Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is one area of medicine that is very controversial, mystifying and most inadequately approached. It is only recently that women have come to question the safety of estrogen, as well as some other hormones, that have been entrenched in medicine for the last 40 years. There are now studies that show estrogen may cause cancer. Some information will justify the use of estrogen regardless of its risk of causing cancer because it is said “the rewards outweigh the risks.”

Estrogen is often prescribed by health care professionals to patients with hormone imbalance problems. But the vast majority of the time, it is not the solution and often makes the patient have more complications, not less. Around 85% of the time, better hormone balance is achieved by balancing estrogen with increasing progesterone, not by increasing estrogen. Women should not assume that taking estrogen is the solution to their problems. Many problems may occur with this assumption.

Estrogen is NOT where we start in the vast majority of patients, no matter where they may find themselves on this hormone journey.