The taking of estrogen like drugs (usually Premarin – made from pregnant mare’s urine) to treat various symptoms of women who are in menopause, such as hot flashes, dry vagina, irritability, depression, dizziness, inability to sleep, headaches, tingling or burning of the skin, dryness of the skin, episodes of rapid heartbeat. Also, estrogen like drugs are given to elderly women to treat osteoporosis (bone thinning). The only symptoms that seem directly related to hormone levels are hot flashes and dry vagina. The other symptoms are frequently related to stress, lack of exercise, poor nutrition and degenerative diseases. Since taking estrogen like drugs often relieves the symptoms, physicians have reached an incorrect conclusion that the underlying cause is a deficiency of estrogen. In fact, a woman’s ovaries produce estrogen throughout her lifetime. The temporary improvement many women feel is probably due to the “speeding up” of cell activity that these drugs produce. The irony of this treatment is that the drugs suppress normal hormone secretions which leads to atrophy of the ovary, thus causing the problem it is supposedly curing.