A Brill
"You have saved my life with this protocol!! Thank you so much for your dedication to women and your continuing knowledge and wisdom for our benefit!!"
Michelle
I love the results I'm getting on the protocol. I'm feel good again, my debilitating headaches are GONE!!!!, my libido is back. I can't live without my Wiley Protocol hormones
PH
Words are not sufficient to describe how the WP has changed my life or how grateful I am for your hard work offering this knowledge and relief and better health to women, especially considering how traditional medical “professionals” and even many alternative medical “professionals” ostracize you. (I use the word “professional” only in the loosest and most sarcastic sense.)
My ob/gyn hit the ceiling 10 years ago, when I asked for supplemental estrogen. After I read your book, thanks to reading Suzanne Somers’ book, I went to my general practitioner and he had never heard about WP, but believed it to be a good idea and was more than glad to prescribe the WP.
I have bought and given away more than a dozen of your books and bought four more the last time I went to Abrams/Royal Pharmacy to get my rx. Within the first three days of my first month of the WP, I began to feel like I had 30 years previously (all the feelings that made me a healthy, happy woman that had slipped away so gradually that I didn't even realize most of them weren't there anymore).
I can't imagine how you must feel to have helped so many people. Thank you so much!
Mary
My name is Mary in Ardmore, Ok. I am 58 years old. Two years ago, I was encouraged to visit Dr. Ridley in Dallas by a good friend who had experienced an amazing transformation on the Wiley Protocol and other things Dr. Ridley prescribed. We learned about her through the Suzanne Sommers book.
I had been in menopause for several years. My libido was practically nonexistent. I often had hot flashes and anxiety attacks. I had been prescribed synthetic hormones and hormone patches for the past 10 yrs. I had gained lots of weight especially around the stomach and abdomen.
After being on the Wiley Protocol for about 2 yrs. now, I feel like a new woman. In the last 6 months, I have had regular periods. I have felt like exercising again and my libido has returned. I look much better in my clothes and get compliments very often such as, "you look so youthful". I am truly grateful to the Wiley Protocol and Dr. Ridley for understanding and offering such great information and choices for women.
Edwina
I have been on the Wiley Protocol for a full year now and am very pleased with it. While I never had hot flashes or lost my figure or sexual desire (when I was ever rested), I was concerned about having lost my centered feeling and the screaming anxiety I was experiencing for the first time, especially in the year preceding learning about the WP (and while working full time at home for clients as an ad designer, plus taking care of my mother 24/7 as she recovered from strokes and my father's death that year). I also wanted to prevent the heart disease and strokes I saw in my mother and other older female family members.
Besides regaining my center back in three weeks, other wonderful things happened that I didn't even know were menopausal related: the aching in the heels of my feet that had appeared over the past two years disappeared in two months and I no longer needed gel pads in my shoes, for instance. My dry and intensely itching skin stopped itching and became less dry. My endless insertion of eye drops decreased dramatically. A knee injured in a fall a year previously that would never completely heal, healed in the first few months and has never hurt again. I again experienced deeper sleep. And so on. But the most wonderful feeling was that "center" I had lost. I had always thought I handled crises well because of my happy center that was there no matter what. When I lost it, I could not understand why that was happening to me. In the past, I had always been optimistic and overall led a happy life no matter what disasters lay in my path. I had always thought of that centered feeling as my "God" place, my "spirit" place; how disappointing to find that it was only hormones :-)
The only adverse symptoms have been sudden urinary incontinence, which I had never in my life before experienced, during high dosage days of either estrogen or progesterone, but over the past year that has been happening less and less often. The other unexpected symptom has been heretofore never experienced belly fat. I have never had a stomach problem or significant weight gain/fluctuation, and this is yet to be resolved. It is the one thing that annoys me intensely. I've always been a size four, even after ten years of menopause, so I have not been pleased to not be able to zip jeans nor skirts--and I do go to the gym. This is not a diet problem nor an inactive problem. It is in some way directly related to using the WP.
However, my own research tells me the missing link for this might be testosterone, and my doctor has finally consented to let me try the WP testosterone for women. I am looking forward to seeing if it works. I began it today.
I very much admire Ms. Wiley and associates for finally finding viable answers for women and doing something about it. I take vitamins and other supplements (but discontinued all those my doctor said might interfere with the WP. I do not take any medical drugs, have never even taken an antibiotic since 1978 when a doctor almost killed me with them. Doctors are good for a diagnosis, but if I require "treatment," I make up my own mind about how I'll be treated, and it is never with drugs or to treat "one body part." The body is a unit that requires overall balance to stay healthy and in harmony (in my opinion). Bioidentical hormones make sense to me as being another way to help supply the tools for that overall harmony.
Stay tuned for MORE testimonials!!!
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Who is TS Wiley?
A Beverly Hills, California-based medical practitioner, Dr. Christian Renna said that he believes T.S Wiley has made, “one of the most important discoveries in this century” a simple molecular mechanism that up until now, everyone else has missed. Her revolutionary discovery is the fact that it’s the rhythm that matters in the accurate physiological replacement of hormones without side-effects for women in the second half of life. Wiley’s findings may have important implications across a wide range of areas, from the treatment of menopause and anti-aging to all of the other diseases of aging such as heart disease and stroke, Type II diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
The heart of Wiley’s endocrine research in women is based in chronobiology and circadian rhythmicity. Her work rests on the simple fact that the circadian clock in every cell of every human body measures one spin of the earth, and the planet’s constant companion, the moon, tracks 28 days 13 times in one revolution around the sun.
This light and dark cycle response on hormone receptors has evolved the 28 day menstrual cycle embedded in the physiological make-up of all women. That’s why replacing hormones for women with static one-time-a-day, same-amount-every-day, dosing has been so unsuccessfully lethal that most women get sick and some women die whether they take synthetic or bio-identical hormones in such a non-natural regimen.
After years of research, T.S. Wiley created The Wiley Protocol®, a patent pending delivery system consisting of bio-identical estradiol and progesterone in topical cream preparations dosed to mimic the natural hormones produced by a twenty year-old woman. The creams and their amounts vary throughout the 28 day cycle to mimic the hormone levels of youth. The Protocol is the only bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) that has ever been developed under the scrutiny of a practicing oncologist.
The Wiley Protocol formulation and manner of dosing bio-identical HRT started out as a "thought experiment” when Wiley asked herself and the doctors she worked with the question - "if hormone replacement consisted of real bio-identical hormones and was dosed to mimic the ups and downs of the blood levels seen in a healthy menstrual cycle of a 20 year-old woman, would all of the symptoms and disease states of aging decline or even, disappear?"
Well, to her surprise and many others, the logic holds - it seems from mounting evidence on the Wiley Protocol, it was the rhythm that was always missing in other regimens.
Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stopped the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in 2003 because the synthetic hormones – Premarin and PremPro were deemed too dangerous, the common assumption among women using bio-identical regimens is that they are doing something “safer.” However, Wiley points out that the synthetics may have caused the harm reported, not just because they weren’t bio-identical hormone molecules, but because of the way they were statically dosed. Perhaps, bio-identicals, currently dosed in the Standard of Care mode, may, too, be in need of study and improvement for safety.
As a medical writer and researcher, T.S. Wiley is the author of “Sex, Lies & Menopause,” Harper Collins, 2005, a landmark work where a doctor, a philosopher, and a scientist prove that by postponing marriage and motherhood, women have accelerated the aging process, resulting in earlier menopause and, ultimately for thousands, earlier death. The book also examines the introduction of the birth control pill in the early 1960’s and the impact of not breast-feeding our young.
In her first book, “Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival, ” Pocket Books, 2000, Wiley points out how the discovery of electricity and the light bulb put us out of sync with nature. Before Edison, people spent summers sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we can consume carbohydrates year round, and sleep less. In Wiley’s modest opinion, sleep is the best medicine.
T. S. Wiley spent eight years in private tutorial in molecular biology with Dr. Bent Formby, PH. D., and has been in clinical private tutorial in oncology with Dr. Julie Taguchi since 1998. She has also been a guest investigator at Sansum Medical Research Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. Her focus is on what she refers to as Darwinian Medicine or “environmental endocrinology” and evolutionary biology as it pertains to molecular medicine, oncology and genetics.
The heart of Wiley’s endocrine research in women is based in chronobiology and circadian rhythmicity. Her work rests on the simple fact that the circadian clock in every cell of every human body measures one spin of the earth, and the planet’s constant companion, the moon, tracks 28 days 13 times in one revolution around the sun.
This light and dark cycle response on hormone receptors has evolved the 28 day menstrual cycle embedded in the physiological make-up of all women. That’s why replacing hormones for women with static one-time-a-day, same-amount-every-day, dosing has been so unsuccessfully lethal that most women get sick and some women die whether they take synthetic or bio-identical hormones in such a non-natural regimen.
After years of research, T.S. Wiley created The Wiley Protocol®, a patent pending delivery system consisting of bio-identical estradiol and progesterone in topical cream preparations dosed to mimic the natural hormones produced by a twenty year-old woman. The creams and their amounts vary throughout the 28 day cycle to mimic the hormone levels of youth. The Protocol is the only bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) that has ever been developed under the scrutiny of a practicing oncologist.
The Wiley Protocol formulation and manner of dosing bio-identical HRT started out as a "thought experiment” when Wiley asked herself and the doctors she worked with the question - "if hormone replacement consisted of real bio-identical hormones and was dosed to mimic the ups and downs of the blood levels seen in a healthy menstrual cycle of a 20 year-old woman, would all of the symptoms and disease states of aging decline or even, disappear?"
Well, to her surprise and many others, the logic holds - it seems from mounting evidence on the Wiley Protocol, it was the rhythm that was always missing in other regimens.
Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stopped the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in 2003 because the synthetic hormones – Premarin and PremPro were deemed too dangerous, the common assumption among women using bio-identical regimens is that they are doing something “safer.” However, Wiley points out that the synthetics may have caused the harm reported, not just because they weren’t bio-identical hormone molecules, but because of the way they were statically dosed. Perhaps, bio-identicals, currently dosed in the Standard of Care mode, may, too, be in need of study and improvement for safety.
As a medical writer and researcher, T.S. Wiley is the author of “Sex, Lies & Menopause,” Harper Collins, 2005, a landmark work where a doctor, a philosopher, and a scientist prove that by postponing marriage and motherhood, women have accelerated the aging process, resulting in earlier menopause and, ultimately for thousands, earlier death. The book also examines the introduction of the birth control pill in the early 1960’s and the impact of not breast-feeding our young.
In her first book, “Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival, ” Pocket Books, 2000, Wiley points out how the discovery of electricity and the light bulb put us out of sync with nature. Before Edison, people spent summers sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we can consume carbohydrates year round, and sleep less. In Wiley’s modest opinion, sleep is the best medicine.
T. S. Wiley spent eight years in private tutorial in molecular biology with Dr. Bent Formby, PH. D., and has been in clinical private tutorial in oncology with Dr. Julie Taguchi since 1998. She has also been a guest investigator at Sansum Medical Research Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. Her focus is on what she refers to as Darwinian Medicine or “environmental endocrinology” and evolutionary biology as it pertains to molecular medicine, oncology and genetics.
How Should We Replace Our Hormones??
Biomimetic – a true bio-identical. WP uses the rhythm of nature to establish the proper doses of estradiol and progesterone to mimic the natural hormones produced by your body. It is a more accurate form of hormone restoration. Hormones can be called bio-identical only when they are dosed in a biomimetic fashion.
Derived from plant sources they mimic the natural wavelike, rhythms of the hormone blood levels in a normal menstrual cycle. It is this natural rhythm that is missing from all other hormone replacement therapies.
The world as we know it, the entire universe, in fact from bacteria to blue whales, is all about timing. Individual rhythms deep within us overlap into larger patterns outside of us -- which then weave in and out of each other.
Relief is in the Rhythm The circadian clock in our cells measures one 24 hour spin of the planet. The moon is in sync as that cycle repeats itself every 28 days -- and so is your body. WP topical creams and their amounts vary throughout the 28 day cycle to mimic the hormone levels of youth. This approach is natural, rhythmic and therefore Biomimetic. Bio-identical hormones are only natural if they are Biomimetic.
The Wiley Protocol relieves the discomforts of menstruation, menopause and hormone imbalances. Tens of thousands of women use it and love it.
Friday, July 3, 2009
TIME WILL TELL THE TRUTH
I have seen people die early from diseases that could have been rectified with hormones and cutting edge, non drug methods. Instead, many choose the pharmaceuticals given to them by their trusted doctors, until they are literally "wacky" and too tired to care anymore. But my theories are different from what some doctors are telling their patients to do. I know this is the better way to live. I am a different person. I sleep, I'm calm. I enjoy life and I enjoy my kids. I really want to tell EVERY person I can tell that THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! And YOU DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE! I will help you understand if you want to understand. Just pay attention to what your body is screaming at you to listen to. It is a choice; continue your present unhealthful lifestyle, poor diet, and overuse of pharmaceuticals and experience a slow but sure, painful, unhealthy, sick life with dementia, heart disease, and probably cancer. Or choose to make a few simple changes starting today and enjoy a long life of vibrant, joyous energy and magnificent health.
FROM FACEBOOK I'M A MIDDLE AGE WOMEN AND I HAVE THE HORMONES TO PROVE IT!
This group is for women who know what it means to be ecstatic one moment and devastated the next (and then back to ecstatic again); what it means to be so tired you can't stay up to for your teen's 10 o'clock curfew, but although completely exhausted can't sleep past 3 a.m. to save your life; what it means to be able to heat a small village with merely your own body heat one moment and then be so cold the next moment that you can't get warm even with your electric blanket on 10; what it means to gain 10 lbs. in one week and how it can take an entire year of deprivation to lose those same 10 lbs.; what it means to start crying a flood of tears at the most inappropriate times; what it means to have your vocabulary diminish daily (they say the nouns go first - "can you hand me that, uh, uh. . . thingy?"!) and what it means to be so angry at your hubby for something you can't remember five minutes later and then be totally in love with him while you still can't remember why you were angry in the first place (thankfully, it all ends with the being totally in love part - and isn't it amazing he puts up with all of this? - it must be a God thing!). We also know what it means to have a monthly reminder of labor and delivery; what it means to own and use as many acne products as any pimply-faced 14 year old on the planet and (finally, I hope) what it means to be scared to death to get up from a seat in public for fear you've had a (and I'm not being British here) bloody accident!
Wow! It's amazing any of us make it through this time of life and all those little hormonies (remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding?)
Wow! It's amazing any of us make it through this time of life and all those little hormonies (remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding?)
Anti-Aging Books by Selected Topic
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Anti-aging Bookstore selected topic full listing
Source: antiaging.com
Los Gatos Longevity Institute suggested and preferred reading list.
Anti-aging Bookstore selected topic full listing
Source: antiaging.com
Los Gatos Longevity Institute suggested and preferred reading list.
How Started BioIdentical Hormone Therapy
Your first symptom might not be a hot flash! It may be headaches that you get around you menstrual cycle that you never had before in your 20's and 30's. Moodiness, insomnia, anxiety, palpitations, no energy, fatigue throughout the day, cravings for more sugar or carbohydrates...these are just a few of the changes I began to go through and had NO IDEA it was because I was losing my hormones! I was still having regular menstrual cycles! And I was only 42! What was going on with me?? I began to start researching. I had my first hormone blood test in 2007 and my Estradiol was 48 pg/ml and FSH was 4.01. What did that mean? Every doctor I asked said I was fine, those were normal numbers. Well, two years later and a whole lot of research in to my medical books I found out that 48 pg/ml was not normal!
http://women.webmd.com/normal-testosterone-and-estrogen-levels-in-women?
I would find web page after web page like the one referenced above that basically told me NOTHING! So many books later, and I will put a link for those books for you to access, which also on my facebook page. I found that NORMAL levels of estrogen in your body have a range and that we "cycle". The hormones don't stay at the same level all month long. Estrogen peaks at Day 12 on a 28 day menstrual cycle and it is in the range of 350-550 pg/ml and it then dips after you peak and it's baseline levels are between 150-200 pg/ml and lower on some days when progesterone is present. Progesterone also has a cycle range and it peaks on Day 21 of a 28 day cycle (if you are still ovulating) and it peaks in the range of 5-15 ng/ml and is present only days 14-28 in measurable levels. Otherwise days 1-14 it is not high enough to effect the estrogens job of rising to get us to ovulate! So exciting to learn all this. So my next job was to find out how can I mimic this cycle? What is being sold by pharmaceutical companies I already understood and knew those drugs did not mimic this normal cycle of a woman's body! That's when I discovered what Susan Somers is doing, Mrs. McGraw is doing and thousands and thousands of other woman who are doing great, look great, and feel great all because they went through exactly what I did and searched for the answers! I had to fly from my home of Illinois to California and I attended a seminar with TS Wiley called "Two Days Back on Earth Seminar". You can visit her website if you are a doctor and wish to attend.
So, I now use the Wiley Protocol and I can just tell you life is great! I'm back to exercising because I have the energy to do so. I'm energetic to tell every woman I know who is having hormone problems that there is an answer out there for you! I treat over 500 women myself in my small town clinic in Wilmington, Illinois. I love my job and my patients! I really just want patients to be well informed and from there everyone can make their own health decisions. I don't push bioidentical hormone therapy on those that don't want it or don't need it. My life has just been so blessed by treating the disease of menopause before it set in and grabbed a hold of me that I want to share that with those who want to hear my message.
Cheers and Bless You!
Gretchen Jones
Riverside Medical Center
105 S First Street
Wilmington, IL 60481
815-450-8102
If you refer a colleague to one of the “Two Days Back on Earth Seminar” in Glendale, California, then we’ll give you 50% off your registration. The person you refer would be required to purchase their conference at the full conference rate of $1,850.00 including materials, or $1,200.00 if they already own the materials. This special is available thru 2009. If you have already attended this seminar you would still receive a 50% discount on the returnee discounted rate, which is $450.00, so it would be $225.00.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
ESTROGEN FUNCTIONS EXPLAINED
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Estrogen functions
Estrogen is the primary hormone responsible for female sexual characteristics, and it is so important for physical function that even men produce some estrogen and have tissue receptors for it. The body produces several types of estrogen molecules, some of which have stronger actions than others. These can be interconverted from one to the other as different needs within the body require. Among the many actions estrogen carries out in the body are these below.
Estrogen is important in maintaining tissue elasticity and strength.This aspect of estrogen activity shows up throughout the body. Declining estrogen is responsible for the increasing delicacy of your skin as you age as well as the tendency to develop wrinkles. Two areas where estrogen loss to tissues and muscles is of particular concern are the vagina and urinary tract.
Vaginal atrophy makes sex difficult or impossible, due to lack of lubrication and stretch—key elements of arousal and response, not just comfort. Tissues may tear and bleed. Damage as well as the loss of normal cleansing by vaginal secretions opens the way for infections and those infections are much more difficult to treat. Labial irritation from washing with even mild soaps and extreme itching are other aggravations of estrogen-starved genital tissues, and affect about 30% of women who do not supplement postmenopausal hormone levels.
Urinary tract tissues react similarly to estrogen deprivation. Infections are more common and harder to treat. Incontinence, often thought to be an inevitable part of aging, is in fact often due to loss of urinary tract muscle tone in response to low estrogen levels. The urinary tract is so susceptible to estrogen starvation that even the muscles that support the bladder can weaken when levels are too low too long.
Even your gum tissues are affected: estrogen replacement has beenshown to lower gum inflammation and loss of teeth due to destruction of the fibers that hold them in place.
Voice changes are a rarely-acknowledged aspect of menopause but can be quite a problem for women who are professional vocalists as well as anyone who relies on their voice a lot. Throat dryness and hoarseness as well as loss of parts of their tonal range are things women may experience.
Estrogen is very important for cardiac and vascular health . Lack of estrogen is believed to be why statistics for male mortality due to cardiovascular disease are so much higher than those of premenopausal women, even though researchers are having a difficult time pinning down the exact mechanisms. In postmenopausal women, cardiovascular disease becomes the leading cause (30-50%) of death. Surgical menopause increases the risk of heart attack seven-fold. Although the risk of clots and strokes may rise in the first year of use (there are mixed research results on this), adequate estrogen levels have been shown to decrease both heart attacks and strokes by 25-50% and deaths due to them by 50%. Some of the reasons for this include estrogen's effects of lowering blood pressure and relaxing the walls of arteries, improving cardiac output, and decreasing fibrinogen (one of the proteins that creates blood clots) levels. Estrogen also may lower your cholesterol level and improve the balance of blood lipids (this may depend upon the type of HRT you use, however). Estrogen also lowers c-reactive protein, which may correlate to lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Estrogen has many other effects on the brain than vascular. Research has yet to identify the exact mechanism, but women who supplement estrogen after natural menopause seem to show lowered incidence or later onset of Alzheimer's disease. New research also indicates that the severity of Parkinson's disease may be affected by estrogen levels.
Estrogen shares some brain receptors with serotonin, another hormone that affects mood. This may be why depression is a common result of low estrogen: if estrogen is not available to fill some of those receptors, serotonin supplies may not be adequate to maintain moods . This interrelationship is at least partially supported by the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressants in treating other menopausal complaints such as hot flashes.
Estrogen seems to be somehow linked to memory itself, especiallyverbal memory . Women with low estrogen frequently complain of feeling "foggy," losing track of their thoughts, words, objects, or blocks of knowledge such as how to get from one location to another. Nouns are particular victims of this process, leading to those helpless conversational fumblings that are one of the hallmarks of menopausal women. That this is a transmission problem is indicated by the recovery of this "lost" information and capability once estrogen levels are restored.
Estrogen affects the nervous system through boosting quantities of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and glutamate. These neurotransmitters affect mood stability and irritability as well as overall energy levels. While excesses become of interest when we are talking about balancing an excess of estrogen, deficiency can be related to a sluggishness often written off to "getting old and slowing down" or maybe just "you're depressed about your hyst and need to get over it."
One of the most widely-recognized effects of estrogen is in the prevention of the bone wastage known as osteoporosis. Without estrogen, calcium is lost from the bones and not replaced, leading to weakened bones that break easily and heal poorly. After menopause, bones lose roughly 3% of their mass per year for the first five years and then about 1-2% a year. 250,000-300,000 women are hospitalized annually for osteoporosis-related broken bones , and 20% of those women die within the next month. This isn't just a matter of dowager's hump or broken hips: bone loss from the jaws is a major cause of tooth loss in postmenopausal women. Maintaining adequate estrogen levels is shown to prevent or diminish calcium loss from bones and the resulting osteoporosis, although it's not the sole factor required for healthy bone maintenance. We've found several online risk evaluation tools (one, another) that you might find useful in evaluating your own personal risk level.
Vision is another system that is impaired by lowered estrogen levels. Eye shape changes as hormone levels do, which can affect your need for correction and the fit of your contact lenses. Dry eyes are a frequent effect of low estrogen. This is such a widespread problem that contact lens manufacturers are developing new lens materials to conserve moisture in response to the growing postmenopausal market. Macular degeneration, in which the center of the visual field deteriorates, cannot be treated and is the most common visual disaster in the elderly. Maintaining adequate estrogen levels causes a 60% reduction of its occurrence. Cataracts at the front of the lens are less of a risk when estrogen is maintained; back of the lens cataracts do not seem to be affected.
Although it may seem trivial in comparison to other systems affected by hormone levels, the connection between estrogen levels and hair growth and texture has nonetheless the potential to cause considerable anguish. Estrogen has a known effect on the life span of a given hair, such that drops in estrogen can shorten the life of the hair and cause it to fall out. When you have a whole head of hair reacting to the catastrophic loss of hormones at the onset of surgical menopause, the results can be near-baldness or at least very worrisome extent of hair loss. Typically, the hair regrows in a few months (barring subsequent hormonal instability) and the situation is resolved. Additionally, low estrogen opens the door to a relative testosterone dominance that brings with it conversion to a form of testosterone that causes male pattern baldness. High estrogen, on the other hand, decreases levels of certain nutrients (B vitamins and magnesium, especially) that are necessary to manufacture hair. Low thyroid hormone, which is related to high estrogen levels, can also cause hair to become brittle and thin.
Since the ovarian hormones are the sex hormones, there is an obvious connection between sex and estrogen. Part of the sense of wellbeing attributable to effective estrogen levels is feeling and looking "feminine." When estrogen is low, the body may be producing enough testosterone to tilt the balance towards the masculine, causing facial hair and head baldness, deepening or coarsening voice, and loss of breast tissue. While estrogen does not of itself directly mediate the libido, it does keep vaginal tissues healthy enough to respond to sexual arousal and it just plain makes you feel sexier. An excess of estrogen, however, can prevent the achievement of orgasm or lessen its intensity.
Lowered levels of estrogen are also linked to impairment of theimmune system. The body's defensive cells are less active and infection-killing measures are less toxic to invading bacteria and viruses. Altogether, a woman with lowered estrogen levels is more susceptible to infection and less able to fight off infection once she's ill.
Estrogen interacts with a number of other hormones in ways that can also have wide-spread effects. For example, it binds thyroid hormone, so that levels of estrogen can influence bioavailable levels of thyroid hormone , and hence one's whole metabolism. In fact, all menopausal women should be tested for thyroid adequacy, since alterations in ovarian hormones can push you over the edge into needing to supplement thyroid (note that it's the alteration in underlying hormone levels, not the taking of HRT per se that does this). Estrogen also plays an important role in insulin-sensitivity. Insulin is the hormone that moves glucose into cells, so that cells are nourished with energy to carry out their functions. Without enough estrogen, glucose metabolism is impeded.
Cancer is one of the big fears that deters women from using estrogen. Unless you carry the breast cancer gene or have had breast cancer in the past, however, your risks of developing cancer are much much lower than that of dying from one of the conditions that results from lowered estrogen. In fact, simple lifestyle choices are riskier: your chance of developing breast cancer are higher if you are obese or drink too much alcohol than if you take HRT. Additionally, estrogen seems more to accelerate development (and discovery) of breast cancer than actually cause it, and when it occurs, it is generally of a more treatable, less aggressive variety. On the other hand, increased breast densitycaused by estrogen means that mammograms are more necessary and must be more carefully read to detect cancers in women with good estrogen levels. You can calculate your personal risks of breast cancer with this tool from the National Cancer Institute.
One sure cancer that estrogen's stimulation of the endometrium (lining of the uterus) is proven to cause is endometrial cancer. Fortunately, by mimicking the natural combination of estrogen plus progesterone, that cancer-causing tendency is squelched when using combined HRT. While women who have had a hyst may think themselves thus immune to this risk, having no endometrium any longer, that may not in fact be the case. Endometriosis sufferers (endometriosis is a disease in which bits of the endometrium escape from the uterus and seed themselves throughout the abdominal cavity) may continue to need progesterone to keep remaining bits of scattered endometrial tissue from turning cancerous. Women in surgical menopause who still have a uterus also carry a special vulnerability to endometrial cancer if they do not protect their uterus from excessive estrogen as well.
Melanoma, an especially malignant form of skin cancer, is also known to be affected by estrogen. While HRT has been shown in some small studies to slightly increase the risk of melanoma, that risk remains well below the risks due to osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease posed by the consequences of low estrogen levels. As with breast cancer, however, this is a cancer in which lifestyle and familial tendencies must be taken into account in risk assessment. At this point, we don't have enough information (and we're not sure it's out there) to accurately judge this risk. The risk of melanoma itself, outside of the familial, is clearly related to sun exposure but is also related to lowered immune function.
On the good news side of the cancer/estrogen equation, however,colon cancer risks are considered to be lowered by estrogen. Since this is the fourth most common cancer and the second most deadly, this is some counterbalance for other risks.
Before leaving the question of cancer, we want to point out some developments in medical as well as public perceptions of hormones that have occurred in the recent past. There was considerable uproar following news coverage in Dec. 2000 of the inclusion of estrogen on the National Institutes of Health list of cancer-causing agents. This was based primarily on the well-documented association between estrogen and endometrial cancer, with breast cancer cited as a lesser association. Since the endometrial cancer risk is so well dealt with by the addition of progesterone (or similar agents called progestins), this is not considered a reason to avoid its use.
And then in the summer of 2002, cancelation of the Woman's Health Initiative study, which studied Prempro in a large number of considerably-post-menopausal women, due to levels of breast cancer above the study's allowable, led to widespread panic that estrogen was "too dangerous." Subsequent discussion and followup testing has indicated that the culprit in the study results is more likely to have been the particular sythetic progestin, Provera, that was used in the study rather than estrogen itself, and that the study population selection may not have been the best to obtain results that can be generalized to younger populations of women.
As for breast cancer, we can only reiterate that this is a matter for personal evaluation and weighing of relative personal risks. We sort of like the way Dr. N puts the whole question of risk into perspective in this website anecdote:
I would be speaking to a menopausal woman from whom I had just taken a detailed history. She had related that she smoked 1 1/2 packs of cigarettes daily, drank 3-5 cocktails daily, took over-the-counter and prescription diet medication, did no exercise, was 30 lbs overweight, consumed a high fat diet, had undergone 3 cosmetic surgeries requiring an anesthetic, visited a tanning salon 3 times a week, did not wear a seat belt while driving, did not have regular pelvic exams or mammography and was having unprotected sex.
After I had discussed HRT at length, including the weight of evidence that HRT is an effective health maintenance strategy, she would look at me and say, "but I am afraid of the risks of HRT!"
Estrogen is the primary hormone responsible for female sexual characteristics, and it is so important for physical function that even men produce some estrogen and have tissue receptors for it. The body produces several types of estrogen molecules, some of which have stronger actions than others. These can be interconverted from one to the other as different needs within the body require. Among the many actions estrogen carries out in the body are these below.
Estrogen is important in maintaining tissue elasticity and strength.This aspect of estrogen activity shows up throughout the body. Declining estrogen is responsible for the increasing delicacy of your skin as you age as well as the tendency to develop wrinkles. Two areas where estrogen loss to tissues and muscles is of particular concern are the vagina and urinary tract.
Vaginal atrophy makes sex difficult or impossible, due to lack of lubrication and stretch—key elements of arousal and response, not just comfort. Tissues may tear and bleed. Damage as well as the loss of normal cleansing by vaginal secretions opens the way for infections and those infections are much more difficult to treat. Labial irritation from washing with even mild soaps and extreme itching are other aggravations of estrogen-starved genital tissues, and affect about 30% of women who do not supplement postmenopausal hormone levels.
Urinary tract tissues react similarly to estrogen deprivation. Infections are more common and harder to treat. Incontinence, often thought to be an inevitable part of aging, is in fact often due to loss of urinary tract muscle tone in response to low estrogen levels. The urinary tract is so susceptible to estrogen starvation that even the muscles that support the bladder can weaken when levels are too low too long.
Even your gum tissues are affected: estrogen replacement has beenshown to lower gum inflammation and loss of teeth due to destruction of the fibers that hold them in place.
Voice changes are a rarely-acknowledged aspect of menopause but can be quite a problem for women who are professional vocalists as well as anyone who relies on their voice a lot. Throat dryness and hoarseness as well as loss of parts of their tonal range are things women may experience.
Estrogen is very important for cardiac and vascular health . Lack of estrogen is believed to be why statistics for male mortality due to cardiovascular disease are so much higher than those of premenopausal women, even though researchers are having a difficult time pinning down the exact mechanisms. In postmenopausal women, cardiovascular disease becomes the leading cause (30-50%) of death. Surgical menopause increases the risk of heart attack seven-fold. Although the risk of clots and strokes may rise in the first year of use (there are mixed research results on this), adequate estrogen levels have been shown to decrease both heart attacks and strokes by 25-50% and deaths due to them by 50%. Some of the reasons for this include estrogen's effects of lowering blood pressure and relaxing the walls of arteries, improving cardiac output, and decreasing fibrinogen (one of the proteins that creates blood clots) levels. Estrogen also may lower your cholesterol level and improve the balance of blood lipids (this may depend upon the type of HRT you use, however). Estrogen also lowers c-reactive protein, which may correlate to lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Estrogen has many other effects on the brain than vascular. Research has yet to identify the exact mechanism, but women who supplement estrogen after natural menopause seem to show lowered incidence or later onset of Alzheimer's disease. New research also indicates that the severity of Parkinson's disease may be affected by estrogen levels.
Estrogen shares some brain receptors with serotonin, another hormone that affects mood. This may be why depression is a common result of low estrogen: if estrogen is not available to fill some of those receptors, serotonin supplies may not be adequate to maintain moods . This interrelationship is at least partially supported by the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressants in treating other menopausal complaints such as hot flashes.
Estrogen seems to be somehow linked to memory itself, especiallyverbal memory . Women with low estrogen frequently complain of feeling "foggy," losing track of their thoughts, words, objects, or blocks of knowledge such as how to get from one location to another. Nouns are particular victims of this process, leading to those helpless conversational fumblings that are one of the hallmarks of menopausal women. That this is a transmission problem is indicated by the recovery of this "lost" information and capability once estrogen levels are restored.
Estrogen affects the nervous system through boosting quantities of neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and glutamate. These neurotransmitters affect mood stability and irritability as well as overall energy levels. While excesses become of interest when we are talking about balancing an excess of estrogen, deficiency can be related to a sluggishness often written off to "getting old and slowing down" or maybe just "you're depressed about your hyst and need to get over it."
One of the most widely-recognized effects of estrogen is in the prevention of the bone wastage known as osteoporosis. Without estrogen, calcium is lost from the bones and not replaced, leading to weakened bones that break easily and heal poorly. After menopause, bones lose roughly 3% of their mass per year for the first five years and then about 1-2% a year. 250,000-300,000 women are hospitalized annually for osteoporosis-related broken bones , and 20% of those women die within the next month. This isn't just a matter of dowager's hump or broken hips: bone loss from the jaws is a major cause of tooth loss in postmenopausal women. Maintaining adequate estrogen levels is shown to prevent or diminish calcium loss from bones and the resulting osteoporosis, although it's not the sole factor required for healthy bone maintenance. We've found several online risk evaluation tools (one, another) that you might find useful in evaluating your own personal risk level.
Vision is another system that is impaired by lowered estrogen levels. Eye shape changes as hormone levels do, which can affect your need for correction and the fit of your contact lenses. Dry eyes are a frequent effect of low estrogen. This is such a widespread problem that contact lens manufacturers are developing new lens materials to conserve moisture in response to the growing postmenopausal market. Macular degeneration, in which the center of the visual field deteriorates, cannot be treated and is the most common visual disaster in the elderly. Maintaining adequate estrogen levels causes a 60% reduction of its occurrence. Cataracts at the front of the lens are less of a risk when estrogen is maintained; back of the lens cataracts do not seem to be affected.
Although it may seem trivial in comparison to other systems affected by hormone levels, the connection between estrogen levels and hair growth and texture has nonetheless the potential to cause considerable anguish. Estrogen has a known effect on the life span of a given hair, such that drops in estrogen can shorten the life of the hair and cause it to fall out. When you have a whole head of hair reacting to the catastrophic loss of hormones at the onset of surgical menopause, the results can be near-baldness or at least very worrisome extent of hair loss. Typically, the hair regrows in a few months (barring subsequent hormonal instability) and the situation is resolved. Additionally, low estrogen opens the door to a relative testosterone dominance that brings with it conversion to a form of testosterone that causes male pattern baldness. High estrogen, on the other hand, decreases levels of certain nutrients (B vitamins and magnesium, especially) that are necessary to manufacture hair. Low thyroid hormone, which is related to high estrogen levels, can also cause hair to become brittle and thin.
Since the ovarian hormones are the sex hormones, there is an obvious connection between sex and estrogen. Part of the sense of wellbeing attributable to effective estrogen levels is feeling and looking "feminine." When estrogen is low, the body may be producing enough testosterone to tilt the balance towards the masculine, causing facial hair and head baldness, deepening or coarsening voice, and loss of breast tissue. While estrogen does not of itself directly mediate the libido, it does keep vaginal tissues healthy enough to respond to sexual arousal and it just plain makes you feel sexier. An excess of estrogen, however, can prevent the achievement of orgasm or lessen its intensity.
Lowered levels of estrogen are also linked to impairment of theimmune system. The body's defensive cells are less active and infection-killing measures are less toxic to invading bacteria and viruses. Altogether, a woman with lowered estrogen levels is more susceptible to infection and less able to fight off infection once she's ill.
Estrogen interacts with a number of other hormones in ways that can also have wide-spread effects. For example, it binds thyroid hormone, so that levels of estrogen can influence bioavailable levels of thyroid hormone , and hence one's whole metabolism. In fact, all menopausal women should be tested for thyroid adequacy, since alterations in ovarian hormones can push you over the edge into needing to supplement thyroid (note that it's the alteration in underlying hormone levels, not the taking of HRT per se that does this). Estrogen also plays an important role in insulin-sensitivity. Insulin is the hormone that moves glucose into cells, so that cells are nourished with energy to carry out their functions. Without enough estrogen, glucose metabolism is impeded.
Cancer is one of the big fears that deters women from using estrogen. Unless you carry the breast cancer gene or have had breast cancer in the past, however, your risks of developing cancer are much much lower than that of dying from one of the conditions that results from lowered estrogen. In fact, simple lifestyle choices are riskier: your chance of developing breast cancer are higher if you are obese or drink too much alcohol than if you take HRT. Additionally, estrogen seems more to accelerate development (and discovery) of breast cancer than actually cause it, and when it occurs, it is generally of a more treatable, less aggressive variety. On the other hand, increased breast densitycaused by estrogen means that mammograms are more necessary and must be more carefully read to detect cancers in women with good estrogen levels. You can calculate your personal risks of breast cancer with this tool from the National Cancer Institute.
One sure cancer that estrogen's stimulation of the endometrium (lining of the uterus) is proven to cause is endometrial cancer. Fortunately, by mimicking the natural combination of estrogen plus progesterone, that cancer-causing tendency is squelched when using combined HRT. While women who have had a hyst may think themselves thus immune to this risk, having no endometrium any longer, that may not in fact be the case. Endometriosis sufferers (endometriosis is a disease in which bits of the endometrium escape from the uterus and seed themselves throughout the abdominal cavity) may continue to need progesterone to keep remaining bits of scattered endometrial tissue from turning cancerous. Women in surgical menopause who still have a uterus also carry a special vulnerability to endometrial cancer if they do not protect their uterus from excessive estrogen as well.
Melanoma, an especially malignant form of skin cancer, is also known to be affected by estrogen. While HRT has been shown in some small studies to slightly increase the risk of melanoma, that risk remains well below the risks due to osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease posed by the consequences of low estrogen levels. As with breast cancer, however, this is a cancer in which lifestyle and familial tendencies must be taken into account in risk assessment. At this point, we don't have enough information (and we're not sure it's out there) to accurately judge this risk. The risk of melanoma itself, outside of the familial, is clearly related to sun exposure but is also related to lowered immune function.
On the good news side of the cancer/estrogen equation, however,colon cancer risks are considered to be lowered by estrogen. Since this is the fourth most common cancer and the second most deadly, this is some counterbalance for other risks.
Before leaving the question of cancer, we want to point out some developments in medical as well as public perceptions of hormones that have occurred in the recent past. There was considerable uproar following news coverage in Dec. 2000 of the inclusion of estrogen on the National Institutes of Health list of cancer-causing agents. This was based primarily on the well-documented association between estrogen and endometrial cancer, with breast cancer cited as a lesser association. Since the endometrial cancer risk is so well dealt with by the addition of progesterone (or similar agents called progestins), this is not considered a reason to avoid its use.
And then in the summer of 2002, cancelation of the Woman's Health Initiative study, which studied Prempro in a large number of considerably-post-menopaus
As for breast cancer, we can only reiterate that this is a matter for personal evaluation and weighing of relative personal risks. We sort of like the way Dr. N puts the whole question of risk into perspective in this website anecdote:
I would be speaking to a menopausal woman from whom I had just taken a detailed history. She had related that she smoked 1 1/2 packs of cigarettes daily, drank 3-5 cocktails daily, took over-the-counter and prescription diet medication, did no exercise, was 30 lbs overweight, consumed a high fat diet, had undergone 3 cosmetic surgeries requiring an anesthetic, visited a tanning salon 3 times a week, did not wear a seat belt while driving, did not have regular pelvic exams or mammography and was having unprotected sex.
After I had discussed HRT at length, including the weight of evidence that HRT is an effective health maintenance strategy, she would look at me and say, "but I am afraid of the risks of HRT!"
Estrogen and The Brain and Memory Function
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
A study conducted at the University of Southern California demonstrated that estrogen promotes the growth of those essential neurons in the brain's hippocampus that are critical to memory function. Scientists there created a hippocampal campus in a petri dish, inducing these cells from the memory center to set up housekeeping in the USC lab. They then squirted conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs or Premarin) on the nerve cell colonies and watched the results under a videomicroscope.
The cells literally bristled with excitement. The addition of estrogen juice significantly increased the number of dendrites or outgrowths of the cell membranes which are known to be cellular markers of memory formation. Dendrites hook-up with other neurons to form new connections, a process that promotes brain 'plasticity' or the ability to learn new material and make new associations. In other words, the same cellular events that occur in the hippocampus of the brain during memory formation happened in these brain cell cultures when estrogen was added.
When I see patients going through the menopausal transition, I not only inquire about hot flashes, night sweats, and the quality of their sleep, I also ask "How's your mood?" and "How's your memory?". The lack of estrogen affects women differently, some struggling far more than others in a brain function sense. I think the problems with verbal memory and executive functioning (starting a multi-step task and completing it successfully) along with the increase in anxiety and depression that can accompany falling estrogen levels are too often not addressed in women of age.
The cells literally bristled with excitement. The addition of estrogen juice significantly increased the number of dendrites or outgrowths of the cell membranes which are known to be cellular markers of memory formation. Dendrites hook-up with other neurons to form new connections, a process that promotes brain 'plasticity' or the ability to learn new material and make new associations. In other words, the same cellular events that occur in the hippocampus of the brain during memory formation happened in these brain cell cultures when estrogen was added.
When I see patients going through the menopausal transition, I not only inquire about hot flashes, night sweats, and the quality of their sleep, I also ask "How's your mood?" and "How's your memory?". The lack of estrogen affects women differently, some struggling far more than others in a brain function sense. I think the problems with verbal memory and executive functioning (starting a multi-step task and completing it successfully) along with the increase in anxiety and depression that can accompany falling estrogen levels are too often not addressed in women of age.
PROGESTERONE FUNCTIONS
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Progesterone's role in the body is closely linked to that of estrogen, in that in many ways it seems to oppose, or counterbalance, the action of estrogen. In fact, many receptors in the body can be occupied by either hormone. When progesterone is occupying an estrogen receptor, the action that estrogen would cause if it were there instead can be blocked. For every receptor that is occupied by progesterone, a molecule of estrogen is thus freed up to do its work elsewhere. In other words, putting progesterone into the system effectively raises the amount of estrogen available to do estrogen-only tasks while at the same time some of those estrogen tasks may go unperformed or underperformed because of progesterone's occupation of those receptors. This is a slippery concept, but a critical one to keep hold ofwhen working on hormone balance.
Progesterone is not only a hormone in and of itself, but can also be used as a building block by the adrenal glands to produce either estrogen or testosterone. While it's not likely that you can meet your estrogen needs solely from progesterone conversion, many women are able to produce enough testosterone when they have an adequate supply of progesterone.
Progesterone, while primarily made by the ovaries, is also manufactured by the adrenal glands. In addition to being used for the production of ovarian hormones, it can also be converted by the adrenals into cortisol, the stress response hormone. Since stress is a survival mechanism, it has a higher priority in the body than sex. What this means in practical terms is that when you are stressed, your body is likely to use your supply of progesterone to create cortisol rather than using it to do progesterone work. Since in surgical menopause your supply of progesterone is limited to adrenal production and any intake rather than feedback-mediated (and hence boostable) ovarian production, this will in turn affect your effective levels of the other hormones. We'll look at this subject in greater detail when we discuss stress.
One word of caution we need to sound on progesterone and its popularizers, most notably Dr. John Lee. With all due respect to Dr. Lee for leading the way in legitimizing this hormone's use, his book must be taken with a grain of salt by women in surgical menopause. While it may or may not be true that women in natural menopause can meet their hormone needs by the use of progesterone alone, this is generally not the case in surgical menopause.
While we know of plenty of women who found his reasoning seductive, as a rule they were not able to stick to progesterone-only HRT. It just doesn't have the desired effect in the absence of estrogen production (remember: in natural menopause, the ovaries continue to produce sub-ovulatory quantities of estrogen). While it could theoretically work in a surgically-menopaused woman with high estrone production by her omentum, we just haven't yet encountered one who actually pulled it off and felt as though she was fully meeting her needs. While in some instances women who are afraid of estrogen prefer to take only progesterone under the misapprehension that it's "safer because they sell it without a prescription," it cannot generally be considered a full and successful approach for meeting systemic hormone needs in surgical menopause.
What progesterone does
It helps prevent osteoporosis in a manner that complements estrogen. While estrogen prevents bone breakdown, progesterone actuallypromotes bone rebuilding by stimulating the osteoblasts (the cells that create the bone fabric itself). As with many things that progesterone does, the effect when used in conjunction with estrogen is stronger than when progesterone is studied on its own.
It has a number of metabolic and nutritional effects. It promotes the use of fat for energy, thus opposing the estrogenic tendency to fat storage. It normalizes blood sugar levels, but can cause insulin resistance at high levels by interfering with the action of insulin. It has a thermogenic effect—it makes you warmer by increasing blood flow to the skin. It counters estrogenic binding of zinc and copper, thus normalizing those levels.
Progesterone exerts a diuretic effect, helping to get rid of the fluid bloating that estrogen can cause. At the proper dose level, it is equal in effect to spironolactone, a diuretic used to combat certain types of high blood pressure.
In the brain, progesterone concentrations are up to 20 times higher than in the blood. Progesterone has a soothing effect that is so significant that it is given to treat the (rare) seizures caused by the stimulatory effect of estrogen. Chemically, it can have the same effect as Valium or Xanax or some anesthetic agents. It also exerts a lesser neurovascular effect in decreasing migraines caused by estrogen. It can promote sleep and counteract edginess, anxiety and panic. It contributes to the lessening of the memory problems seen with low hormone levels. It evens moods. In excess, it can cause depression.
While it has not been demonstrated to have as significant an effect as estrogen on vaginal and urinary tract health, many women report that the addition of progesterone to their HRT does indeed help nourish these tissues. There are progesterone receptors in these areas, so there are grounds to support its action. Part of the effect too may be a result of the "estrogen-sparing" effect whereby progesterone frees up estrogen to circulate elsewhere.
Progesterone is beneficial to thyroid function. It helps keep zinc and potassium in cells, which allows thyroid hormone to enter and be converted into the active form (T3). Given that estrogen inhibits thyroid hormone action, this makes progesterone especially important to women with thyroid dysfunction (and menopausal women are so at risk for this that thyroid testing should be a part of any menopausal workup).
Progesterone in combination with estrogen seems, in some studies, to provide greater cardiovascular benefits than estrogen alone. This is new research and the mechanism is only speculated about, but the benefits do seem to be real. These benefits are not demonstrated by progestins, making the distinction very important in evaluating news articles reporting research results.
Progesterone seems to reduce the severity of allergic reactions and allergies. Women who suddenly seem to develop allergies to everything in sight after a hyst may be demonstrating low levels of progesterone.
Progesterone is not only a hormone in and of itself, but can also be used as a building block by the adrenal glands to produce either estrogen or testosterone. While it's not likely that you can meet your estrogen needs solely from progesterone conversion, many women are able to produce enough testosterone when they have an adequate supply of progesterone.
Progesterone, while primarily made by the ovaries, is also manufactured by the adrenal glands. In addition to being used for the production of ovarian hormones, it can also be converted by the adrenals into cortisol, the stress response hormone. Since stress is a survival mechanism, it has a higher priority in the body than sex. What this means in practical terms is that when you are stressed, your body is likely to use your supply of progesterone to create cortisol rather than using it to do progesterone work. Since in surgical menopause your supply of progesterone is limited to adrenal production and any intake rather than feedback-mediated (and hence boostable) ovarian production, this will in turn affect your effective levels of the other hormones. We'll look at this subject in greater detail when we discuss stress.
One word of caution we need to sound on progesterone and its popularizers, most notably Dr. John Lee. With all due respect to Dr. Lee for leading the way in legitimizing this hormone's use, his book must be taken with a grain of salt by women in surgical menopause. While it may or may not be true that women in natural menopause can meet their hormone needs by the use of progesterone alone, this is generally not the case in surgical menopause.
While we know of plenty of women who found his reasoning seductive, as a rule they were not able to stick to progesterone-only HRT. It just doesn't have the desired effect in the absence of estrogen production (remember: in natural menopause, the ovaries continue to produce sub-ovulatory quantities of estrogen). While it could theoretically work in a surgically-menopaused woman with high estrone production by her omentum, we just haven't yet encountered one who actually pulled it off and felt as though she was fully meeting her needs. While in some instances women who are afraid of estrogen prefer to take only progesterone under the misapprehension that it's "safer because they sell it without a prescription," it cannot generally be considered a full and successful approach for meeting systemic hormone needs in surgical menopause.
What progesterone does
It helps prevent osteoporosis in a manner that complements estrogen. While estrogen prevents bone breakdown, progesterone actuallypromotes bone rebuilding by stimulating the osteoblasts (the cells that create the bone fabric itself). As with many things that progesterone does, the effect when used in conjunction with estrogen is stronger than when progesterone is studied on its own.
It has a number of metabolic and nutritional effects. It promotes the use of fat for energy, thus opposing the estrogenic tendency to fat storage. It normalizes blood sugar levels, but can cause insulin resistance at high levels by interfering with the action of insulin. It has a thermogenic effect—it makes you warmer by increasing blood flow to the skin. It counters estrogenic binding of zinc and copper, thus normalizing those levels.
Progesterone exerts a diuretic effect, helping to get rid of the fluid bloating that estrogen can cause. At the proper dose level, it is equal in effect to spironolactone, a diuretic used to combat certain types of high blood pressure.
In the brain, progesterone concentrations are up to 20 times higher than in the blood. Progesterone has a soothing effect that is so significant that it is given to treat the (rare) seizures caused by the stimulatory effect of estrogen. Chemically, it can have the same effect as Valium or Xanax or some anesthetic agents. It also exerts a lesser neurovascular effect in decreasing migraines caused by estrogen. It can promote sleep and counteract edginess, anxiety and panic. It contributes to the lessening of the memory problems seen with low hormone levels. It evens moods. In excess, it can cause depression.
While it has not been demonstrated to have as significant an effect as estrogen on vaginal and urinary tract health, many women report that the addition of progesterone to their HRT does indeed help nourish these tissues. There are progesterone receptors in these areas, so there are grounds to support its action. Part of the effect too may be a result of the "estrogen-sparing" effect whereby progesterone frees up estrogen to circulate elsewhere.
Progesterone is beneficial to thyroid function. It helps keep zinc and potassium in cells, which allows thyroid hormone to enter and be converted into the active form (T3). Given that estrogen inhibits thyroid hormone action, this makes progesterone especially important to women with thyroid dysfunction (and menopausal women are so at risk for this that thyroid testing should be a part of any menopausal workup).
Progesterone in combination with estrogen seems, in some studies, to provide greater cardiovascular benefits than estrogen alone. This is new research and the mechanism is only speculated about, but the benefits do seem to be real. These benefits are not demonstrated by progestins, making the distinction very important in evaluating news articles reporting research results.
Progesterone seems to reduce the severity of allergic reactions and allergies. Women who suddenly seem to develop allergies to everything in sight after a hyst may be demonstrating low levels of progesterone.
RADIO SHOW INTERVIEW WITH TS WILEY ABOUT HORMONES IN JULY
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
CALL DURING THE SHOW ON MONDAY 9 AM TO 10 AM CENTRAL TIME AND ASK YOUR QUESTIONS FOR TS WILEY AND BIOIDENTICAL HORMONES FROM THE BOOK SEX, LIES, AND MENOPAUSE OR JUST GENERAL QUESTIONS THAT YOU WANT ANSWERED ABOUT HORMONES, RISKS, BENEFITS.... IT'S FOR YOU AND ABOUT YOU SO CALL NOW!
Talk AM 1320 WKAN is the Kankakee's area's premier radio station covering local news, weather, agriculture, and sports. If it's being talked about, WKAN is talking about it with the top radio personalities in the business live everyday.
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Studio Line: 815.935.1320
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Talk AM 1320 WKAN is part of the STARadio Group which also owns X-Country 106.5 FM and My 105.5 FM.
Studio Line: 815.935.1320
TnT Morning Show Studio Line: 877.TNT.OKNO (877.868.6566)
In the month of July, I will be interviewing the author T.S. Wiley of the book Sex, Lies, and Menopause
every Monday morning from 9 am to 10 am asking her questions about hormones!
CALL DURING THE SHOW ON MONDAY 9 AM TO 10 AM CENTRAL TIME AND ASK YOUR QUESTIONS FOR TS WILEY AND BIOIDENTICAL HORMONES FROM THE BOOK SEX, LIES, AND MENOPAUSE OR JUST GENERAL QUESTIONS THAT YOU WANT ANSWERED ABOUT HORMONES, RISKS, BENEFITS.... IT'S FOR YOU AND ABOUT YOU SO CALL NOW!
Interview with Suzanne Somers, Dr Fugh-Berman, and Gretchen Jones
Call my office to set up an appointment or email me 815-476-5210 or jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Here is an Interview with Suzanne Somers, Dr Fugh-Berman, and comments by Gretchen Jones:
I thought I would COMMENT on some statements made by Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician and associate professor in the complementary and alternative medicine master's program at Georgetown University Medical Center. I inserted Fugh-Berman's comments below Suzanne Somers's answers and also am posting my observations of Dr. Fugh-Berman's answers.
QUESTION ONE:
What inspired you (Suzanne Somers) to write a book about wellness?
Suzanne: It started with my understanding—after speaking with many experts—that no one is well and then connecting the dots as to why. I now realize the dots lead to toxicity in our environment, chemicals in our food, water, air, and household cleaning products, and our overuse of pharmaceutical drugs. All of these things make your body incapable of handling any more toxic sludge, and you get cancer. More and more women are beginning menopause at younger ages, and the reason is the toxicity in the environment, coupled with their diet and stress levels. My eight steps, including good nutrition, adequate sleep and exercise, and taking bioidentical hormones, are key for the prevention of cancer and keeping you well as you age.
Fugh-Berman response: I'm not aware of any evidence that early menopause is becoming more common. And early menopause reduces breast cancer risk. Women who start their periods early or begin menopause later than average have a higher risk of breast cancer.
Gretchen Jones response: I AM aware that early menopause is becoming more common. I am treating women as "young" as 30 who have early menopause. Women who are on birth control pills or synthetic hormone replacement pills DO have a higher risk of breast cancer regardless of when they started their periods or began menopause. The Women's Health Initiative Study of over 16,000 women proved that to us!
QUESTION TWO:
Why do you believe that it's harmful for women to experience a natural decline in estrogen?
Suzanne: People always like to point to high estrogen as a culprit. If it was a culprit, every young woman would have ovarian or breast cancer, because they ooze estrogen. Things start to really go awry when the decline in estrogen occurs. Think about it. Most women get their breast cancers in perimenopause, as in my case, but it doesn't show up until menopause, so they say it occurs in menopausal women. I was on birth control pills for 22 years because I was told they were safe. I've come to realize that they weren't safe because is it safe to take a chemical every day? And how could it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation? We go against that nature; every time we go against that nature, we mess with things.
Fugh-Berman: We have 40 years of evidence about birth control pills. They don't increase breast cancer risk (except possibly in women who have taken them for decades starting in their teens), and using birth control to halt ovulation reduces ovarian cancer risk.
Gretchen Jones: YES WE DO HAVE EVIDENCE ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL PILLS. IT'S CALLED THE WOMEN'S HEALTH INITIATIVE STUDY!!! The WHI study showed clearly that Prempro (which is the same thing as birth control pills, a combination pill containing a synthetic estrogen and a synthetic progestin) showed that it increased breast cancer in women! That's why the study was halted!! It also increases risks for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks and blocks any positive effects of estrogen in the body. Over the last 40 years the evidence about birth control pills is SELF-EVIDENT! It increases women's risk for breast cancer and there is NO EVIDENCE that using birth control halts OVARIAN CANCER RISK!
QUESTION THREE:
But isn't it going against nature to prevent the natural state of menopause by taking bioidentical hormones?
Suzanne: Most doctors who say menopause is natural are men. The doctors whom I've interviewed—I'm drawing from their expertise, not my own—recognize the importance of restoring hormones. Our bodies weren't intended to live beyond our reproductive years. Women used to die routinely at 40 or 45, and now they're living to 90 or 100. We've figured out with technology how to keep ourselves alive twice as long as the body wants to be. When we restore our bodies to those optimal hormonal levels at which we reproduce, we keep our insides healthy because our brains are tricked into thinking we can still reproduce and keep us alive to perpetuate the species.
Fugh-Berman: Actually, very little kills people in their 40s, and certainly there's no evidence that declining hormone levels do. And findings from the Women's Health Initiative show that long-term use of postmenopausal hormones leads to more heart disease, strokes, breast cancer, and Alzheimer's. As I point out in my latest paper on the myth that new drugs save lives, life expectancy is calculated as an average, so death rates in younger age groups have the greatest impact. In the 19th century, infant deaths were common, and life expectancy in 1900 was only 49 years. Plunging infant mortality rates and fewer women dying in childbirth have increased life expectancy to 68 years in 1950 and to 75 years in 1990. Thus, women who survived infancy and childbirth in past centuries had an excellent chance of reaching a ripe old age.
Gretchen Jones: Yes, reaching a ripe old age on lots of pharmaceutical medications is what women are experiencing as they reach that ripe old age you speak about. THANK YOU DR. FUGH-BERMAN FOR ADMITTING THAT THE WOMEN'S HEALTH INTIATIVE STUDY SHOWS THAT THESE HORMONES LEAD TO MORE HEART DISEASE, STROKES, BREAST CANCER, AND ALZHEIMERS. We don't live in a NATURAL SOCIETY. We live in an artificial society of lights, electricity, and processed food! And yes, not being able to sleep, heart palpitations, depression, anxiety, constipation, gastritis, urinary tract infections, divorce, memory loss, muscle wasting, weight gain, decreased sense of well being and NO HORMONES do kill people SLOWLY AND AGONIZINGLY. The women I know in the 50's and 60's who haven't yet replaced their hormones don't feel very good. And my 92 year old patient who has so much pain from deteriorating bones sometimes wishes she was dead because of the pain she is in and inability to do anything she loves to do because she can't barely bend or walk. You obviously do not work and treat women or you would "see" this very clearly. And thank you for clearing up what I just said earlier about the damage of synthetic oral hormones that the WHI study clearly showed for all of us and is still being sold to women at "their own risk". Now the pharmaceutical companies just added on the Mirena IUD which is medroxyprogesterone (or Provera) the PRO IN PREMPRO! Nobody has learned anything from the WHI except to keep on deceiving women. Women I have treated who were using the Mirena IUD feel nauseous, have bad cramping, have painful intercourse due to vaginal irritation and dryness, and gain weight, continued spotting or break through bleeding and fatigue and don’t sleep very well.
QUESTION FOUR
So you think every woman who goes through menopause needs to take bioidentical hormones?
Suzanne: Certainly, that's a woman's choice. But I think it's a good idea if you want to stay alive for twice as long as your body intended. Without estrogen, your brain doesn't work as well. That's what all that foggy thinking is about which eventually leads to Alzheimer's. And your bones become brittle and prone to breaks unless you take a nasty bone-building drug like Fosamax or Boniva. Keeping your hormone levels optimal will protect your brain and your bones, and you won't get depression, so you won't need to take Prozac. And you won't need to take painkillers because you won't have the joint pain that's associated with aging. The doctors I interviewed say eliminate all these drugs and put back those natural biologically identical hormones. I use an estrogen cream every day and progesterone cream two weeks a month. That's why, at 62, I don't require any pharmaceutical drugs.
Fugh-Berman: Menopausal hormone therapy DOUBLES the risk of dementia, according to data from the Women's Health Initiative, and increases age-related memory problems, too. We can't assume that bioidentical hormones are any different. While some women do experience accelerated bone loss around menopause, most bone loss is age-related, not menopause-related. And the risks of bone loss have been exaggerated: The average age of hip fracture is 80. While the Women's Health Initiative study did find that hormones improved mood, it was only in women with hot flashes, and I'm not aware of any evidence that estrogen helps joint pain. What's more, any supplemental hormones, whether bioidentical or not, are pharmaceutical drugs.
Gretchen Jones: Please clarify Doctor, that you are talking about synthetic menopause hormone therapy DOUBLES the risk of dementia, breast cancer, etc and, yes, we CAN assume that bioidentical hormones used exactly as they are meant to work in the body IS DIFFERENT. MUCH DIFFERENT! Just as using Insulin to treat diabetics used correctly and in specific way IS DIFFERENT THAN USING IT INCORRECTLY. And I do have evidence BHRT used in rhythmic, cycling dosing does help joint pain, AND helps more than hot flashes, definitely reduces bone loss (which to my 92 year old patient would have been life changing) (who by the way her doctor took her off synthetic estrogen at age 60 because she was "too old" for it any longer, and she is still ALIVE AND OLD 32 years later). Bioidentical Hormones improves mood, improves libido, and therefore saves marriages, improves sleep, energy, sense of well being, as well as the other aforementioned symptoms. Ibuprofen and tylenol are also pharmaceutical drugs...and your point about that is? So is insulin. So what?! Do you watch your patients decline and suffer and get put on more medicine than their poor bodies can process? I do. Because I work all day long treating women clinically for symptoms related to out of whack hormones.
QUESTION FIVE
What if a woman simply wants to follow good lifestyle habits like a good diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep?
Suzanne: Those lifestyle habits are absolutely the recipe for health, and every woman is different. Some women pump out hormones through their 60s and don't have a problem with menopause. Women like myself, though, who choose to work and be wives and mothers and live a high-stress lifestyle, we burn out our hormones really fast. And when estrogen and progesterone plummet, the stress hormone cortisol skyrockets. When your cortisol is high, sleep is impossible. When you're overstressed from declining estrogen and progesterone, cortisol never stops pouring, and we can try to sleep all we want but, without estrogen or progesterone, we won't get that sleep. While I understand women who choose to fight menopause naturally with diet and exercise, they're actually making the aging process harder when they opt not to take bioidentical hormones. They're not able to achieve the kind of health that they would if they had optimal hormone levels. It's hard for me to even understand why people fight it.
Fugh-Berman: Where to begin? First of all, while ovaries, adrenal glands, and fat tissue all make some estrogen after menopause, we know that menopausal symptoms don't correlate well with estrogen levels. Some women have no detectable estrogen and experience no hot flashes, whereas others have near reproductive age levels and have terrible symptoms. The reasoning on stress burning out our ovaries doesn't have any scientific validity; the real risk factors for early menopause are smoking and heart disease. And the remarks about cortisol are inaccurate. Yes, cortisol can keep you awake, but there's no direct relationship between cortisol and declining estrogen and progesterone. At this point, we really don't know what the optimal hormone levels are, and in response to Somers's inability to understand why all women don't take bioidentical hormones, try: common sense, thrift, and an aversion to potentially increasing one's cancer risk.
Gretchen Jones: It isn't all about the hot flashes!! It's about how our bodies function without estrogen and progesterone produced in amounts that keep our bodies healthy and functioning. Just because it doesn't kill us instantly like diabetes, it kills us slowly and in other ways. Women who are using bioidentical hormones in levels that are equivalent to what is normal in women who have no hormone problems in their 20's and 30's can attest to the benefits and you can't eat your way out of hormone deficiency. So now the only real risk factors for early menopause are smoking and heart disease? That's funny, I see many women all day long who are having early menopause and they don't smoke or have heart disease. Yes, we do understand the optimal hormone levels, the medical community doesn't want to know about it. DO A STUDY IF YOU WANT TO KNOW. That's the answer. I have tens of thousands of women who would volunteer and who already have volunteered. Nobody's listening. The medical society just wants to keep repeating the same old thing and keep giving dangerous drugs to women like Depo Provera, Birth control pills, Birth control patches, Mirena IUD, Premarin, Prempro...I could keep going. When your hormones start to go out of whack so does your brain, your heart, your immune function, your bladder, your weight. Hormones are the chemical messengers of the body! Women need their Estrogen and Progesterone to feel healthy. It’s too bad that all women cannot afford the medication because INSURANCE COMPANIES, ESPECIALLY GOVERNMENT INSURANCE COMPANIES WON’T COVER THE BIOIDENTICAL HORMONES! Especially the COMPOUNDED BHRT. Why is that? It’s because the medical community won’t allow because they aren’t paying for any STUDY to be done. Europe has studies. Women can get Testosterone in Europe. They cannot get it covered in the United States.
QUESTION SIX
Tell me about your own menopause. Did you have severe symptoms?
Suzanne: I had three years where I couldn't sleep; I'd wake up soaking wet throughout the night and would get maybe two or three hours total. I was tired all the time, didn't want sex, and started gaining weight for no reason. My hair was stringy, my nails became brittle, and I was downright miserable. My doctor offered me Premarin, but after hearing all those terrible things about it, I refused to take it. I also refused the menopause cocktail of antidepressants, antianxiety meds, and sleeping pills. Finally, I found an endocrinologist who put me on bioidentical hormones, and I started feeling better within a few days. By the end of a year, I was back to my old self, sleeping normally, feeling great, and in the mood sexually again. I don't sell hormones or supplements; this is simply a passion for me.
What do you say to doctors who criticize you for hyping bioidentical hormones as safer than conventional synthetic hormones, who say that bioidentical hormones haven't been well studied?
Suzanne: It makes my blood boil. There are over 40 studies showing that bioidentical hormones are safe, including a Danish study of 700,000 women comparing bioidentical to synthetic hormone use. European women have been using bioidenticals for over 50 years. Bottom line: Bioidentical hormones have been proven safe. They're approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It's very frustrating when doctors don't pay attention to these studies, but so many of them have been bought by pharmaceutical companies, and there's huge money in menopause. Doctors even get bonuses for prescribing chemotherapy drugs; it's really quite a terrible thing.
Fugh-Berman: I agree that the bioidentical estrogen estriol has been well-studied in Europe and has been shown to be effective for hot flashes. But those same European studies also tell us that it increases the risk of endometrial hyperplasia (abnormal cell growth in the uterus) and cancer. In this country, FDA approval doesn't connote safety; it connotes an advantageous risk-benefit ratio for specific conditions. If there's no benefit (for, example, in a woman with no symptoms), the risk-benefit ratio is unfavorable. And yes, I agree there's big money in menopause, but bioidentical hormone manufacturers and promoters are also getting their share of it.
Gretchen Jones: The women in Europe are getting pellot therapy which really isn't the same as mimmicking a rhythmic cycle of Estrogen and Progesterone which would explain endometrial hyperplasia. If doctors were educated and taught how to prescribe and use bioidentical hormones there would not be a huge risk-benefit ratio because it would be given properly. And a doctor makes BIG MONEY on menopause patients because they have many health problems which could largely be avoided if there bodies were not exposed to the standard of care hormone replacement therapy and pharmaceutical drugs to help them sleep, decrease anxiety, control insulin resistance, decrease bone loss, decrease heart palpitations, decrease hot flashes, help thyroid fluctuations, auto immune disorders, Alzheimer’s and Dementia symptoms, as well as anti inflammatory medications for joint aches and a back pain.
QUESTION SEVEN
Speaking of cancer treatments, is your oncologist concerned that you take estrogen after having been diagnosed with breast cancer?
Suzanne: He told me I could die, but here I am eight years later doing just fine. I declined chemotherapy and the drug tamoxifen, which cuts off estrogen, and am sticking with bioidentical hormones. [Somers says that she did recently have a hysterectomy after experiencing uterine bleeding and severe hyperplasia.] Obviously, every woman has to make her own individual choices when it comes to breast cancer treatments, and I just felt that my choices were the best shot I had at survival.
Gretchen Jones: The quality of life women who are on tamoxifen and arimidex is horrible. They have hot flashes, are depressed, have no energy, can't sleep at night, gain weight and have no libido. They often have a non-estrogen receptor breast cancer return so it really doesn't CURE cancer. Suzanne was not taking bioidentical hormones in rhythmic cycling dosing when she first started BHRT because she went to a doctor that didn't know how to prescribe that way. She is now on the Wiley Protocol and had she started on The Wiley Protocol before she probably would not have had to get a hysterectomy. Hormones used correctly work!
Here's an in-depth look at whether bioidentical hormones are safer than conventional HRT and a user's guide for those thinking about taking bioidentical hormones. Check out more from my other blogs.
I thought I would COMMENT on some statements made by Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician and associate professor in the complementary and alternative medicine master's program at Georgetown University Medical Center. I inserted Fugh-Berman's comments below Suzanne Somers's answers and also am posting my observations of Dr. Fugh-Berman's answers.
QUESTION ONE:
What inspired you (Suzanne Somers) to write a book about wellness?
Suzanne: It started with my understanding—after speaking with many experts—that no one is well and then connecting the dots as to why. I now realize the dots lead to toxicity in our environment, chemicals in our food, water, air, and household cleaning products, and our overuse of pharmaceutical drugs. All of these things make your body incapable of handling any more toxic sludge, and you get cancer. More and more women are beginning menopause at younger ages, and the reason is the toxicity in the environment, coupled with their diet and stress levels. My eight steps, including good nutrition, adequate sleep and exercise, and taking bioidentical hormones, are key for the prevention of cancer and keeping you well as you age.
Fugh-Berman response: I'm not aware of any evidence that early menopause is becoming more common. And early menopause reduces breast cancer risk. Women who start their periods early or begin menopause later than average have a higher risk of breast cancer.
Gretchen Jones response: I AM aware that early menopause is becoming more common. I am treating women as "young" as 30 who have early menopause. Women who are on birth control pills or synthetic hormone replacement pills DO have a higher risk of breast cancer regardless of when they started their periods or began menopause. The Women's Health Initiative Study of over 16,000 women proved that to us!
QUESTION TWO:
Why do you believe that it's harmful for women to experience a natural decline in estrogen?
Suzanne: People always like to point to high estrogen as a culprit. If it was a culprit, every young woman would have ovarian or breast cancer, because they ooze estrogen. Things start to really go awry when the decline in estrogen occurs. Think about it. Most women get their breast cancers in perimenopause, as in my case, but it doesn't show up until menopause, so they say it occurs in menopausal women. I was on birth control pills for 22 years because I was told they were safe. I've come to realize that they weren't safe because is it safe to take a chemical every day? And how could it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation? We go against that nature; every time we go against that nature, we mess with things.
Fugh-Berman: We have 40 years of evidence about birth control pills. They don't increase breast cancer risk (except possibly in women who have taken them for decades starting in their teens), and using birth control to halt ovulation reduces ovarian cancer risk.
Gretchen Jones: YES WE DO HAVE EVIDENCE ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL PILLS. IT'S CALLED THE WOMEN'S HEALTH INITIATIVE STUDY!!! The WHI study showed clearly that Prempro (which is the same thing as birth control pills, a combination pill containing a synthetic estrogen and a synthetic progestin) showed that it increased breast cancer in women! That's why the study was halted!! It also increases risks for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks and blocks any positive effects of estrogen in the body. Over the last 40 years the evidence about birth control pills is SELF-EVIDENT! It increases women's risk for breast cancer and there is NO EVIDENCE that using birth control halts OVARIAN CANCER RISK!
QUESTION THREE:
But isn't it going against nature to prevent the natural state of menopause by taking bioidentical hormones?
Suzanne: Most doctors who say menopause is natural are men. The doctors whom I've interviewed—I'm drawing from their expertise, not my own—recognize the importance of restoring hormones. Our bodies weren't intended to live beyond our reproductive years. Women used to die routinely at 40 or 45, and now they're living to 90 or 100. We've figured out with technology how to keep ourselves alive twice as long as the body wants to be. When we restore our bodies to those optimal hormonal levels at which we reproduce, we keep our insides healthy because our brains are tricked into thinking we can still reproduce and keep us alive to perpetuate the species.
Fugh-Berman: Actually, very little kills people in their 40s, and certainly there's no evidence that declining hormone levels do. And findings from the Women's Health Initiative show that long-term use of postmenopausal hormones leads to more heart disease, strokes, breast cancer, and Alzheimer's. As I point out in my latest paper on the myth that new drugs save lives, life expectancy is calculated as an average, so death rates in younger age groups have the greatest impact. In the 19th century, infant deaths were common, and life expectancy in 1900 was only 49 years. Plunging infant mortality rates and fewer women dying in childbirth have increased life expectancy to 68 years in 1950 and to 75 years in 1990. Thus, women who survived infancy and childbirth in past centuries had an excellent chance of reaching a ripe old age.
Gretchen Jones: Yes, reaching a ripe old age on lots of pharmaceutical medications is what women are experiencing as they reach that ripe old age you speak about. THANK YOU DR. FUGH-BERMAN FOR ADMITTING THAT THE WOMEN'S HEALTH INTIATIVE STUDY SHOWS THAT THESE HORMONES LEAD TO MORE HEART DISEASE, STROKES, BREAST CANCER, AND ALZHEIMERS. We don't live in a NATURAL SOCIETY. We live in an artificial society of lights, electricity, and processed food! And yes, not being able to sleep, heart palpitations, depression, anxiety, constipation, gastritis, urinary tract infections, divorce, memory loss, muscle wasting, weight gain, decreased sense of well being and NO HORMONES do kill people SLOWLY AND AGONIZINGLY. The women I know in the 50's and 60's who haven't yet replaced their hormones don't feel very good. And my 92 year old patient who has so much pain from deteriorating bones sometimes wishes she was dead because of the pain she is in and inability to do anything she loves to do because she can't barely bend or walk. You obviously do not work and treat women or you would "see" this very clearly. And thank you for clearing up what I just said earlier about the damage of synthetic oral hormones that the WHI study clearly showed for all of us and is still being sold to women at "their own risk". Now the pharmaceutical companies just added on the Mirena IUD which is medroxyprogesterone (or Provera) the PRO IN PREMPRO! Nobody has learned anything from the WHI except to keep on deceiving women. Women I have treated who were using the Mirena IUD feel nauseous, have bad cramping, have painful intercourse due to vaginal irritation and dryness, and gain weight, continued spotting or break through bleeding and fatigue and don’t sleep very well.
QUESTION FOUR
So you think every woman who goes through menopause needs to take bioidentical hormones?
Suzanne: Certainly, that's a woman's choice. But I think it's a good idea if you want to stay alive for twice as long as your body intended. Without estrogen, your brain doesn't work as well. That's what all that foggy thinking is about which eventually leads to Alzheimer's. And your bones become brittle and prone to breaks unless you take a nasty bone-building drug like Fosamax or Boniva. Keeping your hormone levels optimal will protect your brain and your bones, and you won't get depression, so you won't need to take Prozac. And you won't need to take painkillers because you won't have the joint pain that's associated with aging. The doctors I interviewed say eliminate all these drugs and put back those natural biologically identical hormones. I use an estrogen cream every day and progesterone cream two weeks a month. That's why, at 62, I don't require any pharmaceutical drugs.
Fugh-Berman: Menopausal hormone therapy DOUBLES the risk of dementia, according to data from the Women's Health Initiative, and increases age-related memory problems, too. We can't assume that bioidentical hormones are any different. While some women do experience accelerated bone loss around menopause, most bone loss is age-related, not menopause-related. And the risks of bone loss have been exaggerated: The average age of hip fracture is 80. While the Women's Health Initiative study did find that hormones improved mood, it was only in women with hot flashes, and I'm not aware of any evidence that estrogen helps joint pain. What's more, any supplemental hormones, whether bioidentical or not, are pharmaceutical drugs.
Gretchen Jones: Please clarify Doctor, that you are talking about synthetic menopause hormone therapy DOUBLES the risk of dementia, breast cancer, etc and, yes, we CAN assume that bioidentical hormones used exactly as they are meant to work in the body IS DIFFERENT. MUCH DIFFERENT! Just as using Insulin to treat diabetics used correctly and in specific way IS DIFFERENT THAN USING IT INCORRECTLY. And I do have evidence BHRT used in rhythmic, cycling dosing does help joint pain, AND helps more than hot flashes, definitely reduces bone loss (which to my 92 year old patient would have been life changing) (who by the way her doctor took her off synthetic estrogen at age 60 because she was "too old" for it any longer, and she is still ALIVE AND OLD 32 years later). Bioidentical Hormones improves mood, improves libido, and therefore saves marriages, improves sleep, energy, sense of well being, as well as the other aforementioned symptoms. Ibuprofen and tylenol are also pharmaceutical drugs...and your point about that is? So is insulin. So what?! Do you watch your patients decline and suffer and get put on more medicine than their poor bodies can process? I do. Because I work all day long treating women clinically for symptoms related to out of whack hormones.
QUESTION FIVE
What if a woman simply wants to follow good lifestyle habits like a good diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep?
Suzanne: Those lifestyle habits are absolutely the recipe for health, and every woman is different. Some women pump out hormones through their 60s and don't have a problem with menopause. Women like myself, though, who choose to work and be wives and mothers and live a high-stress lifestyle, we burn out our hormones really fast. And when estrogen and progesterone plummet, the stress hormone cortisol skyrockets. When your cortisol is high, sleep is impossible. When you're overstressed from declining estrogen and progesterone, cortisol never stops pouring, and we can try to sleep all we want but, without estrogen or progesterone, we won't get that sleep. While I understand women who choose to fight menopause naturally with diet and exercise, they're actually making the aging process harder when they opt not to take bioidentical hormones. They're not able to achieve the kind of health that they would if they had optimal hormone levels. It's hard for me to even understand why people fight it.
Fugh-Berman: Where to begin? First of all, while ovaries, adrenal glands, and fat tissue all make some estrogen after menopause, we know that menopausal symptoms don't correlate well with estrogen levels. Some women have no detectable estrogen and experience no hot flashes, whereas others have near reproductive age levels and have terrible symptoms. The reasoning on stress burning out our ovaries doesn't have any scientific validity; the real risk factors for early menopause are smoking and heart disease. And the remarks about cortisol are inaccurate. Yes, cortisol can keep you awake, but there's no direct relationship between cortisol and declining estrogen and progesterone. At this point, we really don't know what the optimal hormone levels are, and in response to Somers's inability to understand why all women don't take bioidentical hormones, try: common sense, thrift, and an aversion to potentially increasing one's cancer risk.
Gretchen Jones: It isn't all about the hot flashes!! It's about how our bodies function without estrogen and progesterone produced in amounts that keep our bodies healthy and functioning. Just because it doesn't kill us instantly like diabetes, it kills us slowly and in other ways. Women who are using bioidentical hormones in levels that are equivalent to what is normal in women who have no hormone problems in their 20's and 30's can attest to the benefits and you can't eat your way out of hormone deficiency. So now the only real risk factors for early menopause are smoking and heart disease? That's funny, I see many women all day long who are having early menopause and they don't smoke or have heart disease. Yes, we do understand the optimal hormone levels, the medical community doesn't want to know about it. DO A STUDY IF YOU WANT TO KNOW. That's the answer. I have tens of thousands of women who would volunteer and who already have volunteered. Nobody's listening. The medical society just wants to keep repeating the same old thing and keep giving dangerous drugs to women like Depo Provera, Birth control pills, Birth control patches, Mirena IUD, Premarin, Prempro...I could keep going. When your hormones start to go out of whack so does your brain, your heart, your immune function, your bladder, your weight. Hormones are the chemical messengers of the body! Women need their Estrogen and Progesterone to feel healthy. It’s too bad that all women cannot afford the medication because INSURANCE COMPANIES, ESPECIALLY GOVERNMENT INSURANCE COMPANIES WON’T COVER THE BIOIDENTICAL HORMONES! Especially the COMPOUNDED BHRT. Why is that? It’s because the medical community won’t allow because they aren’t paying for any STUDY to be done. Europe has studies. Women can get Testosterone in Europe. They cannot get it covered in the United States.
QUESTION SIX
Tell me about your own menopause. Did you have severe symptoms?
Suzanne: I had three years where I couldn't sleep; I'd wake up soaking wet throughout the night and would get maybe two or three hours total. I was tired all the time, didn't want sex, and started gaining weight for no reason. My hair was stringy, my nails became brittle, and I was downright miserable. My doctor offered me Premarin, but after hearing all those terrible things about it, I refused to take it. I also refused the menopause cocktail of antidepressants, antianxiety meds, and sleeping pills. Finally, I found an endocrinologist who put me on bioidentical hormones, and I started feeling better within a few days. By the end of a year, I was back to my old self, sleeping normally, feeling great, and in the mood sexually again. I don't sell hormones or supplements; this is simply a passion for me.
What do you say to doctors who criticize you for hyping bioidentical hormones as safer than conventional synthetic hormones, who say that bioidentical hormones haven't been well studied?
Suzanne: It makes my blood boil. There are over 40 studies showing that bioidentical hormones are safe, including a Danish study of 700,000 women comparing bioidentical to synthetic hormone use. European women have been using bioidenticals for over 50 years. Bottom line: Bioidentical hormones have been proven safe. They're approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It's very frustrating when doctors don't pay attention to these studies, but so many of them have been bought by pharmaceutical companies, and there's huge money in menopause. Doctors even get bonuses for prescribing chemotherapy drugs; it's really quite a terrible thing.
Fugh-Berman: I agree that the bioidentical estrogen estriol has been well-studied in Europe and has been shown to be effective for hot flashes. But those same European studies also tell us that it increases the risk of endometrial hyperplasia (abnormal cell growth in the uterus) and cancer. In this country, FDA approval doesn't connote safety; it connotes an advantageous risk-benefit ratio for specific conditions. If there's no benefit (for, example, in a woman with no symptoms), the risk-benefit ratio is unfavorable. And yes, I agree there's big money in menopause, but bioidentical hormone manufacturers and promoters are also getting their share of it.
Gretchen Jones: The women in Europe are getting pellot therapy which really isn't the same as mimmicking a rhythmic cycle of Estrogen and Progesterone which would explain endometrial hyperplasia. If doctors were educated and taught how to prescribe and use bioidentical hormones there would not be a huge risk-benefit ratio because it would be given properly. And a doctor makes BIG MONEY on menopause patients because they have many health problems which could largely be avoided if there bodies were not exposed to the standard of care hormone replacement therapy and pharmaceutical drugs to help them sleep, decrease anxiety, control insulin resistance, decrease bone loss, decrease heart palpitations, decrease hot flashes, help thyroid fluctuations, auto immune disorders, Alzheimer’s and Dementia symptoms, as well as anti inflammatory medications for joint aches and a back pain.
QUESTION SEVEN
Speaking of cancer treatments, is your oncologist concerned that you take estrogen after having been diagnosed with breast cancer?
Suzanne: He told me I could die, but here I am eight years later doing just fine. I declined chemotherapy and the drug tamoxifen, which cuts off estrogen, and am sticking with bioidentical hormones. [Somers says that she did recently have a hysterectomy after experiencing uterine bleeding and severe hyperplasia.] Obviously, every woman has to make her own individual choices when it comes to breast cancer treatments, and I just felt that my choices were the best shot I had at survival.
Gretchen Jones: The quality of life women who are on tamoxifen and arimidex is horrible. They have hot flashes, are depressed, have no energy, can't sleep at night, gain weight and have no libido. They often have a non-estrogen receptor breast cancer return so it really doesn't CURE cancer. Suzanne was not taking bioidentical hormones in rhythmic cycling dosing when she first started BHRT because she went to a doctor that didn't know how to prescribe that way. She is now on the Wiley Protocol and had she started on The Wiley Protocol before she probably would not have had to get a hysterectomy. Hormones used correctly work!
Here's an in-depth look at whether bioidentical hormones are safer than conventional HRT and a user's guide for those thinking about taking bioidentical hormones. Check out more from my other blogs.
