Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5870

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Publication type: news

Rumble C.
Hormone therapy to almost die for
The Age (Melbourne) 2006 Aug 13
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/hormone-therapy-to-almost-die-for/2006/08/12/1154803145323.html

Full text:

Hormone therapy to almost die for

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/hormone-therapy-to-almost-die-for/2006/08/12/1154803145323.html

Chantal Rumble
August 13, 2006

Dee presumed her tailor-made, so-called natural hormone-replacement
therapy was safe “because a doctor gave it to me”.

THE first sign of the damage caused to Dee by years of natural hormone
therapy was a slight feeling of faintness as she recovered from
unrelated surgery.

The second sign was total collapse. No sooner had Dee told a nurse she
was feeling faint than she stopped breathing and both lungs collapsed.
It took medical staff 45 seconds to revive her and it has taken the
mother of three almost two years to recover.

Dee, 63, who does not want to be identified, had always been a fit and
active woman, passionate about her own health.

When menopause struck in her early 50s, she had debilitating mood swings
and hot flushes and began a course of conventional hormone replacement
therapy (HRT) on the recommendation of her doctor.

However, frightened by claims and counterclaims about the risks
associated with HRT she, like many of her peers, began looking for an
alternative.

It was her close friends who told her about a so-called natural
alternative – special compounded hormone therapies, which included
testosterone.

“My girlfriends were saying to me the testosterone was fantastic. They
had never had better sex lives and it was like they were 18 years old
again,” Dee says.

Dee’s friends encouraged her to visit their GP, who conducted a series
of expensive tests and prescribed a tailor-made hormone therapy that
could be prepared at only one pharmacy. It cost about four times as much
as conventional HRT, but Dee was prepared to pay for a natural product
for peace of mind.

“I thought ‘This is fantastic. It’s all made for me instead of an
off-the-shelf product for everybody’,” she said.

“I was told it was natural and it was prescribed for me to target the
areas in my body that were lacking and causing the menopause problems,
and it fixed them up. It was great, just great.”

Dee had never felt better. Her menopause symptoms disappeared
immediately and she began recommending the therapy to other people,
including her sister.

“I presumed it was safe, of course, because a doctor gave it to me,” she
said.

What Dee did not know was that her natural therapy had extremely high
doses of the same hormones included in conventional HRT, including
oestrogen, which can cause blood clots.

In 2004, after two years of natural therapy, Dee began suffering extreme
pain. Doctors believed the pain was caused by a damaged vertebra and
admitted her to hospital for surgery, but it was only after the
operation, when she collapsed, that they discovered the real cause.

Dee had more than 100 blood clots in her lungs. One lung collapsed
completely and the other by 70 per cent.

Dee endured 45 seconds without oxygen, four days in intensive care and a
full month in hospital. It was one of the most traumatic experiences in
her life and she has not yet regained her strength. “It’s caused not
only me a lot of stress, but my family as well and my friends,” she
says. She has a simple warning for her peers. “You should find out
everything you can. Just because something says ‘natural’, don’t believe
it.”