Hormone therapy may improve the quality of life: Doctor

JAKARTA (JP): Getting old can be scary as it is a time when the body is prone to various ailments due to the lack of certain hormones. But there is a way to prolong the quality of life for aging people.

When the hormone estrogen in women and testosterone in men is decreasing, this can reduce or cease not only their sexual activities and reproductive functions, but can make them vulnerable to coronary heart disease, stroke, dementia, and osteoporosis.

"So, when women enter their 40s and men their 50s they may feel restless, dizzy, aches in their muscles and bones, and other symptoms of the hazardous menopause period and andropause period for women and men respectively," obstetrician Ichramsjah A. Rahman told a media briefing on Monday.

He suggested that they undergo hormonal therapy to prevent or to remedy such ailments.

In many countries, he added, such therapy has become necessary as it has been proven to alleviate menopausal and andropausal symptoms, prevented osteoporosis in 60 percent of menopausal women, heart disease in 70 percent of them, and from senility, bed wetting, and even from colon cancer.

"Hormone therapy can help our elders to live a healthy life for a longer period so they can enter old age without problems," he added.

Activists of the Menopause Society of Indonesia (Permi), Ichramsjah and his colleague Ali Baziad, initiated the first national congress on Menopause and Andropause which will be held on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 in the capital.

The congress will discuss problems and treatment and how hormone therapy affects other organs.

It will also advocate the urgent need to obtain affordable treatment and therapy since the therapy itself would take a lifetime to ensure its effectiveness.

"Menopausal women would have to spend between Rp 150,000 and Rp 200,000 (some US$19) per month for the pills only and that is until the end of their life," Ali Baziad said.

"For men, they have to be injected with testosterone once every two months," he added without revealing the cost.

However, he said, there are fears that such therapy can cause breast cancer in women and prostate cancer on men, while replacing the therapy by consuming certain foods which contain the same substance, such as soy beans, may not be effective in increasing the level of the hormones needed.

"Women should undergo a mammogram test to detect breast cancer each two years and so should men to check on their prostate regularly," he added.

Ali Baziad also said that Permi had asked the Ministry of Health to start considering the development of the invention of hormonal substance derived locally from the country's natural resources to replace the expensive imported one now widely used here.

Ichramsjah added that they had also persuaded the government to provide a special scheme for senior citizens health insurance, such as in South Korea and other developed countries.(bby)