Wolf in sheep's clothing

Recently, the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) issued a position statement on whether or not it was healthy for women to take HRT for menopause. It was a long paper with a short answer. Women near the time of menopause would benefit from HRT but only for a short time and HRT should not be used by women older than 60.

Does something change in a woman's body on the day she turns 60 years old? If so, then The North American Menopause Society should tell us what it is.

The metabolic pathways that keep women under 60 years old healthy are the same metabolic pathways that keep women over 60 years old healthy. Intentionally excluding women over 60 years old and denying them healthcare is discrimination.

If NAMS is going to say that somehow on a woman's 60th birthday her body chemistry has changed and only Fosamax, Boniva or some other bisphosphonate and not appropriate doses of estradiol, testosterone, progesterone, and dhea will keep her bones strong then NAMS should show the proof.

The North American Menopause Society has been misleading the public and medical communities for decades. The result of steering women and their doctors away from appropriate treatment of the multiple hormone deficiencies of profound hypogonadism (menopause) is a steady supply of women in need of breast cancer treatment, osteoporosis treatment, anti-anxiety treatment, sleep drugs and anti-depressants.

NAMS does not take a balanced or scientific view of profound hypogonadism in women. If it did NAMS would be telling women and their doctors the following:

1) NAMS uses terms interchangeably for all hormone regimens, whether they represent hormone replacement or not.

2) NAMS primarily recommends a pill made from horse urine and calls it HRT for menopause even though it is not. This pill raises estrogen levels to extremely high, unhealthy levels and lowers the other menopausal hormones. So now instead of having menopause women who take this horse urine pill have two new illnesses to replace menopause. Women who take this horse urine pill now have hyperestrogenism (extremely high and unhealthy estrogen levels) combined with lower than menopause levels of testosterone, progesterone and dhea levels.

3) Hyperestrogenism, or extremely high levels of estrogen, was a rare illness prior to the introduction of horse urine pills.

4) NAMS uses the negative results of clinical trials that used the horse urine pills to steer women and their doctors away from using appropriate hormone treatment.

5) NAMS doesn't tell women that HRT was not used in these trials. In fact, NAMS never mentions that hormone levels were not tested in trials that use these horse urine pills. Testing hormone levels produced by these horse urine pills would prove that they are not HRT, nor are they any replacement at all.

The North American Menopause society advertises the following:

NAMS is dedicated to providing menopause help and menopause information for women

Define help. This couldn't be further from the truth.

For decades the North American Menopause Society has taken away a woman's opportunity to obtain safe, reliable, and effective treatment. NAMS has consistently denied women access to quality medical care that would treat their profound hypogonadism by misleading their doctors into believing that horse urine is HRT and the failure of horse urine to treat profound hypogonadism is a failure of HRT.

With HRT based on normal ovarian hormone levels you can restore sexual function, you can prevent and reverse osteoporosis, you can prevent breast cancer, you can continue to be competitive in the job market and you can be healthy again.

With horse urine pills, which create bizarre hormone levels, you cannot restore sexual function, you cannot prevent or reverse osteoporosis, you cannot prevent breast cancer, you cannot continue to be competitive in the job market and you cannot be healthy.

Intentionally confusing the unhealthy hormone levels created by horse urine and the healthy hormone levels created by using bio-identical ovarian hormones means women and their doctors are misled into mistakenly believing that real hormone replacement is unhealthy.
Creating and then reinforcing this confusion ensures women will not receive appropriate medical treatment and will continue to unnecessarily suffer from cancer, relationship troubles, broken bones, and heart disease. All of this suffering, simply to make money for a drug company.

The North American Menopause Society leads women down a path of ill health and does their best to keep them there.

This confusion over what HRT really is allows The North American Menopause Society to create a steady stream of women in need of expensive pharmaceuticals that are available from Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that is a major sponsor of this group.

NAMS stunning disregard for women their health, their family, and their career is consistent and unwavering.

In reality, this group is nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing.