In April, an associated press article “Hormones can raise breast cancer risk” by Mike Stobbe appeared in newspapers across the country citing “More Proof Menopause Hormones Raise Cancer Risk.” According to this article:

Research on two continents signaled more bad news for menopause hormones, offering the strongest evidence yet that they can raise the risk of breast cancer and are tied to a slightly higher risk of ovarian cancer.

New U.S. government numbers showed that breast cancer rates leveled off in 2004 after plunging in 2003 -- the year after millions of women stopped taking hormones because a big study tied them to higher heart, stroke and breast cancer risks. Experts said the leveling off shows that the 2003 drop in the cancer rate was real and not a fluke.

From 2001 to 2004, breast cancer rates fell almost 9 percent -- a dramatic decline, researchers report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The trend was even stronger for the most common form of the disease -- tumors whose growth is fueled by hormones. Those rates fell almost 15 percent among women ages 50 to 69, the group most likely to have been on hormone pills.

At the same time, a study of nearly 1 million women in the United Kingdom showed that those who took hormones after menopause were 20 percent more likely to develop ovarian cancer or die from it than women who never took the pills. That study was published online by the London-based journal The Lancet. ( Ovarian cancer and HRT in the Million Women Study. Narod SA. The Lancet - Vol. 369, Issue 9574, 19 May 2007, Pages 1667-1668. www.thelancet.com)

This is exciting news but it is very important that you realize that the hormones referred to in this article are synthetic hormones such as Premarin and Prempro not bio-identical hormones.

While I am grateful that decreased use of synthetic hormones was one aftermath of the Women’s Health Initiative Study (WHI) linking synthetic hormones to and increased risk of breast and uterine cancers as well as heart attack, stroke and dementia, I continue to be distressed that the media does not differentiate between synthetic and bio-identical hormone therapies when documenting how a decreased use of (synthetic) hormone therapies is tied to a drop in national breast cancer rates.

Why is this such a big deal? Very simply because, while synthetic hormone replacement is increases a woman’s risk for breast cancer, bio-identical progesterone replacement does the exact opposite; it decreases a woman’s risk for breast and uterine cancers.

As has been described in previous newsletters, estrogen increases cell growth and when uncontrolled, this unchecked cell growth can result in cancer. In contrast, m ultiple medical studies examining the anti-estrogen action of progesterone have shown that bio-identical progesterone replacement can neutralize or reduce estrogen’s ability to stimulate the unchecked cell growth that can lead to cancer.

In a recent interview with CBS.com , Dr. Uzzi Reiss stated: “ Progesterone is the most protective breast hormone. At an infertility clinic at Johns Hopkins, Linda Cowan published a study in the early 1980's. She followed two groups of women for more than 20 years. There aren't many studies like this. What's unique about these women is that one group had blocked fallopian tubes, and the other group had progesterone deficiency. The only long-term health effect the women with blocked tubes had was the inability to get pregnant. But more than 20 years later, the group with progesterone deficiency had tenfold more cancer.

The role of hormone balance in the development and prevention of hormone dependent cancers is still a subject of much controversy with the conventional medical community.  I wholeheartedly agree that more research is needed in this area however I can speak from my own clinical experience.

According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, the chance of developing invasive breast cancer at some time in a woman's life is about 1 in 8 (13% of all women). In over a decade of treating thousands of women suffering from hormone imbalances, I have had only two patients that I am aware have been diagnosed with breast cancer. The scientific study I would like to read would be one that tracked a reduction in the incidence of breast cancer because every woman in the United States augmented her body’s production of progesterone with bio-identical progesterone as soon as her hormone levels began to shift.

Until the traditional medical community steps up to the plate and that study is in hand, it is your responsibility to review the data and decide for yourself. If multiple medical studies have already documented the cancer-protective properties of bio-identical progesterone, why wouldn’t you do what you can right now to take better care of yourself from the risk of developing cancer?

Be well.

Dr. Randolph

___________________________________________________

Value Pack Quick Links:
Peri-Menopause
Menopause or Hysterectomy
PMS
Weight Loss
Osteoporosis
Andropause (male menopause)