Bioidentical hormones for menopause
Bioidentical hormones are hormones that are identical to those produced by the body. Bioidentical hormone therapy is also called “natural hormone therapy” since the body cannot distinguish these hormones from the ones produced by the body. They are derived from plant chemicals and are being marketed by manufacturers to be safer and more effective than other hormone therapies. However, many doctors disprove these claims.
There are FDA-approved bioidentical hormones that can be purchased without prescription. The confusion about bioidentical hormones comes from the notion that they have to be custom-compounded. These compounded bioidentical hormones are not FDA-approved because they are not standardized. These are custom-compounded because some women have allergic reactions to some ingredients in those products that are commercially available.
Kathleen Uhl, MD, the FDA’s assistant commissioner for women’s health, tells WebMD:
“That doesn’t mean that compounding is bad. Compounding can be useful for patients who are allergic to an additive in an FDA-approved product.” She added, “There is no reason to think that these bioidentical compounded [products] would have a different safety profile than the FDA-approved ones.”
It caused quite a stir when Oprah Winfrey featured bioidentical hormone therapy on her show last January 2009. Her guest Suzanne Somers, a self-help author, made remarkable declarations about the ability of the hormones to treat almost anything that ails the female body. ”I know I look like some kind of freak and fanatic. But I want to be there until I’m 110, and I’m going to do what I have to do to get there,” Somers said.
Oprah was so fascinated with Somers’ book that she decided to go on bioidentical hormone therapy after reading it.
“After one day on bioidentical estrogen, I felt the veil lift. After three days, the sky was bluer, my brain was no longer fuzzy, my memory was sharper. I was literally singing and had a skip in my step,”
she wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine.
Many doctors still express concerns about compounded bioidentical hormones because there is very little or no evidence to support their safety and effectiveness.
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