Friday, Apr. 16, 1965

The Springs of Youth

The "hot flashes" and occasional depressions that bothered middle-aged women a decade ago are becoming symptoms of the past. Modern woman seems to be escaping most of the rigors of the menopause--that time of life (usually around 50) when fluctuations in the hormonal output of her glands may lead to both physical and psychological discomfort. One of the explanations is hormone therapy. So successful has it been that doctors have carried on a decade-long debate: Why not give all women some hormone treatment, even after menopause, to mitigate the insidious effects of later aging?

At the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists meeting in San Francisco last week, the argument seemed close to resolution. Many doctors now agree that all women should indeed get regular doses of an estrogenic hormone from menopause on.

Some women, to be sure, sail through menopause experiencing no more than changes in menstrual flow. But as post-menopausal aging continues, skin begins to lose its tone, bosoms their lift and bones their hardness. Fatty deposits may pile up in the arteries and leave a woman vulnerable to heart at tacks. Regular doses of estrogens, says the University of Chicago's Dr. M. Edward Davis, can delay the onset of such changes and diminish their impact. There is even a test--an adaptation of the familiar "Pap smear" for detecting uterine cancer--that indicates how much medication a woman might need. "Estrogens are not the fountain of youth," added Brooklyn's Dr. Henry S. Acken Jr., "but they may be the springs that feed the fountain."

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