ABSTRACT
Hormone replacement has become the main tool in the practice of medical endocrinology along with a few surgeries and some suppressive and destructive drug therapies. TheWomen’s Health Initiative study set out to determine the safety and effi-
cacy of this type of therapy using synthetic female hormones for menopausal women. The results were a disaster (Chen et al., 2002). Researchers stopped the study years early because the long-term side
effects were much more devastating than the symptoms that synthetic hormone replacement therapy was trying to treat and the long-presumed benefits in the theoretical therapeutic benefits were nowhere to be seen. Because this was the first comprehensive and large-scale study of female hormone replacement therapy (HRT), there were much data gleaned from the study that was previously unknown. Ordinary medicine had been using these hormones to treat menopausal
women for years without actually knowing the side effects. The assumption was that replacing the hormones that were beginning to diminish at menopause would change the signs and symptoms that seemed to be connected to this loss of hormones. Some of these symptoms are hot flashes and night sweats, cardiac problems, and bone loss. The addition of congegated estrogens (the synthetic kind made from pregnant horse urine) helped tremendously with hot flushes and night sweats in most women. However, with estrogen replacement, there were more cardiac events and strokes. Bone loss continued with estrogen administration, and most important, the rate of breast cancer increased tremendously by a factor of 65% to 80% if all histologic types of breast cancer are considered together (Chen et al., 2002). These dangerous side effects were a surprise to those running the study
and to the physicians who were prescribing these synthetic hormones every day. The assumption was that by replacing the missing hormones, the body would automatically stop the processes of aging. Once studied, it turned out to be a false assumption.
