From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well
by C.W. Randolph, Jr., M.D.

Introduction
About the Authors
Table of Contents
Interview with the Author
Ordering Information

Introduction

Today, I am a successful Board Certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist (OB/GYN). Since inception, my practice has been dedicated to women's health and a more natural medicine approach to wholeness and healing. For many years, I took great joy in delivering healthy, beautiful babies. Over time, however, I found that my greatest gifts as a healer manifested when I worked with my patients to address their health issues associated with aging. Consequently, in 1998, I made the decision to devote the main thrust of my energies towards gynecology and a more natural approach to hormone balance therapies.

I, along with every other physician who graduated from medical school in the last several decades, was trained to believe that synthetic hormone replacement therapy (HRT) provided a number of health benefits for women suffering from the symptoms of hormonal changes. The touted benefits of HRT included relief of vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes), reversal of vaginal atrophy (thinning and drying of the vaginal tissues), and prevention of osteoporosis (progressive loss of bone mass). Medical schools also taught that a complete hysterectomy (removal of the uterus, tubes and ovaries) was the recommended treatment option for women with dysfunctional bleeding, fibroid tumors or endometriosis with chronic pelvic pain. For years, leading women's health experts contended that - for a woman who has had all the children she wants or who is past childbearing age - the ovaries were just inert fibrous tissue masses that served no function for the aging female body. Today, I am convinced, and have the clinical evidence to prove, that the training we physicians received from our respective medical schools was wrong.

When I opened my practice, I initially adhered to my medical school training and regularly prescribed synthetic HRT, such as the pharmaceutical brands Premarin, Provera, and Prempro, for my patients who had undergone a hysterectomy or who were suffering from menopausal symptoms. When asked about side effects, including weight gain, I repeated what I had been taught and indicated that there was no clinical evidence to support these concerns. Nevertheless, it took only a couple of years for me to seriously doubt my training and to begin to treat my patients with an alternative: human-identical hormonal therapies.

What triggered my concerns, you might ask? Very simply, I listened to my patients and paid attention to their responses and reactions to synthetic HRT. Many of the women for whom I had prescribed synthetic HRT did gain a great deal of weight. I could not attribute their weight gain to changes in eating habits or lifestyle activities; the only thing that had changed for them was the introduction of synthetic estrogen into their systems. In addition to their concerns about weight gain, these same patients frequently came in with new complaints including bloating, decreased libido, depression, poor quality of sleep, and "just not feeling right."

What I heard and observed confused me. I began to ask myself: "If what I had been taught about HRT and weight gain could be wrong, what other aspects of my training regarding synthetic hormone replacement might be erroneous?" I was determined to take a deeper look. First, I tested to see if my patients' responses validated what was then the accepted medical theory that HRT would help prevent osteoporosis. It didn't. When I tested the bone mineral density of my patients who had been on HRT, I found that instead of evidencing an increase in bone density, many had borderline or true osteoporosis. My confusion began to turn to real concern. I began to ask: "Is HRT helping or hurting my patients?"

Finally, I became highly concerned about the potential correlation between synthetic HRT and my patients' breast health. I found that women I put on synthetic HRT were likely to return six months to a year later with breast lumps and even worse, years later some would return to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Even though the volume of patients I was personally tracking did not equate to a statistically sound research database, I saw enough to make me question whether the synthetic HRT I was prescribing for my patients was causing an estrogen dominance that contributed to excessive breast cell proliferation. From that point on, my concerns regarding the potentially negative health concerns associated with synthetic HRT transmuted from confusion and concern to a mixture of fear and anger. I asked myself: "Could it be that synthetic hormones actually have a carcinogenic effect?" and, "If I believe that HRT is harmful, then what do I do now?"