Intrauterine adhesions (the opposing surfaces of the uterine cavity stick together)

  • Imperforate hymen (a hymen in which there is no opening, the membranecompletely closes off the vagina)

  • Transverse vaginal septum (a dividing wall or membrane in the vagina)

  • Aplasia (absence of an organ or tissue) of the vagina, the cervix, or the uterus
Functional causes

Amenorrhea Symptoms

Amenorrhea is a symptom of an underlying disorder. Additional symptoms may be present depending on the associated condition.

  • Galactorrhea (breasts produce milk in a woman who is not pregnant or breastfeeding), headache, or reducedperipheral vision could be a sign of anintracranial tumor.

  • Increased hair growth in a male pattern (hirsutism) may be caused by excessandrogen (a hormone that encourages development of male sex characteristics).

  • Vaginal dryness, hot flashes, night sweats, or disordered sleep may be a sign of ovarian insufficiency or premature ovarian failure.

  • Noticeable weight gain or weight loss may be present.

  • Excessive anxiety may be present in women with associated psychiatric abnormalities.

When to Seek Medical Care

Consult a health care provider if a girl is 14 years old and her secondary sexual characteristics (for example, breast development and pubic hair) have not started to develop or a girl is 16 years old and has not had her first menstrual period.

For women who have already begun menstruating, they should see a health care provider if they have missed 3 consecutive menstrual periods.

Exams and Tests

A doctor may perform the following tests to determine the cause of the amenorrhea:

  • Blood tests may be performed to determine the levels of hormones secreted by the pituitary gland (FSH, LH, TSH, and prolactin) and the ovaries (estrogen).

  • Ultrasonography of the pelvis may be performed to assess the abnormalities of the genital tract or to look for polycystic ovaries.

  • CT scan or MRI of the head may be performed to exclude pituitary and hypothalamic causes of amenorrhea.

If the above tests are inconclusive, additional tests may be performed.

Amenorrhea Treatment

Self-Care at Home

  • In some women, nutritional deficiencies induced by dieting can cause amenorrhea. Such women should eat a properly balanced diet.

  • In some women, excessive body weight could be the cause of amenorrhea. These women should restrict the amount of fat in their diet, and they should exercise moderately to maintain an ideal body weight.

  • More than 8 hours of vigorous exercise a week may cause amenorrhea. A moderate exercise program may restore normal menstruation.

  • If amenorrhea is caused by emotional stress, finding ways to deal with stress and conflicts may help.

  • Maintaining a healthy lifestyle by avoiding alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking is also helpful.

Medical Treatment

Treatment depends on the cause of amenorrhea. Once the cause is determined, treatment is directed at correcting the underlying disease, which should restore menstruation. In case of anatomical abnormalities of the genital tract, surgery may be indicated.

Dopamine agonists, such as bromocriptine (Parlodel) or pergolide (Permax), are effective in treating hyperprolactinemia. In most women, treatment with dopamine agonists restores normal ovarian endocrine function and ovulation.

Hormone replacement therapy, consisting of an estrogen and a progestin, is needed for women in whom estrogen deficiency remains because ovarian function cannot be restored. It is also required to maintain bone density in women whose underlying disease cannot be treated.

In some cases, oral contraceptives may be prescribed to restore the menstrual cycle and to provide estrogen replacement to women with amenorrhea who do not wish to become pregnant. Before administering oral contraceptives, withdrawal bleeding is induced with an injection of progesterone or oral administration of 5-10 mg ofmedroxyprogesterone (Provera) for 10 days.


Surgery

  • Some pituitary and hypothalamic tumors may require surgery and, in some cases,radiation therapy.

  • Women with intrauterine adhesions require dissolution of the intrauterine adhesions.

  • Surgical procedures required for other genital tract abnormalities depend on the specific clinical situation.

Follow-up

Annual follow-up is required for women with amenorrhea caused by ovarian insufficiency. The follow-up is performed to monitor ovarian hormone replacement and to detect the development of associated conditions.

Prevention

By maintaining a normal weight, girls can prevent primary amenorrhea caused by excessive weight loss or weight gain.

Outlook

In most cases, amenorrhea is not a life-threatening condition. In most women, medications, lifestyle change, or surgery can correct amenorrhea.

Amenorrhea has been associated with reduced bone density and increased fracture rates.

For More Information

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
409 12th St, SW
PO Box 96920
Washington, DC 20090-6920
(202) 638-5577

American Society for Reproductive Medicine
1209 Montgomery Highway
Birmingham, AL 35216-2809
(205) 978-5000


Web Links

MedlinePlus, Amenorrhea - primary

MedlinePlus, Menstruation - absent


Synonyms and Keywords

amenorrhea, absence of menstrual bleeding, absent menstruation, lack of menstruation, missed period, absent period, absent menses, menstrual dysfunction, primary amenorrhea, secondary amenorrhea, menstrual cycle,menarche, menstrual bleeding, delayed puberty, anatomical defects of the genital tract, abnormalities of the genital tract, ovarian disorders, anovulation, pituitary disorders, hypothalamic disorders, intrauterine adhesions, pituitary tumor, hypothalamic tumor, intracranial tumor, hyperandrogenemia, premature ovarian failure, polycystic ovary syndrome, prolactinemia, prolactinoma

Authors and Editors

Author: Lawrence M Nelson, MD, MBA, Head of Gynecologic Endocrinology Unit, Investigator, Section of Women's Health Research, Developmental Endocrinology Branch,

Editors: Suzanne R Trupin, MD, Clinical Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign; Mary L Windle, Pharm D, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy; Pharmacy Editor, eMedicine.com, Inc; Lee P Shulman, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Head, Section of Reproductive Genetics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.