HRT — still dangerous and worthless in preventing heart disease

Don’t let these headlines trick you into putting your health in danger

It came to a screeching halt 12 years ago… “in the interest of safety.”

I’m talking, of course, about the Women’s Health Initiative’s multi-million dollar hormone therapy experiment. The goal was to see if it could help prevent heart disease.

But the answer was a resounding NO. In fact, it showed that estrogen pills can significantly UP a woman’s risk of breast cancer, strokes, and heart attacks.

And because of those results, millions of women stopped taking them.

But these drugs are a gold mine to Big Pharma. So don’t expect them to disappear any time soon.

That’s why we were inundated with all those headlines last week touting a new study.

The big “news” was that “Hormone-replacement therapy seems safe, study finds,” or “Hormone study provides peace of mind for menopausal women.”

But don’t believe a word of it.

Because this is a classic, textbook case of Press-Release Medicine.

But if you read a bit further, you’ll see how in this case the PR “spin” worked, even though the study failed.

The bad news about those estrogen pills (and now, patches) started coming out decades ago. And by 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative study showed once and for all how incredibly dangerous they were.

But the helpful folks at the Kronos Longevity Research Institute want us to forget about that.

After all, there’s a whole new generation of women of a certain age who could be popping those pills just like their moms did.

So this new study, called KEEPS, looked at those younger women.

The goal was to see if estrogen pills or patches would lower the risk of heart disease for women in their 40s and 50s by keeping plaque from forming in their arteries.

But they didn’t.

The study was a flop. It found the pills and patches offered no heart-protection benefit at all.

And it found something else…

The women who took the Premarin pills had increased triglyceride levels. (That’s a kind of fat that can raise your risk of heart disease.)

Now, when the study didn’t turn out as expected, you might think that would be it. Case closed.

But of course not! Big Pharma doesn’t quit that easy.

You’ve heard the cliché about turning lemons into lemonade. And that’s precisely what this research institute did.

First, it issued a press release with a headline saying that the hormone treatment “has favorable effects on markers of heart disease.” Then it let the media spin the rest.

And wait till you hear this part!

Even the head KEEPS researcher, Dr. S. Mitchell Harman, couldn’t seem to put in a good word about his study.

He was quoted as saying, “We cannot recommend estrogen” to prevent heart disease even in younger, healthy women.

Then he added, “The good news? It doesn’t hurt, either. It looks like a wash.”

Really, Dr. Harman?

Have you looked at the label for Premarin lately?

I guess you haven’t seen the warnings about cancers, stokes, blood clots, breast cancer, or dementia.

All I can say is that Dr. Harman and the Kronos Institute can KEEP all those estrogen pills and patches to themselves.

We’ve heard quite enough already.

 

Sources:
“Early hormone therapy safe for women’s hearts?” Kathleen Doheny, July 28, 2014, WebMD, webmd.com

“Hormone study provides peace of mind for menopausal women” Charlotte Libov, August 4, 2014, Newsmax health, newsmaxhealth.com