|
Product
Details:
Get a comprehensive education from the breakthrough
book on natural progesterone.
The book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About
Menopause written by Dr. John R. Lee with Virgina
Hopkins, is the preeminent work on menopause and natural
hormone replacement.
Dr. John R. Lee has been a leader in the research, education
and treatment of estrogen dominance. His work has brought
about new, natural and effective ways to approach the changes
brought on by pre-menopause and menopause.
This book is your one-stop source of information on how
your hormones work, menopause and the effectiveness of progesterone.
With 30 million menopausal women in North America and some
20 million baby boomer women in menopause or on the brink
of it, it's no wonder this is a major topic of discussion.
Excerpt from the book:
Not so long ago, menopause was a word you did
not say out loud in public, and you had to go to a medical
library to find a book on the subject. Go into a typical
bookstore these days and you'll find literally dozens of
titles on menopause. They range from praising the wonders
of estrogen and hormone replacement therapy to personal stories
of the ups and downs some women experience during the "change
of life," and there are now many other books written on the
subject of natural hormones. What was once a taboo subject
has become a mainstay of talk shows and women's magazine
articles.
Menopausal Politics
With 30 million menopausal women in North America and some
20 million baby boomer women in menopause or on the brink
of it, it's no wonder this is a major topic of discussion.
What is a wonder is how we have managed to make
menopause, a perfectly natural part of a woman's life cycle,
into a disease. It has only just dawned on us that menstruation,
pregnancy, and childbirth are not diseases; now we need to
realize that menopause is not a disease despite millions
in advertising dollars spent by drug companies to convince
us otherwise. The pharmaceutical companies have not failed
to notice the huge population of premenopausal women in the
pipeline, a financial gold mine in the making. Premarin,
a form of hormone replacement therapy made from pregnant
mare's urine by the Wyeth-Ayerst company, was one of the
top-selling prescription medicines in the United States until
the 2002 Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study showed that
PremPro (a combination of Premarin and a progestin) increased
the risk of breast cancer, strokes, and gallbladder disease.
Although Premarin/Prempro generated more than $2 billion
in sales in 2001 and represented 22 percent of Wyeth's pharmaceutical
sales, more recently, sales of Premarin/Prempro have declined
about 25 percent.
In 1995, when I first wrote this book, I stated, "A large
percentage of advertising and research dollars are spent
trying to convince women that estrogen will cure everything
from heart disease to Alzheimer's, but there is scant evidence
for any of these claims and reams of evidence that synthetic
estrogens are highly toxic and carcinogenic." Now the WHI
has proven me correct on this, and many millions of women
are searching for a safe alternative to PremPro. In truth,
it's not so much the estrogens per se that are toxic and
carcinogenic, it's estrogens used in excess, and with progestins
instead of natural progesterone. But you will learn a lot
more about this as you read further.
The good news is that women have become guarded and skeptical
about having new drugs pushed on them. After being told that
DES, a hormone that was supposed to guard against miscarriages,
was safe, hundreds of thousands of women discovered the hard
way that it caused cancer in their children. Women were told
that Valium was a safe and effective remedy for depression
and anxiety, only to find out that it was addictive. Then
their physicians tried to convince them that once they had
reached menopause they should automatically go on hormone
replacement therapy featuring synthetic estrogens and progestins,
only to find it was increasing their risk of deadly diseases
rather than saving them from the aging process. It is telling
that only 10 to 15 percent of menopausal women chose to use
conventional HRT despite intense pressure from doctors and
the media. The real tragedy is that many thousands of women
have undoubtedly died or been permanently harmed because
they used HRT, when the natural forms of these hormones,
used wisely and in moderation, could have been, and still
could be of very real benefit. In the chapters that follow,
we will look more closely at how estrogen and progesterone
work in a woman's body and the politics of pushing drugs
to women.
What is Menopause?
Strictly speaking, menopause is the cessation of menses,
the end of menstrual cycles. The unpleasant "symptoms" of
menopause that some women suffer, such as hot flashes, vaginal
dryness, and mood swings, are peculiar to industrialized
cultures and, as far as I can tell, they are virtually unknown
in agrarian cultures. In native cultures menopause tends
to be a cause for quiet celebration, a time when a woman
has completed her childbearing years and is moving into a
deeper level of self-discovery and spiritual awareness. She
is becoming a wise old woman. In these cultures menopausal
women are looked up to and revered. They are sought out for
advice and their opinions are heavily weighed in the decision-making
process of the community. How strange that sounds to us!
We know menopause as a death knell, the end of a woman's
sexuality, a descent into a dried-up and painful old age
of arthritis and osteoporosis. How did this experience of
menopause come to be? I believe it's a combination of poor
diet, unhealthy lifestyle, environmental pollutants, cultural
attitudes, the incorrect use of synthetic hormones, and advertising.
But first, let's look at what happens in a woman's body as
menopause approaches.
Supplemental
Reading:
About the Author, Dr. John Lee, M.D.:
International Authority on Natural Progesterone
John R. Lee, M.D. is internationally acknowledged as a pioneer
and expert in the study and use of the hormone progesterone,
and on the subject of hormone replacement therapy for women.
He used transdermal progesterone extensively in his clinical
practice for nearly a decade, doing research which showed
that it can reverse osteoporosis. Dr. Lee has had a distinguished
medical career, including graduating from Harvard and the
University of Minnesota Medical School. He retired from a
30-year family practice in Northern California a few years
ago and ever since has been writing and traveling around the
world speaking to doctors, scientists and lay people about
progesterone. Dr. Lee has taught a very popular course on
"Optimal Health," at the College of Marin for 15 years.
He is the author of the best-selling book, What Your Doctor
May Not Tell You About Menopause: The Breakthrough Book on
Natural Progesterone (Warner Books, 1996), the new What Your
Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause: Balance Your Hormones
and Your Life from Thirty to Fifty (Warner Books, 1999), and
editor of the John R. Lee, M.D. Medical Letter.
|
