Safe Hormones Smart Women

by D. Lindsey Berkson, Lindsey Berkson

• ISBN13: 9781450217255
• ISBN10: 1450217257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-21
• Publisher: Iuniverse Inc

Summary

D. Lindsey Berkson MA CNS DABCN is a participating scholar at a science-focused think tank that specializes in the most up-to-date research on estrogen, called the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities. Berkson has lectured to doctors of all backgrounds on health and hormones for 30 years. She has a master's degree in nutrition, higher board certifications in nutrition, formulated the 1st non-hormonal nutritional supplement for menopause for doctor's use in practice (in the 80's) and she consults with many doctors and patient's on hormonal issues. This is her 4th book on hormones, such as Hormone Deception - one of the earliest books on the role of the environment and pollutants on hormones and health.

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION
Are you exasperated when you start to notice...
• Your chin sprouts hairs you can't see to tweeze?
• That the only way to lose 20 pounds is to cut off an arm?
• You're weary all day, yet can't stay asleep all night?
• You work out regularly, but your body obstinately assumes the shape of your couch?
• Your cholesterol is rising no matter how much cheesecake you refuse?
• You vaguely remember being horny, but sex suddenly seems as much fun as a barium enema . . .
• And now, ye gads, you have cleavage in the back as well as the front!
Not to mention you're so tired that Starbucks doesn't give a mid-afternoon jolt anymore. And dating younger men since your divorce, with no libido and a Sahara desert for them to wander in, just ain't gonna get you a second dinner and a movie.
And that worrisome heel bone scan you got at the women's health fair at the mall reminds you of your grandmother with her multiple fractures and ongoing bone pain the last several decades of her life.
So what's the story with these problems?
They are all related to the levels of various hormones in your body being out of balance or on a downward decline.
So lots of us, understandably enough, would love to replace the hormones we are missing, especially if it means we could live healthier, happier, and saner, not to mention friskier lives.
But the questions are many:
Is hormone replacement safe? Or not?
Are bioidentical hormones safe, or not?
Do they help some women and not others, and who the heck really knows?
Does anybody other than the Dalai Lama tell the truth?
But he's a man.
And . . . he's celibate.
How do we make menopause a time of brilliance, health, energy, satisfaction, and fun, not to mention enjoying our older memories while making newer ones?
If that's possible, sign us up.
But if the diagnosis is truly idiopathic menopause, which means nobody really knows what's going on here but we'll bill your insurance company anyway, level with us.
Inquiring minds with pausally plummeting bodies earnestly want to know, because the last several decades in terms of who says what about hormones has been nuts. The lives and loves of hormones have yo-yoed so much it's enough to give anyone hot flashes. But don't concede defeat to aging free-fall. There is hope.
Once upon a time, literally hundreds of scientific studies suggested that taking hormones protected women's hearts and lives, so much so that hormone replacement therapy was recommended by the American Heart Association to treat women who had had heart attacks. For decades, when women went "pausal," most OB-GYN doctors would say "take this pill, it will make much of your life better."
Hormonal therapy for postmenopausal women was, for a long time, the most widely prescribed medicine in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. It was passed out like healthy M&Ms.
But in July 2002, our hormonal planet cracked.
The earth stopped rotating, while around the globe women furiously flung hormones out their windows, like trying to whack black widow spiders off their shoulders without getting bit.
Why?
Because we were suddenly told by two governmental bodies (the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health)—based on results from the first part of the government's Women's Health Initiative trial—that hormone replacement therapy was no longer safe.
Hormones were, in fact, dangerous.
Most doctors stopped prescribing hormone replacement. Trying to find a doctor to prescribe hormones was like trying to find a soul mate if you were 40 and single. Not easy.
And the same has been true with bioidentical hormones. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Endocrine Society said there was little or no evidence to support claims that supposedly "natural" hormones were any safer or better than commercially patented synthetic hormones, some of which were derived from horse urine.
Yet, behind the scenes, unknown to many physicians, researchers, and women, well-run research and re-analysis of past studies have jump-started a re-emergence of positive perceptions about hormone replacement therapy and the role of balanced hormones in women's total health picture. The conclusions drawn during the early 2000s about hormones being dangerous for all women has again flip-flopped.
In Europe.
In Canada.
In the U.S.
A new consensus and understanding about the safety, effectiveness, and potential protection of hormone therapy is re-birthing. There is now science showing that hormones are not always as dangerous as we had thought and, instead, they actually protect many aspects of health in certain women, at certain ages, given in certain ways and in specific forms.
But many doctors don't know this.
The first few experts who were kind enough to review this manuscript (doctors who are tops in this field) didn't know about these studies. For example, research done on large numbers of women actually shows that estrogens—without synthetic versions of progesterone—might in fact protect against breast cancer, protect against heart disease, and protect our bones for decades to come. And that natural progesterone protects hearts and breasts, compared to synthetic versions that make breasts and hearts more vulnerable to disease.
The experts challenged us to send them these studies.
We did. You'll hear about them later.
If even the doctors who work in this field didn't know many of the latest findings, then how could you? That's why this book was written: to share the science and explain why balancing your hormones—which often requires hormone replacement, but can also be nudged with specific food and nutrients—complies with your body's physiology and safeguards your health.
It isn't easy being you—living in a body that has hormones up one time of the day, and down another, changing day by day, month by month, and then rudely falling off a cliff in a pink convertible like Thelma and Louise when we reach our 50s. We had the hormones to produce the next generation, to have babies. But now these hormones are waving bye-bye and here we are, weary and complicated.
Just the thought of everything that goes on and how easy it is to get out of whack—it's literally exhausting. However, there is safe hormonal help on the way.
But it's important to understand that getting you balanced and vibrant is an alliance between your doctor and you. In the manner that Cher slapped Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck when he proclaimed his love for her, I say to you about this hallucination of someone else having the one perfect simple immediate fix-it answer for your health: Get over it!
Your health might take a bit of tweaking over time. With the appropriate hormones and nutrients it's usually weeks, not months. But it's a joint effort between you and your doc. Your doctor should have knowledge about and respect for hormones and nutrition, truly listen to your story, observe how you respond, and then tweak and fine-tune your program. And then there's you and your daily choices: what you eat, what you have the will power not to eat (you will learn the 4 Ws you must avoid), your nutrient cornucopia, and your exercise and sleep regimes.
Hormone balancing therapy gets women well. It's the new way to practice medicine and nutrition. It's based on straightforward physiology. And it's here to stay. We will start seeing men and women in their 20s get hormone baseline tests, and monitor them every decade, as we appreciate more and more the role of hormonal health for all of our body parts through all of our life phases.
The problem with doing things as they have always been done is that it didn't get patients off meds or feeling better. The old medical approach of giving drugs for symptoms, and not getting at the core of what caused these symptoms, is outdated.
The new approach is to have the doctor design a program based on each individual woman's body.