The news that menopausal hormone therapy had the potential to cause higher rates of breast

cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall harm rocked women and physicians across the country.

The study arm used progesterone and peremorin, because it was the most commonly

prescribed form of estrogen, and still prescribed more than a million times a year in the U.S.

It's a mixture of more than 50 different estrogens from horse pee. Premarin comes from the words

pregnant mare urine. If you're skeptical, try crushing a pill and sniffing it.

The dour findings of the Women's Health Initiative, combined with some high-profile

celebrity endorsements, saw interest shift to bioidentical hormones made from plants rather

than a hoarse source. They're marketed as being safer, more effective.

No wonder estimates peg the annual number of prescriptions at 30 million a year, constituting

a billion-dollar industry.

One reason patients may believe compounded hormone therapy is safer is that, thanks to a

legal loophole, they're not mandated to provide the FDA insert required

for commercial products warning about side effects. Purchased at regular pharmacies,

hormones have a prominent black box with an all caps warning, endometrial cancer,

cardiovascular disorder with breast cancer and probable dementia. There's no evidence that

bio-identical hormones are any safer,

but the missing laundry list of side effects may give patients a false sense of security.

Another appeal is customized dosing based on saliva hormone testing,

but such tests are considered to be unreliable,

and so recommended against, since the only people

who profit are the ones trying to sell you the tests.

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