One of the first symptoms most women see in menopause is irregular or missed periods. When menopause starts to occur, the estrogen and progesterone levels, stimulated by the ovaries, are seriously decreased. This means that the ovaries no longer get the signal to release the egg, which means that a woman will often notice a disruption in her normal monthly cycle.

After puberty, the only disruptions that occur in the monthly cycle occur because of diseases or other problems with the ovaries or pregnancy. However, once menopause begins to occur, it is not uncommon to experience serious disruptions with regard to the monthly cycle.

Another common symptom of menopause is the hot flash.

More than 75% of women who go through the menopause experience hot flashes, to varying degrees of severity. This makes a woman feel flush. For example, she can be standing in a room that is only 70 degrees, but she will overwhelmingly feel as if someone has turned the temperature up to 90 degrees.

In the very next moment, though, she may feel as if the room is only 40 degrees, and she is suddenly shivering. These hot flashes can be accompanied by other symptoms like dizziness, heart palpitations, or faintness. Most hot flashes last up to ten minutes, but not all women experience them to that terrible degree. Some women simply acknowledge them and move on.

Hot flashes are caused when they hypothalamus, a part of the brain, cannot correctly regulate a woman’s body temperature because of the extreme hormonal fluctuations. Poor diet and stress levels in the woman’s body have been shown to have a negative effect on the entire process. Most women will experience these symptoms for five to six years, though some women have them for the ten to twenty years prior and following menopause.

Hot flashes often lead to another common symptom of menopause, insomnia. Because hot flashes can occur both during the day and throughout the night, many women find that they wake up drenched in sweat. If a woman is a light sleeper anyway, and most are after they have children, it can be impossible for her to fall asleep again.

Interestingly enough, though, night sweats aren’t the only thing that cause these sleep disturbances. The hormone levels in the blood also have an effect on the quality of a woman’s sleep. Fixing these hormone levels can sometimes eliminate sleep difficulties.

Learning to identify the common symptoms of menopause can help you learn to deal with them on a much healthier level. Be sure to contact your doctor if any of your symptoms are causing serious problems in your life.

Christine Reilly MD is a noted authority on the research and management of menopause and a contributor to many publications dealing with the management of menopause. Her site – http://www.menopause-tellme.com – has a wealth of information that presents the facts in nontechnical and easy-to-understand language.

Asthma is a chronic lung condition that is characterized by difficulty in breathing, wheezing, and mucus accumulation. People with asthma have extra sensitive or hyper-responsive airways. During an asthma attack, the airways become irritated and react by narrowing and constructing, causing increased resistance to airflow, and obstructing the flow of the air passages to and from the lungs.

Some research indicates that the symptoms of asthma may get worse when you have heartburn or acid reflux. Acid reflux occurs when your undigested stomach content moves back up into your esophagus.

Acid reflux can cause painful heartburn which you can relieve with antacid medicines or natural remedies. Antacids simply neutralize your stomach’s acid, which reduces the burning sensation in your esophagus tube. It is best to use natural remedies first because neutralising stomach acid is a temporary method and only serves to suppress the cause of acid reflux.

For acid reflux, it is best to use digestive enzymes. Take a good digestive enzyme with every meal you eat. The next step would be to learn how to eat so you don’t get acid reflux or heartburn.

Acid reflux happens mostly in people who are older and overweight. But sometimes it can happen in children and in all types of people.

In some studies, researchers have injected acid into the esophageus of people with asthma, and it had a significant impact on their asthma and increased their asthma symptoms.

These is also evidence to suggest that people who have asthma get acid reflux more often than people without asthma. This is probably because of the big pressure changes in the chest during breathing in people with asthma. These high pressures could force liquid to travel the wrong way up the esophagus.

In these cases, asthma sufferers seem to lose out twice: they suffer from asthma and they may suffer from acid reflux more often than non asthma sufferers.

However, this is not the whole story. If acid reflux really was an important cause of asthma worsening, then treatments against acid reflux should make the asthma better, however, this is generally not the case.

In the meantime, if you have asthma and you also have acid reflux, it could just be that careful treatment of your reflux will make your breathing better.

If your asthma is bad and no-one knows why, some doctors would check whether you have or had acid reflux by conducting tests to measure the acidity in your stomach. If the result showed a tendency for acid reflux, then your doctor should help you eliminate this condition.

Using a doctor who uses natural methods to treat acid reflux is the best way to go. Using drugs to eliminate acid reflux when you are already taking drugs for asthma is asking for addition health problems in the future. Drugs do not cure acid reflux and cause Theis condition to worsen. It is best to use natural remedies and diet to eliminate acid reflux and heartburn.