FAQ
How is Winona different from other healthcare websites?
Winona uses the most current scientific information to provide answers to your menopause questions. Using years of experience, and taking the best possible care, we can help you take control of your menopause journey.
Focusing on menopause wellness, health, and anti-aging therapies, Winona healthcare providers are available to help you online. They are excited to hear your concerns, and when appropriate, they can prescribe you effective medications. In one online visit, you can be diagnosed and prescribed specific medication to alleviate your real menopause symptoms.
Our Winona Pharmacies will prepare you prescription and deliver it directly to your door. Imagine that, no more visits to the doctor’s office!
Let our Winona healthcare professionals answer your concerns.
Winona’s healthcare professionals can create a customized plan to help balance your hormones and help provide you with the symptom relief and medical benefits that you have been looking for. Their goal is to have you feeling better than you have in years.
We offer solutions that can include pills, creams, patches, and other replacements to help improve your long-term health. In addition to alleviating the symptoms of low estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone, hormone replacements can also aid you in losing weight, and improve your skin, hair, memory, mood, sex drive, and create an overall sense of well-being.
Who are your Winona healthcare experts?
The Winona healthcare team includes physicians and medical practitioners who are licensed and trained to understand your distinct needs during this period of life. Menopause is a journey. It can be challenging, but we are here to help you during this life transition. Menopause awareness is an important knowledge for every women because every woman's menopausal symptoms are unique. And the treatment plan provided by Winona healthcare professionals will be individualized.
What is Menopause?
Menopause is the absence of the menstrual cycle for one full year. It usually occurs at about 45-52 years of age, but perimenopause can start at 35. Menopausal symptoms are incredibly variable from woman to woman. Some women have few symptoms, while others feel miserable.
I don’t know if I am really going through menopause. How can I tell?
Menopause looks different for each person, but symptoms are one effective way to tell if you are going through menopause.
Some of the symptoms include:
Hot flashes
Weight gain, increased body fat, low muscle tone
Insomnia and restless sleep
Skin changes, including more noticeable skin wrinkles
Decreases sex drive, vaginal dryness, and painful intercourse
Fatigue, low energy
Headaches and migraines
Difficulty concentrating and memory changes
The feeling of uneasiness, mood changes, depression, and a low sense of well-being
How long do I have to endure the symptoms of menopause?
Menopause can last over a decade! If you include perimenopause, it can last up to 20 years. If not properly treated, the impact can create a lifetime of health problems. Menopause typically spans the time leading up to your last period (also called perimenopause) to post-menopause.
We encourage you to take control of your journey now, not just for you, but for the ones who love you. Menopause is a challenging time – your body is stressed both physically and emotionally. This can be an equally challenging time for partners, children, and friends who are along for the emotional and physical roller coaster ride of menopause and all of its changing iterations.
How can Winona help me alleviate my symptoms?
Winona is here to share all of the opportunities available to ease menopausal symptoms, and actually enjoy this life transition! While there is no ‘treatment’ for menopause as it is a natural event, there are great treatments for the often-chronic symptoms that result from it. Providing relief from your symptoms is the goal of Winona. You may also check: Can you reverse menopause?
Am I a candidate for HRT?
You could be, but that is decided during your online consultation with our medical providers. Start Winona’s easy patient questionnaire to find out more
Is HRT safe?
When monitored and guided by trained medical professionals, HRT is absolutely safe and can improve your health both long-term and short-term. Millions of women have used HRT for decades to help them feel their best!
Prescription menopause relief. Delivered.
What you should know:
Estrogen Replacement can add back the estrogen that naturally decreases during menopause. Estrogen has many jobs, but one is mental processing. Estrogen “lubricates the brain.” Taking HRT in menopause may improve memory, concentration, and cognition. Estrogen can also help protect against heart disease, strokes, decrease blood cholesterol, lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s/dementia, improve mood swings, decrease water retention, reduce hot flashes, prevent osteoporosis, and reduces the chance of Type 2 diabetes. Winona provides estrogen that is chemically identical to the kind made by women’s ovaries, and described as “bioidentical.” Shipped by Winona’s private pharmacies it comes as a pill, transdermal cream, or estrogen patch.
Progesterone Replacement can help many symptoms. Once a woman hits her mid to late 30’s she can enter perimenopause, and progesterone production starts to decline. Once she reaches menopause, circulating progesterone levels are so low, they are similar to levels normally seen in men. Research shows that adding back the progesterone can improve brain function, mood as well as cardiovascular, and nervous system health. Progesterone can protect against uterine and breast cancer, helps fat metabolism, normalize blood sugar, reverse osteoporosis, improve thyroid function and act as a natural antidepressant, and reduce anxiety.
Testosterone Replacement: Although many think of it as a ‘male’ hormone, testosterone is also an important female hormone that plays a critical role in women’s health. Testosterone maintains normal metabolic function, muscle and bone strength, urogenital health, mood, and cognitive function. A deficiency in testosterone can lead to low sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm. Tiredness, depression, headaches, cognitive problems, osteoporosis, and lean body tissue loss are additional complications from low testosterone. Testosterone levels peak in a woman’s ’20s and start to drop years before perimenopause. By menopause, most women’s levels are half of the peak levels. Winona offers DHEA, a testosterone precursor, to gently yet effectively replace the testosterone that can be missing with menopause.
Why HRT?
You don’t have to accept your menopause symptoms as just a “part of getting older.” HRT is one way to get your vitality back. By taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) you can restore proper hormone levels using substances that are indistinguishable from what your body would produce on its own.
The hormones replaced during HRT are estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. Winona offers estrogen in either cream, patch, or pill form. It is compounded and mailed directly to your home by the Winona Pharmacy specializing in HRT. With personalized doses, you can get back to more optimal hormone levels, restore your youthful drive, and address the symptoms that are adversely impacting your life
How long until I see and feel results?
The results will vary, but most patients will see relief from some symptoms within the first two weeks.
Will I ever “get better”?
Because your body will never resume producing these hormones at the higher levels on its own, you’ll need to continue HRT for as long as you want to keep experiencing the benefits of optimal hormone levels
Do I need to change my lifestyle during treatment?
Treating your underlying hormone deficiencies and imbalances can have an incredible impact on your wellness. But we also recommend beginning on a course of vitamin supplements, regular exercise, and a healthy diet. With this added focus on health, you may begin to feel better than you have in years!
Should I take herbal & vitamin supplements?
You can lose bone mass during menopause. Although exercise will certainly help with this, your Winona doctor will likely prescribe a vitamin supplement. Be sure to discuss your desire and thoughts about taking these with your provider. It’s important to take the right supplements that will not interfere with other medications or health conditions you may have.
Osteoporosis is a concern for most women during menopause. This disease is marked by your bones becoming weak and fragile. Additionally, low energy and lack of sleep are major concerns during menopause. Winona supplements are designed to provide the unique and changing micronutrients needed during menopause.
Aren’t there more ‘natural’ solutions to my menopause symptom?
When thinking about menopause, many women just try to ‘get through it’ naturally. Their decisions are often based on the years of misinformation about the risks mistakenly associated with HRT. The reality is that there is nothing more ‘natural’ than replacing hormones you no longer produce with bioidentical hormones. The hormones are ‘micronized’ so they are better absorbed and utilized by your body and actually mimic what your body used to do before menopause.
Who on the Winona team is making the medicines we are taking?
When our founders decided to offer more choices to complement the HRT, they immediately wanted to add multivitamin supplements. As trained scientists, they knew there were specific ratios of nutrients that could help patients relieve their symptoms when combined with HRT. Using the highest standards and rigorous testing, we designed supplements using only the highest-quality, pharmaceutical-grade nutrients. These are proven to be effective and safe to provide maximum menopause health benefits and faster results with no dangerous side effects.
Feel like yourself again.
What is the medicine I would be taking?
Winona hormone replacement options for women include cream, pill, or patch. Winona’s providers will work directly with you to identify what’s right for you.
Topical Cream
Women use creams as a way to get a dose of hormones through the skin. Estrogen creams are easy to use. Applying cream to the skin is called “transdermal” dosing, meaning that the medication is transported through the layers of the skin to the bloodstream. Dosing through the skin bypasses the liver and is generally considered to be easier on the body because of the lower dose needed. The amounts applied are precisely measured by using the Winona dispensing bottles.
Pills
You may have tried oral hormones if you ever used birth control pills. The doses of hormones in birth control pills are higher than what is needed for menopause. Winona’s oral hormones are targeted specifically towards hormone replacement from our compounding pharmacy, which provides a dose that’s perfect for BHRT purposes.
Because an oral hormone has to go past the liver—which breaks down a large part of the hormones that pass through it—the dose of hormones has to be significantly higher than creams or patches. Most women tolerate these doses just fine, but some women may want the topical alternative.
Patches
Women use patches as a way to get a dose of hormones through the skin. Estrogen patches are easy to use. Applying the patch to the skin is called “transdermal” dosing, meaning that the medication is transported through the layers of the skin to the bloodstream. Dosing through the skin bypasses the liver and is generally considered to be easier on the body because of the lower dose needed. Just apply the patch, sticky side to the skin, to an area that is clean, dry, and hairless. Usually the rear end. Depending on the dosage you can wear from 4-7 days before you replace the patch. A patient package insert for the patches will be given with each prescription and refill.
What did we forget?
We are here to help you. Please ask any questions we didn’t answer here at help@bywinona.com
“This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The information contained herein is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of any treatment.”
