June 23rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Wellcome Library, London // CC 2.0
The Endocrine Society has released a new, peer-reviewed statement on the risks and benefits of hormone therapy for menopausal women. The upshot is that risks and benefits vary depending on the age of the patient and the length of time since menopause:
One interesting finding . . . was that women who start hormone therapy within 10 years of menopause have a 30% to 40% reduction in total mortality.
In addition, in the 50 to 55 age group the task force concluded that hormone therapy reduced hot flashes and overactive bladder and that vaginal estrogen reduced recurrent urinary tract infections. The evidence also showed that hormone therapy reduced pain on intercourse and improved quality of life.
Given that there are thousands of lawsuits pending over the role of HT in breast cancer, I was especially interested in this nugget of new information:
“Our conclusion is that [the estrogen/progestin hormone combination] didn’t cause breast cancer — it caused preexisting tumors to grow to a size where they became detectable.”
Tags: Endocrine Society, estrogen, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, postmenopause
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 3 Comments »
April 23rd, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock
Tags: blood, breast milk, C'elle, cancer, HAMLET, hormone therapy, life-giving fluids, Menstruation, ovulation, science, Shakespeare, stem cells, vaginal bleeding
Posted in Menstruation, New Research, anatomy | 3 Comments »
April 18th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Paula S. Derry, Ph.D.
Déjà vu
An article in today’s New York Times Magazine recounts the author’s experience with a debilitating depression that began during her perimenopause, the transitional time leading up to menopause. For her, prescription estrogen was a life-saver that alleviated her symptoms. The article places her experience in the context of research on the Timing Hypothesis, an idea that arose after the Women’s Health Initiative, or WHI, research project. WHI clinical trials documented that hormone supplements after menopause did not, as had previously been assumed, lower a woman’s risk of heart disease. Heart disease risk was not lower, and, in fact, when a number of chronic illnesses were considered together, the medication did more harm than good overall. The Timing Hypothesis is the idea that the WHI was fundamentally flawed, because hormones must be started right around the time of menopause to have a health-promoting effect and the subjects in WHI were on average over 60; if started when a woman is older, when chronic illnesses have already started, the hormones are actually harmful rather than helpful. The Sunday New York Times article presents this idea uncritically, without quoting any of the many experts who do not find it plausible or convincing, and, in addition, presents a lurid, unscientific description of perimenopausal hormonal dynamics with words like “ricocheting hormones” and an “upheaval” that causes a “hellacious strain” on the brain. The author suggests that WHI was a poorly planned study that asked the wrong questions with the wrong methodology. The Timing Hypothesis, if true, might lead to a cure for Alzheimers and have other important health repercussions. Continue reading...
Tags: depression, estrogen, guest post, heart disease, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, perimenopause, timing hypothesis, WHI
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
February 7th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Tags: asthma, drugs, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | Comments Off
January 5th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
As we have often noted here, one of the key reasons the marketing of hormone therapy for menopausal women has been so successful is the misguided belief that menopause is an estrogen-deficiency disease. Among other purported disadvantages of the decline in estrogen that accompanies normal aging was the belief that this decline caused muscle loss and other declines in physical functioning. (Muscle cells have receptors for estrogen, and recent research has linked higher blood levels of the hormone to greater muscle strength in elderly women.)
But the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) is still providing new information about the lack of benefits of HT. (For those who are new around here, the WHI is a large US clinical trial begun in 1991, in which thousands of postmenopausal women were randomly assigned to take either HT or placebo pills. The study was abruptly ended ahead of schedule in 2002, when researchers discovered that the women taking the hormones had higher risks of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer, and blood clots – the very conditions the drugs were assumed to prevent – than placebo users.) In a new study based on a subgroup of 2400 women to be published in a forthcoming issue of Menopause (February 2010), both the women using HT and the placebo groups showed similar dips in muscle strength and walking speed over six years. In other words, women get older and show physical indications of aging with or without hormone therapy.
Tags: hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, postmenopause, WHI
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 4 Comments »
January 1st, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock
The bioidentical hormone therapy industry has been getting a bad rap lately in the US, and this press release is an example of why. Among other things, the writer confuses estrogen and progesterone, in one paragraph saying their product is a “safe and scientifically-proven, all-natural estrogen delivery cream[]“, and in the next describing it as a “natural progesterone cream” (emphasis is mine). Moreover, the press release springboards from another estrogen-positive press release that claims that estrogen may be the cure for female depression, citing an ob/gyn author of a book, and promoting a soon-to-be-launched web page.
So, in one breath the product is an estrogen delivery cream that will help with low estrogen, but in the next breath (on the linked product page) it is argued that it will help with estrogen that is too high (which is more accurate). The product website emphasizes that it is “without dangerous pharmaceuticals”:
This remarkable product contains NO risky synthetic estrogens or progestins. [Product] Cream is similar to the progesterone your body naturally produces, so there are no worries about dangerous interactions or nasty side effects. Continue reading...
Tags: bioidentical hormone therapy, critical thinking, estradiol, hormone therapy, Menopause, postmenopause, progesterone
Posted in Health Care, Menopause, Pharmaceutical | 3 Comments »
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
RSS 
