Few treatments have a worse reputation than hormone replacement therapy, and few reputations are built on such a tangle of old headlines, half-remembered studies and marketing. If you have had a hysterectomy, much of what you have heard about HRT may not even apply to you: most of the frightening findings came from women who…
Hot flashes, night sweats and broken sleep are some of the most common complaints after a hysterectomy, and they often come together: a night sweat wakes you, and then you cannot get back to sleep. Whether you get them, and how strongly, depends mostly on one thing: whether your ovaries were removed. If they were,…
Surgical menopause is the menopause that starts when both ovaries are removed in an operation called a bilateral oophorectomy. It often happens together with a hysterectomy, but it is not caused by the hysterectomy itself: taking out the uterus ends periods, while taking out the ovaries ends the body’s main supply of estrogen. Because that…
If your uterus was removed but your ovaries were left in place, you did not go into menopause on the day of surgery. Your ovaries keep making estrogen and progesterone, and they keep doing so until they wind down on their own schedule, which in the United States happens at an average age of 51.[1]…
Many women are told, or read online, that a hysterectomy “throws your hormones out of balance” or “makes you age overnight.” The real answer depends almost entirely on one question: were your ovaries removed? The uterus does not make the estrogen, progesterone or testosterone that circulate in your blood. The ovaries do. This guide explains…