“Hormones are the juice of life,” said Suzanne Somers last week, according to an article in the New York Times.
The self proclaimed menopause guru to millions touted “bio-identical” hormones, which can be prescribed by doctors in customized doses and prepared individually by pharmacies. She reassures women that they are safe and has articles from medical journals to back her claim.
Dr. Lynne Shuster (mayoclinic.org)
Dr. Lynne T. Shuster, the director of women’s health clinic at the Mayo Clinic, does not quite agree. She believes that the safety and effectiveness of “bio-identical hormones” needs to be studied more closely and, unlike branded hormone therapy, has not been approved the F.D.A.. Shuster, and many other doctors, believe that menopausal hormone treatments can be very worthwhile, but full disclosure of its benefits and risks is essential.
According to Vitals.com, Dr. Shuster completed both her medical degree and residency at Mayo Medical School.
Hormone treatment is big business and full disclosure is not always good for sales. Millions of dollars have been spent by drug companies using celebrities and other means to create a positive preventative health message that drowns out the risks.
Menopause became a diagnosed degenerative disease, which required prevention or cured with hormones in the 1960’s. Dr. Robert A. Wilson, a gynecologist, stated in his popular book “Forever Feminine:”
“No woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay. There is no need for either valor or pretense. The need is for hormones.”
And so the backbone was laid. Drugs such as Premarin, an estrogen derived from the urine of female horses, were developed to treat the “menopausal disease,” creating massive profits for drug companies.
Women flocked to use this miraculous drug, but increasing numbers of cases of endometrial cancer were reported. A warning was finally added to the label, although the drug company never further researched the connection. Boston Medical Center has estimated that the drug caused more than 15,000 cases of endometrial cancer in the United States between the years 1971-1975 alone.
Wyatt shifted their attention from Premarin’s risks to a study released in the 1990’s that reported the protective effect of hormonal drugs on the heart. They developed Prempro, which was a combination of Premarin and the hormone progestin. Celebrity icon, Lauren Hutton, running down the beach on TV advised women that estrogen replacement during menopause could protect their heart and their future.
Research studies strongly disagreed with Lauren Hutton and Wyatt. In 2002 the largest clinical trial ever was halted, because participants who took combined hormones showed an increased risk of breast cancer as well as heart attack, stroke and blood clots in the lungs. They later found that these drugs also increased the risk of dementia in participants 65 and older.
The lawsuits that resulted offer a disturbing look of how pharmaceutical companies function and how in the pursuit of profit trust was breached. Because of their lack of disclosure of both benefits and risks, they’ve cast a shadow over an effective therapy for women facing menopause.
Dr. Lynne Shuster – False Advertising Casts a Shadow On Menopausal Hormone Treatment: “Hormones are the juice of … http://bit.ly/7FRJZE
My mom recently started bioidentical hormones and my whole family has seen a huge change in her. Yes there are pros and cons to everything but so far these drugs seem to be working wonders for her.
Dr. Lynne Shuster – False Advertising Casts a Shadow On Menopausal Hormone … http://bit.ly/5Cb76c
Personal Summer? Dr. Lynne Shuster – False Advertising Casts a Shadow On Menopausal Hormone … http://bit.ly/7FRJZE
Shuster is wrong! There are several FDA approved bioidentical hormones available. I’m using one of them, EstroGel, which is bioidentical estradiol topical gel. There are also bioidentical estradiol patches and even a spray, all FDA approved. There is also FDA-approved bioidentical progesterone in pill form, Prometrium. These products are also covered by most insurance plans.
I wish the anti-bioidentical doctors would stop misinforming the public. They make it seem like using bioidentical hormones is risky and unscientific. We’re merely replacing what was in a woman’s body for the first 50 years of her life. It’s a shame that women’s ovaries quite suddenly shut down at menopause and the resulting withdrawal from estradiol often triggers extremely unpleasant symptoms that make getting any enjoyment out of life difficult if not impossible.
Also note that a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis increases dramatically after menopause. Many believe that the loss of hormones is the culprit and putting them back will lower the risks, though they do tend to agree that you’d better start the replacement sooner than later.
I started using bioidentical progesterone several years prior to menopause which totally abated my palpitations and insomnia and also helped to regulate my cycle. Last year, after 9 days of unrelenting hot flashes multiple times per hour 24×7, I started using bioidentical estradiol. Not only did I get nearly complete relief from the hot flashes, I also experienced a rather miraculous mood lift. Not surprising considering that prior to menopause my estradiol levels were always on the high end of the normal range (350+ pg/mL), and then after the hot flashes started it was close to 0. Now that I’m supplementing, I’m at 70. My target range is 50-100.
This is a very rough time for women. Let’s make it easier, OK? Viagra is much more dangerous for men than estradiol and progesterone are for women, but you don’t see many doctors telling men with ED that they shouldn’t use Viagra. Why are women always treated so shabbily, like our enjoyment of life isn’t important? Dr. Shuster probably hasn’t reached menopause yet, I think she’ll have an attitude shift about bioidentical hormones when she gets there.
Also important to note that the 2002 study mentioned in the article used synthetic hormones, not bioidenticals. They used Wyeth’s conjugated equine estrogens and synthetic progestin. Since that study, researchers pretty much agree that synthetic progestins are risky.
So what studies are available that show that bioidentical hormones are safe? How about all of women’s lives??? Women have had bioidentical hormones in them for all of their lives prior to menopause. If they were risky, why would we not see more young women with cancers, heart disease, stroke, and other problems when their hormone levels are highest? Why does the risk of health problems increase drastically when women’s progesterone and estrogens are LOW, i.e., after the menopause transition ?
We need to employ some logic here.