Diseño de la investigación

Pharmaceutical companies actively encouraged the hormone trend when they realized billions could be made by demonizing menopause and creating drugs to “cure” it. In the early 1960s a major promotional campaign was launched claiming that “estrogen deficiencies” were the cause of most of the ills being felt by women before, during, and after menopause. Sales of products promising to replace the supposedly missing estrogen—called hormone replacement therapy (HRT)— skyrocketed.

HRT had actually been in the works for some time. When doctors started to diagnose women with hormone issues, pharmaceutical companies suddenly had a use for their steroid-based lab experiment. They sent patients the message, “We see your pain, so we developed this revolutionary treatment for you.” In reality, they were just picking this as the perfect moment to release the products that had already been in development and hadn’t had an application until now.

some symptoms. However, HRT managed this not by genuinely addressing an imbalance in the body, but by acting as a steroid—that is, suppressing the immune system’s response to viral inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, and exposure to toxins such as DDT.

In other words, HRT didn’t make anyone healthier. On the contrary, in some cases it hid diseases by temporarily preventing the immune system from fully reacting to and combating them. So while it sometimes provided symptom relief, HRT allowed cancers, viruses, bacteria, and more to continue attacking women’s bodies and aging them rapidly without their knowledge—at least, until the damage became so severe it couldn’t be covered up any longer.

Suddenly, doctors were noticing cancer and strokes on the rise among the women taking HRT. It was just a glimpse of the true problems hormone replacement had been causing, yet it was enough to get attention. When the news was reported, sales dropped—for a while. Soon, another promotional campaign claimed that an adjustment to the products had addressed the problem, and HRT became popular again.

Then in 2002 an enormous clinical study called the Women’s Health Initiative, which ran for over a decade and involved more than 160,000 postmenopausal women, caught on to more of the havoc that HRT had been wreaking and concluded that HRT substantially increased the risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.2 That is, hormone replacement therapy rapidly sped up the aging process. Once again, HRT sales plummeted.

When the findings came to light about HRT’s dangers, it should have been banned. It should have prompted researchers to look into what was really behind women’s mystery symptoms—and started them down the path to the discovery that hormones were never the problem.

Instead, another strategy came into the mix: bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). BHRT is safer than the previous drugs used in HRT. How much safer? No one knows. Every doctor is smart enough to know that, at this point, BHRT remains experimental. It’s at the beginning of a 30- year journey of trial and error, just as HRT once was. Trends in health care are so powerful, sometimes nothing can stop them. For doctors, a trend can feel like following the Pied Piper—that is, following their best chance of keeping the peace with colleagues, protecting their livelihoods, and giving hope to patients seeking answers. It’s a difficult balance. For women in a society that favors youth over wisdom, the pull is strong toward any trendy pill or cream that claims it’s the fountain of youth. Not even bringing the truth to light will stop the hormone train.

No matter the reasoning or alluring language that’s used to promote BHRT, the same basic issue applies: menopause is a natural part of life that doesn’t need to be “cured.” It’s not worth taking a risk with a perilous concept that’s caused tremendous damage in the past.

That said, if you’re presented with both HRT and BHRT as options and still want to try one, I suggest you choose BHRT from a compounding pharmacy. Make sure you get your prescription from a highly skilled physician who’s well versed in holistic health and can regulate and balance dosages with knowledge and precision—and who also views BHRT as a temporary, periodic Band-Aid rather than as an indefinite solution. Another option is to seek out an herbalist, who will provide whole herbs to balance hormones.

There are women who use HRT and get no relief, and there are women who use BHRT and get no relief. For over 25 years, I’ve seen women use both and get no results (except for accelerated aging, despite all claims that it will bring back their youth), and I’ve witnessed hundreds of frustrated doctors unable to get their patients better with hormone therapy. That’s because neither form addresses the underlying health issues misattributed to menopause. When people feel like they’re experiencing improvement with hormone therapy, it’s because it’s never prescribed by itself anymore;

it’s prescribed alongside loads of supplementation and an overhauled diet, and it’s the supplements and new diet that make women feel better.

Hormone therapies, because they’re steroids, act as immunosuppressant drugs. A patient’s viral symptoms such as heart palpitations and hot flashes (which the doctor doesn’t identify as viral) may calm down on BHRT, tricking everyone into believing it’s working. And consider the symptom vaginal dryness, which sometimes improves on BHRT. Vaginal dryness is a symptom of adrenal fatigue, not perimenopause or menopause—that’s why this discomfort can trouble even women in their 20s and 30s. The BHRT steroids can potentially prompt the adrenal glands to churn out adrenaline; this is what temporarily brings some women relief, along with the risk of longer-term adrenal issues.

Yes, it’s possible to have hormonal imbalances. The symptoms doctors call menopause don’t have to do with the reproductive hormones, though. Normally, they’re related to the hormones of the adrenal and thyroid glands.

Saliva, blood, and urine tests are not an accurate way to determine if a woman’s hormones are balanced. These testing methods are fallible and often grossly inaccurate. If the thyroid is underproducing hormones (that is, it’s a hypothyroid), then the adrenal glands overproduce hormones to compensate. The destructive nature of the overproduction of adrenaline destroys the viability and accuracy of blood tests that look at progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone levels.

Body temperature fluctuations, bloating, dizziness, night sweats, heart palpitations, fatigue, and other issues listed in the previous section—these symptoms, viewed collectively, are brand-new to womankind as of the last 60 years. Reproductive hormones aren’t to blame. There’s a bigger picture being overlooked. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade here, poke the bear, or accuse well- meaning doctors of having anything but the best intentions for their patients. We are all working toward the same goal: women’s health. We all want women to truly heal. That’s all the information here is about.

It would be easier for me to repeat the conjecture and advice that’s already out there. I can’t do that in good conscience, though. The only way I sleep at night is knowing that I’ve listened to Spirit, that I’ve offered people real answers. Revealing the information in this chapter is worth it to me if it means it could protect you. I want to support you in your health, to help you avoid chronic illness, cancer, and stroke, like I’ve successfully done for women all these years. I want you to live to 90 or 100. I want you to be happy and free.

Your life is precious. Your soul is precious. It’s critical for every woman to know the truth about menopause. It’s about having options, making informed decisions. Because if you don’t understand the real story, how can you make the judgment call that’s right for you?

Our choices get taken away from us when we are not given the proper options, information, and truth. There’s a saying, “You always have a choice.” Not when all the options aren’t available to you! If the truth is hidden in a vault that you don’t have access to, or lost in the past and forgotten, how can you make the right choice?

The details I provide in this chapter are meant to unlock that vault.

If just one person connects with this chapter and uses these secrets that have been hidden away from womankind to keep herself safe and guard herself from the peer pressure to go with the crowd, then at least one person can live a better life.