| ... I’m always terrifically happy to write a column about menopause, although to be perfectly honest, I’d be terrifically happy to write a column about anything, even how you should |
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argue that using HRT widely for menopause was wrong, wrong, wrong, despite all those studies all over the place back then extolling huge health benefits from HRT - lowered risks of |
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much higher rates of heart attacks and strokes and blood clots and even some cancers (although, women on HRT also had lower rates of osteoporosis and colon cancer). |
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drive a motor-home (never in front of me on a one-lane highway) or how to fix the NHL (get out of Phoenix – a game played indoors on ice will never go over where cacti bloom – and put teams in Winnipeg (ice for 10 months a year) and Hamilton and Quebec City (yes, they’re French, which means they’re weird, but at least they appreciate |
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.....The “negative” data was compelling, however, and consequently, the use of HRT in North America quickly plummeted.
But over the last few years, a growing army of menopause experts have begun to discount the findings of the WHI Study on the grounds that:
.....1) the women in the WHI Study were too old (62, on |
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hockey, and besides, it’s always extra-nice to beat a team from Quebec. And Ontario. And Alberta. Especially Alberta ).
Unfortunately, however, I have to stick to medical columns, but that’s OK because, there’s nothing I enjoy more than sharing my medical opinions, and especially, as I said, my opinion about menopause because that gives me a chance to brag, which is another thing I really enjoy doing.
.....You see, long before it became standard for doctors to stop promoting the use of hormone replacement therapy HRT) for menopause, ( I was one of the first voices in the media to |
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heart disease, diabetes, all sorts of cancers, dementia, extending life, even improved dental health, for crying out loud.
.....So I was not at all surprised that when they finally managed to do a good study to weigh the true impact of HRT in a large group of women, the famous Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study, the researchers had to terminate it much earlier than they had planned to because the early data showed clearly that HRT was detrimental to the health of many of the women in this study: they were not only at higher risk of dying prematurely than the control group of women, but HRT users were also suffering |
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average) for the results to be applicable to the more typical women entering menopause who are generally much younger,
.....2) the particular formulation of hormones in the WHI Study (a combination pill of estrogen and progesterone) is what really caused most of the damage, and other forms of hormones (patches, for example, or even, if you heed the advice of “Dr.” Suzanne Somers, “bio-identical” hormones) would not prove nearly as problematic and would in fact offer many substantial health benefits,
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