Preventing Menopause: How to Stop Menopause Before it Starts by Beth Rosenshein
(Your Health Press: 2006)

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Audio
Hear author Beth Rosenshein discuss preventing ovarian failure on the radio show Preventing Menopause.
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Hear Dr. Elena A. Christofides (who authored the foreword for Preventing Menopause) discuss the fertility industry on the radio show The Fertility Industry.
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Here's what people are saying about Preventing Menopause: How to Stop Menopause Before it Starts:

“I hope women and their loved ones use the information in this book to help them make a reasoned, informed plan that will address what is happening to them in this often difficult time.” — Dr. Elena A. Christofides, Endocrinologist (from the Foreword)

“Beth Rosenshein continues to work hard to further clarify the poorly understood area of ovarian function. Her tireless research raises excellent questions about the effectiveness of our current medical options. It is a big step forward toward addressing questions that will help us customize care in order to achieve better quality of life for women in the second half of their lives.” — Dr. Scott Eberly, Internal Medicine, Bellevue, WA

“Preventing Menopause opens up several new doors in the exploration of women’s health. It offers women more choices in how they want to experience menopause. I highly recommend this book to those who are experiencing pre and menopausal related symptoms.” — Libby Yuskaitis, RN, BSN

Journal Newspapers book review: Can women avoid menopause? One author thinks so.

About the Book
Ovaries are only needed for childbearing, right? Wrong! The truth is, the ovaries have many functions vital to a woman’s health, including an integral role in sexual satisfaction, quality of sleep, overall mood, and protection from breast cancer, colon cancer, and heart disease. When ovaries run out of eggs and fail, which is what happens at menopause, women’s bodies are left far more vulnerable to these diseases with significantly reduced sexual function. The information needed to prevent or delay menopause for at least thirty years, thus improving our sex lives and overall health as we age, has been available, but no one’s told us about it. Until now.

In her groundbreaking book, Preventing Menopause: How to Stop Menopause Before it Starts, Beth Rosenshein explains how you can safely make menopause an optional phase of life. Working together with your doctor, and using the newest and most appropriate hormonal therapy, you can prolong ovarian function and maintain good health. Not only will this program provide birth control, but it will keep your sex drive alive too. One thing is for sure: this is not your mother’s Hormone Replacement Therapy!

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction

Chapter 1: Changing the Way We Think

Chapter 2: A Common Language and a Common Goal
What Are Hormones?
What Is an Estrogen?
How Estradiol Is Produced
How All Hormones Are Stored in the Blood
Hormonal Products
What Is the Difference between Synthetic, Natural and Patented Hormones?
Why Say Ovarian Failure Instead of Menopause?
Ovarian Hormones Have Multiple Functions

Chapter 3: Why Prevent Ovarian Failure?
What Is Ovarian Failure?
Is Ovarian Failure Natural, Normal or Neither?
How Breast Tissue Responds to Ovarian Failure
How Testosterone May Protect Against Breast Cancer
Studies Clearly Demonstrate How Testosterone Prevents Breast Cancer
Breast Cancer and Hypogonadism
Risk of Cancer and Ovarian Failure
How Ovarian Failure Affects Your Risk of Heart Disease
Ovarian Function and Heart Disease
Osteoporosis
Sleep
How Ovarian Hormones and Melatonin Work Together
Weight Gain and Muscle Tone
Sexual Response
Hot Flashes as an Early Indicator of Ovarian Failure

Chapter 4: How to Prevent Ovarian Failure
A Limited Supply of Eggs
How Ovaries Deplete Themselves Too Soon
How the Levels of Ovarian Hormones Change Over Time
Risk of Birth Defects
Birth Control
Protecting Your Ovaries

Chapter 5: Restoring the Balance
How to Restore Normal Ovarian Hormonal Balance
Define Your Goals
Ovarian Hormone Products
Normalizing Ovarian Function

Chapter 6: Understanding Standard Hormone Replacement Therapy as Used in the Women’s Health Initiative
What I Found
The Goals of the WHI
What the WHI Actually Did

Chapter 7: Working with Your Medical Professional
Ovarian Specialists
Understanding Your Laboratory Report

Chapter 8: Summing Up
My Journey Continues
The Future of Menopause... For Ourselves, Our Daughters and Our Granddaughters

Appendix A
Appendix B

Resources
Finding a Doctor Who Can Help You
How to Find a Doctor or Other Healthcare Professional
Finding a Compounding Pharmacy
Recommended Reading

Bibliography
Index

EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF THE BOOK
Until confronted with menopause I never really gave it much thought. I accepted that I would one day go thorough “the change” just like every other woman. The only thing I knew of menopause was that a woman had hot flashes for a short time and then her life went back to normal, except that she would no longer be able to have a baby. I really thought life would be the same after menopause as it was before. I was in for a rude awakening.

At age 43 I began experiencing changes I was completely unprepared for. My sexual response was completely gone, and after several months I realized that it wasn’t coming back. I needed to find out how this happened, if this was normal, and how to adapt to this change. I was baffled. At the time I had no idea that how I was feeling was caused by menopause, which I later learned was complete ovarian failure. I also discovered that it might be possible to prevent or delay this failure. I had no idea that menopause might be optional.

But as I pored over thousands of medical studies and discovered that it might be possible to make menopause optional, I knew I had to write a book. Originally, I planned on writing solely about the use of bio-identical hormones taken to recreate pre-menopausal hormone levels—as opposed to the non-identical hormones such as Premarin™ and Provera™ used in the most commonly prescribed form of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in an attempt to restore pre-menopausal sexual response. But as I learned more and more about ovarian function, I discovered that as we age we lose our eggs at a faster and faster rate, thus hastening the onset of ovarian failure, and that it may be possible to significantly delay this failure by better managing the eggs with which we are born. Contrary to what nearly every woman—and her doctor—believes, I became convinced that ovarian failure is not inevitable.

About the Author
Beth Rosenshein is an electrical/bio-medical engineer and is very familiar with medical research. She holds two United States patents, one for a unique design of a vaginal speculum, and one for a clever urinary collection device specifically designed for women. Beth discovered and documented an important drug interaction between esomeprazole (Nexium™) and testosterone. Her findings were published in a case study in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences in May 2004. She petitioned the FDA in August 2003 to change the labeling on hormone products. The petition was granted in September 2004. Beth is also a wife and mother and lives in Seattle, Washington.