One of the tragedies associated with our healthcare system is that there is no preventive medicine. Many people, doctors included, feel that giving flu shots and providing mammograms is preventive medicine. Well, flu shots do not prevent the flu and mammograms certainly do not prevent breast cancer.
I have been involved with hormones since my mother died of breast cancer in 1980 at the age of 61. It tears me up inside to think back about her medical care which was horrific and yet would still be considered the standard of care by many of today’s doctors.
Up until this point, hormonal issues have always been within the province of ob-gyns who have been trained that the “cure” for the gynecological problems of women can be achieved with birth control pills or surgery.
However, there are changes occurring in the medical field brought on, not so much by doctors accepting revolutionary changes, but by patients who are dissatisfied with their medical care. What do you think will happen when women finally become aware that marching with pink ribbons does not prevent breast cancer, but natural progesterone and/or high dosages of vitamin D do prevent it.
There will be gynecologists who will have the opportunity to become leaders in their field. They may be ostracized by their peers, but they will have the support, respect, and adoration of their patients.
The importance of this issue resides in the fact that women do not have a clue how badly they have been abused by a medical system that is unaware of the concept of preventive medicine. As a result, women wind up with PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, ovarian cysts, PMS, cramps, miscarriages, inability to concieve, morning sickness, post-partum depression, migraine headaches, gall bladder disease, asthma, breast cancer, uterine cancer, and the list goes on.
Everyone of these conditions, for the most part, are preventable and/or curable. One of the goals is to make people aware that they no longer have to put up with substandard care. Nothing will change, however, until enough people become angry about how they are being treated.
I am very much aware that there will be a tremendous amount of resistance to changing a system that thrives on disease and illness. I was a victim of the ignorance of doctors, such as those who run the Pace Program at U.C.S.D., headed by William Norcross, and used as “experts” by the California Medcial Review Board. They felt my ideas of getting people well were so dangerous I should not be practicing medicine. Of course the ideas that they criticized involved my treating the underlying cause of illness and taking people off toxic medications.
My book, “The Miracle of Bio-identical Hormones”, which has received 4 natural book awards and has been published by 4 other countries and is the number one hormone book in Germany was felt by the Pace doctors to be an example of why I should not be practicing medicine.
These are the people who actually prevent progress in medicine. Welcome to the revolution.
Here you use the term “natural” progesterone rather the “bio-identical” hormones. I like that. The term bio-identical has never made sense to me. Chemicals are chemicals. There are only so many combinations possible. Something synthesized in the lab with the same molecular structure is indistinguishable from the “natural” compound (and in some case even purer).
Is this covered in your book? I really want to understand. I just fear women are being led down another path that might be equally dangerous or more costly than synthetic HRT.
I wish this debate had started decades earlier – for your mother as well as for myself. I’m 66 and have been on tibolona HRT for 15 years. Not sure where to go at this point …
Thank you for the article, Dr, Platt.
Jean, request a free e-book copy of his book at questions@plattwellness.com
Thank you, Barbara. I’ve requested the e-book.
Thank you for your comments. I would like to clarify the subject that you brought up. The term bio-identical means that the hormone is identical from a molecular standpoint to the hormone that the body produces. It does not mean that there has been no laboratory intervention, but it does infer that it is not synthetic – i.e.
no synthetic chemicals added. There are yam extract progesterone preparations available OTC, but the body has no means of converting this type of “progesterone” to the actual hormone.
Tibolone, as you know, is not FDA-approved in this country, but has been approved in most other countries in the world. The FDA had breast cancer and stroke concerns, which is not surprising since it is a synthetic steroid with estrogenic properties. I strongly suspect you would do better with bio-identical progesterone and testosterone.
I wish you good health.
Michael E. Platt