Natural Help for Menopause [New Research]

I feel like menopause is something that isn’t spoken about that much, even though all women will go through it in their lives. Menopause is caused by a natural reduction in reproductive hormones, which begins in the late 30s for most women. Some time in their 40s, most women experience what is known as perimenopause, where estrogen levels begin to decline dramatically, causing unpredictable menstrual cycles, finally leading to menopause. Every woman is different, but most women experience menopause by their early 50s on average.

The most well-known symptom of menopause is hot flashes, although there are many common symptoms of menopause experienced by women that include sleeping problems, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety, joint and muscle pain, physical and mental exhaustion, bladder issues, and others.

For many years women often underwent hormone replacement therapy to manage symptoms of menopause, though in recent years that is becoming less common due to health risks since hormone replacement therapy has been linked to increases in the risk of cancer and stroke.

There are natural products that can help with managing menopausal symptoms without the risks of hormone replacement therapy, and I wanted to write about a less well-known supplement for menopause known as Siberian rhubarb that I’ve been reading about. It’s less known in the United States, but not elsewhere- it’s been used in European countries like Germany for decades to help with the symptoms of menopause and has extensive clinical and lab studies demonstrating its safety and effectiveness.

Siberian rhubarb has been found to be effective at low doses for menopausal symptoms; the clinical research found that just four milligrams a day helped most women. In research, after just one month the participants had a significant reduction in their hot flashes over that of the placebo group, and then after three months, the women reported a 54% reduction of their overall menopause symptoms beyond just hot flashes.

Another large scale study confirmed those results, and found that the longer women took the supplement, the better of results they had with researchers reporting that the women had an amazing 83% reduction in the severity of their menopause symptoms after one year. Another large study reported that after taking Siberian rhubarb for six months, 56% of women reported major improvements and 13% said they’d experienced a complete absence of menopausal symptoms.

This research is especially important since hot flashes and night sweats affect as many as 50% of perimenopausal women and up to 85% of postmenopausal women, and women typically experience them for five to seven years on average, with some women having them for fifteen years or even longer! Menopausal symptoms can be a real problem for most women, so a simple one capsule a day supplement that has shown to be so effective against the negative symptoms of menopause is pretty amazing.

Siberian rhubarb supplements are not very common in the US, but we have found two different products that contain the recommended dose used in the above studies, one by Life Extention and the other by a company called Solgar. They’re both great products, but we’d probably recommend the Solgar product called Menopause Relief the most because in addition to the recommended 4mg of Siberian Rhubarb, it contains saffron extract, a potent antioxidant that has many benefits confirmed by scientific studies including boosting mood, cancer prevention, and even helping to prevent macular degeneration.

Since we like it so much, we’re going to have the Menopause Relief supplement by Solgar on one of our everyday sales for 25% off, so I’d recommend giving it a try since with the sale it’s less than $20 for a month’s supply and contains the amounts shown to be beneficial in just one capsule a day.

With Siberian rhubarb supplements for menopause, some women experienced relief after just one month, though for others it took longer, so if you try it for a month and don’t feel the relief you’d like, I’d suggest giving it a real trial of about three months, since that’s the most common length of most research studies. It’s not a magic wand, but the research on it is very positive, so I definitely feel confident recommending it.