Bioidentical Hormones & BHRT Replacement Therapy
Bioidentical Hormones: Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) is a popular alternative to traditional hormone replacement therapy that uses commercially prepared, mass-marketed preparations of hormones. Why might you want to consider the Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy alternative?
Save A Horse
Premarin consists of estrogens that are derived from a pregnant mares urine (hence the name Premarin). There is a reason why if you break open a Premarin pill it may smell like urine. Did you ever wonder exactly how urine gets converted into a pill? Unfortunately, many horses have been subject to torture and death in order to harvest their urine for the drug company that makes Premarin. Approximately 70,000 horses are incarcerated on at least 300 farms throughout the United States and Canada for 6 months out of the year. That is the length of the pregnancy of the female horse (the mare).
Once the horses have been impregnated, they’re confined to very small stalls in which they often cannot even lay down, connected to a device designed to catch all of their urine as it leaves their body and restricted in the amount of water that they can drink to make the urine more concentrated. Infections, nerve damage and even blindness can result from these appalling conditions.
Perhaps the worst consequence of this urine harvesting system is the fate of the newborn offspring of the pregnant horse (the foal). The foal is seen as a byproduct of the manufacturing of the urine and is usually destroyed. Foals are sent to slaughterhouses where they’re then shipped to Europe and Japan to be consumed as delicacies. The mother horse, after 12 years of repeated impregnations and confinements, is slaughtered.
Opponents argue that this animal cruelty is unnecessary because technology now allows manufacturers to chemically synthesize more appropriate hormone replacements in the laboratory. Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy compounds are synthesized in a laboratory and they’re derived from plant sources only (yam or soy).
Bioidentical Hormones: Get Exact Replacements
Obviously, horse estrogens can only approximate those found in humans. In fact the drug Premarin and all drugs that contain Premarin consists not only of 3 main types of horse-specific estrogens but also numerous metabolites (or by-products) of hormones. Add to that traces of other hormones and other chemicals and it is clear that commercially available hormone replacements are very complex preparations and some of the components and their actions may not be known. There is little reason to believe that horse estrogens would exactly mimic the role of estrogens in the human woman’s body.
BHRT creates molecules exactly the same as those found in a woman’s body. These molecules are easily recognized as being part of the body’s finely tuned hormonal system and readily accepted as part of the body’s endocrine(hormonal) systems.
DON’T FLOOD YOUR SYSTEM
Hormonal systems in the human body are very delicate, subtle systems in which the various substances involved regulate many substances according the needs of the body. Only very small amounts of hormones are needed for the various tasks that hormones carry out. Commercial preparations of hormones, however, have typically administered hormones at much higher levels than normally found in the human body. The manufacturers of Premarin have agreed with these criticisms and have recently released a new version of Premarin that contains lower dosages of hormones.
An additional problem contributing to the problems that prescribed dosages of Premarin is the fact that the horse estrogens remain in the human body for a very long time. Equilin, one of the horse estrogens in Premarin, can remain in a woman’s body for up to 13 weeks. The human woman’s body does not have the capability to quickly raise and lower the levels of horse estrogens so the estrogens stay in the body for a long time, unchanged. This can cause problems with the natural communication taking place all the time in the human body between various hormones and organs of the body. To summarize, the commercially prepared hormone replacements are supply hormones that are too strong and stay in the body for too long.
BHRT produces hormones that exactly mimic the hormones found in your body. Your body is able to metabolize them and regulate them as if they were made in your own body.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR MEDICINES
Wouldn’t you want a medication specifically created with you in mind to meet the requirements of your body and treat your target symptoms? Wouldn’t you like a medication whose dosage can be adjusted to exactly what your body needs? This can not happen with commercially prepared products such as Premarin that are manufactured in huge corporate labs and shipped in large lots to pharmacies all over the world. Each patient gets the exact same dose: a 50-year old 130 pound woman will take the same pill as a 90-year old 100 pound woman.
BHRT is formulated specifically for your body usually based on chemical analysis of your body fluids (such as saliva). If the initial dosage does not seem to be optimal for you, the dosage can be adjusted up or down, of all the components of the preparation or just one component, for your next prescription.
The bioidentical alternative could be the answer that you need in hormone replacement therapy.
