Synthetics or natural hormones: Which Hormone Replacment is better?
When approaching menopause (perimenopause), a woman needs to learn the inner workings of her body in order to better understand the changes she's experiencing. Materials and literature regarding menopause abound and are available to help us understand the circumstances surrounding menopause.
Most menopause symptoms are caused by hormone imbalance. As we approach the end of our ovulating days, our bodies naturally begin to reduce their production of reproductive hormones. In many menopausal cases, these hormone imbalances can be arrested with the use of natural hormone replacement.
During a normal menstrual cycle, only estrogen is produced for the first 10-12 days. Ovulation then tells the female body to produce progesterone and balance the hormone levels. Progesterone sustains the endometrium (lining of the womb in which a fertilized egg would lodge) so it can receive a fertilized egg and pregnancy can occur. If no pregnancy happens, the body stops producing both hormones and menstruation occurs.
Sometimes during perimenopause no ovulation occurs, so the estrogen our bodies continue to produce is never balanced by progesterone. Adequate estrogen levels but insufficient progesterone levels leads to estrogen dominance, which is harmful and may cause uterine cancer.
In perimenopausal women, progesterone hormone replacement eliminates menstrual cramps, headaches, breast tenderness, migraine headaches and allergies, including asthma. Natural progesterone also prevents weight gain and improves thyroid function.
For menopausal women, natural progesterone should be the primary hormone replacement and not estrogen as is the usual practice to prescribe. Estrogen, without the balancing effects of progesterone, can have very serious side-effects. Progesterone, on the other hand, is beneficial and limits the negative health effects of "estrogen dominance" (estrogen unconstrained by the beneficial effects of progesterone). As stated earlier, estrogen is a carcinogenic. It has been shown in reports by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation that hundreds of women claimed to have developed breast cancer after taking PREMARIN, a hormone therapy that contains a combination of SYNTHETIC estrogens (http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/News/2010/pharmaceutical_business/index.htm & http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/05/27/bc-class-action-breast-cancer-hormone.html).
Estrogen has also always been a risk factor for breast cancer. An article by Dixie Mills, MD, FACS, indicates that recent studies showed that PROVERA, another SYNTHETIC progestin, actually doubles a woman's chance of developing breast cancer (http://www.womentowomen.com/breasthealth/estrogenbreastcancer.aspx).
Natural progesterone hormone replacement helps prevent cancer of the breast, uterus and ovaries. Estrogen and synthetic progestins are lipogenic, or create fat and cellulite, unlike bioidentical natural progesterone hormone replacement which helps eliminate fat. Progesterone is the female "feel good hormone" and helps to enhance a woman's libido (estrogen suppresses it).
Prevention is always better than cure. Breast cancer can most probably be prevented with progesterone hormone replacement. Natural hormonal balance is extremely important for proper bodily function. A simple hormone test can determine your hormonal status, and the proper hormone replacement can allow us to live a healthier and happier life.
Synthetic drugs are big business. Natural products cannot be patented, so naturally most pharmaceutical companies have no interest in them. It's interesting to note that most research published in medical journals is funded by these pharmaceutical companies and the result is a media-generated bias towards the sale and use of SYNTHETIC estrogen-based therapies. This is why some doctors are unaware that natural bioidentical progesterone can be prescribed in place of the dangerous synthetic hormones in the market. Ultimately, this also allows PREMARIN, a known carcinogenic that damages blood vessels, to be one of the largest-selling drugs in the world (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7671246, http://injury-law.freeadvice.com/defective_products/study-shows-prempro-premarin-increase-breast-cancer.htm, http://www.newspiritservices.com/premarin.html).
If you're suffering from menopausal symptoms from progesterone deficiency and would like to have the proper hormone replacement therapy, you might first want to check out the other symptoms of low progesterone. The link below provides a detailed description of these symptoms. You can check this list by clicking on the link below.
Click here to read about the symptoms of PMS