Continued from Daily Dose for Feb 23, 2011

Sue Ann got on the great library in the sky, the Internet.  We all know that the Internet is loaded with garbage information.  However, as an intelligent woman, she decided that she would be able to decipher the reasonable information from the posted hysteria that would surely be there.

Sue Ann knew that if things don’t really make sense, then somehow money has to be involved. She followed the money trail. Here is what she found. It was not a delightful yellow brick road at all.

The sale of fabricated hormones makes so much money for the large pharmaceutical companies, that there is certainly going to be a push back against anything that threatens that money.  Let’s face it, the world revolves around money.  I don’t think any of us begrudge anyone from making a profit. However, if there is potential harm in what is making the profit, we should all have a problem.  I am saying “potential” harm!

She remembered when there was big money to be made in infant formula? It was hard to find any of the big name universities or professors, medical doctors or pediatricians to endorse breast-feeding. In fact, when she was an infant in the 1960’s, it was almost looked down upon to breast-feed.

She started to pull the medical studies, the actual studies that had been published in the mainstream medical literature:  JAMA, NEJM, Neurology, Fertil Steril, J Natl Cancer Inst, Steroids, Med. Clinics North Am, and many others.  The studies are out there.  Dr. Nonbelieve told her that there were no studies about the safety and efficacy of natural hormone therapies.  Fortunately for Sue Ann, she found over 100 studies in less than an hour sitting at her kitchen table. Just because Dr. Nonbelieve did not believe in them, it does not mean that they aren’t real. They are real and they are available!

The medical literature does clearly support the use of bioidentical hormones as a much safer option over the use of Premarin and Provera.  For example, the WHI initiative clearly demonstrated that the use of some progestins (artificial progesterone) and estrogens have been associated with an increase in heart attack and stroke. However, there are many studies that support the benefits against such outcomes to the natural hormones, estrogen and progesterone.  The natural hormones have the opposite effect of the synthetic hormones.

There was a study that was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that illustrated that natural progesterone actually reduced the incidence of exercise induced myocardial ischemia (heart attack) compared to the pharmaceutical choice of progestin.

One of the most shocking findings that was discovered was this quote from the Mayo Clinic by Fitzpatrick and published in the prestigious Fertility and Sterility Journal. The name of the article is “Micronized Progesterone (natural or bioidentical):  Clinical Indications and Comparison with current Treatments”

“A large body of evidence, including the Postmenopausal Estrogen/Progestin Interventions study, suggests that the use of combination estrogen and oral micronized progesterone is optimal for long-term hormone replacement therapy…However, use of progesterone-like hormones (progestins) is associated with a number of potential adverse reactions including bleeding, amenorrhea, and, at higher doses, somnolence.  There is also evidence that synthetic progestins have a teratogenic (birth defect) effect when administered during the first four months of pregnancy.  Treatment with combined estrogen and progestin medication impairs glucose tolerance in some patients.  The synthetic progestins also may attenuate the beneficial lipid and cardioprotective effects of concomitantly administered estrogen. Because of the potential adverse reactions, careful medical oversight is required if the synthetic progestins are to be used during the first trimester of pregnancy or by patients with diabetes, hyperlipidemia, or hypertension. For indications in which oral delivery of synthetic progestins currently are used, the theoretic benefits of oral delivery of the natural form of the hormone are obvious. In addition to the decreased potential for adverse effects, there are clear advantages in convenience, cost, compliance, and quality of life.

Wow, Sue Ann really did her homework.

The information is out there.  Women do not have to fear the natural hormone therapies that are available to them.  The proof is out there.

Just like breast-feeding, until we all stand up, doctors and patients, and say that we want the most beneficial and the least harmful therapies available, we will continue to have a few “suits” sitting in conference rooms deciding what will be published, touted, and followed in the exam room.  The pharmaceutical companies can get out of my patient’s exam room.

If you want more information on bioidentical hormones, just ask or start researching. I don’t have to guide you. The information is just at the tip of your fingers.  Just start typing.

Oh by the way, when I received the records from Dr. Nonbelieve, “this doctor” had actually written on one of the phone messages from Sue Ann requesting natural hormones “I don’t believe in natural hormones.”  “This doctor” may not believe the sun is going to rise tomorrow, but I do.  I know that the sun will rise tomorrow and I know that the hormones that God created, the natural hormones, are a heckuva lot safer for our bodies than the ones concocted in a laboratory by companies trying to generate an astronomical profit.

Tomorrow, I am going to write about Gluten and being Gluten Free!!  Yummie!

To your health,

Dr. Haendiges

If Dr. Nonbelieve wants more information about natural hormones, I will gladly get all that is requested.