[Boomer]

Foreward: OK, men of TOTV, if you are reading this, I know you are snooping in the “Feminine Forum,” a part of TOTV -- started long ago with a thread titled “Girl Talk” but now closed because of its age. (sigh) Anyway, I am happy that you are looking in. This book could be important to you, too, because it is about women. I invite you to continue reading. (I hope those of you who are inclined to make remarks that sound like they are coming from a snorting 5th grade boy will spare us.) Behave yourselves and read on. I bet you can learn a few things.
Sincerely,
Boomer. . .


I listen to NPR. That’s where I heard a recent interview with Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN and women’s health advocate. (If you Google her name and ctpublic.org, you can listen to “A Frank Discussion about Menopause.”)

Dr. Gunter’s new book, The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism, covers the whole territory, including MHT (Menopausal Hormone Therapy, aka Hormone Replacement Therapy) in a chapter titled. “MHT: The Messy History and Where We are Today.”

She clarifies things about that well known study done in 2002 (which some of us remember, depending on how old we were when the $#*t hit the fan.)

In that chapter, she has a sub-chapter titled “The WHI – A WTF for MHT.” She calls attention to the fact the study got its own press conference -- which was not the normal thing for medical studies. And in 2002, 130 major news articles were devoted to it. There have been many more since.

The director of the WHI, at the time, had been quoted as saying the NIH was going for “high impact from its press conference” and the goal was “to shake up the medical establishment and change the thinking about hormones.”

As a comment on those quotes and all the publicity, Dr. Gunter writes, “I dunno – I think the goal should be to report accurately on data so women and their providers can make the best health care decisions.” In the next paragraph, she says, “Shake things up they did.” She calls the mess that followed that highly publicized study a -- uh, hmmmm, how do I use her term on TOTV? OK, here goes a hint. She plainly calls it a -- cf – figure it out. I find those words to be completely correct.

She explains why the WHI data should not have been extrapolated to all women. (Well, guess what. All women are not the same, but for almost 20 years the study has caused many to be treated as such.) If you were caught in the fallout from the study – or if you are about to be – I suggest getting your own copy of The Menopause Manifesto.

Not only in retrospect, but even at the time, in 2002, I found it interesting that the early boomers -- the first women who took The Pill -- making men’s lives easier -- were eagerly and immediately sold out (as menopause was approaching) by the Cliffs Notes version of the study that was playing in headlines and on magazine covers, across the country. Fear was running amok. (“Ah, yes. I remember it well.”)

The story behind those headlines has continued. I am not a doctor, but I wish someone would do correlating follow-up studies on several things, including whether osteoporosis has increased in a bigger percentage, by age-demographic of women, since hormones got to a point where they almost had to be scored on the street. (The plummeting of hormone scripts seems to have opened the door for all those osteoporosis meds.) And they need to study those women who held on to that hormone pill that had been around for decades. How are they doing now?

Risk vs. Benefit and a defining of who was getting what-- and when the hormones were started — was not really explained in the constant drumbeat of publicity that followed that 2002 study.

In addition to the chapter that addresses important specifics and clarification of the meaning of reported percentages of the 2002 study -- many of which were lost in all the noise, drama, and knee-jerk reactions of the time -- there is a chapter on what jumped in to fill the vacuum created by that study. That chapter is “Bioidenticals, Naturals, and Compounding: Separating the Medicine from the Marketing.”

The hormone decision is not an easy one because one-size-does-not- fit all. But it should be an informed one. Risk vs. Benefit.

The Menopause Manifesto was recently published and is getting rave reviews from women. I really like Dr. Gunter’s writing style. The tone is conversational, with easily understandable explanations. The information is well-researched, based in medicine and science, but presented in a highly readable way. She sprinkles in a bit of salty language – but I do that myself sometimes. It’s OK. Dr. Gunter covers a lot of ground about being a woman, including a little anatomy lesson with a segue into the Big O.

I have bought two extra copies of this book to give away. If the topic here is interesting to you as a woman -- or as a man with a woman in his life – buy it for yourself – and/or for someone else. This one is a keeper.

Boomer