Back around 20 years ago, women got a scare when they were told that hormone therapy could increase their risk of cancer. But it turns out the people who released that info were bureaucrats, not the scientists doing the study. They were half wrong — and it’s a major half.
It seems that — after a 20-year study of 160,000 women — there’s a very big difference depending on the type of hormone therapy.
Estrogen plus progestin therapy does seem to lead to an increased cancer risk, but estrogen-only therapy not only doesn’t have that cancer risk, but can reduce it as well as coronary heart disease.
In addition to its beneficial effects on menopause symptoms (which are widely acknowledged), the new study found that, after an average of 10.7 years, “rates of breast cancer were significantly lower in the [estrogen only] group compared with the placebo group.”
Specifically, “women who took estrogen had a 23% reduction in their risk of breast cancer.”
This jibes with a 2012 study by those shifty Danes that followed women for 26 years “and found that women taking estrogen had a lower risk of heart attack, heart failure or death—and no increased risk of cancer.”
This is great news for the millions of women who could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. If that's you, the first person you might want to talk with is your compounding pharmacist. They're the expert on not only the hormones themselves, but the various ways they can be customized to be most effective for you. They'll work with your physician to devise a personalized hormone-replacement regimen to do you and your body good.
This is great news for the millions of women who could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. If that's you, the first person you might want to talk with is your compounding pharmacist. They're the expert on not only the hormones themselves, but the various ways they can be customized to be most effective for you. They'll work with your physician to devise a personalized hormone-replacement regimen to do you and your body good.
