The big change in your early fifties usually brings about changes in your diabetes treatment needs as well. In addition to the mood swings, the slowdown of estrogen and progesterone production can put your blood sugars on a swing of their own. In fact, you may actually start experiencing these symptoms well before menopause, in the proceeding period known as perimenopause that starts anywhere from ages forty-five to fifty-five (average age being forty-seven).

How Menopause Affects Diabetes

Lower estrogen levels may increase insulin resistance in type 2 women, while lower progesterone levels have the opposite effect, increasing insulin sensitivity. For this reason, one woman's glycemic (or blood sugar) response to menopause can be very different from another's. The best way to figure out what's going on with you is to test your glucose levels frequently and work closely with your doctor.

The ADA reports that, on average, most women require less medication for type 2 diabetes after menopause. However, weight gain, which occurs in response to a slowing metabolism and declining estrogen levels, may offset this benefit. So can inactivity (another reason to keep on track with fitness at any and every age).

According to the Mayo Clinic, women with diabetes who are postmenopausal have a risk of heart attack or stroke that is three times that of their peers without diabetes. One solution for some women many be hormone replacement therapy (HRT), available in a pill, patch, cream, or vaginal insert.

HRT: Risks Versus Benefits

Whether or not to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to combat some of the menopausal problems unique to women with diabetes is very much an individual decision, based on your own medical situation and cardiovascular risk profile. Oral estrogen therapy may improve your cholesterol profile by lowering your LDL (bad) and raising your HDL (good) cholesterol, but it has also been found to increase triglyceride levels, which ups cardiovascular risk.

More recent studies have found that low-dose, continuous trans-dermal HRT may improve fasting glucose levels and decrease total cholesterol in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. Further large-scale, long-term study of this therapy is needed.