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Lowered Expectations – The Story Behind The HRT News

By Madeline Behrendt, D.C.

This week women’s health headlined print and media stories around the globe. What triggered this attention was the halting of an 8-year U.S. Federal study that evaluated the risks/benefits of combination Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), treatment which includes estrogen and progestin (i.e. Prempro).

NIH, which ran the study, notified the public, the press and the medical community at the same time to avoid any confusion, as well as the 16,000 women involved in the study who received letters indicating they should stop using this drug, all due to results documenting that HRT use in healthy women increased the frequency of breast cancer (24%), stroke (41%), heart attack (29%) and blood clots (100%). Many people are asking, “How did this drug get approved in the first place, how was this missed?”, and “It’s 2002, shouldn’t medicine be getting better, not worse?”. I’m asking, “How many women that you know are affected by this?”

For many, this is not news, for me it only confirms what I researched and wrote about years ago. Since then I’ve made a point to ensure women in my practice had quality information and resources so that they could make great choices, and watched as those great choices included honoring their bodies wisdom during menopause and turning away from hormone “replacement” therapy and the pill. Almost 100% are free of any hormone therapy and with all the inflammatory reaction to this week’s news, these women were not shocked or anxious or depressed, they were relieved, grateful and confident. And they are healthy.

The story from my perspective, is not the news about the negative effects of HRT, my interest has never been in a particular drug or disease, that’s not really the point, is it. What I care about as a doctor is more personal, what I care about is how women’s lives are affected by this discussion.
Approximately 38% of women past menopause take HRT, with an estimated 70 million hormone prescriptions filled each year in the U.S.. Considering how little research exists on the safety of these medications, as well as the long term effects, these numbers are staggering, how is it possible that so many women were convinced to take this dangerous medication?

Like many women, when I was a kid I’d look at my Barbie doll and think “Am I suppose to look like that?” HRT is like a hormonal version of Barbie, setting a chemical standard that has questionable grounds in reality. In HRT, the one place plenty of time and money has been spent is in marketing, unless we live under a rock, we can not escape the “programming” of how advertisers want us to spend our menopausal years. In the span of just a few generations, women have been conditioned to have lowered expectations, to surrender their innate wisdom to a pen and a prescription pad. We’re repeatedly told that our bodies don’t work and that only a medical doctor can decide what is a wrong or right (in modern language the risk/benefit ratio) choice for our health. Our bodies don’t know how to go through menopause, is that a bad joke?

The results of this study have kicked up a lot of dust and are bringing into discussion many topics that women need to pay attention to, one of these is the assumption that a patient’s interests are paramount and take precedence over all other interests in medicine. Reports this week discuss that medical options have become increasingly impersonal and there are many interests that need to be satisfied, indeed prioritized, including research grants, pharmaceutical companies, malpractice providers, HMO’S, etc. The reality is that women need to protect their own interest, and understand that even though a doctor told them to use a form of drug therapy, it is each woman who will experience the consequences and as such whatever she puts into her body she, not someone else, is responsible for.

As we move forward, it’s time to repair the bond that was broken between women and their health, to restore and promote confidence and pride in the innate wisdom of body and mind, and to educate women about care that honors them, with the focus on well-being. Many times when resources change, health changes. The news features report that many women start HRT due to hot flashes or night sweats, and want to save themselves from social embarrassment and sleepless nights. I understand. But the only option isn’t treatment where you swap the health of one body part for another, how about finding the cause of your problem, how about taking care of the interference not just trying to change a symptom, how about becoming healthy. How about chiropractic. For those that appreciate research, you may access chiropractic research regarding hot flashes at: www.jvsr.com/abstracts/1297-0056.cervic.htm

Do women under chiropractic care expect to have allergies twice a year, do they expect to be sick all winter, do they expect their kids to be on antibiotics for the first 3 years of life, do they expect to have problems during pregnancy, do they expect to have a rocky menopause, do they expect to be sick? Ask them, they have higher expectations and are living them.

A special message for all chiropractors, save another life today, make sure that women in your practice have access to this information, a clear spine, and a strong foundation. This ride is just getting started, there will be a lot of publicity about miracle drugs promoted to fill the gap Prempro left, however miracle drugs often have non-miraculous side effects, weren’t we all told at one time that Prempro was a new miracle drug?

The press has been asking for information about “alternative” choices, it’s long overdue that they opened the door to feature news on other approaches. Of course they are looking for research, any chiropractors who are interested in publishing a case study regarding menopause in a research journal, please contact me, I’d be more than happy to help you.

Related Links
Planet Chiropractic: Hormone Replacement Therapy – HRT Links
Planet Chiropractic: Women do not want to be on Hormonal Drugs

planetc1.com-news @ 7:41 am | Article ID: 1026744103

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