Are the Risks of Taking Menopause Hormone Replacement Therapy Real?

Menopause - a time of hot flashes, poor sleep and mood shifts - can be a difficult time for any woman.

Menopause is a normal and natural stage of life that is as automatic as puberty, and programmed into every woman's body. However, a question many women have on their mind as they are entering menopause is how to safely and effectively manage menopause symptoms, go natural, try hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or do nothing.

My personal undertaking with Solutions for Women has been to help women better understand confusing information about hormone replacement treatment options including bioidentical hormone therapy.

I was recently asked this question:

Are the risks of taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) during menopause real?

The answer is yes and clinically proven many times over to harm to a women's health.

Taking hormone replacement therapy has been associated with increased rates of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, blood clots, and memory loss. Most recently HRT has also been associated with lung cancer.

These risks were revealed with the sudden closure of the 2002 Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study. In 2008 the WHI also reported on a study that confirmed that the risk for developing breast cancer doubles after 5 years of taking HRT.

After the WHI results were released to the public in 2002, prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy decreased by over 60 percent. Two years later there was a dramatic decline in the number of new cases of breast cancer reported. This drop in breast cancer was seen in women over 50 who are the candidates for hormone replacement as a treatment for the symptoms of menopause. Many experts account the unforeseen change in the numbers of women developing breast cancer to women refusing to take artificial hormones (HRT).

The FDA and the WHI both agree the health risks of HRT outweigh any possible benefit.

It does not appear that HRT in any form is safe for women to take for menopause symptom relief, or any other reason. There also is no evidence that Bioidentical Hormones are any safer than traditional HRT.Many doctors still prescribe low-dose HRT only for women with severe hot flashes and only for a short period of time, approximately one year. The problem is that most women who stop taking HRT find that their hot flashes return and typically will be more severe.

You should not ever feel forced into taking hormone replacement therapy of any kind.

Dr. Susan Love, Breast Cancer Research Foundation states: "We need high levels of hormones to reproduce, and then, when we reach menopause, our hormones shift down to a safer level. The bottom-line has been reinforced: Artificially maintaining higher levels of hormones is not good for our health. This is true regardless of whether the hormones are "bioidentical" or not."