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  Menopause Flushing: What your doctor can do

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is the most effective treatment for menopausal flushing. It consists of oestrogen and (unless you have had a hysterectomy) a daily dose of progesterone for 14 days of the month. It may be a few weeks before the flushes disappear.

Doctors are still arguing about how long women should stay on HRT. You might imagine that when you stop taking HRT the falling levels of hormones will make the flushes reappear.

This does sometimes happen, but not in all women. When you stop HRT, the dose can be reduced very gradually so that the body becomes used to the falling levels.

Paroxetine and venlafaxine are drugs that can help if you are unable to take HRT and have really troublesome flushes. They are mainly used to treat depression, because they change the way that cells in the brain handle transmitter chemicals, such as serotonin and noradrenaline.

These chemicals may also be involved in hot flushes, so it is not surprising that these drugs reduce flushes. A study of venlafaxine, published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2000, found that it reduced hot flushes by 61%.