Do you want to understand more about this time
of your life - plus get the
latest information on
- Is it really menopause? How To Tell
- The signs of Early and Late Menopause
- How and why hormones change
- Hot Flashes & Mood Swings:What You Can Do
- Night Sweats: Why They Happen
- Dysfunctional Bleeding-What To Expect
- Irregular Periods: What They Mean
- How To Look Younger Without Surgery
- Female Sex Products That Really Work
- Natural Hormones: The REAL Truth
- How Mother Nature CAN Help
- How Exercise Can Change Your Sex Life
AND SO MUCH MORE . . .
Then you need
Your Perfectly Pampered Menopause
The book that really understands how you feel !
HRT: Why Age Matters
Because the WHI study included women from age 50 to 79, the initial results were a combined tabulation of all age groups together.
But Goldstein says that when data was re-analyzed to focus on the youngest members alone, anentirely different risk-to-benefit ratio of HRT began to emerge.
"What we discovered is that if a woman is between the ages of 50 and 55 when she starts taking hormones, or if she begins HRT less than 10 years after she started menopause, she has less heart disease and less death from any cause, compared to the placebo group," says Goldstein.
Those results were published in April 2007 in the Journal of the American Medical Association – and then again reinforced by similar research published in the The New England Journal of Medicine the following June.
Here researchers focused on younger women who had a hysterectomy, and took estrogen alone. These results suggested that in these women HRT may also have protective effects on the heart.
" Women who were in their 50’s in the estrogen alone trial tended to have less coronary artery calcium if they received estrogen compared to placebo. And coronary artery calcium is …a strong predictor of future risk of coronary heart disease, so these results lend support to the theory that estrogen may slow early stages of arteriosclerosis," says lead study investigator JoAnn Manson, MD, DrPH, chief of preventive medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and professor of medicine and women's health, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
Unfortunately, Goldstein says neither message seems to have been relayed to women – or even their doctors – and as a result many women are suffering unnecessarily, afraid to use hormones to quell menopause symptoms in order to protect their heart.
" We have strong evidence to show that if it is less than 10 years since you started menopause, using HRT on a short term basis is not likley to harm you, and it can help you - you shouldn't be afraid," he says.
Cardiologist Nieca Goldberg, MD agrees. "Women can sort of relax a little - that when they’re younger and need to go on hormone therapy because of their symptoms, that this may not be detrimental to their heart, " she says.
Those at risk for stroke, however, may not share this same sense of relief. In the same April 2007 JAMA study researchers found the risk of stroke increased in HRT users by some 32% - and that age or years since menopause didn't matter.
