Hi everyone. The recent study that found an almost threefold rise in breast cancer in women who use HRT is the reason for the break in my fertility-related posts. I just had to write something about it. It demonstrates so much of the wrongs of modern medicine; unfortunately we see this pattern repeat itself again and again. It goes like this: a new medicine comes to the market. Early research claims it is beneficial and effective. Doctors get excited and increasingly prescribe the new miracle drug to unsuspecting patients who are looking for relief from their symptoms. As the years pass, more and more data regarding the use of the medicine becomes available and a fresh picture emerges. The miracle drug may be efficient in reducing the symptoms but it carries a risk of dangerous long and short term side effects. This was the case in many of the well known and widely used medicines such as aspirin, omeprazole, diclofenac and many others.

HRT was introduced in the eighties and quickly became a hit. Books were written at the time claiming that Oestrogen can give you back your youth and people genuinely believed that it stopped the aging process; the list of health and well-being benefits grew by the day! The idea was, since the level of Oestrogen tends to suddenly drop around the age of 50 causing all sorts of symptoms, replacing these hormones would turn the clock back. It would make you look and feel young again. Sounds like a perfectly good and sensible idea. The problem here is that the drop in the level of Oestrogen in a woman’s blood around the age of 50 is a natural process; it is part of human evolvement with age. Like other human body processes it has developed through millions of years of evolution for a good reason. If there was any advantage in keeping the level of Oestrogen the same throughout our lives then evolution would have designed us that way.

This actually is another type of pattern in modern medicine: every time we think we are cleverer than nature, that we can change something in the original human design, we ultimately fail. A good example for that is the use of aspirin as a prevention of heart disease. The idea to give aspirin to all people over the age of 50, to prevent heart conditions, lay in the assumption that the normal human blood is too thick and tends to clot and create problems such as heart attacks for example. The idea was to take aspirin to thin the blood which will then make it less likely to clot and therefore prevent heart problems. It took more than 40 years for the scientists to take a good hard look at the data accumulated over the years and to conclude that the use of aspirin in healthy people as a prevention actually causes more deaths from bleeding and kidney problems than it saves from heart conditions.

The position with HRT was similar. There is a sudden drop in the level of Oestrogen in the woman’s blood and therefore it makes sense to give her Oestrogen to supplement the levels. Really they were asking for trouble-and trouble came. In the first few years the good news just kept on coming and it was claimed that the use of HRT not only made you feel better but it also protected you from heart disease, strokes and several types of cancer-a win ,win situation. However, as time passed, more and more worrying reports about possible dangerous effects have surfaced. Here is another massive problem of modern medicine: all (and I mean all) the short and medium term studies into the effects of a new medicine are being conducted by the company that develops the medicine. This company has already invested tens of millions of pounds in their product and are extremely keen for it to pay for their investment and make a handsome profit. These studies are highly suspicious. There are many cases in the past where pharmaceutical companies have been found to hide unfavourable results, to misinterpret data and to design studies in a way that will show favourable results. One famous case that comes to mind is when the American manufacturer of the antidepressant Prozac was taken to court by the family of a man who took his own life and killed a few others whilst on the medicine (it was completely out of character). The family solicitor got a warrant to look around the manufacturer’s paperwork. To his amazement he discovered that studies which had been conducted by the pharmaceutical company showed a significant increase in violent behaviour and suicides in people using this medicine but that these studies had never been published! The pharmaceutical company knew then that their medicine increased suicides and violent behaviour and they actively hid it. Even more disturbingly, these findings were more common in adolescents. This case has sent a shudder through the medicine world, and the prescribing of this antidepressant to teenagers has been stopped. However, shocking as it may sound, this practice is not unusual and can partially explain why the initial studies of a new medicine are so different to the long-term ones! The long-term ones are not being conducted by the pharmaceutical companies but by Epidemiologists. Epidemiologists are specialists in collecting and analysing data from medical institutions and archives; they are usually public workers and are therefore under no pressure or bias regarding the outcome of their study. These types of studies are called review studies and are considered to be the gold standard of Medical Research.

When these studies started to collect and analyse data on HRT treatment the problems started to come out of the woodwork. Almost everything that was claimed at the start with regard to the effects of HRT was shown to be wrong! It was found that there is actually a raised risk of heart conditions, strokes and cancer with the use of HRT. Astonishing.

It may surprise some people but actually I am not completely against the use of HRT or other doctors’ medications for that matter. We often take risks in life and it’s no different in the case of taking modern medicine. It is ok if a person chooses to take the risk of a side effect, as long as they are made to feel better when taking the medicine; but: this patient choice must be an informed one and based on all the information available. When a woman is offered HRT treatment (or any other medicine) she has to be informed on two very important issues:

1) All the possible consequences of taking the medicine (increased risk of cancer, heart problems, etc)-which the doctors never do.

2) There are alternatives to HRT- again, which the doctors never do.

There are safe alternatives to HRT. I treat women with menopausal symptoms on a fairly regular basis, with Chinese herbs and/or Acupuncture, with very good success. I know from my colleague, a Western Herbalist, that her herbs are very effective as well.

There is no need to risk your health in order to feel better. Doctors must give patients all the information as not doing so is, in my view, criminal.