Are you having menopausal symptoms and would love help, but worried about safety of hormone replacement therapy because you have heard that it is dangerous?

You may have heard that it causes breast cancer or heart attacks, and maybe your doctor has even advised you against it.

So you keep suffering with embarrassing hot flashes, vaginal dryness and painful sex, fatigue, depressed mood, irritability, poor sleep, changes in your hair, your skin, your sex life and the shape of your body. How you feel may be affecting your family, your career and your quality of life.

Hearing about this unnecessary suffering is so frustrating, because the overstated and misunderstood risks of estrogen replacement resulted in poor quality of life and even unnecessary deaths for so many women.

Where this confusion came from? The Women’s Health Initiative Trial (WHI) in 2002 started this controversy. In this study women were given SYNTHETIC NON-bioidentical estrogen ( a drug with hormone-like properties, but not the exact structure the ovary used to make) and a SYNTHETIC progestin (again, not the structure the human body normally makes). The progestin in the pill was the main problem, it contributed to an increase to breast cancer and the risk of heart disease. Even in that study estrogen was not shown to do that! Multiple studies since then showed beneficial effects of hormones on the body, and yet the old story is still repeated and believed by so many to this day.

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

Across many studies, estrogen replacement was NOT shown to increase risk of breast cancer.

Estrogen is shown to actually reduce risk of heart attacks and death!

Yale study that looked at women aged 50-59 with history of hysterectomy showed that estrogen replacement therapy was associated with REDUCTION in deaths from heart attacks and breast cancer. They estimated that 90,000 women have died because they did NOT continue on hormone replacement therapy. Shocking, isn’t it?

Here is the study:

Philip M. Sarrel, Valentine Y. Njike, Valentina Vinante, and David L. Katz. The Mortality Toll of Estrogen Avoidance: An Analysis of Excess Deaths Among Hysterectomized Women Aged 50 to 59 Years. American Journal of Public Health: September 2013, Vol. 103, No. 9, pp. 1583-1588.

HERE IS WHAT WE KNOW

 Estrogen is important for your bones. Low estrogen is a risk factor for osteoporosis.

Estrogen is the most effective therapy for hot flashes. 

HERE IS WHAT WE KNOW regarding hormone replacement therapy:

1. WHEN you start hormone replacement matters.
2. HOW you take your hormone replacement matters.
3. What FORM of hormone replacement you take matters