Why do some physicians cling so intensely to what they learned in school, when new research and new ideas so strongly encourage them to develop and practice new treatments?
It is difficult to understand why so many physicians cling so intensely to what they learned in school, when new research and new ideas so strongly encourage them to develop and practice new treatments. It is also difficult to understand why the FDA and big Pharma continue to resist such changes in medical thinking and practice. Have you ever wondered why big medicine is so determined to prevent compounding pharmacies from practicing their trade? What is going on here.
Postmenopausal Women in the United States are hamstrung by the FDA and the medical groups like it (and ACOG) who obviously impair the rights of women to get what they need in the form of FDA approved drugs for menopause and testosterone deficiency. Consequently, we use an alternative medication-bio-identical hormone replacement– in the form of compounded hormones which work and have fewer side effects and risks than oral “mare’s urine estrogen”-Premarin-which is approved for women by the FDA. As long as I have been a doctor, over 35 years, women have been repeatedly denied the right to obtain hormones that work in a delivery system that provides relief safely. From inaccurate headlines in the NIH’s inflammatory and inaccurate press release in 2002 about the WHI study, to this article by a female infertility gynecologist, women (and some physicians) have been brainwashed into thinking that hormones will kill them. This myth is perpetuated by the very agencies and doctors who are charged with helping women know what is good for them. These federal agencies, and the researchers (who are funded by pharmaceutical companies and federal grants to discredit compounded hormones), limit the hormonal options for women in multiple ways: They create fear, using instruments like this article; they offer only psychiatric drugs that “calm us down and shut us up” but don’t treat the problem; and they approve inadequate small doses of the hormones we need, with short duration of treatment, that we do not get relief from the “approved” drugs at all. In all these ways, and more, we are negatively impacted by the medical “safety” organizations to whom we pay our taxes. In this case a woman infertility gynecologist, Dr Santoro, has fronted another bad study, deeming compounding pharmacies and hormones “evil” in an effort to limit the choice of women to maintain their health and strength and therefore to compete on an even playing field with men.
This article is another example of the kind of strategy being utilized by many “research” studies or physicians conducting “research” studies, in which compound pharmacies are castigated and women and physicians are urged not to trust or use them. There is an economic motivation that is not disclosed. The motivation is for the compounding pharmacies to be driven out of business so that big pharma can control all the access that women have as they search for adequate hormone replacement. The goal is to have them be required to buy the more expensive drugs “approved” by the FDA and owned and monopolized by big pharma. Cheaper more immediate and effective solutions are not desired and we are all encouraged not to trust in them or utilize them.
If the US medical organizations did not discriminate against women by denying us the hormone replacement we need after menopause, than women would not need to search out better hormone preparations to treat their symptoms of hormone depletion after menopause. Women comprise over 50% of the population, yet most are literally crippled after we turn 50, by the double standard that allows men full access to hormone replacement for aging, in multiple forms, while denying women adequate choice or dosage of HRT necessary to be productive.
I have used and prescribed bio-identical hormones for over 30 years for many pre and postmenopausal hormone deficiency symptoms. The first compounded hormone I prescribed was compounded progesterone in rectal suppository form, for PMS in 1986. This treatment worked well and provided 28 days of normality for cycling women in a world that believed PMS was a psychiatric condition. In reality, PMS is a hormonal deficiency condition, now well known to be secondary to progesterone deficiency in the second half of the menstrual cycle. That the college of OBGYN believed PMS was a psychiatric disease prior to 1999, and even had a question on the re-board exams that same year asking doctors to “correctly” answer that PMS was a psychiatric disease. We now know that the correct answer was “PMS is NOT secondary to a deficiency of Progesterone”. Living through some of these reversals of medicine makes one realize that the overall beliefs of medical professionals are decades behind the actual practice of medicine and the “cognoscenti” at the top rarely practice medicine and know what is going on with real patients. It takes decades to reverse their thinking and when government has no interest in changing a belief, it takes longer.
Women have been creatively doing workarounds for as long as we have been considered inferior–forever! It is historically clear that we will always seek out what we need, and know works well, even if it is not “blessed” by our governmental agencies. Women will find creative ways to survive as long as we are treated as second class citizens by our federal agencies. If this article leads to the compromise of compounding pharmacies, then the inevitable outcome will be gender and age discrimination. Dr Santoro has just put another nail in the coffin of women’s rights.
Kathy Maupin MD OBGYN
author of The Secret Female Hormone c. 2014 Hay House
This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author, with Brett Newcomb, MA., LPC., Family Counselor, Presenter and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com.
