After stopping her bio-identical hormone therapy a few years back and now on the verge of menopausal crisis, a former patient returned to my care. Why did she stop her HRT? Because of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study which reported an increase risk of cancer in those subjects using “progesterone” with “estrogen”.

First of all let’s make it very clear, comparing the hormones used in the WHI study with botanically-derived bio-identical hormones is like comparing apples to oranges.

The WHI used Premarin derived from pregnant mare’s urine as the “estrogen” and Provera, synthetic medroxyprogesterone, as the “progesterone”.

Years ago when WHI first began to study HRT’s effectiveness in preventing heart disease, I was asked to by the American Heart Association to be part of a panel of local experts to answer women’s questions on the hormones. As a nurse practitioner who had been treating menopausal women for years with natural hormones, I was honored to be part of the medical panel which included cardiologists and endocrinologists, but the WHI researcher was not too thrilled when I began questioning her terminology. I argued that WHI was not using “progesterone” but a synthetic derivative and that the study would show an increase in cardiovascular disease for two reasons:
1. the hormones were oral which would create havoc in the liver’s production of clotting factors (just as oral contraceptives increase the incidence of blood clots)
2. and not using real progesterone would put the subjects at risk for breast cancer.

Now what I had to say was not well received, but the cardiologist covertly asked about what I knew. Although I explained, the doctors, too fearful to break away from protocol, continued following the pharmaceutical sponsored protocols until…the study was stopped. Why? Because the subjects had significant increases in…
1. blood clots leading to stroke and heart attack
2. and breast cancer especially in the subjects that were given Provera

Guess what? The endocrinologist on that panel is now using natural hormones.
How many women must suffer before health care providers make the switch to alternative therapies?

Needless to say, my former patient gladly went back on bio-identical hormones. I also recommended Genesis Gold® to help metabolize the hormones as safely as possible and to balance adrenal, thyroid, and hypothalamic function as well as glucose metabolism. Finally I counseled her on nutritional and lifestyle changes to encourage healthier body composition and promote safer estrogen metabolism.

Tomorrow, I’ll go into detail about hormone metabolism.