Hormone Replacement Logic

It seems to me that the medical community is treating more and more illnesses as if they were drug deficiency diseases. Instead of looking for the actual cause of the problem and then trying to eliminate the cause, they are simply looking at symptoms and are treating the symptoms with drugs. For example: Let's assume that a certain type of headache is caused by a hormone imbalance that is related to a nutritional deficiency. Does the doctor try to determine the cause and then do his best to get the hormones back in balance or does he simply prescribe a painkiller, like aspirin, which only treats the symptoms and not the cause of the pain? According to this way of thinking a headache might be thought of as an aspirin deficiency instead of as a nutritional deficiency because the treatment isn't really directed at the cause.

Is similar thinking affecting the way we treat other hormone deficiency problems? Are hormone imbalance symptoms caused by a deficiency of our man made drugs? Years ago, when it was discovered that women's estrogen levels were dropping about 40 to 60 percent at menopause, doctors jumped to the conclusion that this was creating a deficiency which was causing things like hot flashes, heart disease and osteoporosis so started giving out thousands of prescriptions for the artificial estrogen drugs. The slight molecular differences between these artificial estrogens and natural estrogens made it possible to patent the drugs. By patenting them the drug companies could control their sale and make more money. These drugs did seem to help hot flashes and slow down osteoporosis to a degree but even a slight change in the molecular structure of a natural substance can drastically change its long-term effects on the body. Many of these artificial estrogens have now been linked to side effects such as increased risk of strokes, water retention, weight gain, and other serious concerns such as uterine and breast cancer. If the number one goal were to truly be of help to women then a company would surely have tried to make available the natural estrogen that they thought was lacking instead of trying to replace it with something artificial that the body never made in the first place.

True medicine looks for a cause and the best cure. Since our medical system often looks at the need to make a profit first, we do not always get the best cure. Natural formulations, which often are the best cure, cannot be patented and since they cannot be patented they cannot be controlled for maximum profitability, so the drug companies will not spend the money to research or develop them. Therefore, we often wind up with drugs that affect the symptoms but cannot really eliminate the deficiency causing the problems because they are not truly the natural things that the body is lacking. These drugs often have similar effects but also cause negative side effects. The drugs, in many cases, mask the symptoms but do not really provide a cure in the case of deficiency diseases. Since these diseases are not caused by a deficiency of a drug but of something natural, a drug can't replace what is missing.

The problem of assuming an incorrect cause is also playing a role in the ineffective treatments that women are receiving for problems related to hormone imbalance. As mentioned before, years ago the medical community made the assumption that women were suffering from an estrogen deficiency because of the drop in estrogen that occurs at menopause so they started giving women artificial estrogen. It was later determined by modern research that one extremely important fact had been completely ignored during the early studies and that was that progesterone levels drop much more significantly at menopause than do estrogen levels. Doctors doing the more recent studies began to believe that it might be this drop in progesterone and not the natural drop in estrogen that was causing many of the symptoms that seemed to be related to hormone imbalance. To test this theory they began trying to bring up the progesterone activity in women diagnosed with osteoporosis and were able to show a significant increase in bone density in those tested. Significant bone density improvement has never been demonstrated in those given estrogen drugs.

The doctors pioneering modern research then started working with progesterone to see if it would help with PMS and found significant relief for about 90% of those who tried the new treatments. This made sense because studies have shown that those experiencing PMS symptoms usually have a lower ratio of progesterone when compared to estrogen levels than those who do not suffer from these symptoms.

There is still some controversy as to the best way to accomplish this. Some of the doctors doing the pioneering research are still struggling with the idea of using all natural treatments instead of synthetic drugs. They recommend that women use a cream that contains the synthetic drug U.S.P. grade progesterone. Others, however, like Homer Woolf, a highly respected pharmacist and biochemist from Idaho, recommended that women use "Resolve," a cream containing natural nutritional phyto-progesterones extracted from the wild yam root and designed to give women back the nutritional building blocks that many are lacking in their diets because of the fact that we're eating produce that is grown in depleted soils, vegetables that are not fresh and too many processed foods. Since good extracts are small fat-soluble molecules they absorb well through the skin when added to a quality base cream.

If you are considering trying one of these creams you can choose the more natural approach or the man made drug approach. Free agency is a wonderful thing. My personal studies have led me to believe that most hormonal problems are not due to a deficiency of a man made drug but of progesterone and when restored through the use of a well formulated natural product, it brings with it noticeably better health.