As women search for more natural solutions to their menopause symptoms, inquiries about bioidentical hormones have been on the rise – and so has the controversy.
HOMECoalition.org has launched a “Take Action” campaign to help the public protest the FDA’s ban on bio-identical estriol. It is an interesting read – you don’t even have to read between the lines to understand what is going on there. It is disheartening to see that once again, it’s all about money, money, money.
Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is also referred to as human-identical HRT, or natural HRT, depending on the source. Bioidentical hormones are derived from plants and have the same molecular structure of hormones produced by the human body, so they look and act like the hormones that they were made to replace. See my page on Bioidentical Hormones for details.
Bioidentical hormones are custom-tailored to an individual’s specific needs and contain no extra chemicals to hinder their acceptance into the body. For this reason, they cannot be patented – and because they cannot be patented, pharmaceutical companies are not able to profit from them.
The only bad thing that comes from pharmaceutical companies not being able to market bioidentical hormones, is that the power they possess over the medical community (and the public) will not be put to good use. You won’t see any advertising from pharmaceutical manufacturers, no medical education seminars for your OB/GYN, and certainly no public awareness campaigns.
So, how is that a bad thing? Women who may not be very proactive about their health, or who may rely solely on the advice of their gynecologist might never know they have this option.
