What Types of Hormones Should You Take For Menopause?

What Are the Different Kinds of Hormones?

There are two kinds of hormones used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) - synthetic hormones and bioidentical hormones (BHRT).

Synthetic hormones arrived when estrogen was deemed the female hormone. In the 1960s, a gynecologist named Robert Wilson published a book called Feminine Forever. He told women that menopause was a disease, and that horse estrogen was the solution for their symptoms. One year later, Ann Walsh followed up with her book Now! The Pills to Keep Women Young! Unfortunately, both of these scientifically unsound books were huge successes. The pharmaceutical companies benefited the most and successfully sold their synthetic hormone solutions. In reality, there was no scientific evidence that women were deficient in estrogen, or that estrogen supplementation had any benefits. Synthetic hormones are used in traditional HRT. Although different combinations are prescribed, the most common synthetic combination for women is estrogen and progesterone. The progesterone is made from a synthetic form of progesterone - medroxyprogesterone acetate. The estrogen in synthetic hormones is made from conjugated equine estrogens, which are taken from the urine of pregnant mares. Providers at Raena Health never recommend the use of synthetic hormones, as they have been shown to be unsafe.

Dr. John Lee MD writes,

"By the mid-1990s, there was ample scientific evidence that HRT was not living up to its promise and even that it was probably doing more harm than good, but many rigorous studies showing this were ignored in favor of continuing hype from the drug companies about all the diseases that HRT could prevent... In the summer of 2002, two major studies published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) finally changed the fixed mindset of conventional medicine toward HRT. The first blow to HRT came from the huge Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study, one part of which looked at the effects of the most common form of HRT, PremPro. This arm of the study was ended after five years (three years early) because of a clearly greater risk of breast cancer, heart disease, and strokes among women using PremPro."