 By Design
Not Deficiency - The Hormone Controversy
By Tony Southwell, D.C Earlier
this year in July, headlines all over the world were telling women to stop taking
hormone replacement drugs due to increased risks related to heart attacks, strokes, blood
clots, and various other side effects. This started a hormone controversy that has swept
the continent, touching one of women’s most precious and personal life cycles,
tossing it into a state of controversy and confusion.
So, what triggered this latest hormone controversy? In July, the NIH
(National Institute for Health) notified the public, the press, the medical community, as
well as the 16,600 women who were involved in a long-term study, that they should stop
taking the study drug - a hormone replacement drug combining estrogen and progestin. This
was due to results documenting that hormone replacement therapy used in healthy women
increased the frequency of breast cancer 24%, stroke 41%, heart attack 29%, and blood
clots almost 100%. The obvious questions being asked around the world were, “How did
this drug get approved in the first place?” and, “How were all these terrible
effects missed?”
It is estimated that that over 20 million women (USA) will transition
into menopause this year. In the USA approximately 6 million women use this particular
hormone combination, while 38% of woman past menopause take some form of hormone
replacement therapy, with an estimated 70 million hormone prescriptions filled each year
in the U.S.
This whole hormone situation makes me want to just stand up and
shout… “STOP THE INSANITY” (with apologies to Susan Powter). To me,
it’s not just about hormone replacement therapy personally. I have little interest in
a particular drug or disease. Multi-media and continuous programming by the big marketing
machines condition us to look for and ask for these therapies, in light of this recent
dilemma one has to ask, “Are your individual interests really paramount and taking
precedence over all else in medicine and the marketing of medicine?” As a writer
quotes when he first reported this story in the Kansas City Star… “the biggest
hurdle is drug industry advertising, both in ads patients see and promotions to doctors,
that suggest hormones are great for overall health. We hope that truth will win over
advertising.” Jim Wright, a UBC professor of medicine who is the managing director of
the Therapeutics Initiative, quoted to the Globe and Mail “It shows how effective the
marketing influence is despite evidence.”
As a woman, and a consumer, this recent issue really emphasizes how
important it is that you take responsibility for your own health and healthcare, develop
confidence and pride in the amazing powers within each of us that governs and guides us.
Seek out healthcare professionals that also understand this perspective and support and
guide you through your various life stages. The reality is that it is each individual who
has to protect their own interests, and know that even though a professional told you to
use a particular form of drug therapy, it is you who will experience the consequences.
Therefore, you are ultimately responsible for what you put in your body.
I personally promote a unique philosophy, and lifestyle; a lifestyle
free of unnecessary drugs and toxins, and full of life expressed in honor of the
incredible wisdom that built our bodies from two simple cells and continues to guide us,
in honor of the body’s amazing self-regulating and self-healing abilities, and in
honor and respect for the natural, complex lifecycles that are part of our life’s
journey.
Menopause is neither a disease nor a deficiency, but just another great
cycles of life; a unique one where your body system repositions the chemical relationships
of your hormones to prepare you for a new phase in your life. Sure the road of change
maybe bumpy and uncomfortable, but if you know and trust the process, you can minimize the
interventions needed allowing you to proceed comfortably into the next new, wondrous phase
of your life.
The incredible wisdom of your body adjusts your hormone levels by
design, not deficiency. Your life progresses guided by an internal intelligence, not by
accident. Chiropractors work to remove interference from your nervous system through which
this intelligence, this guidance system, this lifeforce, expresses itself, allowing this
wisdom to guide, protect and serve us to its fullest.
Tony Southwell is the owner of Lifeforce Family
Chiropractic. |
