Menopausal Symptoms (NAPSA)—A new survey confirms that more than 50 percentof menopausal womenareclassified as having moderate to severe Menopausal symptoms. J.D. Power and Associates created these classifications based on selfreported frequency and severity of symptoms. And as the severity of these symptoms increases, so does the impact on women’s daily lives. However, according to the new J.D. Power and Associates survey of women currently not on hormone therapy, commissioned by the National Consumers League (NCL), a surprising number of women, almost one-third, report that they have not discussed their menopausal symptoms with their doctors. MenoPAUSE: Take Time to Talk about Your Symptoms, a new education campaign, will help the more than 4,000 women in the U.S. that enter menopause each day understand their menopausal symptoms, and recognize how symptoms mayaffect their daily lives, and partner with their doctors to make informed treatment decisions. “As part of our mission to represent the interests of consumers, NCL has launched MenoPAUSEto give the millions of women who experience moderate or severe menopausal symptoms the tools to understand the impact of their symptoms and start an informed discussion with their doctors,” said Linda F. Golodner, NCL president. Many womenfindit difficult to discuss menopausal symptoms with their healthcare professionals. In fact, one-third of the women surveyed say their doctors tend to trivialize menopausal symptoms, and 43 percent of doctors agree. In addition, 60 percent of women surveyed report that they often do not have the information they need about the effects of menopause, and 65 percent of women say that treatment-related decisions are left up to them. MenoPAUSE aims to help women recognize their symptoms and talk to their doctors. It provides checklists that allow women to define their menopausal symptoms and chart their personal and family medical histories. Women can use this individualized information to determine whether symptoms have a mild, moderate, or severe impact on their daily lives, based on reports of other women’s experiences. “Sometimes I see patients who have a hard time asking for help even when their symptoms have a negative effect on their lives. Learning how to talk about symptoms and their impact can help,” said Ann L. Honebrink, M.D., Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Health System. “MenoPAUSEprovides the tools to help facilitate the discussion between symptomatic meno- pausal women andtheir doctors.” For more information about MenoPAUSE, please log onto www.nclnet.org/menopause.
