Tara Parker-Pope - The Hormone Decision

A smart womans guide to the medical minefield of menopause, written in Tara Parker-Popes straight-talk, no-spin style. At last, the truth that women have been waiting for!

MARY LOU QUINLAN, author and CEO, Just Ask a Woman

Notice
This book is intended as a reference volume only, not as a medical manual. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor. If you suspect that you have a medical problem, we urge you to seek competent medical help.

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2007 by Tara Parker-Pope

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker-Pope, Tara.

The hormone decision : untangle the controversy understand your options make your own choices / Tara Parker-Pope.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13 9781594864209 hardcover

ISBN-10 1594864209 hardcover

1. MenopauseHormone therapyPopular works I. Title.

RG186.P39 2007

Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 hardcover

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For my mom. I miss you.

Confused about hormones? Its no wonder.

For years, women have taken prescription hormones to boost their health before, during, and after that important life transition called menopause. Its a time when hot flashes, mood swings, and other changes announce that our ovaries are shifting gears and getting out of the baby business. As our natural estrogen and progesterone levels wax and wane, hormones in a pill have been a way to calm the hormonal chaos going on inside our bodies and give us much-needed relief from the vexing symptoms of menopause.

But after years of feeling good about hormone drugs, today women are scared to death. Newspapers, magazines, and television shows are filled with frightening reports about menopause hormones and studies linking them to heart attack, stroke, breast cancer, and other health worries. The latest research has seemed to contradict decades of scientific study in which hormone drugs appeared to protect womens hearts. The conflicting reports about hormones, heart attacks, and hot flashes are enough to leave your head spinning.

But you dont have to be confused anymore. The purpose of this book is to tell you the facts about menopause hormones and the science behind all the recent publicity. Once you look behind the headlines, youll realize that much of what youve read about menopause hormones has been misleading or just plain wrong.

The reason the hormone debate seems so confusing is that the medical community itself is confused about hormones. Every new hormone study seems to contradict the previous one. But in recent years, scientists have begun to make sense of much of the new hormone research. Theyve discovered that while the answers arent always simple, they arent nearly as scary as weve been led to believe. Unfortunately, most of these new insights havent been widely reported, and many women and doctors havent gotten the message. No single study can provide all the answers we need about menopause hormones. But every new study, every new reportno matter how bad or good the news seems at firstis simply one more small piece of the puzzle.

This book will help you see how all these pieces fit together. It will serve as a step-by-step guide to understanding the hormones made by your body and the hormones made by drug companies. It will also shed light on the controversial history of hormone science and hormone drugs, giving you insight into the historical context that frames todays debate.

In these pages, you will embark on a head-to-toe tour of how hormones affect various parts of your body, based on not one but hundreds of scientific studies. You will learn what scientists know about how hormones affect your heart, your brain, your bones, your breasts, and every other imaginable body part. You will learn about the laboratories at Wake Forest University where for years, scientists have studied how hormones influence the heart health of monkeys. You will visit 120,000 nurses who have selflessly given their time and their personal health information to create one of the largest and most important studies ever of womens health. From the horse pee farms of Canada to pharmacies that peddle so-called natural hormonesyou will understand the risks and benefits of all the various products now touted as options to relieve menopausal symptoms.

Most important, you will get an insiders view of the now-famous Womens Health Initiative (WHI), the government-sponsored study of more than 27,000 women that has produced the most-frightening reports about the risks and benefits of menopause hormones. As the health columnist for the Wall Street Journal, I have followed this ground-breaking study since the first WHI hormone results were announced in the summer of 2002. Since then, I have conducted extensive interviews with the scientists, medical doctors, and government health officials behind the WHI and spent countless hours poring over hundreds of pages of detailed scientific papers explaining the research. The WHI is the biggest-ever clinical trial evaluating womens health, and the data it has produced have proved exceedingly difficult to interpret. What has emerged is a far more complicated hormone story than has been reflected in the headlines and sound bites that appeared after the WHI results were first announced. In reading this book, you will see the miscalculations and the missteps that the government and the WHI scientists have made along the way and how these decisions and hurdles have clouded the debate and confused women.

In July 2002, many of the scientists behind the WHI told women to stop taking hormones because of worries about heart attacks and breast cancer. Today, after a closer look at the study data, these same scientists have realized that hormones are likely safeand in some cases, possibly even protectivefor women seeking relief from menopausal symptoms. The WHI researchers continue to mine the data that are still pouring in from this important study. And some of the WHIs top scientists are pursuing new research, trying to determine if there is a window of opportunity when menopause hormones are safest and most effective for women.