don't particularly want to go on to the world of Zimmer frames and helplessness. Do you? I would rather live a shorter life feeling well and active than a longer life feeling old and grey.
There seems to be an odd, subconscious element to this debate, which goes deeper than you'd think. It's to do with global and gender politics. Drug companies make money out of HRT.
Many men and women would like to put a stop to that. They believe in Nature, right and wrong, and that anything which interferes with her plan to wither us and kill us off, is morally wrong.
Feminists who feel women pander to men by worrying about their youth and looks too much are against HRT. Some macho men don't want feisty women over a certain age running around. Surveys come thick and fast - and mostly come up with the results their devisers wanted. Of course we're confused. I think anyone who was reluctant to take HRT in the first place, feeling it to be unnatural and wrong, will now stop taking it. Others, who like me took to it rapturously in the first place, will keep on using it.
An increasing few will take the middle way and put their faith in herbal cures.
As for me, I'm delighted to see U.S. scientists have unveiled a safe HRT treatment: a synthetic compound that reverses bone loss without the risk of cancer. But I would be delighted, wouldn't I?
MENACE: says Dr Ellen Grant:
For Dr Ellen Grant
40 years I have dedicated my life to alerting women to the dangers of using hormones such as those contained in the Pill and in HRT formulations. That's why I welcome last week's decision to abandon a major trial of HRT involving 6,000 British women.
The doctors supervising the trial believe new evidence published this year highlighting the risks of HRT - an increase in the incidence of breast cancer, strokes and heart disease - would put women off joining the trial.
Well, of course it would, and I'm delighted this research has been dropped. It is time women realised how they have been abused by the scientific and medical establishment which has so aggressively promoted the use of these sex hormones.
The push to persuade us to take HRT has been a massive misjudgment, followed by a cover-up perpetrated by some doctors, scientists, regulators and the population control lobby who have been unwilling to confront the medical problems caused by the Pill.
In the 1960s I worked for the Family Planning Association and was involved with early research into the Pill, assessing the effect of the oestrogens and progestogens (chemicals that mimic the action of progesterone) on women's health. So I was in a good position to witness first hand the start of the sexual revolution fuelled by the availability of the Pill.
I concluded that ingesting the sex hormones in the Pill had a devastating effect on women's health. Today, we have accepted that there may be real risks with taking the Pill - so why have we not realised that the same was bound to be true of HRT, which uses similar hormones?
Too many women have been persuaded they should take HRT to protect their health: to alleviate symptoms of the menopause, to prevent osteoporosis, and to protect against heart disease.
The problem is that many of the studies which support these claims are flawed. In some, the women who reacted badly to HRT were excluded from the findings.
In a 1987 study of 21 British HRT clinics, only women who remained on HRT for more than a year were included and there was no control group of women who were not taking HRT.
Those who were included in the study were from a higher social class with few smokers so their health was better than that of the general population anyway. At the same time, disturbing research showing that sex hormones may do real harm was ignored. Britain did not have a high incidence of breast cancer in 1962 (when the Pill became widely available).
Yet since then the rate has doubled and death rates from the disease have increased. In the 1970s, reports of an increase in thromboses (blood clots) and heart attacks in women aged over 35 led to falling use of the Pill and HRT; at the same time new cases of breast cancer fell.
Then new, supposedly safer, brands of the Pill were developed. More, and younger, women started taking them and we saw another rise in the number of cases of breast cancer. I think the disease's epidemic has correlated uncomfortably with the changes in sex hormone prescribing.
There is evidence for this from other countries, too. Japanese women live longer than those in the U.S., yet have five times fewer cases of breast cancer. Is it because the Pill was licensed for general use in Japan only in 1999? And can we expect a rise in the incidence of the disease there as it becomes more widely available?
And what about the muchvaunted claims that HRT can protect against heart attacks? How can hormones that cause blood clots prevent heart attacks? It doesn't make sense.
Properly controlled studies have shown that the sex hormones in the Pill and HRT are associated with an increase in migraines, strokes and blood clots. But those results have largely been ignored and other large-scale studies - with more favourable findings - have muddied the waters.
It cannot be good for women to spend a large part of their lives taking hormones. When I first started as a doctor, the women I saw who wanted to take the Pill were married and usually had one partner. Now Pill-takers are getting younger and younger and have many more partners.
The reality is that women can spend decades on the Pill, and then start taking another lot of hormones in the guise of HRT when they reach middle-age.
We are living in an Alice In Wonderland world where women think that by taking hormones they can control fertility without long-term consequences and then defy old age too. They, and their doctors, have been brainwashed into thinking that the menopause heralds the onset of some sort of hormone deficiency disease.
This is physiological nonsense. Old age is not a new invention. My mother lived to the age of 95 with no help from HRT.
Indeed, if women do need help at the time of the menopause, I believe it is as a consequence of unhealthy lifestyles caused by modern diets, the Pill, infections, smoking and alcohol.
We should be teaching women they need a balanced diet of fresh fish, meat, vegetables and fruit to combat deficiencies and live a long and healthy life.
It would be a lot more beneficial than telling them to take potentially dangerous hormones.
Dr Grant is honorary secretary of DASH (Doctors Against Abuse From Steroid Sex Hormones) and author of Sexual Chemistry, Understanding Our Hormones, The Pill And HRT.
|
