Suzanne Somers Calls ObamaCare "A Socialist Ponzi Scheme"

WSJ: SUZANNE SOMERS: As a writer of 24 books mostly on health and wellness and by using my celebrity to get to the best and brightest doctors, scientists and medical professionals in the alternative and integrative health-care world, I have come to the following conclusions:

First of all, let’s call affordable health care what it really is: It’s socialized medicine.

I’ve had an opportunity to watch the Canadian version of affordable health care in action with all its limitations with my Canadian husband’s family. A few years ago, I was startled to see the cover of Maclean’s, a national Canadian magazine, showing a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline, “Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You.” It went on to say that young Canadian medical students have no incentive to become doctors to humans because they can’t make any money. Instead, there is a great surge of Canadian students becoming veterinarians. That’s where the money is. A Canadian animal can have timely MRIs, surgeries and any number of tests it needs to receive quality health care.

My sister-in-law had to wait two months to get a General Practitioner. During this period she spent her days in bed vomiting continuously, unable to get any food or drink down because she couldn’t get an appointment with the doctor. When she finally did, the doctor said, “Oh you don’t need me, you need a specialist.” That took another two weeks until she got a pill that corrected the problem.

Really, is this what we want?

All of my husband’s cousins are doctors. Several have moved to the U.S. because after their years of intensive schooling, they want to reap financial rewards. My 75-year-old Canadian girlfriend was denied treatment because she was too old. She died recently, having been given palliative care. That’s all the system would allow.

Affordable care will allow for pre-existing conditions. That’s the good part for retirees. But, let’s get down and dirty; the word “affordable” is a misnomer. So far, all you are hearing on the news is how everyone’s premiums are doubling and tripling and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that the whole thing is a big mess. Plus, even after Obamacare is fully implemented, there still will be tens of millions of people not covered. So what’s the point? Medical care will be degraded, the costs will skyrocket, and most frightening of all, your most intimate and personal information is now up for grabs.

So, is affordable care a good thing for retirees? Perhaps over time, it might work if you don’t get too old and you don’t get too sick, and you don’t live too long. But frankly, the economic ramifications with our already swollen debt load don’t add up. Retirees who are on Medicare will suffer the consequences of 700 billions of Medicare dollars instead being used to cover the skyrocketing cost of Obamacare. In essence, less dollars for seniors, means less service. Not fair. The Boomers are going to take the “hit.” In Obamacare, “too old” has limitations of service.

Boomers are smart. They see the train wreck coming… most I speak with think the Affordable Care Act is a greater Ponzi scheme than that pulled off by Bernie Madoff.

CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS:

An earlier version of this post contained a quotation attributed to Lenin (“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state”) that has been widely disputed. And it included a quotation attributed to Churchill (“Control your citizens’ health care and you control your citizens“) that the Journal has been unable to confirm.

Also, the cover of a Maclean’s magazine issue in 2008 showed a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline “Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You.” An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the photo showed and headline referred to a horse.

What will the Affordable Care Act mean for retirees?

Suzanne Somers (@SuzanneSomers) is a health advocate, entrepreneur, Emmy-nominated actress and author including: Newest Book: I'm Too Young for This!: The Natural Hormone Solution to Enjoy Perimenopause (Kindle), as well as: Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging, The Sexy Years: Discover the Hormone Connection: The Secret to Fabulous Sex, Great Health, and Vitality, for Women and Men, Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat after Forty, Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones, Suzanne Somers' Get Skinny on Fabulous Food, Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness, Suzanne Somers' Eat Great, Lose Weight: Eat All the Foods You Love in "Somersize" Combinations to Reprogram Your Metabolism, Shed Pounds for Good, and Have More Energy Than Ever Before,  Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging and more.

Somers: I'm Too Young for This!: The Natural Hormone Solution to Enjoy Perimenopause

Book: I'm Too Young for This!: The Natural Hormone Solution to Enjoy Perimenopause (Kindle)

Why Wait to Feel Good Again?

If you're in your thirties or forties, your body is changing, and so are your moods, sleep, health, and weight. Tired of being at the mercy of your hormones? Armed with the knowledge in this book, you don't have to be. Perimenopause can be enjoyable if you know what to do. I'm Too Young for This! details how you can get your body and mind back on track, safely and without drugs, including:

- How our bodies transition hormonally—from puberty through perimenopause.
- The common complaints of perimenopause—and hidden factors that may keep you symptomatic.
- What are the minor and major hormones, and the important role they play in feeling good and staying vibrant and healthy.
- What to eat—including Perimenopausal Power Foods—as well as other lifestyle shifts that are critical to your successful transition.
- Cutting-edge research that proves the safety and efficacy of bioidentical hormone replacement (BHRT).
- The Symptom Solver: a state-of-the-art guide to immediate relief for your hormonal complaints. Plus, how to find the right doctor as well as get your most frequently asked questions answered by expert hormone specialists.

Your life is about to change for the better. You can feel great, be vibrant, healthy, thin, and sexy! This book shows you how.

Book: Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (Kindle)

Technorati Tags: book,books,hormone replacement,natural hormones,solutions,Perimenopause,Menopause,Suzanne Somers,bioidentical hormones,BHRT

Suzanne Somers' Amazing Breast Reconstruction Surgery Using Her Own Stem Cells

Video:  Suzanne Somers' Stem Cell Breast Reconstruction Surgery - Episode 1

Watch Suzanne Somers' amazing breast reconstruction surgery on Suzanne Somers Breaking Through - Episode 1. Find out how Suzanne used her own stem cells to regrow her breast after battling breast cancer.

Suzanne has been a trail blazer for women’s health in many areas!

Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place

How to Starve Cancer Out of Your Body - Avoid These Top 4 Cancer-Feeding Foods

Video: Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Christine Horner

Download Interview Transcript

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Story at-a-glance

• Dr. Christine Horner, a board certified general- and plastic surgeon, shares her extensive knowledge about breast cancer—its causes and its cures, and the pro’s and con’s of various screening methods
• There are many all-natural cancer-prevention strategies, and research shows that most of them can cut your risk in half. Consequently, by implementing multiple strategies, you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer as well as other chronic disease
• Your diet is the one of the best ways to either feed or prevent cancer. Processed foods, soft drinks, red meat from CAFO-raised animals, trans fats, all forms of sugar, and any food containing or contaminated with xenoestrogens promote cancer growth. Plant foods, particularly cruciferous vegetables and flax seed, as well as many herbs and spices are cancer-preventive
• Healthy fats of particular importance for cancer prevention are omega-3 and omega-9, which effectively slow down tumor growth in estrogen-sensitive cancers such as breast-, prostate- and colon cancers

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Christine Horner began her career as a board certified general- and plastic surgeon, performing breast reconstructive surgeries on women who'd had full mastectomies due to breast cancer.

In this interview, she shares her extensive knowledge about breast cancer—its causes and its cures, and the pro's and con's of various screening methods.

Her interest in breast cancer began while she was still in college, when her mother developed the disease.

Thirteen years later, when her mother's cancer returned, Dr. Horner became very active with the American Cancer Society.

For a time, she was a vice-president and the Kentucky state spokesperson for the American Cancer Society on breast cancer issues.

"We were trained to say that we don't know what causes breast cancer and we have no known cures; the best things that women can do are breast exams and mammograms," she says.

"… In my practice, I was watching women get younger and younger when I was doing breast reconstruction on them.

Finally, I was doing women in their 20s. I thought something is way wrong with this picture." I thought why don't we just look through the medical literature and see if there's anything that research shows that women can do, that's within our control that will lower our risks. I had no idea what I was going to find… But when I looked, I instantly found thousands of studies that show exactly why we have a cancer epidemic…"

What's Causing the Cancer Epidemic?

What Dr. Horner discovered was that there are a number of habits we've stopped doing in our modern culture that are highly protective. We've dramatically altered our diets—shunning our native, whole-foods cuisine for highly processed fare—and engage in very little physical activity, for example.

"We're telling women that all they can do is mammogram [screening], and it's extremely disempowering," Dr. Horner says. "You feel like you have no control over it. But if you look at epidemiological studies… we know that people that live in Asia have a very low incidence of breast cancer or prostate cancer… [W]e have the studies showing that if an Asian woman moves to the United States and adopts our American diet and lifestyle, within one generation her risk will match that of an American woman's. It's like "Hello? What are we doing or not doing that they're doing or not doing that's making such a big difference? "

Dr. Horner was eventually introduced to the system of Ayurvedic medicine, and the more she learned about it, the more she felt there were answers therein that needed to be shared with people on a wider scale.

'[T]here are so many really simple things people can do that can have a dramatic effect on their health," she says. "Basically, the more you learn about natural medicine, the more you'll realize that we're just telling our patients lies– not on purpose, but from what we have been taught from the pharmaceutical companies and so forth."

She pitched the idea to television stations in Cincinnati to let her talk about complementary and alternative medicine, and ended up being the first syndicated segment on the news related to complementary and alternative medicine, which ran from 1999 through 2002. At that point, she decided to quit her surgery practice to focus on teaching people how to become and stay healthy naturally, and wrote the book: Waking the Warrior Goddess: Dr. Christine Horner's Program to Protect Against and Fight Breast Cancer, which contains all-natural approaches for protecting against and treating breast cancer. Dr. Horner's book won the IPPY award in 2006 for "Best book in health medicine and nutrition."

"[W]e have the answers to the breast cancer epidemic," she says. "We truly do– and it's very simple. If you have a terrible diet and lifestyle and you do just one thing, you cut your risk in half. You do more than one thing and they will multiply up together. They don't add up together. They multiply up together, so it becomes extremely easy to dramatically lower your risk of breast cancer."

It's worth mentioning that the same strategies apply for other types of cancer as well. Prostate and colon cancer tumors, for example, are similar to breast cancer tumors, as certain hormones cause them all to grow. Hence, protective strategies that are effective against breast cancer also work on these other types of cancer. Cancer prevention strategies will also virtually eliminate most other chronic disorders.

The Problem with Conventional Cancer Screenings

While diagnostic screenings have their place, some cancer screens are just about worthless… The wisdom of using the PSA test, for example, which checks for prostate cancer, has recently been questioned. Ditto for mammograms.

"Looking at the diagnostic tests that are currently available, none of them are perfect," Dr. Horner says. "Everything has its pros and cons… [M]ammography produces radiation, which has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer. It's like, "Why are you doing the test to look at a disease when it's actually causing the disease, too?" … It does pick things up at earlier stages, but the problem is that it's not very specific. So when it looks and it sees something… that looks suspicious, it is wrong 80 percent of the time. In the United States, there's roughly a million breast biopsies done per year, and 800,000 of them are unnecessary."

One of the best cancer screening methods is self-examination. But you need to make sure you're doing it correctly. For more information about how to do a breast self exam, please see this previous article.

MRI's, which do not use ionizing radiation, are not a practical tool as they are very expensive, and, like mammograms, MRI scans are not very specific. Ultrasound is another technique used in Western medicine. The traditional ultrasound can see whether a mass is cystic or solid. But while a solid mass is generally considered to be something that might be of concern, this is not 100 percent certain either, as cancer tumors can sometimes have cysts in them.

"Now there's a relatively new ultrasound that uses a color mode," Dr. Horner says. "It's called elastography. But there aren't very many centers in the United States that use it. I go to the Center of the Hoxsey Clinic, to Dr. Arturo Rodriguez at Tijuana. It has a color scale that measures the elasticity of the cell membranes. Cancer cells are very stiff, whereas normal cells have more fluidity to them. It'll show up as red if it has a lot of stiffness to it, as a cancer cell, or blue if it has elasticity… It's a very good tool."

On Thermography

Another form of cancer screen, which is still considered controversial in conventional medicine, is thermography, which gives you an infrared image of your body. By looking at heat and blood vessel patterns you can determine whether there are areas of concern.

"[B]efore you even get a tumor formation, the very first thing that happens is new blood vessels start to grow into the area where the tumor may form. Those blood vessels grow abnormally. They grow an abnormal amount of patterns and they produce an abnormal amount of heat. That's what thermography is checking for," Dr. Horner explains.

As with most new technologies, thermography hit some snags in its earlier stages, and fell out of favor in the early 70s. However, the technology has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years, and is now computerized; eliminating the need for highly trained technicians to evaluate the results.

"The problem we still have today with thermography is that we don't have standardization," Dr. Horner explains. "We don't have a uniform way that people are tested and trained with uniform equipment, and so forth… But there's definitely a movement… to do standardization, and to get that technology available for women, because this is a technology that has no health detriments associated with it. It does not use radiation or anything harmful to your body."

Unfortunately, the advocates of mammography perceive thermography as a threat to their business model. So there's tremendous pressure against it, including from the federal regulatory agencies.

"It's unfortunate," Dr. Horner says, "but our country is run by big business. It's just is, so anytime we want to shift anything culturally like that, and we're going against established business, we have trouble because it's all about money."

For example, many of the presidents of the American Cancer Society were members of the Radiological Association, which is the industry supporting the mammography component. The entire medical field is littered with massive conflicts of interest.

'We can see that everywhere. You look in the FDA—there are people from Monsanto that work in the FDA. Unfortunately, people think, "the United States is not very corrupt." But actually, it's extremely corrupt," she says.

Still, there are many good reasons for considering thermography. To ensure you're getting the highest standard of care, Dr. Horner recommends using a practitioner certified by the International Academy of Clinical Thermography, an independent non-profit organization that provides objective, third-party certifications. Their website lists qualified thermography centers across the US, Canada, and some other countries, such as France, Trinidad, and Zambia.

Most Natural Prevention Strategies Can Reduce Your Cancer Risk by Half...

Through her research, Dr. Horner has gathered a large number of cancer-prevention strategies—about 50 in all! Even more astounding is the rate of effectiveness of many of these strategies.

"[I]f you look at the studies, virtually every single thing that has an influence [causes] almost a 50 percent reduction in cancer risk… and if you combine them, like I said, you'll get these synergistic results where they'll multiply up as far as their effect is concerned.

I'd say the most important thing is what you do or do not put in your mouth… because you can have huge influences by the foods you consume– the spices, the herbs, and so forth. And, the things that you avoid, that's going to give you the biggest results. … Vitamin D cuts your risks in half. Turmeric and anti-inflammatories cut your risk in half. I could go through each thing—and I'm telling you the research shows that there's about 40 to 50 percent reduction [in risk]—so… to say that one is necessarily better than anything else, that's a really hard thing to claim."

The Top Four Cancer-Promoting Foods

Dr. Horner brings up an excellent point, and that is that in order to be effective, you must first STOP doing that which is promoting cancer growth (or poor health in general), and then all the other preventive strategies have the chance to really have an impact. Addressing your diet should be at the top of your list, and rather than adding certain foods, you'll want to eliminate the most dangerous culprits first.

Naturally, processed foods and soft drinks do not belong in a cancer-preventive diet...

Dr. Horner, believes red meat from animals reared in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO's) is also a MAJOR contributor to cancer. These animals are given antibiotics, growth hormones and other veterinary drugs that get stored in their tissues. Additionally, cooking the meat over high heat creates heterocyclic amines, which further add to its carcinogenic effect.

While I do recommend eating meat, I agree that there is absolutely NO benefit to eating CAFO beef. The ONLY type of meat I recommend is organically-raised, grass-fed meats. It's hard for a lot of people to grasp the difference between CAFO and organic meat, but truly, they are like two different species in terms of their nutritional content. One is health harming while the other is beneficial.

So when we're talking about the detrimental impact of red meat on your health, especially in terms of feeding cancer, please understand that we're talking specifically about CAFO beef, aka "factory farmed" meat. Next on the list of cancer-promoters is sugar (this includes ALL forms of sugar, including fructose and grains).

"To me, sugar has no redeeming value at all, because they found that the more we consume it, the more we're fuelling every single chronic disease," Dr. Horner says. "In fact, there was a study done about a year ago… and the conclusion was that sugar is a universal mechanism for chronic disease. It kicks up inflammation. It kicks up oxygen free radicals. Those are the two main processes we see that underlie any single chronic disorder, including cancers. It fuels the growth of breast cancers, because glucose is cancer's favorite food. The more you consume, the faster it grows."

Next is the type of fats that you consume. It's important to remember that every cell membrane is made out of fat, as is your brain. According to Dr. Horner, bad-fats in the diet are a major contributor to ill health and cancer. On the list of fats to eliminate are:

• Animal fats from CAFO-raised animals
• Trans fats
• Partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated fats

Healthy fats of particular importance for cancer prevention are omega-3 and omega-9. According to Dr. Horner, omega-3 in particular serve to effectively slow down tumor growth in estrogen-sensitive cancers such as breast-, prostate- and colon cancers. Fourth on the list of cancer promoters is ANY item that contains xenoestrogens (chemicals that mimic estrogen). This can become a rather long list once you start including any food contaminated with such estrogen-mimicking chemicals, such as BPA, found in the linings of canned goods and in plastics. The list gets truly unwieldy when you include personal care products that contain such chemicals as well…

"There are case reports of five- and six-year-olds going through secondary sex characteristics because of the shampoo that they were using... There are all sorts of different sources where we're exposed to these chemicals from our foods and from the products that we use.

What we're seeing is younger and younger puberty. Around the world, the average age is about 16 years old. In the United States, it's 10 years old now, and sometimes even younger. The problem is that with each menstrual period there is a surge of estradiol, which is the strongest, most abundant form of estrogen, and the one that's most associated with breast cancer. If you start your period very young, you'll have more periods in your lifetime than what a person would have, obviously, if they started at an older age.

In addition to that, when a girl goes through puberty, her breast cells become really sensitive to environmental toxins, radiation, and so forth. They're considered immature. They haven't differentiated– as a more scientific term for it– so there's a longer period of time that they're exposed to these toxins where they have a greater sensitivity."

Dr. Horner reviews a number of other important factors that influence your cancer risk, so for more details, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.

Eating for Cancer Prevention

According to Dr. Horner, the research clearly shows that the one food that is the most important for optimal health is plant foods.

"Plants are packed full of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that are crucial for our health. They also have hundreds of phytochemicals in them. These don't have any nutritional or caloric value, but they are like natural medicines, and some of them behave exactly like chemotherapy," she says.

"Every plant has some anti-cancer properties to them. There are some that are standouts. Cruciferous vegetables are something that I really recommend. They're a family of vegetables that include broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and Brussels sprouts…

All of them have several different chemicals in common. They've got indole-3-carbinol, Calcium D-glucarate, and sulforaphane. They have big anti-cancer properties to them, and they inhibit the growth of breast, prostate, colon cancer and a variety of other ones. Of all the families of vegetables to consume, [cruciferous vegetables] are the ones to be aware of, so you can make sure you're including that in your diet frequently."

Naturally, you'll want to make sure the vegetables are fresh, and ideally locally grown and organic. Besides cruciferous veggies, another standout plant for cancer-prevention is flax seed. The lignans in flax seed inhibit the growth of cancer in about a dozen different ways, including the exact same mechanism as the anti-cancer drug Tamoxifen and Arimidex, which shut down an enzyme in fat cells called aromatase that converts androgens into estrogens.

"I hear from patients, "Oh! My oncologist told me not to take flaxseeds, because they're estrogenic,"" Dr. Horner says."They don't understand how plant estrogens or "phytoestrogens" work.

There are all sorts of different strengths to estrogens. Let's say estradiol, which is the strongest, most abundant form– if it hooks on to the estrogen receptor, it may cause a thousand cell divisions. But if a plant estrogen hooks on, it may cause one. When you flood your system with these plant estrogens, I'd say it's kind of like a game of musical chairs. There are only certain numbers of receptors, and whoever gets their first, gets it. They're blocking the strong estrogens from getting on, so that's why it has an inhibitory effect."

Other Lifestyle Factors that Influence Your Cancer Risk

Other lifestyle factors that have been found to have an impact on chronic disease and cancer include:

• Vitamin D—There's overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. As mentioned earlier, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels—probably around 80-90 ng/ml—would be beneficial. The health benefits of optimizing your levels, either by safe sun exposure (ideally), a safe tanning bed, or oral supplementation as a last resort, simply cannot be overstated. In terms of protecting against cancer, vitamin D has been found to offer protection in a number of ways, including:
  • Regulating genetic expression
  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous
  To learn the details on how to use vitamin D therapeutically, please review my previous article, Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.
• Getting proper sleep: both in terms of getting enough sleep, and sleeping between certain hours. According to Ayurvedic medicine, the ideal hours for sleep are between 10 pm and 6 am. Modern research has confirmed the value of this recommendation as certain hormonal fluctuations occur throughout the day and night, and if you engage in the appropriate activities during those times, you're 'riding the wave' so to speak, and are able to get the optimal levels. Working against your biology by staying awake when you should ideally be sleeping or vice versa, interferes with these hormonal fluctuations. According to Dr. Horner:

  "If we, for instance, go to bed by 10, we have higher levels of our sleep hormone melatonin; there's a spike that occurs between midnight and 1am, which you don't want to miss because the consequences are absolutely spectacular. Melatonin is not only our sleep hormone, but it also is a very powerful antioxidant. It decreases the amount of estrogen our body produces. It also boosts your immune system… And it interacts with the other hormones.
  So, if you go to bed after 10… it significantly increases your risk of breast cancer."

• Effectively addressing your stress: The research shows that if you experience a traumatic or highly stressful event, such as a death in the family, your risk of breast cancer is 12 times higher in the ensuing five years.
• Exercise—If you are like most people, when you think of reducing your risk of cancer, exercise doesn't immediately come to mind. However, there is some fairly compelling evidence that exercise can slash your risk of cancer.
  One of the primary ways exercise lowers your risk for cancer is by reducing elevated insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. Additionally, exercise improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood. Your immune system is your first line of defense against everything from minor illnesses like a cold right up to devastating, life-threatening diseases like cancer.
  The trick about exercise, though, is understanding how to use it as a precise tool. This ensures you are getting enough to achieve the benefit, not too much to cause injury, and the right variety to balance your entire physical structure and maintain strength and flexibility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels. This is why it is helpful to view exercise like a drug that needs to be carefully prescribed to achieve its maximum benefit. For detailed instructions, please see this previous article.
  Additionally it is likely that integrating exercise with intermittent fasting will greatly catalyze the potential of exercise to reduce your risk of cancer and stimulate widespread healing and rejuvenation.

More Information

For more information, please see Dr. Horner's book, Waking the Warrior Goddess: Dr. Christine Horner's Program to Protect Against and Fight Breast Cancer. You can also learn more about Dr. Horner on her website, www.DrChristineHorner.com.

 

Source: Video Transcript  -  Dr. Mercola  - h/t to MJ

Related Links:

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The Cancer Treatment So Successful - Traditional Doctors SHUT it Down

Dramatically Effective New Natural Way to Starve Cancer and Obesity

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How to Donate to Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation

Check out Sanoviv Medical Center

Knockout

Suzanne Somers says Patrick Swayze should not have used chemotherapy

Actress Suzanne Somers attends a Blackberry Loves Mavericks cocktail reception for 'Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire' at the Royal Ontario Museum during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009 in Toronto. (AP)

Suzanne Somers thinks Patrick Swayze could have been alive today if he would have used alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer instead of chemotherapy.

The former "Three's Company" star, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991 and rejected chemotherapy in favor of natural treatments, reportedly told Toronto-based columnist Shinan Govani that it was Swayze's chemotherapy treatments, not pancreatic cancer, that ended his life prematurely. Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness by Suzanne Somers.

"They took this beautiful man and they basically put poison in him," she reportedly said. "Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins in his body? I hate to be this controversial. I'm a singer-dancer-comedienne. But we have an epidemic going on, and I have to say it."

Swayze died on Monday at age 57

Swayze Memoir: No to Painkillers, Yes to 'An Amazing Ride'

In a quest to remain mentally sharp, Patrick Swayze turned away painkillers while enduring rigorous chemotherapy treatments during much of his battle with pancreatic cancer, his soon-to-be-released memoir, 'The Time of My Life,' will reveal. That, along with the actor's reaction and stoic acceptance of his disease, are just some of topics found in the book, according to excerpts highlighted by NBC's 'Today' and the NY Daily News. 'Life,' out Sept. 29, was co-written with wife Lisa Niemi.
Swayze died Monday evening in Los Angeles. Funeral plans have not been set, however fans will stage a memorial this weekend in the small North Carolina town where the actor's biggest film, 'Dirty Dancing' was filmed. Excerpts from 'The Time of My Life,' after the jump.

Discovering the Cancer:
"I had been having some digestive trouble, mostly acid reflux and a kind of bloated feeling, for a few weeks ... I've had a sensitive stomach my whole life, so I hadn't thought much of it, but lately I just couldn't shake the constant discomfort ... My doctor told me my chances of surviving for more than a few months weren't high and I had no reason to doubt him."

Disbelief ...
"I had been excited about the upswing my life was on ... Now it all seemed like a cruel joke. I couldn't be dying -- I had too much to live for!"

... And Acceptance:
"I began thinking to myself, I've had more lifetimes than any 10 people put together, and it's been an amazing ride. So this is okay."

No Painkillers:
"I continued with chemotherapy all the way through the shoot [for his TV show, 'The Beast']. But I never took any painkillers since they dull not only your pain but also your sharpness."

Thanking the Love of His Life:
"How grateful I am that you chose to love me. I know that because of you, I've found my spirit. I saw the man I wanted to be. You are my woman, my lover, my mate and my lady. I loved you forever, I love you now and I will love you forever more

Publicist: Patrick Swayze Dies at 57

Sanoviv Medical Center

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth – Cross-Posted: Marion’s Place

Media Blasts Oprah for Supporting Alternative Medicine

This is just a preview of what is to come in the world of government-run healthcare overseen by the ‘Health Czar’. Have you ever seen a scarier more unflattering photo of Oprah?? Even being Obama’s Muse hasn’t helped her from attacks in this arena which brings us to the obvious question… how will they treat the rest of us????

In January of this year, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to talk about health tips. The 62-year-old actress uses bio-identical estrogen cream and progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month.

According to Somers, the bio-identical hormones are identical to the ones created by the human body, unlike conventional hormones, which are made from mare’s urine.

The result has been a media firestorm condemning both Somers and Oprah, including the hit piece in Newsweek linked below. The authors of the piece, Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, argue that bio-identical hormones are just as synthetic as conventional hormones -- although they don’t much discuss the fact that conventional hormones are actually different from the 17-beta-estradiol made by your body, while the bio-identical hormones are 17-beta-estradiol itself.

The real reason for the attacks on bio-identical hormones?
As Somers points out, many doctors, scientists and media figures make a good deal of money off of the pharmaceutical industry.
And one thing you won’t see mentioned in the Newsweek article is the fact that Pat Wingert is the co-author of a pharmaceutically biased book on hormones and menopause, and that Newsweek is heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies.

This resembles an incident a few years ago when the cattle industry actually sued Oprah Winfrey just for talking about Mad Cow Disease.

--------------------

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The authors of this Newsweek article clearly had a bone to pick with alternative medicine of all kinds. Newsweek does not just ridicule Suzanne Somers for her endorsement of bioidentical hormones, they blast Jenny McCarthy’s stance on vaccine adjuvants being a culprit in causing autism, and even criticize Dr. Christiane Northrup for warning Oprah’s audience of the HPV vaccine and recommending dietary and lifestyle changes to enhance their natural immunity instead. In their article they counter this advice with the statement,

“It is true that of the millions of women who have received the vaccine, 32 have died in the days or weeks afterward. But in each case, the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration investigated the deaths and found that they were coincidental and were not related to the shot.”

This is the kind of blanket dismissal one could only expect from those who have not bothered to do any serious investigations of their own on a topic.

And as for the idea that your thoughts and beliefs may have the slightest to do with your physical health? Ridiculous, according to these two authors.

Apparently they’ve never heard of epigenetics.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, has carefully documented how emotions are one of the most important factors in your health. According to his research, the controlling factor in deciding what your genes express -- in deciding how your future health will play out -- is not your genes, your family history or even the strength of your immune system. It is YOUR MIND.

These are the kind of myopic viewpoints you have to contend with when dealing with conventional medicine, big pharma, and their mouthpieces. But that doesn’t mean they’re any more right, or any less ridiculous, than the people and alternative strategies they try to dismiss with little more than parroted catch-phrases.

Is an Organized Smear Campaign Underway?

Now, Oprah has been targeted by big industries before, such as when she dared talk about Mad Cow disease on her show – a topic that brought her a lawsuit by the meat industry.

But Oprah is not the only one in the crosshairs of what can only be described as an organized smear campaign against alternative medicine.

There’s a disturbing trend taking shape, with a recent onslaught of media articles seeking to put a bad spin on various complementary, alternative medicine and natural medicine options. The misinformation campaign is shifting into higher gear. Is it a very deliberate and concerted media strategy?

Could there be any coincidence that this is all occurring just as the government is preparing health care reform? What would happen If much of alternative medicine was determined illegal?
Robert Zieve, MD, who gave me many of these links, believes that it smells like a witch hunt.

Recent headlines include:

• Contaminants lurk in many ‘natural’ products. Tests find some herbal supplements may be doing more harm than good.

• Cancer patients turning to alternative remedies. 60 percent seek natural ‘cures’ despite warnings from doctors.

• Doctors eager to try ‘mystical mumbo jumbo’. Alternative remedies gain acceptance despite lack of evidence.

• Many ‘natural’ products make dubious claims. A product with "natural" ingredients may be no better for you than one with artificial ingredients, but a lot of us still trust advertisements that suggest as much.

• Reality check on supplements, remedies. Americans increasingly turn to alternative medicine. But does it really help?

• $2.5 Billion spent, no alternative cures found. Big government-funded studies show most work no better than placebos.

• Alternative heart disease treatment probed. Government investigating whether patients were told enough about risks.

-----------------

Dr. Deepak Chopra responded to the Oprah bashing with this Alternet article, where he states,

"The criticism the medical establishment is directing at Oprah through this article only exposes their own frustration in having squandered their credibility with the public. They hope that if they can successfully attack Oprah's immense credibility, then they can magically get some of that credibility back for themselves. However, if people still trusted the health care industry to act in their best interest the way they did decades ago, then it would be unnecessary to brand Oprah for "crazy talk" simply because she occasionally provides a forum for ideas outside of mainstream medicine.
The medical profession is burdened with a host of problems that Oprah addresses with more candor and force than the AMA. She promotes wellness and prevention, two areas that drastically need improvement. She brings up creative solutions to problems that medical science is baffled by, such as the healing response itself and the role of subjectivity in patient response. These are issues that few M.D.s are willing to explore, yet she has done so for decades.
... What this tells me is that medicine needs Oprah and other patient advocates who are demanding that official medicine heal itself. To accuse them of lacking medical credibility is a red herring. Patients aren't supposed to know more than their physicians. The fact that they often do, at least insofar as alternative treatment goes, is both a sign of hope and cause for distress."

--------------

Is Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Dangerous?

It has been overwhelmingly proven that conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which science, as little as ten years ago, massively touted, has now been shown to be very dangerous. So there’s no argument there.

Studies looking at the long-term usage of synthetic estrogen have revealed many negative side effects, including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, high blood pressure and vaginal bleeding. But perhaps most strikingly, just one year after millions of women quit taking hormone replacement therapy, incidents of breast cancer fell dramatically—by 7 percent!

The following prescriptions now carry black box warnings and need to be avoided:

1. Premarin. Premarin is an estrogen extracted from Pregnant Mare’s Urine. We now know it is associated with an increased risk of heart disease.

2. Estrogen Therapy. Estrogen, which is extracted from Premarin, was effective in combating some menopausal symptoms but proved to have serious, negative side effects, such as the increased risk of breast cancer and an increase in insulin levels.

3. Provera. This drug is a progestin or a synthetic form of progesterone, which probably makes it even more toxic than Premarin. Its well-documented, negative side effects include blood clotting.

But to lump bioidentical hormones in with the rest, and attributing the same dangers to them as their synthetic versions is likely unjustified.

The Truth About Bioidentical Hormones

Bioidenticals, unlike synthetic hormones or natural ones from animals, are natural hormones that are bioidentical to your own.

The bioidentical hormone that is prescribed 80 percent of the time is estriol. It’s natural -- not a drug -- and you get it at compounding pharmacies.

And, although the article above states there are no conclusive clinical studies showing that bioidenticals are any less risky than synthetic hormones, the FDA also admits it’s unaware of any adverse effects of bioidentical hormones.

The fact is that estriol has been used safely for decades, and I believe it’s particularly useful when your ovaries have been removed or you’ve had a hysterectomy. Dr. Johathan Wright, who I’ve interviewed for my Expert Inner Circle program, is a pioneer in bioidenticals, and you can see what he has to say about their value in this short video.

The crux is that natural estriol can’t be patented, so there are no major profits to be made, and hence it gets little attention.

The FDA Effectively “Banned” Estriol, But May Approve an Unsafe Prescription Instead

Although not an FDA-approved drug, the FDA has proposed to allow estriol-containing prescriptions to be filled if they’re accompanied by an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, if and when a physician believes it’s in his patient’s best interest.
However, the IND places a significant financial burden on physicians, most notably by requiring them to submit applications to an Institutional Review Boards (IRB).
This process effectively bans most prescriptions for estriol.

Meanwhile, the FDA is in the process of considering the approval of Trimesta, a knock-off of natural estriol. Clearly, the FDA has never been concerned with estriol being used in an unsafe manner -- they were concerned that their drug-company buddies were not getting their fair share of the profits.
Aside from the obvious bias, this is even more troubling because Trimesta may not be a safe version of natural estriol.
According to Dr. Jonathan Wright, the problem with Trimesta is that it’s taken in pill form. Taking this hormone orally is known to be a greater risk factor for endometrial cancer than taking the hormone transdermally (through your skin).
As Dr. Wright said:

"...When the inevitable findings of excessive endometrial cancer are ultimately disclosed, you can bet the blame will fall on the bio-identical hormone itself -- and not on the oral route of administration, which is known to be more risky."

Do You Need Hormone Replacement?

The issue of hormone replacement generally does not come up until the classic symptoms of menopause strike. Menopause occurs when you stop producing estrogen and progesterone, and your periods cease. This can occur naturally, or be induced by a hysterectomy or by having your ovaries removed.

Typical menopausal symptoms include:

• Hot Flashes

• Vaginal Dryness

• Menstrual Irregularities

• Depression

• Mood Swings

• Weight Gain

Short- and long-term strategies can help you control these symptoms. The best approaches are preventive and involve diet and exercise. But in some cases where diet and lifestyle changes are not enough to counteract the more troublesome symptoms of menopause, bioidentical hormones may be able to help.

However, you’ll want to make sure you get your hormonal levels checked properly before embarking on any kind of hormone supplementation program.

I recommend you review Michael Borkin’s article, Women’s Hormones, for more in-depth information about the many variables involved in your sexual and overall health.

Oftentimes the cumulative physiological effects of stress can cause disruption of the natural rhythms and balancing mechanisms of your hormones, which can compromise your overall health as well as your sexual and reproductive health.

Both estrogen and progesterone are necessary in the female cycle, and their balance is key for optimal health. Many women have an imbalance of these hormones, regardless of their age. And if you have insufficient levels of progesterone to counter excessive estrogen, this imbalance can be further exacerbated by chronic stress.

So your answer might not necessarily lie in using hormones, but rather addressing your stress levels so that your body can normalize your hormone levels naturally.

Alternatives to Hormone Replacement

Prevention is always the best cure, and diet and exercise are as powerful in the prevention of future menopausal symptoms as for most other health concerns. Eating right for your nutritional type and exercising regularly can go a long way to keeping your hormones balanced as you age.

Consuming plenty of phytoestrogens (plant-estrogens) such as licorice and alfalfa before menopause can also help moderate your day-to-day estrogen levels so that when menopause comes, the drop won’t be so dramatic.

Beware, however, that soy is not a good option. In fact, non-fermented soy products are likely to damage your health even further.

You’ll also want to make sure your vitamin D levels are optimized. Vitamin D has gotten the short shrift, thanks to fears abouttanning and skin cancer, but Vitamin D is a must for gene regulation and optimal health. For more information, I recommend you watch my one-hour video lecture on this essential nutrient.

As for supplements, these have been shown to be beneficial in tempering symptoms of menopause:

• Polyphenols. Certain polyphenols have been shown to have some HRT-like benefits without the drawbacks, and are associated with a lowered risk of heart disease. Royal Macha seems to be an amazing adaptogenic herbal solution for menopause that has helped many women. Be sure to avoid the inexpensive ones, as they typically don’t work. Get the real deal from Peru.

• Omega 3 fats. You’ll also want to get plenty of omega-3 fats. A high quality animal-based omega-3 supplement, such as krill oil, can be far more effective and beneficial than fish oil.

• Black Cohosh may help regulate body temperature and hot flashes.

Implementing these lifestyle changes will help control symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, without resorting to hormone replacement.

Source: Mercola.com

I myself have gone to Suzanne Somers’ Doctor’s Clinic and used the bio-identical hormones. I never felt better and there are no side affects. And for anyone who has doubts… I would say just look at Suzanne and compare her to just about any other 62-year-old woman. If the positive affects aren’t obvious… get glasses! -Ask Marion~

Posted: Ask Marion – True Health Is True Wealth

Related Resources:

• Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones
• Newsweek Attacks Oprah Winfrey and BioIdentical Hormones
• Why Does the FDA Maintain a Conspiracy of Silence about the Health Benefits
• The Drug Story
• Western Medicine - Forbidden Cures
• The Neglected Nutritional Research of Dr. Weston Price, DDS
• Sanoviv Medical Center
• Big Red Juice
• Act (Natural) Energy Drink & Suzanne Somers’ Sip of Sunshine

Suzanne Somer's Sip of Sunshine

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Suzanne Somers on the Schwarzbein Principle - Bioidentical Hormones

For any of you who have read any of my books on Somersizing, you know the important role Dr. Schwarzbein plays in my life. She is an awesome doctor, cutting-edge, and the first doctor I met who truly understands menopause and its ramifications. As an endocrinologist, her specialty is the chemical makeup of the body. As I struggled to find a doctor who really understood what my body was going through in menopause (before I found the wonderful doctors I have interviewed for this book), it was Dr. Schwarzbein who was finally able to help me find relief. She understands the importance of replacing the hormones lost in the aging process with natural hormones that are exact replicas (bioidentical) of the ones we make in our own bodies. Because of Dr. Schwarzbein, I am enjoying my menopause more than any other passage so far. Here is our conversation.

SS (Suzanne Somers): First of all, I appreciate your giving me time to do this. I know how swamped you are at the office.

Every woman is looking for answers during this confusing passage, and you have made menopause a specialty. So let me first ask you: Because menopause is confusing not only to women but also to most doctors, how did you figure it out?

DS (Dr. Diana Schwarzbein): Most of what I know about hormone replacement therapy in menopause I did not learn in medical school, or in medical training. It was when I was in private practice. I had four years of medical school, three years of internal medicine, then two years of endocrinology, but in nine years of training no one said, This is menopause, this is what you need to be doing.

SS: What made you pay attention?

DS: I started treating diabetic patients back in 1991, and I was noticing that a subset of my diabetic patients who happened to be menopausal women, who were following the exact same diet and exercise program as all the other diabetic patients, were not responding with the same good results. In other words, their sugars were not budging. It was startling. They were eating the same way, doing the same kinds of exercises, but their blood sugars were staying at 300, whereas the men and the premenopausal women had blood sugar levels that were coming down.

SS: What were you missing?

DS: It started to dawn on me that maybe the sex hormones were playing a role in their problem. But initially I made a lot of mistakes.

SS: For instance?

DS: If someone said to you, you can have all the benefits of hormone replacement therapy with or without a period, everyone would probably say, "Oh, without a period, please."

SS: Very understandable. I mean, who wants to have a period if they don't have to?

DS: I agree, and at that point I bought into the current standard of care that believed you could have the benefits of hormones without a period. But I found that when you give hormones that way [continuously combining an estrogen with a progestin on a daily basis], you make the patient more insulin resistant.

SS: But isn't a woman her healthiest when she is pregnant, because her body is making estrogen and progesterone simultaneously?

DS: Actually, no. Pregnancy is not the healthiest state for a woman to be in. In fact, pregnancy is one of the times when you are more insulin resistant. If you are pregnant back to back and you have many children, I guarantee you're going to end up with type 2 diabetes or another form of insulin resistance such as obesity, abnormal cholesterol levels, and/or high blood pressure. Also, we now realize that pregnant women have a higher risk of breast cancer.

SS: Why is that?

DS: I am not sure that anybody really knows, but I'm going to say I think it's because of insulin resistance. Because high insulin levels have been linked to breast cancer. For instance, women with type 2 diabetes have one of the highest risks of developing breast cancer. So do women with metabolic syndrome [an insulin-resistant problem].

SS: Okay, but why would pregnancy make you insulin resistant?

DS: It's complex, but to simplify, physiologically you have many hormonal changes in pregnancy that block the action of insulin. One of them is the high progesterone levels.

SS: But people always think of pregnancy as a high estrogen state.

DS: Actually, pregnancy produces high estrogen levels but much higher daily progesterone levels, and the progesterone blocks the action of estrogen every day. The result of this is a low estrogen effect in the body.

SS: So let's get back to how you started treating your diabetic menopausal patients.

DS: I started treating women with diabetes in 1991, and I prescribed Prempro to those who were in menopause. Luckily, I noticed right away that their blood sugar control worsened. This was a group of patients who were not improving despite how hard they were working at eating well and exercising. In fact, some of them were getting worse. That's when I realized Prempro was the problem. Then I switched these women to estradiol and progesterone, thinking the bioidentical hormones would be the answer. However, I still prescribed them in a continuous combined way (no periods), and their blood sugars remained elevated.

Then I thought about the four rules that I use for the replacement of any missing hormone:

1. Don't take a hormone that's not low or missing.
2. Take only bioidentical hormones.
3. Mimic normal physiology as much as possible.
4. Track the hormone levels and their effects.

Starting with rule number one-in menopause you are low in estradiol and progesterone. Rule number two, give back the same hormone in its bioidentical form. I realized that Premarin was being substituted for estradiol, and Provera was being substituted for progesterone, and this was not the right thing to do. So I prescribed bioidentical estradiol for estradiol and bioidentical progesterone for progesterone.

Then, because of rule number three, I realized that continuous combined therapy was not the way the body made these hormones. To mimic normal physiology as much as possible, these hormones would have to be taken in a cyclical manner, and then women would have to have withdrawal menses [monthly period] again.

Then, rule number four, I followed my patients by tracking their hormone levels through blood work and the effects of these bioidentical hormones.

When I followed my four rules of hormone replacement that I used in treating all types of hormone deficiencies, the blood sugars of the women with diabetes improved and their hormone levels came back into balance. Finally, these women felt well again.

I realized the mistake I was making [ten years ago] treating menopausal women with type 2 diabetes was in giving them continuous combined HRT. Remember, as diabetics they were already insulin resistant, and they became more insulin resistant on continuous combined HRT. Unfortunately, many doctors today still don't understand the link between continuous combined therapy and insulin resistance and are still making the same mistake today that I did all those years ago.

In my opinion, the harm of continuous combined therapy was confirmed in July 2002, when the first results of the Women's Health Initiative was published. There were three groups of women in this study:

1. The observational group. These women were in menopause but were given only a placebo. They were "observed" to check for heart disease, breast cancer, stroke, blood clots, type 2 diabetes, and so forth.

2. Two treatment groups: subdivided by whether the woman had a uterus or did not because of a hysterectomy.

If the woman had a uterus, she was given Prempro, a synthetic drug hormone comprising an estrogen, Premarin, and a progestin, Provera. Progestins block the effect of estrogen, so the women on Prempro did not get a period. In other words, if you take an estrogen and then block the action of it with a progestin, you end up with a low estrogen effect in the body. Hence, no bleeding.

If she didn't have a uterus, she was given Premarin alone. [Premarin is a drug that contains many different estrogens, most of which are not found or made in the human body.] Taking Premarin alone would lead to a higher estrogen effect in the body.

SS: Interesting. And when you have a low estrogen effect because of continuous combined HRT [no period], are you subject to disease?

DS: That's what the WHI study showed. It was going to be an eight-plus-year study. They wanted to compare the outcome of the treatment groups with those of the observational group.

But at 5.2 years, the Prempro study was stopped early.

SS: Why?

DS: They started noticing that the women on Prempro [continuous combined therapy-no period] were having more heart attacks, more strokes, more blood clots, and more breast cancer than the group taking the placebo.

SS: What about the women who were taking Premarin?

DS: They haven't found the same kind of increased risk for disease with Premarin alone; therefore, that part of the WHI study is still ongoing. It is slated to be finished and reported in 2005 after eight years plus.

Last year when the news broke out about Prempro, the initial reaction was to get all women off all HRT, and to this day that is what most physicians are recommending.

SS: Why was the Women's Health Initiative done in the first place?

DS: The idea was to do a long-term prospective study on the possible benefits versus risks of the most commonly used HRT. They studied Premarin and Prempro because these are the most commonly prescribed therapies.

SS: So, when a woman takes these drug hormones, is she getting any good out of it at all, or would she be better off not taking anything?

DS: The WHI concluded that Prempro is worse than not taking anything, and I agree with the conclusion.

SS: That's a pretty strong statement.

DS: Yes, but that's what the study concluded.

As far as Premarin goes, I do not like it because it is not a bioidentical estrogen. However, it hasn't been shown to be more harmful than not taking anything at all. But this part of the study is still ongoing. It's important to know that Premarin has not yet been shown to be of much benefit, either. When it first came on the market, it was only supposed to be used in the short term to treat hot flashes, but then its use got extended (without any studies, I might add) to long-term hormone replacement therapy for menopause. As far as I am concerned, one of the uses of HRT after menopause should be for protection against heart disease. Premarin does not protect against heart disease.

SS: Well, all I know is I am feeling so wonderful that I am going to take bioidentical [natural] hormones for life, or as long as I choose to do so.

DS: And I believe it is safe for you to take bioidentical hormones for the rest of your life as long as we keep monitoring the effects of these hormones and we keep adjusting the amount to match your ever-changing lifestyle.

SS: Now what about Prempro or Premarin? Would a gynecologist put a woman on these drugs for life?

DS: I know many women who have been on these drugs for too long. There are two paralleling concepts going on: One is don't substitute a drug for a hormone; they do not do the same thing in the body. Two, do not think that you are going to come up with a better way to give these drugs than to match the physiology that already exists, as in natural bioidentical hormones.

I learned from my own studies and my treatment of menopausal women that you can approach menopause in two ways: symptomatic relief therapy or bioidentical HRT following the four rules mentioned earlier. Most gynecologists have been approaching it from the symptomatic side. They feel that as long as a woman is not having hot flashes, she is being treated properly. That is not true.

Furthermore, in my experience most gynecologists treat the uterus as the most important organ in the human body. As such, they feel their role is to keep harm from coming to your uterus. The medical literature in gynecology is filled with studies on the amount of progestin needed to protect the uterus from developing cancer. In trying to save the uterus and prescribing continuous combined therapy, gynecologists have increased the risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, and strokes in once-healthy women! Unfortunately, by messing with Mother Nature and giving drug hormones without restoring menstrual bleeding, we have done more harm than good.

SS: Okay, here we are again at having a period.

DS: You have to have a period, because this mimics normal! The normal state is not pregnancy! Prempro mimics pregnancy, so continuous combined therapy is not normal. Having a monthly period is normal. At one point gynecologists understood this concept. Prior to the last ten to fifteen years, most doctors did prescribe Premarin and Provera in a cycling way. That was the standard of care for quite some time.

SS: Then what happened?

DS: Primarily, women weren't feeling good on Premarin and Provera. They were complaining of bloating and irritability and on top of it were getting their period again! Then many women stopped taking HRT because they felt so poorly on it. Instead of treating women with bioidentical hormones, gynecologists tried different ways to give Provera to protect against uterine cancer and came up with continuous combined therapy without thinking about or studying the long-term consequences.

SS: Quite a dilemma. So if rule number three is to mimic normal physiology as much as possible, that would mean having a period, but is having a period all your life normal?

DS: Medically we are altering natural phenomena everywhere. There is nothing natural about immunizations, or open heart surgery, or hip replacement surgery. We have to decide as a society whether we are all going to honor aging or not. If we are, then I would say don't give hormone replacement therapy. But if as a society we choose to alter natural phenomena medically, we have to be consistent. Taking HRT after menopause is not natural, but neither is performing open heart surgery.

SS: Let's talk more about rule number four-tracking.

DS: Tracking means monitoring the effect of the hormone a woman is taking. It is done through assessing hormone levels, assessing how the woman feels on hormones, when and how much bleeding she has on a monthly basis, assessing bones and cholesterol, and evaluating her uterine lining with yearly ultrasounds. It also entails following specific issues pertinent to the woman's personal health history such as blood pressure, insulin, and blood sugar levels.

Menopause is a serious condition. In other words, I don't just prescribe hormones and say, "Have a nice life, call me if you get a hot flash." Menopause needs to be followed just like any other hormone replacement therapy. Dosages of hormones may need to be continuously adjusted around a woman's aging and her changing lifestyle.

SS: What about self-medicating, as in today my breasts are a little more tender, I think I'll take a little more estrogen cream?

DS: I don't feel very comfortable with women self-medicating around symptoms. For instance, let's take breast tenderness . . . it could be from too little estrogen or too much estrogen. So how would a woman know what to do?

I'll tell you something else about estrogen: It can act like an antidepressant, and women can end up taking too much of it if left to determine how much they should be on in relation to how they feel. Then you get into the complications of high hormone effect in the system.

And then there is progesterone. Women cannot tell if they're taking too much progesterone because it is a stimulant and can initially make one feel better. It isn't until later that they can start feeling depressed or gain weight from too much progesterone, and by then they may not realize it's the progesterone because of how long it took before the symptoms occurred.

SS: Oh, so that is why you don't like women to self-adjust their hormones.

DS: Right, you have to be very careful. You do not want too much or too little. It has to be just right, and the only way to do that is through tracking.

SS: Should women and men go only to an endocrinologist who specializes in bioidentical HRT to get their sex hormones balanced?

DS: As an endocrinologist, I have chosen to specialize in sex hormones. But not every endocrinologist has the same training. I wish I could say, "Go to your local endocrinologist and everything will be okay." Unfortunately each person must find the right endocrinologist or doctor for him- or herself. It will require interviewing the doctor to see if he or she has made sex hormones a specialty.

SS: When you do get your hormones in balance (as you have helped me balance mine), life is blissful. It's worth a trip or a drive to another city to get on track. After all, it is a three-hour drive for me to see you, but you are worth it.

DS: Well, thank you. Now that you and I have worked together for all these years, you know that hormone replacement therapy can be complex.

SS: And this is where the concept of synthetic pharmaceutical hormones is screwy to me. How can one pill fit all?

DS: Exactly. Even though we all share the same physiology, we don't all share the same metabolism rate of different hormones. I mean, you and I have completely different body types. Let's look in the mirror at ourselves: Who has more estrogen . . . you or me?

SS: Old friendly me. Curvy body . . . you get to have a long, lean body and slim hips (I hate you, by the way). But I get your point. Every "body" has different needs.

DS: It's also genetics. It's about ratios among different hormones.

SS: Right now the ratio, the match, you have prescribed for me feels good. I'm feeling fantastic.

DS: Great. But it's sometimes a very difficult thing to find the perfect match for women. It takes patience and focus.

SS: How difficult?

DS: Well, it depends on their lifestyle and what is going on.

SS: So if a woman lived by a river and didn't work and didn't have a telephone or a television set and wasn't constantly thinking, Oh, my God, I have to juggle a million things . . .

DS: It would be easier to find a match for that woman. She could probably get away with much less estrogen, because estrogen is the multitasking hormone. But if this same woman smoked, it would make the body rid itself of the estradiol faster.

Another example is you, Suzanne, when you were going through that period where you were so stressed. Your hormone needs kept going up, so I had to keep changing your doses, yet your hormone levels stayed the same, because you were using it up so much. And then abruptly your stress stopped and the dose of your hormones was too much for you. All of a sudden you had a high estrogen effect.

SS: Right, and that was excessive bleeding . . .

DS: Yes, you called me and I decreased your doses and things got on track and in balance again.

SS: What's interesting to me as the patient who has been doing this for several years is that I have become very sensitive to when the doses are not correct. I find this an incredible way to work with you as my doctor. We are doing this in concert together, and it helps me to feel that I am in control of my health and my body.

DS: Yes, and as you recall when we first started working together, I was very clear about the fact that this is a pain in the butt. A "one pill fits all" would be a lot easier, but the rewards of doing it this way, from a health standpoint, a quality-of-life standpoint, and a longevity standpoint, are indisputable.

And it's not just about the hormones. It's about eating well and stress management, and tapering off sugar and other chemicals, and doing the right kinds of exercise. All hormones talk to one another. So you can't take estradiol and progesterone and expect to find balance if your insulin and adrenaline levels are going crazy from poor nutrition and lifestyle habits. Every hormone has to be in balance with the other hormones.

SS: That makes a lot of sense. A woman has to have better habits after menopause to keep her hormones in balance to help keep her prescribed hormones in balance, too. How do you feel about gynecologists giving antidepressants to quell menopausal symptoms?

DS: I think it's a tragedy. We are one of the first generations of women to fully experience this passage. We have much higher stress levels and more anxiety in our lives than ever before, and we are seeing menopause at earlier ages. And all this accelerated aging is due to bad lifestyle and dietary habits! Giving a woman an antidepressant to deal with the suffering of menopause does nothing to replace the hormones she has lost in the aging process. Antidepressants take away the vibration of living and create a host of other problems. Menopause is natural, but dying is natural also! Today we have ways of dealing effectively with menopause or delaying death; why wouldn't we want to take correct advantage of that? Antidepressants are not the answer.

SS: So what is the answer?

DS: Remember this concept . . . she who keeps her hormone levels highest the longest wins. That's the race, dear!

It's got to start with good nutrition. People don't realize that if they want to be busy and run around like a crazy person, and they don't eat well, then they will literally eat themselves!

If a woman of childbearing age wants to make a baby but is under any type of stress, she can end up dealing with infertility. Eggs are dispensable. This is not the time to make a baby, because she needs to use whatever she would use to make an egg for energy instead to fight off the stress.

We have advanced medically so that women no longer need to die prematurely from childbirth or from infectious diseases as they did before we had antibiotics. Women also used to die in perimenopause from infections before proper medicine was available, because we are more susceptible to infections during this phase. Women are their healthiest and strongest during their childbearing years, when they are making a full complement of hormones. The loss of hormones makes you weak.

SS: So the theory is that if I keep my hormones balanced and I continue to eat right, I can expect to stay strong and most likely avoid the diseases of aging?

DS: Right, and we now know that it's not just about menopause. It's about nutrition and stress management and sleep and exercise, and hormone replacement, if needed.

SS: Are we baby boomers the guinea pigs?

DS: I think the women who have been given the chemicals are the bigger guinea pigs. Come on, giving drugs to replace a hormone? These chemicals will cause you to lose the hormones that protect you from heart disease, namely estradiol. Real hormones provide protection from heart disease if given in bioidentical form [exact replicas of the hormones we make in our own bodies]. This was confirmed by the Howard Hodis study at theUniversity of Southern California. He showed that estradiol-not Premarin, not synthetic hormones, not drugs, but the bioidentical estradiol found in human ovaries-will protect a woman against heart disease.

SS: Okay, Dr. Schwarzbein, we're sold, but where am I going to send women to find this kind of excellence and understanding relative to this passage? Women are barraged with bad medical advice and are highly influenced by the drug companies, so where do they go, and what should they ask their own doctor? For instance, the woman says, "I am in menopause, I am having hot flashes, I am irritable, and I am bloating."

DS: First thing to ask your doctor is to get baseline hormone levels through lab work. You want to have your estradiol, progesterone, and follicle-stimulating-hormone levels tested. If you are in menopause, you proceed to rule two.

Tell your doctor that you want to be prescribed bioidentical estradiol and progesterone. You can get the best form of these hormones from a good compounding pharmacy. Next, ask your doctor if he or she knows or works with a good compounding pharmacy. If not, or if you don't have one in your area, have them check the reference guide you have provided in the back of this book. However, some doctors won't know how to use the compounding pharmacy, so ask them to prescribe an estradiol preparation such as Estrace or Gynodiol found in the local pharmacies. There is also a noncompounded form of bioidentical progesterone known as Prometrium.

SS: How would someone know how much to take?

DS: You always want to take the lowest dose and taper up slowly.

SS: And see how you feel?

DS: Yes, and take the estradiol hormone twice a day. Estradiol is in and out of the body very quickly, so you really need to take smaller amounts more frequently to achieve the best balance. Take it twice a day about twelve hours apart, because you want to mimic a steady stream, as if your own body is still making it. The progesterone may be taken once a day or sometimes twice a day if needed.

SS: Okay, they have their estradiol and progesterone preparations. Now what?

DS: They will need to take them in a cycling manner. Take the estradiol every day of the month twice a day and add in one pill of progesterone for fourteen days out of each month. The easiest way to do this is on calendar days one through fourteen of every month.

SS: What dosage should they take?

DS: Start with about 0.5 mg of estradiol twice a day and with 100 mg of progesterone a day, and then track symptoms and levels to determine if a higher or lower dose is needed.

SS: What happens after the fourteenth day of progesterone? Is that when a woman should expect to have her period?

DS: Yes, they are supposed to be having a regular menstrual flow around the end of the progesterone or just after it is finished. . . . If they break through early [bleeding], then they are taking either too much progesterone or not enough estradiol.

SS: How will they know?

DS: They will need to have their blood levels checked to see which one it is.

Now, we are not taking into account that some people would like to be on progesterone 50 mg twice a day, not 100 mg once a day. Unfortunately, we don't have a 50 mg at every drugstore. We only have 100 mg. You have to try to work with it. But if you are able to work with a compounding pharmacy, they will be able to work it out to fit your needs more specifically.

SS: This will be a big help to women who are frustrated and do not live in an area that has an informed endocrinologist or gynecologist. As women, we have to be proactive about our health and our hormonal needs, because there is so much misinformation and lack of understanding about this passage. That is the point of this book, to empower women and men (and believe me, they also lose their hormones) to find quality health care and information about hormones for themselves.

DS: We are in a crisis as far as menopause is concerned. Doctors are going to have to learn something new, because we can't keep allowing women to suffer and become ill due to the lack of understanding that exists.

SS: So what is the future? I agree with you that menopause is a crisis at this time with this lack of understanding among women and doctors, but another generation is coming up right after us, and everyone is still in a state of confusion and frustration. Women my age are suffering, their marriages are falling apart, the divorce rate is going up, men are remarrying young girls to get the fun back in their lives, so what is going to happen? What are your hopes?

DS: Menopausal women have to demand answers. We also have to get them over their fear of breast cancer and of estrogen. One of my hopes is that the right information gets out. Women have to know that the risk of breast cancer is much less than the risk of dying from not taking hormones, or the risk of getting a heart attack or a debilitating stroke.

Let me state that insulin is a much bigger hormone relative to breast cancer than estrogen will ever be, because insulin is a major growth hormone. Insulin is a major growth hormone and estradiol is a minor growth hormone. Breast cancer is not caused because you took estradiol. Breast cancer comes from damage to DNA from the environment and damage caused by unhealthy lifestyle and dietary habits.

SS: Like . . .

DS: Stress, smoking, too much caffeine, high daily doses of progestins, lots of artificial sugar, anything that you put in your body that shouldn't be there. If you damage an area of the DNA that promotes a tumor, then that tumor is going to start to grow. Estradiol is a growth factor for normal breast tissue. So if you have normal breast tissue, but now the DNA of that normal breast tissue gets damaged, estradiol is still going to make it grow, but it didn't cause the damage.

In fact, I am going to stick my neck out and say that when we finally get around to studying bioidentical estradiol, it is going to be shown to be protective against cancers because it is an antioxidant in the human body.

Again, though, it is not about too much or too little of a hormone. The balance has to be just right.

SS: Thank you so much.