There appears to be no end to the pharmaceutical drive for profit — no matter what the human cost. A supreme example is the estrogen replacement drug for menopausal women known as Premarin. It is made from “conjugated equine estrogens” extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. (A “cruelty-to-animals” procedure you don’t want to hear about.)

For years, Premarin was widely, enthusiastically prescribed to protect women from heart disease and osteoporosis, while dealing with menopausal symptoms. This was enough to keep them taking the drug, in spite of the side effects of headaches, leg cramps, water retention, weight gain and mood changes.

Bio-identicals is the term currently used for natural hormone replacement therapy (NHRT).  Note that the word “natural” has been dropped altogether. I think that was an honest move in that “natural” can mean anything occurring naturally in nature, which would include a pregnant mare’s urine used for the more traditional forms of hrt like Premarin and Prempro. At least many experts are finally admitting that these hrt concoctions are more “natural” to horses than women. That in itself is progress. 

It was a doosey, and it happened following one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. What’s even more interesting is that it happened about 18 years before I began my surgical menopause.   

One chilly winter morning, I was in a mad rush to iron my skirt before I bolted out the door to get to work on time. Fuss pot that I was, I would wear only clothes items that had been freshly ironed.

After weaning myself off hrt, very gradually since December 2003, it’s now going on 6 weeks since I’ve been completely free of hormone supplementation. Although I had my doubts about succeeding at this, because I have no ovaries, I finally did it. The best news is that I’m coping well with the changes.  

Following a hysterectomy and ovary removal procedure in 1991, I tried various types of hormone therapies. None was helpful at controlling the nastier symptoms of surgical menopause until I tried bio-identical hormones in June of 1999.   

Since Wyeth’s fall from grace over its harmful hormonal therapies, some pharmaceutical companies have embarked on major marketing campaigns to promote their anti-depressants for the relief of hot flashes. If I understand this correctly, and I think I do, women have been advised to wean themselves off hormone replacement therapy to avoid the risks of breast cancer, heart disease, blood clots and dementia, and the solution is to subject them to the known side-effects associated with anti-depressants What nonsense!

My friend Nancy called me the other day. “ Quick, turn on your radio, you’ll want to hear this woman talking about HRT! ” And so I tuned in to the local radio talk show as quickly as I could. The woman being interviewed was Lorna R. Vandehaeghe, BSc, co-author of No More HRT: Menopause, Treat the Cause . I was as impressed with her radio interview as I had been with the wealth of information in her book. When I read it last fall, it prompted me to start weaning myself off my hormone therapy, something I had been contemplating for some time.

Not Easy but Doable

I gained a whopping 60 pounds on hormone replacement therapy, and I didn’t like it one bit. Following a hysterectomy and ovary removal procedure in 1991, the gynecologist promptly prescribed Premarin, saying it would help to keep me in a good mood now that my ovaries were gone. What he didn’t say was that it could cause weight gain, and lots of it. Don’t you just hate it when doctors forget to tell you about ALL the risks associated with the drugs they push on you? 

Since the U.S. National Health Institutes pulled the plug on their largest study of conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT) last year, the media have issued countless reports on the dangers of supplementing with hormones.

Among the important research discoveries: Conventional HRT does not protect your bones or your heart, two of the primary benefits once used by doctors as selling points to get women to fill their prescriptions. Another claim was that the conventional HRT could alleviate the discomfort of severe flushing and night sweats. As a woman who experienced full-blown surgical menopause at age 38, I tried several forms of therapies, in a variety of doses, and none could deliver on that promise either.

WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW ABOUT WOMEN’S HORMONES AND HEART DISEASE CAN HURT US ALL

"It’s not what we don’t know about nutrition that hurts us, it’s what we know for sure that turns out to be dead wrong." – Victor Herbert