HRT and cancer again

It was widely reported in March 2008 that breast cancer survivors, who were afterwards treated with HRT, had a more than two-fold increased risk of a recurrence. According to long-term follow-up data from a randomised clinical trial, after five years women with previous breast cancer had a recurrence rate of 22.2% compared with 8% in women who received no hormone therapy. The study was undertaken at King’s College London, and scary though it is, I would suggest any woman with follow up care for breast cancer examines her options carefully.

This study does not, sadly, stand alone as more recently, data from the Women’s Health Initiative and the Million Women Study provided additional compelling evidence of an increased risk of breast cancer among HRT users, according to the King’s College researchers and authors of the above study.

It is the oestrogen in HRT that is the problem, as it causes proliferation of the cells, so investigate alternatives such as natural progesterone. An excellent book on this is the one by the late John Lee, MD called ‘What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer’, and the straightforward book I co-wrote with Dr Shirley Bond on the applications of the hormone and called simply ‘Natural Progesterone’ and which is available from the website at www.catalystonline.co.uk

Girls reaching puberty as early as 8 in the USA

Health care professionals in the natural hormone field, like Dr John Lee, have been expressing concern for some years that the onset of puberty in girls is happening at a much earlier age than in previous generations. Their concern has centred on the fact that reaching puberty at a very early age will increase their risk of breast cancer because puberty exposes girls to more oestrogen. High levels of oestrogen are a known risk factor for breast cancer and indeed can cause it to flourish. According to a report by American biologist Sandra Steingraber, puberty is now occurring more regularly at the age of 8, rather than at 13 which was the previous norm. Her data indicates that if you get your first period before age 12, your risk of breast cancer is 50 percent higher than if you get it at age 16 and so her theory is that for every year we could delay a girl’s first menstrual period we could prevent thousands of breast cancers. Early puberty also has social and emotional implications for these young girls but hard evidence on what causes it are not known. Sandr Steingraber herself believes there are a number of causes but that is likely an ecological disorder arising from the increased amounts of oestrogen in our food and water, exposure to environmental chemicals coupled with increased childhood obesity and a substantial drop in exercise and activity like outdoor games.