Top 5 benefits of taking hormones
Earlier this decade, several flawed studies linking hormones to cancer created a media frenzy. Unfortunately, when these studies were proven wrong, the media was no longer interested in the subject or in correcting its coverage. There are many benefits to taking hormones. Here are five of them:
1. Protect your heart: Women who start hormone replacement therapy within five years of menopause have a 30 percent reduction in mortality from heart disease. The sooner you start preventive medicine therapy the better!
2. Protect your brain: A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed two interesting facts pertaining to hormones. 1) The risk of Alzheimer’s disease was reduced 50 percent by taking the hormone estrogen. 2) If the patient stayed on hormones greater than 10 years, the risk of dementia decreased five fold. The study also found that if hormones were started after the onset of dementia they were not beneficial. Use it early.
3. Protect your bones: There is a 35 percent reduction in fracture risk in women on hormones. This is important to know because half of all women who suffer a hip fracture over age 75 never leave the hospital.
4. Protect your sex life: Women after menopause experience a rapid loss of desire as well as vaginal dryness and pain with intercourse. Replacing estrogen and testosterone helps prevent both of these problems and results in a closer, more intimate relationship.
5. Quality of life: Estrogen prevents hot flashes better than any other agent or nutraceutical. It also benefits mood and increases quality of sleep and an overall sense of well being.
To me, the overall goal is not to have quantity of life (think 95-year-old Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home), but to have a vigorous, upbeat quality of life in our golden years.