Hormone therapy: The risks continue even when the doses stop
If you've ever taken hormone replacement therapy—or are considering taking it—you should be aware of a recent analysis that shows why HRT is even more dangerous than we thought. The analysis was a follow-up to an original government study that was done with 16,608 women, looking at post- menopausal hormone use. The study was abruptly stopped when there was a surge in heart attacks and breast cancer that occurred in the study group.
This analysis has uncovered what's happened to those women a few years after the end of that HRT study.
First, the good news. The most troubling initial finding in the HRT study was the increased risk of heart disease for women who took estrogen-progestin pills. The good news is that this particular risk has been found to actually decrease after just a couple of years once use has been discontinued.
But the news isn't all good. Far from it. For women who took hormone therapy for more than 5 years, their risk of lung and breast tumors increased. And women who had taken and then stopped hormone therapy were 24 percent more likely to develop all types of cancer than those who took placebo during the study.
This news makes it even more critical that, if you use or used HRT, you continue to get regular cancer screenings.
There are still many mainstream doctors who think conventional hormone replacement therapy (Premarin, Prempro) is okay to use in low doses, as necessary but I absolutely disagree. Even if you overlook the increased risk of cancer for a minute (as if you could), remember these pills are made from the urine of pregnant horses. They're a chemical soup with forms of estrogen that are possibly cancer-causing. There's no way on God's green earth that this substance was ever meant to be ingested by humans. Imagine if your doctor told you to drink that! You'd tell him he was insane and find a new doctor. But when they package it in a pill, spend millions on PR, and make it "prescription required," it becomes the standard.
I recommend to my own patients who are suffering from the hot flashes and brain fog associated with menopause to give bioidentical hormones a try. They're designed to match human hormones—which means there are no foreign-to- human equine forms of estrogen in them. Use the lowest dose of this much more natural option to help with symptom relief, and use it for less than five years. And make sure you work under the supervision of an experienced practitioner.
Two good resources to find bioidentical hormones are the Natural Hormone Pharmacy (800-522-6692) and the Women's International Pharmacy (800-279- 5708). See www.iacprx.org for a listing of compounding pharmacists around the country. Contact any of these organizations to locate a local practitioner who works with bio-identical hormones.
