One of things women going through menopause experience is hot flashes and inability to sleep. But a drug that was previously used to treat seizures has been found to help with this according to a report in the Journal of Women’s Health. Almost half of menopausal women, about 40 percent, have trouble getting to and staying asleep.

Researchers have found that gabapentin not only “helps alleviate hot flashes” but then also results in a better night’s sleep. The drug also doesn’t seem to have the dependency issues that other drugs have.
Image: sxc.hu.

Hot flashes not only greatly annoy women during the day, but they can prove a big disruption to sleep. For women suffering hot flashes after cancer treatment, rest is important, but difficult. And breast cancer patients can’t take advantage of hormone replacement therapy because they need to avoid estrogen.

One answer to the problem may be the drug gabapentin, a nonhormonal therapy. It was approved by the FDA to fight seizures, but other uses are becoming common. Gabapentin is widely prescribed to reduce pain.
In a study reported on at the National Cancer Institute website, patients taking gabapentin experienced either a 49% …read more

If you’ve ever had shingles, you know how painful it can be – especially if it’s not caught early enough to take the antiviral medication. That’s what happened to me about four years ago when I had shingles. I didn’t know what it was until it was too late.
One of the things I remember the most was not only how much it hurt, but how tired and run down I felt. Just awful. And then there’s the itch too. Not fun at all.
Treating shingles (herpes zoster) pain is hard because it’s nerve pain (neuropathic pain), the toughest there is to …read more

And I thought only (menopausal) women experience hot flashes!
Apparently, men who are undergoing anti-hormonal treatment or androgen-deprivation therapy as treatment for prostate cancer, experience hot flashes as well.
The only current therapeutic agents for this condition are androgen-originating hormones. However, some of which can actually fuel the growth of cancer. Men may be relieved of hot flashes but new cancer growth becomes an issue to worry about.
Now, according to North Central Cancer Treatment Group researchers (based at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.), low doses of the drug gabapentin can reduce hot flashes in this patient population of men.
…the drug gabapentin reduced …read more