Black Cohosh For Menopause Symptoms
We used to think that the best way to treat menopause was with HRT, and we thought that HRT protected us from heart disease and osteoporosis. Well, we were wrong. And we’ve been looking for a better way to treat night sweats and hot flashes ever since.
A better way has been around for hundreds of years. Native Americans used black cohosh to treat menopausal symptoms long before Europeans set foot on American soil. They dug up the bushes, dried the roots and made tea out of it. It helped premenstrual symptoms and menopausal symptoms, and was sometimes used to induce labor.
The benefits of black cohosh in treating menopausal symptoms have never really been questioned. Although there are some design problems with the studies, black cohosh has been studied extensively as a therapeutic treatment for menopause, especially in Germany. It works.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that black cohosh is safe and as effective as HRT for at least six months. They do caution that long-term studies haven’t been done, so they can’t say for sure that it’s safe after 6 months. It is not known exactly how black cohosh works, but it does not seem to work the same way that estrogen does.
There are a couple of cautions about using black cohosh for treatment of menopausal symptoms:
- Be very careful not to confuse it with blue cohosh, which is a different herb altogether and is much more toxic.
- We don’t know if black cohosh is safe for women who have breast cancer, or who have a family history of breast cancer.
- Black cohosh should not be used when you are pregnant because it stimulates uterine contractions and could induce labor.
- We don’t know if it’s safe to use for nursing women.
If you’re not pregnant or nursing, and you don’t have breast cancer (or a strong family history of it), black cohosh is a safe and effective way to manage the hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause.