Video by Dr. Tabatha Barber criticizing the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial and arguing that its findings were misconstrued. The speaker contends the WHI’s harms were driven by the synthetic progestin used (not estrogen), that participants were older (average ~63) and had preexisting risks (smoking, heart disease, diabetes, obesity), and that the trial was stopped leading to broad fear of hormone replacement. The speaker distinguishes synthetic hormones (which she says carry risks including increased intestinal permeability, nutrient deficiencies, ovarian suppression and low testosterone) from bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which she presents as fundamentally different and implied to be safer.
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The evidence was misconstrued right from the get go. Estrogen was demonized for causing breast cancer when it was actually the progestin in the study that was causing that. That's the same progestin that's in all of our birth control, mind you. The study was stopped, people panicked, and it was regarded that hormone replacement therapy was dangerous. There's some other missing pieces to that puzzle. The average age woman in that study was 63. She was already 10 plus years into menopause. She had already gone 10 years without making her own hormones naturally, her own estrogen and progesterone, and then she was given synthetic hormones. The majority of women in the study were smokers or had heart disease or diabetes. Diabetes and obesity. They were already unhealthy with these disease processes to begin with before they were given synthetic hormones way past their menopausal age. There are many, many flaws in this study. Essentially what this study did show us was that synthetic hormones are not safe. They do have risks associated with them and we should be very careful when taking synthetic hormones. Unfortunately, for many political reasons, we have deemed menopause as the cutoff for that concern before menopause. We're not concerned if you're on synthetic hormones, but we know from the research that synthetic hormones cause increased intestinal permeability, they cause vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, they cause your ovaries to stop, stop producing your own hormones, they cause low testosterone, they cause a lot of issues long term. So I just want you to be aware that medicine often makes big blanket statements in the heat of panic and then comes back later and puts their tail between their legs and says, okay, we were wrong. We weren't doing this right. We saw that with the low fat, no fat diet of the 90s, cardiologists said, yes, cholesterol causes heart disease. And two decades later they say, oh, we were wrong. It doesn't actually cause heart disease. It's very necessary and healthy for living. So this stuff happens all the time. But what I want you to understand is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is totally different than hormone replacement therapy with standard synthetic hormones.
