(For some reason, the Globe and Mail site now crashes my computer when I try to go there. [But I'm not paranoid, noooo ...] Could someone who can still go there please post a link to the article in today's edition, by-line Andre Picard, p A14 in the print edition? Thanks.)

lagatta, one of the reasons I am so sensitive to this topic is that I spent a good decade listening to heavy propaganda -- from doctors and friends both -- in favour of HRT, as I suspect sophrosyne's mum did as well.

Sure, we can think for ourselves. But I tell you, it can be hard to stand up to the kind of concerted campaign that older women have faced on this turf.

For years, all I had to hang on to in my resistance to HRT was a vague feeling that menopause was not a disease and therefore shouldn't be hyped as such. I was amazed for years at the intense emotional reaction I got from family and friends for saying that out loud. Some of my relatives still won't discuss HRT with me -- and I have a feeling that this study is just going to make that worse.

Quack's view was, well, it'll help bone density. Prevent osteoporosis, don't you know. The old gril had a couple of tests done and found out that her bone density, already nothing to worry about, actually increased measurably during the year or so the quack was occasionally suggesting this.

Curiously, the quack is female, and a generation or so younger than the old gril. I don't know what if anything any of this signifies, except maybe that some surprising people can get caught up in those weird beliefs tenuously held by an influential group.

[ 28 May 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

Mind you, it did nothing for her bones, which I believe was the point. To me, discovering at, say, age eighty that your joints are stiff and your bones more fragile than they used to be is just, y'know, life. To others, it seems something to be fought even harder with a medication that is CLEARLY NOT WORKING!

FYI, I'm not going to tell my Mom to do anything, I wouldn't even dare... Rather, it usually works the other way around, with a "I told you so!"

[ 28 May 2003: Message edited by: sophrosyne ]

Certainly agree that conventional medicine tends to overmedicate for both physical and mental/emotional health complaints. But a friend who is a doctor (in a speciality other than gyno) is VERY leery of scare stories in the press. They are often simplistic.

Just thinking, skdadl. You put this topic in feminism, because it pertains to women's health, I surmise? I would have posted such health issues in body and soul.

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Oh, well. One day or another we'll find the fountain of youth in pill form.

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After all, the Western medical system has a long and not-so-proud tradition of marginalizing women's health issues, and not conducting thorough-enough testing to verify that drugs treatments etc. have the same effect on females as they do males.

The serious depressives (those who are convinced that we're all going to die, so why don't we all die as soon as poss) argue with the serious fountain-of-youth types (those who think they're going to be playing tennis at ninety and really like the idea of plastic surgery).

I am convinced that the last battle on earth will be fought between those two groups. (You are all aware, of course, of how often "the last battle on earth" has been re-cast between two oversimplified poles of all sorts?)

Put me in camp 1. I hardly expect to live out the day. I like getting older. I have never wanted to be younger. I try to look as awful as I can.

lagatta: choose your weapons!

At the very least, I hope to be driving two or three generations of progeny batty.

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But I do think getting older is the pits. I'd rather be dead than asexual.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
I don't take HRT. I am very suspicious of overmedicalisation. But I do think getting older is the pits. I'd rather be dead than asexual.

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I have one grandmother that would take you to task over the idea that getting older means you're asexual. I still remember the day I called her when she was making "Better-Than-Sex Cake" and she told me "It's isn't really, but we call it that anyway."

Where do they find guys? There was a huge spate of early mortality - most of it smoking related, among guy friends just a bit older than me in recent years.

Of course, some could be lesbians, but Zoot's relative seems het.

I think younger women find our pickle hard to relate to.

Have no desire to go through the many plastic surgeries to raise and tighten everything to find a younger men, and middle-aged and older women who've done that (thinking of a wealthy aunt of mine, and no, she has never given me or anyone else in the family a cent) just look like older women who've had stuff done...

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The estrogen and progestin component of the Women's Health Initiative, which included over 16,000 women, compared two groups of healthy women (no prior history of heart disease), one using estrogen with progestin and one taking a placebo. In this study, combined estrogen and progestin was associated with a 22 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The incidence of heart attacks increased 29 percent among women taking estrogen and progestin, as compared to the group of women on placebo (2). These effects became apparent after an average of 5.2 years of follow-up.

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http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/estrogenplus

Hot flashes are the pits, especially if you're working outside the home. And of course there are other things that happen during menopause, even though it's not an illness. So far Black Cohosh seems to be one of the herbals that are somewhat effective and don't have any horrendous side effects.

As for sexual desire and aging, I've noticed changes, certainly, as I've grown older (I'm in my 40s now). Nowadays, my desires are more cyclical, with a definite ebb and flow at different times of the month. That doesn't mean that at low ebb I don't want any sexual contact - it just takes a little longer to get things going, or I may not orgasm as quickly, or at all for that matter.

That's an honest question. I've always wondered.

Indeed, many serious medical conditions USUALLY make menopausal complaints fade into the background. But I do have friends who are really debilitated by them, and the herbal stuff doesn't work.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/05/29/juska/index.html

If you're not a Salon subscriber, you have to look at an ad to get their "day pass" so you can read the whole article. Sorry for that, but the article is right in line with the discussion.

[ 29 May 2003: Message edited by: Zoot Capri ]

The point that struck me was that Juska is an older woman choosing to be an active sexual being when our culture normally relegates women of that age, especially unmarried ones, to the asexuality that you seemed very much against in your earlier post. Further to that, she said something to the effect of at that stage of life, sex was different in many ways than it is for younger women.

But lagatta, she says it isn't "casual" sex to her at all, and obviously the three guys she's now settled on mean something to her. I think I also would have had trouble setting up the project the way she did -- but where she is now sounds terrific. Maybe not for me -- but she sounds terrific.

This I think I understand:

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Juska turns around and looks them both up and down, before she remembers my question. "Oh wait, I'm sorry, about soul mates?" She crosses, then recrosses her legs, smiles. "Look, I'm in a much different place than you are at your age. Maybe it's an evolutionary thing. I've done marriage and kids. I'm not into nesting. I don't have much time left. And I have these lovely interactions with these men -- maybe it's because for me, and for other people my age, there's a certain poignancy and sweetness that comes from being so close to the end."

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