Original research
Use of alternative therapies for menopause symptoms: results of a population-based survey1 ,

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0029-7844(02)02005-7Get rights and content

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To describe self-reported prevalence of the use of alternative therapies for menopause symptoms and subject characteristics associated with their use.

METHODS:

A telephone survey of 886 women aged 45–65 years (87.2% response rate) was conducted at Group Health Cooperative in Washington state. Women were asked about eight alternative therapies and their use for menopause symptoms.

RESULTS:

The proportion of women who used each therapy was 76.1% for any therapy, 43.1% for stress management, 37.0% for over-the-counter alternative remedies, 31.6% for chiropractic, 29.5% for massage therapy, 22.9% for dietary soy, 10.4% for acupuncture, 9.4% for naturopath or homeopath, and 4.6% for herbalists. The proportion of women who used it to manage menopause symptoms was 22.1% for any therapy, 9.1% for stress management, 13.1% for over-the-counter alternative remedies, 0.9% for chiropractic, 2.6% for massage therapy, 7.4% for dietary soy, 0.6% for acupuncture, 2.0% for naturopath or homeopath, and 1.2% for herbalists. Among women who used these therapies, 89–100% found them to be somewhat or very helpful. A history of breast cancer was associated with a six-fold increase in use of dietary soy for menopause symptoms (odds ratio 6.23, 95% confidence limits 2.54, 15.28). Current users of hormone replacement therapy were half as likely to use alternative remedies or providers (odds ratio 0.48, 95% confidence limits 0.29, 0.77) as were never users. Sleep disturbances were associated with a four-fold increase in the use of body work, a three-fold increase in the use of stress management, and more than doubled the use of dietary soy products to manage menopause symptoms.

CONCLUSION:

The use of alternative therapies for menopause symptoms is common, and women who use them generally find them to be beneficial. Physicians should routinely ascertain perimenopausal women’s use of alternative therapies.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

The study was conducted at Group Health Cooperative, a health maintenance organization that provides medical care to more than 43,000 women aged 50–80 years in western Washington. Data were gathered as part of a follow-up survey for the EnPower Workbook Trial, a randomized trial in which we assessed the impact of a workbook designed to help women make informed decisions about the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).15 We selected a simple random sample of 100 primary care providers with at

Results

A total of 886 women participated in the 6-month telephone survey (87.2% response rate after excluding ineligible women). Reasons for ineligibility included: language or hearing (16); out of town (eight); sampling error (employee or the spouse of an employee at our research center, or male sex, eight); disenrolled from Group Health Cooperative (six); deceased (four); too ill (three); and conflicting study (one). A mean of 5.8 calls were attempted to reach each of these 886 women, and the mean

Discussion

In this study of women aged 45–65 years, a large proportion of women reported using at least one type of alternative therapy to help them manage menopause symptoms. The most commonly used therapies were stress management, herbal, homeopathic, or naturopathic remedies or providers, and dietary soy products. Despite the widely held belief that natural approaches are superior to pharmacologic approaches for the management of menopause symptoms, many women were using HRT. These findings are

References (17)

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This work was supported by contract number U48/CCU009654 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and by the Office of Women’s Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

1

The authors wish to acknowledge Lou Grothaus for his biostatistical assistance.

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