Most hormones prescribed to women today are not identical to the hormones she naturally makes.
Synthetic hormones can be harmful
Section titled “Synthetic hormones can be harmful”What is wrong with Premarin®?
Section titled “What is wrong with Premarin®?”The word 'Premarin' is from the words pregnant mares' urine. It is a combination of different estrogens, most of which are not normally found in the human physiology. Estrogen is a signal to certain tissues to behave in certain ways. The signal is then broken down and the breakdown products are weaker and have less estrogenic effect than the original hormone. In this way the signal is allowed to dissipate. When a horse estrogen is used in humans, the breakdown products are actually stronger than the hormone and therefore the message does not decay as it normally should but is amplified. This may be why estroge replacement is associated with an increased risk of cancer.
Progesterone
Section titled “Progesterone”Natural progesterone is different from meDr. yprogesterone acetate (Provera®). A neurologist at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston uses natural progesterone for people with temporal-lobe seizures. He performed PET scans of some of these patients. The scans showed a difference in the brain metabolism of those patients given natural progesterone compared to those given synthetic meDr. yprogesterone. Other studies found that meDr. yprogesterone given to monkeys caused the arteries to go into spasm. This is not a desirable situation. Natural progesterone allowed the arteries to remain more open. Synthetic progesterone has been shown to increase the risk of cancer of the breast. Women who have borne chilDr. experience very high levels of natural progesterone, and have less breast cancer than women who do not bear chilDr. . I suspect this is because synthetic and natural progesterone affect the breast differently.
Beware of the YamScam
Section titled “Beware of the YamScam”Supplements are good! Prescribed medicines are bad! Right?
Wrong...
You may not find many sharks off the American beaches but there are plenty in the American health food industry. The Mexican yam, for instance, known as barbasco or dioscorea, is rich in substances that can be made into female hormones. Indeed, major pharmaceutical companies use the Mexican yam as a precursor for the manufacture of birth control pills and other hormone products. Substances in the Mexican yam can also be made into DHEA or dehyDr. pianDr. terone. Unfortunately, it takes a chemistry set to do this. Human systems do not have the capability to make these transformations.
Has this stopped people from selling Mexican yam as a substitute for DHEA or female hormones? Nope. There are a number of companies who tout their Mexican yam supplements as a substitute for hormones or for DHEA, some are even headed by people with a degree in medicine! Anyone who pretends to be knowledgeable in chemistry who tells you that the Mexican yam is going to be transformed into progesterone or DHEA in your body is trying to lying to sell.
And on the subject of multi-level marketing of these products, the old adage is as valid as ever: *Buyer beware!*
Hormones can be helpful
Section titled “Hormones can be helpful”For any woman who has lost her uterus and/or ovaries, hormone replacement can help her feel much more normal than she otherwise would. Although studies show that women who take horse hormones and synthetic progesterone have higher risks of heart disease, stroke, and blood clots, there is evidence that your own natural hormones are beneficial. For example, in 1975, Dutch researchers enrolled 9,450 women in a study to track age of menopause and death from heart disease. The women were from 35 to 65 years old when the study started. After an average of 20 years of follow-up, they found that those women who went through menopause at the age of 52 or later had only 82% the cardiovascular death rate of those women who went through menopause at the age of 44 or earlier. The longer these women menstruated, the less heart disease they had. That means, the longer they were exposed to their own natural hormones, the less heart disease they had.
People are different. For some people, hormone replacement helps a number of uniquely feminine problems. Even horse estrogen definitely reduces the risk of hip fracture and colorectal cancer. It may reduce the incidence of cataract, dementia (Alzheimer's disease), and aging skin, but I don't think the whole story has been written yet on all these. However, horse estrogens have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, breast cancer, and blood clots. Other women do better without it. Diet, exercise, individual genetics and habits are important for health and long life.
Causes of insufficient hormones
Section titled “Causes of insufficient hormones”Tubal ligation and hysterectomy
Section titled “Tubal ligation and hysterectomy”Removing the uterus decreases the blood supply to the ovaries. This can decrease their output of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and other anDr. enic (male) hormones. Many women report menopausal symptoms after their uterus is removed, even when their ovaries are left in place.
Stress
Section titled “Stress”Stress causes the adrenals to work harder. These glands produce not just cortisol, the major stress hormone, but progesterone and testosterone as well. If they are stressed they will have difficulty doing that.
Resources
Section titled “Resources”Tori Hudson, ND and Christiane Northrup MD are worth reading, as is Dr. Jonathan Wright's Natural Hormone Replacement, available in our office. Dr. John Lee has useful information but is a bit over-enthusiastic about the benefits of progesterone.
[1]Endogenous estrogen exposure and cardiovascular mortality risk in postmenopausal women From the Julius Center for General Practice and Patient Oriented Research, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Abstract: In this study, the authors investigated whether combined information on reproductive factors has additive value to the single reproductive factor age at menopause for assessing endogenous estrogen exposure and cardiovascular mortality risk in postmenopausal women. They conducted a population-based cohort study that included 9,450 postmenopausal women from Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who were aged 35--65 years at enrollment in 1975, with a median follow-up of 20.5 years. A Cox proportional hazards model and Receiver Operating Curves were used to analyze the data. Women aged 52 years or more at menopause had an 18% reduction in cardiovascular mortality (hazard ratio = 0.82, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69, 0.98) compared with those aged 44 years or less. Women with more than 18 years of exposure to endogenous estrogen had a statistically significant 20% reduction in cardiovascular mortality (hazard ratio = 0.80, 95 percent CI: 0.67, 0.96) compared with those who had 13 years of exposure or less. The area under the curve of the Receiver Operating Curves for the two models was identical (area under the curve = 0.67, 95 percent CI: 0.66, 0.68). This study shows that age at menopause is related to cardiovascular disease mortality and that a newly developed composite measure of endogenous estrogen exposure does not add to the predictive value of age at menopause for cardiovascular mortality. Am J Epidemiol 2002 Feb 15;155(4):339-45
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