(Note: The results of the study
represented in this article applies ONLY to pharmaceutical hormones, not
the natural bioidentical hormones found on this web site.)
It has happened again. More bad news for drug companies pushing their
harmful products upon the American consumer.
This time it is another Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study by the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) that blows holes in the myth that
taking pharmaceutical estrogen pills like Premarin helps prevent
dementia and Alzheimer's disease in older women. The myth personified is
that pharmaceutical estrogen can help keep older women's minds sharp.
|
|
Diosgenin cream ingredients
| Benefits diosgenin cream |
How to use diosgenin cream. |
Return to Eden Diosgenin (nicknamed Progesterone) Cream.
Do you remember our newsletter
last year detailing how Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was attempting to stop
compounding pharmacists from prescribing natural progesterone (diosgenin)
after their profits fell by more than 57% from $2.07 billion in 2003 to
$800 million in 2004 (after the WHI study had to be stopped)?
Well, now they have gone after
centers like ours making complaints to the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC). The FTC's position backed by the big pharmaceutical companies is
that Dr. John Lee, M.D.'s studies were not scientific and did not rise to
the standard of FDA and National Institutes of Health studies, and that
our claims about natural progesterone are false, unfair, deceptive,
misleading advertising in violation of the law..
(Please read
what Dr. Helen Pensanti M.D. has to say about this. Read on to how the study
was conducted.)
This is an attempt to force women into taking
unsafe proven cancer causing synthetic hormones using
your tax dollar to harass natural hormone suppliers. We here at the Women's
Menopause Health Center refuse to take away your choice of a healthy
alternative to Premarin, Prempro and the other dangerous drugs. We are
taking a stand against this heavy handed attempt to destroy competition. We
are going to fight for your choice of a healthy way to get through menopause
comfortably and safely.
(Ed. note: This was from our newsletter last year. The
continued harassment by the FTC has caused us to discontinue our wonderful
product. Do not be forced
into taking something that can kill you. You may purchase safe
progesterone cream at your local health food store, or find it a lot less
expensively on line at places like ebay and yahoo stores.
Do not let these heavy handed tactics destroy your health!)
|
It turns out that the opposite is true. Although
the WHI study sample was small, dementia was diagnosed in 28 women who
took the pharmaceutical estrogen, compared with 19 taking placebo pills.
The results of the WHI study research, released on June 22, 2004 in a
NIH press release (click here to see WHI study press release), involved
approximately 3,000 women, ages 65 to 79, who had had hysterectomies and
had taken estrogen-only pills, sold by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals as Premarin
an average of about five years. The WHI study findings echoed a recent
WHI study involving pharmaceutical estrogen-progesterone supplements.
According to an Associated Press article, co-researcher Stephen Rapp, a
professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Wake Forest
University said the WHI study results were not statistically significant
because the numbers were so small. However, he added that the trend was
troubling.
“Translated to a population of 10,000 older women taking estrogen alone,
there would be an additional 12 cases of dementia per year,” Dr. Sally
Shumaker, also of Wake Forest University, was quoted as saying in the AP
article.
At the end of the WHI study, the risk of dementia in the estrogen-alone
group was 49% higher than the risk in women using the placebo. That is,
among 10,000 women using conjugated equine estrogens, 37 could be
expected to develop dementia, compared to 25 in 10,000 women using the
placebo — 12 extra cases of dementia in every 10,000 women using
estrogen alone each year. This increased risk was not statistically
significant.
Additionally, 76 women on pharmaceutical estrogen developed mild bouts
of forgetfulness compared with 58 women in the placebo group. When those
results were pooled with the dementia WHI study group, the results
became statistically significant.
“No matter which outcome we're looking at, there is no evidence of
benefit,” the AP quoted Rapp as saying. Pharmaceutical estrogen pills
offer “no protection against dementia, and in fact the likelihood
increases on hormone therapy.”
"These studies further support last year's recommendations that
menopausal hormone therapy should not be used to prevent cognitive
decline or dementia in older postmenopausal women," stated Judith A.
Salerno, MD, MS, Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging
(NIA). "Women should follow the Food and Drug Administration's
recommendation that those who want to use menopausal hormone therapy to
control their menopausal symptoms should use it at the lowest effective
dose for the shortest time necessary."
Pharmaceutical estrogen pills have been linked to uterine cancer.
Because of that, most women who take horse-urine based hormones at
menopause, like Premarin, have used combined pharmaceutical
estrogen-progestin pills. Wyeth's pharmaceutical estrogen-progestin pill
is sold as Prempro. An earlier WHI study found that pharmaceutical
estrogen- progestin pills increased older women's risk of breast cancer,
strokes and heart attacks. For that
earlier WHI study, click here.
The results of the latest WHI study were published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
Menopause
Recipes:
TLC Bath & Body Recipe:
Exercise Tip:
Curves Workout.
Return to the Archived Newsletter
Index.
