Natural
Progesterone: The World's Best Kept "Anti-Aging" Secret
by Catherine P. Rollins
Twenty
years ago a doctor asked Marjorie why she wasn’t
on progesterone to which she responded, “nobody
told me I should be.” Within 3-4 days of
commencing progesterone cream, she felt so much
better about herself. More confident; more in control
of her life. Marjorie points out she's been taking
progesterone and feeling the benefits for twenty
years without any side effects.
During
this time doctors tried to take her off the cream
but Marjorie flatly refused. Instead, she suggested
that maybe these doctors listen to the women who
are taking progesterone and getting well. Marjoie
has shared her experience on progesterone cream
with other women many times over but their doctors
argue they don’t need it. Such a pity, says
Marjorie! She personally wouldn’t be without
it.
Natural
progesterone has been around since the 1940s. Dr
John Lee has bravely championed its use despite
the medical fraternity’s inability to embrace
his theories. Millions of women around the world
continue to be eternally grateful to him for having
discovered the benefits of its use because of his
indefatigable stance.
And
yet doctors remain reluctant to prescribe it. They
flatly refuse to honour a woman’s choice
of natural progesterone - a natural hormone that
is identical in chemical structure to the hormone
that our bodies produce naturally, and therefore
is less likely than synthetic progestin to cause
side effects.
Perhaps
resistance is due largely to the lack of published
clinical trials and scientific evidence made available
to doctors on natural-to-the-body hormones like
progesterone.
OK,
so what’s hindering test trials that can
change all this? Lack of financial incentive, that's
what! Pharmaceutical companies, in the interests
of self-preservation, flatly refuse to inject millions
and millions of dollars into research, development
and marketing of a drug that cannot be ‘owned’ under
a patent.
Meanwhile,
the pharmaceutical industry is guilty of a massive
campaign of mis-information in regards to the less ‘natural’ hormone
replacement therapy drugs they manufacture and
push doctors to prescribe. There is growing evidence
that synthetic HRT is perhaps not all it’s
cracked up to be. Clearly some medical claims are
based on myth and not fact. The effect on heart
disease is just one example. The dangers of synthetic
HRT, especially on breast cancer, are only now
being given any exposure as more and more women
demand answers to their health questions.
Let’s
not fool ourselves here. What’s best for
women’s health is not always high on the
agenda. It’s about patents and profits, and
chemically altered drugs that ineptly replace our
natural hormones. It’s about over-shadowing
responsible information on hormone replacement
therapy with test trials and data, in some cases
funded by the multi-national pharmaceutical companies
who manufacture these drugs.
It
is a fact that pharmaceutical companies are the
main source of information for many doctors. Pharmaceutical
companies have an interest in selling their products
and they do this by heavily promoting drugs, including
HRT to doctors. The question is whether doctors
are getting balanced information or just promotional
material from the pharmaceutical companies.
Many
women are feeling like they have been treated like
guinea pigs. Only now are we learning that synthetic
HRT, once prescribed to millions of women to ease
the immediate symptoms of menopause and to prevent
osteoporosis and heart disease, has been found
to increase the risk of heart disease, cancer and
blood clots.
The
Million Women Study, an unprecedented study of
the medical histories of nearly 1.1m British women
who were cancer-free as they entered the national
screening programme, revealed that those on some
types of synthetic HRT were twice as likely to
develop breast cancer as those who had not used
it.
Consumers
are right to wonder why they weren’t given
the full picture earlier. As long ago as 1997 British
Medical Journal review of 22 studies concluded
that there was no evidence that post-menopausal
HRT prevents heart and blood vessel problems. Until
recently women weren’t given this information,
but were told that HRT could protect them from
heart disease.
Consumers
are right to ask “Why weren’t these
products tested more thoroughly before they were
prescribed so broadly and why weren’t we
told of the possible risks earlier?"
The
1995 PEPI trials clearly demonstrated that natural
progesterone actually works better than synthetic
progestin in terms of protecting the heart, and
that natural progesterone can protect against uterine
cancer as well as synthetic progestin. Yet, inexplicably,
this message has not yet reached the medical community.
The overwhelming majority of doctors still write
prescriptions for synthetic progestins, and most
do not even know that there is a different, possibly
safer kind of progesterone available.
The
situation appears to be changing, however. There
is a grass-roots movement of knowledgeable women
who have themselves undertaken to research the
best superhormone strategies for menopause and
who are now demanding that their physicians prescribe
natural progesterone.
About
the Author:
Catherine
P. Rollins is the author of 'A Woman's Guide
to Using Natural Progesterone' and Director
of the highly popular website:
Natural-Progesterone-Advisory-Network.com.
This
article was syndicated from The
Natural Progesterone Advisory Network:
http://www.natural-progesterone-advisory-network.com/natural-progesterone-anti-aging-secret.htm