By Alicia Stanton, M.D., OBGYN
Chief Medical Officer

March 20, 2009

"This article was well thought out and helpful in explaining the current situation regarding bioidentical hormones."

I applaud the Wall Street Journal article by Dr. Schwartz, Dr. Holtorf and Dr. Brownstein! They did a great job clearing some of the confusion regarding bioidentical hormone therapy. It has always made sense to me that you would want to utilize hormones in your body that have the exact same chemical structure as a hormone that your body would produce itself. Yet, many from the pharmaceutical and medical establishment continue to try to compare bioidentical hormones to non-bioidentical hormones which creates confusion.

Because bioidentical hormones have the same structure as our naturally produced hormones, they have the same shape and fit into all of the cell receptors that they should. This allows them to have the same effects that you would expect from your own hormones. Non-bioidentical hormones do not have the same structure and shape so they don't always fit into the receptors on our cells as well as they could. This could limit their beneficial effects. The more significant problem is that non-bioidentical hormones could have unintended side effects. The example listed in the WSJ article is that bioidentical progesterone is used by fertility doctors to sustain pregnancies while non-bioidentical progesterone (medroxyprogesterone or Provera) is used as "the morning after pill" to stop pregnancies. Amazingly, these two very different substances are often used interchangeably in the literature which is another great source of confusion.

One of the most important things about natural progesterone is that it is a building block to many other hormones including cortisol and the sex hormones, DHEA, testosterone and estrogen. If you are using nonbioidentical progesterone, you cannot have the building block effect which would support the other hormones. Most importantly, natural progesterone balances estrogen very well - especially in the breast and uterus. Many women in our society today have a deficiency in progesterone due to our stress levels and lifestyles. The symptoms of this deficiency include anxiety, PMS symptoms, fatigue, breast tenderness, bloating and heavy bleeding.

Dr. Holtorf wrote a very comprehensive paper on the safety of bioidentical hormones after reviewing the large body of literature available to him. It contains great information on the differences between bioidentical and non-bioidentical hormones - especially the greater safety of progesterone over medroxyprogesterone. I encourage women who wish to utilize bioidenticals to read this paper and recommend that their physicians read it as well.

This article was well thought out and helpful in explaining the current situation regarding bioidentical hormones. I look forward to seeing this conversation continue.

To read the article, click here.