..... 3) the short-term use of hormones could not possibly produce the same negative consequences as those found in the 7-year-long WHI Study.
..... All of which is to say that many medical experts now claim that HRT is quite safe in the short-term in younger women and that such women with “severe” symptoms should seriously consider using it for a “short” period of time, since nothing else works nearly as effectively for severe symptoms.
..... In fact, recent guidelines from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) assert that short-term use (anything less than 5 years) is not only safe, but would substantially help many women currently refusing to go on HRT because of their fears about it, fears that have been generated, the experts claim, by the media which have hyped the negative consequences of HRT way out of proportion while largely ignoring its benefits.
?.....To which I say, “baloney.” (Actually, I would use a much stronger word, but I want to be able to continue writing this family-oriented column).
First, despite the assurances of some experts, no one can really define “short-term” when it comes to the safety of HRT.
..... In fact, a couple of studies have shown that soon after women start on hormones, perhaps as soon as 2 years after, their risk of breast cancer starts to rise (happily, the studies also show that this risk starts to fall rapidly as soon as women stop taking HRT), which is why it’s not really surprising that other studies have concluded that the rate of breast cancer went down significantly in North America in the years after women largely stopped using HRT (there may, of course, be other reasons for this decline in breast cancer numbers, but it’s tempting to think it’s at least somewhat due to the reduced use of hormones).
..... And then, there’s the matter of HRT perhaps being safer in “young” menopausal women than it is in the older women represented in the WHI Study.
..... So on that front, a recent intriguing study found that in the years after HRT use went down significantly, the heart attack rate among women aged 50-59 (that is, “young women”) also dropped
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