Are you Perplexed About Hormone Replacement Therapy?
You are not the only one who does not really get what is meant by hormone replacement therapy.
It is always important to know about the facts; this is specifically true if you are talking about your physical well-being. And one of the most important pieces of information is that there are several baby boomers living in the US who are females.
Baby boomers are those who were born sometime between 1946 and 1964 – and in 2006, the oldest of them began turning 60. As per the US Census Bureau, there were an approximate of 78.2 million baby boomers, as of July 1, 2005, and 50.8 percent of them were females. According to projections, this shows that in 2006, 7,918 people turn 60 everyday and about 330 every hour.
This elucidates why a large percentage of women nowadays find distress when experiencing peri-menopausal and menopausal symptoms. If you are one of more than 40 million women experiencing distress from menstruation to menopause, then you have to know the facts.
Defined as the termination of menstruation for 12 successive months, menopause marks the end of a woman’s reproductive years, and normally occurs naturally around age 51 or 52 when the ovaries stop producing estrogen. Immediate menopause can occur at any age when the ovaries are surgically taken out. In either case, menopause affects women’s health and quality of life for the rest of her lifetime.
A study that’s sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was referred to as the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was conducted among 161,000 50-to-79-year-old females in order to address the most common causes of death, disability and quality of life among females. It was an attempt to gather information on ways to prevent and lessen the incidence of heart disease, breast and colorectal cancer, and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, and to identify the advantages and risks of using menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) to prevent these chronic diseases. The reason being the incident of these 3 diseases spikes after a woman reaches menopause.
Many women are not aware of the fact that the above-mentioned study only tackled cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis among 65-year-old women who are on synthetic hormone replacement therapy using the brands PremPro and Premarin only. Unfortunately, in July 2002, the investigators stopped the part of the research which is involved in the combination of estrogen and progestin – citing safety concerns as the main reason for such an action.
In November 2003, there were about nine million American women who were still taking some form of Premarin as in PremPro. Premarin, also referred to as PMU for short, stands for PREgnant MARes’ urine. A decrease of approximately 25% among the 12 million women who are using PMU-based medications in 1999 was observed right after the WHI results came out.
About 1/3 of the approximately 55 million post menopausal women in the United States are on synthetic estrogen replacement therapy (ERT), or hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Of them, approximately 49 % currently use “PMU” based products, down from a high of 79 % in 1999.
For those women who are scared, and still don’t use any Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), the idea of natural bio-identical hormones became more intriguing. Still, this task has become so perplexing because of the countless products that have been plaguing the market. Good thing though that the government dipped its finger on the matter – regulating all bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) solutions that are on circulation.
Certainly, women nowadays need not be confused about HRT. In menopause medicine, people are now openly talking about bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). Know however, that the term may be a bit confusing considering that hormones are not really bio-identical. Natural hormones aren’t bio-mimedic unless the body can recognize them as hormones, and they’re not considered restoration unless what has been lost is truly restored. Athough it’s a fact that hormones can be mimicked, they can never be identical. Furthermore, they cannot be replaced, rather they can be restored.
Exactly how do biomimetic hormones differ from bio-identical hormones? Biomimetic hormones are derived from natural sources, and mimic in the body the natural undulating rhythms of the hormone blood levels in a regular menstrual cycle. Undulating means to cause to move in a smooth wavelike motion.
Bio-identical hormone products are commonly derived from plant sources to match the chemical structure of hormones produced naturally by the human body. The premise is that, in technical terms, the body cannot distinguish bio-identical hormones from the ones the female ovaries produce; however, various types of human-produced hormones are recognized differently by cells. Thus, it makes sense that bio-identical hormone effects might also be different. Bio-identical hormone compounds must be presented biomimetically for them to be genuinely similar to human hormones.
Biomimetic hormone restoration therapy is more precise because it can mimic the up-down rhythm of the blood levels in a regular menstrual cycle. This exact feature is biomimetic, and must not be mistaken with bio-identical.
How do you define rhythm? Let us start out by saying that the body follows a master clock, more like a conductor in an orchestra. For the most part, the body takes its cues from light signals to stay in tune with the day and it strikes up one part of the body while the other “sleeps”. Figuratively, the hormones in the body rise and fall at the wand of the maestro.
The circadian clock in our cells is equal to one 24-hour rotation of the planet. As the moon tracks such a movement of the Earth, so does your body tracks that cycle. One product known as the Wiley Protocol uses this natural rhythm of nature to determine the correct doses of estradiol and progesterone that mimic the natural hormones produced by your body. The topical creams and their amount differ throughout the 28 day cycle to restore the hormonal levels of youth.
The latest treatment for women in menopause is multi-phasic rhythmic dosing of bio-mimetic hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) using natural hormones in a bio-mimetic manner. Over two million women in the U.S. use customized hormones for menopause symptoms.
According to forecast, in 2030, approximately 54.9% of the 57.8 million baby boomers would be female. Upon that time, the baby boomers would be treading along the ages of 66 to 84. And by that time, they would hopefully still be living comfortably, thanks to the Biomimetic Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT).