Hormones Resource
Center
Natural
Progesterone: The World's Best Kept "Anti-Aging"
Secret
by Catherine P. Rollins
Twenty
years ago a doctor asked Marjorie why she wasn’t
on progesterone to which she responded, “nobody
told me I should be.” Within 3-4 days of commencing
progesterone cream, she felt so much better about herself.
More confident; more in control of her life. Marjorie
points out she's been taking progesterone and feeling
the benefits for twenty years without any side effects.
During
this time doctors tried to take her off the cream but
Marjorie flatly
refused. Instead, she suggested
that maybe these doctors listen to the women who are
taking progesterone and getting well. Marjoie has shared
her experience on progesterone cream with other women
many times over but their doctors argue they don’t
need it. Such a pity, says Marjorie! She personally
wouldn’t be without it.
Natural
progesterone has been around since the 1940s. Dr John
Lee has
bravely championed its use despite
the medical fraternity’s inability to embrace
his theories. Millions of women around the world continue
to be eternally grateful to him for having discovered
the benefits of its use because of his indefatigable
stance.
And
yet doctors remain reluctant to prescribe it. They
flatly refuse to
honour a woman’s choice
of natural progesterone - a natural hormone that is
identical in chemical structure to the hormone that
our bodies produce naturally, and therefore is less
likely than synthetic progestin to cause side effects.
Perhaps resistance is due largely to the lack of published
clinical trials and scientific evidence made available
to doctors on natural-to-the-body hormones like progesterone.
OK,
so what’s hindering test trials that can
change all this? Lack of financial incentive, that's
what! Pharmaceutical companies, in the interests of
self-preservation, flatly refuse to inject millions
and millions of dollars into research, development
and marketing of a drug that cannot be ‘owned’ under
a patent.
Meanwhile,
the pharmaceutical industry is guilty of a massive
campaign of mis-information
in regards to
the less ‘natural’ hormone replacement
therapy drugs they manufacture and push doctors to
prescribe. There is growing evidence that synthetic
HRT is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be.
Clearly some medical claims are based on myth and not
fact. The effect on heart disease is just one example.
The dangers of synthetic HRT, especially on breast
cancer, are only now being given any exposure as more
and more women demand answers to their health questions.
Let’s not fool ourselves here. What’s
best for women’s health is not always high on
the agenda. It’s about patents and profits, and
chemically altered drugs that ineptly replace our natural
hormones. It’s about over-shadowing responsible
information on hormone replacement therapy with test
trials and data, in some cases funded by the multi-national
pharmaceutical companies who manufacture these drugs.
It is a fact that pharmaceutical companies are the
main source of information for many doctors. Pharmaceutical
companies have an interest in selling their products
and they do this by heavily promoting drugs, including
HRT to doctors. The question is whether doctors are
getting balanced information or just promotional material
from the pharmaceutical companies.
Many women are feeling like they have been treated
like guinea pigs. Only now are we learning that synthetic
HRT, once prescribed to millions of women to ease the
immediate symptoms of menopause and to prevent osteoporosis
and heart disease, has been found to increase the risk
of heart disease, cancer and blood clots.
The Million Women Study, an unprecedented study of
the medical histories of nearly 1.1m British women
who were cancer-free as they entered the national screening
programme, revealed that those on some types of synthetic
HRT were twice as likely to develop breast cancer as
those who had not used it.
Consumers
are right to wonder why they weren’t
given the full picture earlier. As long ago as 1997
British Medical Journal review of 22 studies concluded
that there was no evidence that post-menopausal HRT
prevents heart and blood vessel problems. Until recently
women weren’t given this information, but were
told that HRT could protect them from heart disease.
Consumers
are right to ask “Why weren’t
these products tested more thoroughly before they were
prescribed so broadly and why weren’t we told
of the possible risks earlier?"
The 1995 PEPI trials clearly demonstrated that natural
progesterone actually works better than synthetic progestin
in terms of protecting the heart, and that natural
progesterone can protect against uterine cancer as
well as synthetic progestin. Yet, inexplicably, this
message has not yet reached the medical community.
The overwhelming majority of doctors still write prescriptions
for synthetic progestins, and most do not even know
that there is a different, possibly safer kind of progesterone
available.
The situation appears to be changing, however. There
is a grass-roots movement of knowledgeable women who
have themselves undertaken to research the best superhormone
strategies for menopause and who are now demanding
that their physicians prescribe natural progesterone.
About
the Author:
Catherine P. Rollins is the author of 'A
Woman's Guide to Using Natural Progesterone' and Director
of the highly popular website:
Natural-Progesterone-Advisory-Network.com.
This
article was syndicated from The
Natural Progesterone Advisory Network:
http://www.natural-progesterone-advisory-network.com/natural-progesterone-anti-aging-secret.htm
