No help on the HRT front

Last week I sent you an e-Alert (“Hiding the R” 11/4/02) with a report on the recent National Institutes of Health conference that reviewed the status of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). In response to that e-Alert I received this e-mail from an HSI member named Bigsur:

“I am a registered pharmacist who has quietly and discretely attempted to encourage his customers to avoid HRTand managed to get in a fair amount of trouble for his bother (I work for a chain). So I was delighted when the study came out that finally discredited HRT, AND was published so the public could be made aware of the findings. I am sorry to tell you that I am starting to see an increase of HRT prescriptions again.”

This is not great news, but also not surprising. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing deep research or simply skimming headlines: the field of HRT is filled with confusion and mixed signals.

For instance, I came across a recent article on MSNBC with this “promising” headline: “Hormones may Prevent Alzheimer’s.” But by the end of the article there was more confusion than clarity on the subject of HRT and dementia. Hormone therapy, it claimed, reduces the chances of Alzheimer’s in some women, and increases the chances for other women. Then summing it all up, one of the authors of the study in question stated that women should not use the study’s findings to make a decision about HRT.

It seems that there’s no end to these types of unhelpful reports about synthetic hormone therapy. As a result, I imagine that many frustrated women are simply throwing up their hands and relying on the advice of their doctors. And as we’ve seen, there are thousands of physicians out there who prescribe by the pharmaceutical book without exploring alternate methods that are often just as effective, but without the sometimes disastrous long-term side effects.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute