Hormones Protect "Against" Cancer(s): 7 Million Medicare NIH Women's Study

Why wasn't this shouted from the roof tops? This study also showed that estrogen statistically protected "against" the risk of breast cancer!

Aug 20, 2022

Hormones.

Hormones are the most misunderstood genre of medicine.

Yet, hormones are the most powerful signaling molecules inside our bodies - in men, women, and even the developing baby inside the protected womb.

In fact, if you could write a recipe for aging, it would be the “waning of hormones” plus an increase in “unhealthy inflammation”. Boom. You’re getting and feeling older.

That’s how hormone therapies came about. Attempts to slow down aging.

Women took hormones for decades with the promise of staying feminine and younger for longer.

But the statistical fiasco of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in July 2002, made doctors and patients alike, fearful of hormones.

Too many doctors, women and men, all think estrogen drives cancers in women and testosterone drives cancers in males.

As I have been asking for years, joined by Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, associate urologic professor at Harvard, who has also been saying this, “Why would Mother Nature make the very hormones that drive humanity, carcinogenic?”

That doesn’t make physiologic sense.

In comes the latest stunning results, from a massive US government-run study, that should be on all news media platforms. And shouted from the rooftops… but isn’t.

Latest study in Yale’s version of the British Medical Journal, that sadly, most docs, GYN, urologists, etc., have not yet heard about. Yet…

Title: Effects of Hormone Therapy on survival, cancer, cardiovascular and dementia risks in 7 million menopausal women over age 65: a retrospective observational study

(By Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A)

This was posted in May of 2022, but no one I know, all doctors whose practices and consciousnesses “revolve” around hormones, had heard about this.

Methods

From 2007-2019 enrollment records of 100% Medicare beneficiaries, we identified 7 million female enrollees aged 65 or more.
We identified type, route and strength of estrogen based on their prescription drug utilization records. Using vital status record and encounter records, we defined the first onset of thirteen patient outcomes; all-cause mortality; 5 cancers (breast, lung, 18 endometrial, colorectal, ovarian cancers); 6 CV conditions (ischemic heart diseases, heart failure, venous thromboembolism, stroke, atrial fibrillation, acute myocardial infarction); and dementia.
Then, we implemented an extended Cox regression analysis to examine the effects of type, route, and strength of estrogens on each of 13 study outcomes.

Findings

Estrogen mono-therapy (ET) exhibited a significant, 20% (aHR=24 0.80; 95% CI 0.78-0.82), relative risk reduction of mortality. The reduction was greater with estradiol (aHR=0.78; 95% CI 0.75-26 0.80) than conjugated estrogen (aHR=0.86; 95% CI 0.85-0.88), and with vaginal (aHR=0.69;

This means that estrogen helped make women live longer, on the average 5 years longer. And that natural estrogen (bio-identical) had more benefit preventing this premature all-cause mortality, than horse’s estrogen, or Premarin.

95% CI 0.65-0.74) than oral (aHR=0.89; 95% CI 0.87-0.90) and transdermal (aHR=0.78; 95% CI28 0.75-0.81) preparations.

This “staying alive younger longer” benefit was greater when hormones were applied inside the “vagina” than oral or topical delivery applications.

ET also exhibited “significant risk reductions” for “all” study cancers, breast (aHR=0.82; 95% CI 0.80-0.84), lung (aHR=0.87; 95% CI 0.84-0.90), endometrial (aHR=0.65; 30 95% CI 0.62-0.69), colorectal (aHR=0.86; 95% CI 0.82-0.90) and ovarian (aHR=0.83; 95% CI31 0.79-0.88).

Estrogen statistically reduced the risk of breast, ovarian, uterine, lung and colorectal cancer (no other cancers were studied it seems to me), with having a 33% less risk of getting these cancers if one had been on estrogen (and it seems to me it was for at least 5 years).

So get this loud and clear - Estrogen protected AGAINST breast cancer.

I was at David and Allison Brownstein’s paradise home last week and his daughters are both in residency. I asked what they are being taught about hormones right now in present time (August 2022). They both chimed in: “Never prescribe hormones. They cause cancer!” This reminds me that much of today’s “standard of care” seems to use “peer review data” the way they want. Ignore when it doesn’t push meds.

For example, approximately 12,000 women in the WHI over 65 were found to statistically live longer and healthier up to 90 years old if they had the “highest” levels of “cholesterol”. The conclusion of the authors (40 prestigious institutions of the WHI) said we should re-evaluate how we treat high cholesterol in older women. This was published in 2020 in a “big” journal. But, most older women are still given statins to lower their LDLs.

I digress…

ET slightly increased risks of ischemic heart diseases (aHR=1.03; 95% CI 1.01-1.04).

Estrogen slightly increased risk of stroke only if it was taken orally! And none if taken at lower dosages.

However, such risk was not observed with low dose ET (aHR=0.98; 95% CI 0.97-0.99). Both combination therapy (aHR=1.11; 95% CI 1.08-1.14)
And progestogen mono-therapy (aHR=1.09; 34 95% CI 1.05-1.13) exhibited a significantly increased risk of breast cancer.

This was pointed at progestins, NOT natural or bioidentical progesterones. Please realize this important difference.

They don’t mention that most of this progesterone was the synthetic progestins, that have been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. BTW these synthetic progestins are in many birth control pills.

Oral HT exhibited a moderately increased risk of dementia.

Oral estrogens are not the best, safest route to get your hormonal therapies, myself and many others, not all, have been saying this for years.

BTW - the old CEOs of the meds used in the original fiasco WHI had their stocks plummet. So they got busy formulating bioidentical hormones, the very ones they had been dissing for years. They patented a formula. Took it through phase I and II and III trials successfully. Started to publish in peer reviews the virtues of bioidentical hormones. They first named these Replenish so a few articles are under that name. But Dr. Daved Rosensweet, my dear friend and colleague, had already patented that name. So it now will be sold as Bejuve. But it’s all oral.

Conclusions

Among female Medicare beneficiaries aged ≥65, the effect of menopausal hormone therapy varies by type, route, and strength but overall estrogen seemed beneficial.

This kicks the “estrogen window” hypothesis out the window. Older ladies can take hormones. Even into their 90’s. But the docs have to be well trained on how to do this safely. But saying that women can only safely take hormones for a few years around menopause, is… WRONG.

About living longer with estrogen. These authors say in the “bowels” of their great study:

Our overall mortality results are consistent with the mortality results from a meta-analysis of 31 observational and RCT studies that reported reduced mortality among HT users.

The statistical protective effect of estrogen to keep women healthier and living longer was also concluded (demonstrated or proven), say these authors, with the re-analyses of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening RTC, which reported a 23% decrease in all-cause mortality with estrogen therapies!

This means lots of studies have been demonstrating that taking estrogen therapies keeps women alive and healthier for longer.

But that is not what is being taught in med schools, even some naturopathic schools, which appear to perpetuate the fear of estrogen rather than the protection.

This has so been proven that many countries around the world offer hormones for FREE to their menopausal women, as they live longer and their medical systems get less burdened. And this has been soon to be the case by tracking their citizens on hormones and who ends up their meticulous registries, such as death, breast cancer, adverse cardiovascular events registries, etc. The statistics have shown that women on hormone replacement stay healthier longer, less cancers, less heart issues, and cost the country’s medical care… much less.

All the Nordic countries have been doing so for years. Now Whales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and a few others have joined. England started doing so last year on an income-layered basis.

While we in the US, still run by Big Pharma, are teaching new generations of docs that hormones drive cancer and should not be prescribed.

While our own NIH publishes a huge study like this. That is not being shouted out from the rooftops.

Original Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study re-analysis

There was a 19-year re-analysis of the original WHI, sponsored by 12 prestigious cancer centers.

That re-analysis demonstrated fatal flaws in the first blush of the WHI. I wrote about these flaws and explained them in-depth in my book Safe Hormones, Smart Women. This book, written in 2005, faced these issues head-on.

This in-depth 19 year re-analysis of the WHI showed that if women had taken estrogen therapies, they had a 23% reduction in risk of getting breast cancer for the next 20 years, even if on estrogen for only a short while.

Also, if they had been on estrogen therapies, and then got breast cancer, they had a 44% less risk of dying from it. Nothing has ever shown this level of protection against fatality in breast cancer before.

The conclusions of this re-analysis, done by major cancer centers, was not shouted from the rooftops like the original scare and wrongful data of the first WHI conclusions. (The entire original methodology was found to be seriously flawed, but oh, this never made night-time news!)

I ask again: “Why would Mother Nature make the very hormones that make babies and enable homo sapiens to be alive, thrive and evolve, be “cancer-causing?”

Share this article if this puts a hormonal fire in your belly!

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