Uzzi Reiss M.D. - The Good News About Estrogen: The Truth Behind a Powerhouse Hormone

In 2017, the North American Menopause Society announced that hormone therapy does not need to be routinely discontinued in women older than sixty or sixty-five years and can be considered for continuation beyond sixty-five years. There are not data to support routine discontinuation in women age sixty-five years. This position statement was then supported by the Academy of Womens Health, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, the American Medical Womens Association, and twenty-eight international womens health organizations. Soon after, in that same year, the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) affirmed the safety and efficacy of hormone therapy for certain conditions and in certain populations of menopausal women. And still later, a study published in late 2017 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) also clarified that using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for five to seven years was not associated with any risk of disease or mortality. Its now almost three years later, and most women in the United Statesindeed, around the worldare still caught up in a misconception about the dangers of estrogen, particularly related to HRT.

At the time of these announcements, the media and medical world paid little attention. Why is this significant? Because the statements supported HRTs safety, dissociating it from increased risk of breast cancera major reversal in medical advice. For the fifteen years before 2017, the medical establishment had insisted that any form of HRT was potentially dangerous, which is why so many women avoided hormonal supplementation.

I find this misinformation and misperception about HRT a travesty. Hundreds of millions of women have been missing out on safe, disease-preventing hormone treatment for no good reason.

As an ob-gyn in private practice for over forty years, I have worked with thousands of women, helping them find the healthiest, most effective treatments for their medical problems. As a medical researcher, gynecological specialist, and physician who practices integrative care, I have studied and tested how best to treat women for their individual needs. And the dominant focus of my work has been on revealing to women the power of estrogen, the essential female hormone, to help them defend against disease, offset the effects of aging, and enhance their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. In fact, I believe that estrogen is a superpower for women of any age.

My work with estrogen and other hormones helps women recover from the ill effects of estrogen deficiencies that rob women of their health, vitality, and sometimes even their lives. My integrative approach means that I treat my patients holistically, using a combination of best practices in Western (or allopathic) medicine in addition to nutrition and other functional medicine techniques, so women do not have to wait for disease to occur but rather can take proactive steps to strengthen their body-brain systems as they move through all phases of their lives. It gives me enormous satisfaction to get to know my patients and care for them as they move from adolescence through the early fertility of young adulthood, through perimenopause, and ultimately into menopause. This natural cycle of growth, however, becomes curtailed or disrupted by many culprits: too little estrogen, too much estrogen, and chemicals that have infiltrated your brain and body, disrupting your bodys ability to protect itself. In the pages ahead, you will discover a long list of avoidable factors that increase your vulnerability to aging and illness, never mind the effects of hormonal ebbs and flows. Understanding estrogenits function and interplay with all your other hormones and body systemsis key to boosting your overall health, achieving and maintaining weight loss, increasing your energy, improving your sleep, and gaining inner calm. In short, estrogen and its accompanying hormones can safely turn back the clock and build your capacity to resist the effects of aging.

HRT may not seem like a new solution to fighting the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. However, my approach is new. I treat the whole woman. My patients, from all over the world, come to me because they dont want quick-fix prescriptions or unnecessary surgeries; they want to be in charge of their own health and to make conscious, thoughtful decisions about what feels good and what works. They have come to realize that many conditions, including PMS, osteopenia (low bone density that has not yet developed into osteoporosis), fibroids and endometriosis, and anxiety are preventable once they understand the role of estrogen and other important hormones. Indeed, what distinguishes me and my patients is our mutual trust that, together, theyand youcan achieve optimal hormonal health, which begins with achieving estrogen balance at all times in life.

What also distinguishes me from many other physicians is that I see youthe patientas a central agent of your own health. In many ways, putting you in control, empowering you with knowledge to make good decisions, is long overduewomen should always be part of their own health care. But I think that we have come to a turning point in medicine: in all specialties its become clear that patients must be treated as individuals, that a one-size-fits-all basis for diagnosis and treatment is not only ineffective but often dangerous. My biggest breakthrough remains the realization that women need a customized approach to their needsno one is just like another. They come to me with different life experiences, ethnicities, dietary habits, and exercise histories. Some are aware of genetic markers that may predispose them to certain illnesses; others are not yet aware. I show my patients how to pull together all this vital information so they can become knowledgeable, proactive participants in their own health.