Bioidentical Hormone Society - Hormone Therapy, Hormone Replacement Therapy and Adult Onset Diseases

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The Bio-identical Hormone Society (BHS) is a collective of members who share a common interest in the discussion, diagnosis and treatment of those issues centering on an aging population. Its goal is to provide information on safe treatment to all who seek a better way. Today, the data on bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and studies with relevant information tend to be widely dissociated and not necessarily well understood. This FILE ARCHIVE is intended to be a repository of current thought, published science and clinical insights. Often, only abstracts can appear due to copy right issues. Interested members will take the time to pull detailed information in areas where interest peaks. It is an evolving resource which will grow over time as members contribute to the knowledge base. It is not a space for advertisement. While there may be sponsors from time-to-time, this area is intended to be a members' area for research and review. Submit potential posting information to information@bioidenticalhormonesociety.com.

In the future, BHS will establish a member FORUM to contain user groups for the open dialoging of germane issues. Anticipated groups will include the MD community, clinical community, science community and others as needs arise. This does necessitate a "hosted" capability such that inappropriate postings are blocked. Stay tuned as this resource becomes available.

BHS has added hundreds of articles to its ARCHIVE location.
Members may simply click here to log-in

Welcome to the Bio-Identical Hormone Society! We've organized to further promote the return to principles of Nature in human endocrinology. We know that human hormone therapy should exactly replicate human molecular configurations, quantities, routes of administration, and inter-relationships with other hormones as found in healthy, normally functioning humans.

If you're not a physician, you might wonder why we need a medical society to promote the obvious. After all, shouldn't the goal of any human therapy be to restore normal, natural human function as exactly as possible?

If you're a physician, you know the reason. For nearly a century, medical therapies have been dominated by the use of patent medicines. We're taught to use them from our days in medical school. Years later, when we're out in practice, using patent medications as first-step therapy is “built in”, and seems perfectly normal.

If you're not a physician, you may be surprised to know that medical schools don't teach therapies using molecules normally present in our bodies or in Nature as “first-line” therapies. You might think medical schools would teach the use of alien, patent molecules only when human or otherwise Natural molecules fail.

Or you may not be surprised at all. But you may be surprised to know that the situation in endocrinology—hormone diagnosis and therapy—actually isn't as bad as it is in many other areas of medical therapeutics. The large majority of diabetics are now using bio-identical human insulin. The most often prescribed form of thyroid hormone is “levothyroxine”, a molecule identical to one of the two major thyroid hormones. (It's entirely true that this therapy omits the other major thyroid hormone as well as minor ones, but still, it's progress.) A major prescription form of male hormone therapy uses bio-identical testosterone. Another bio-identical hormone therapy uses erythropoietin (EPO), a kidney hormone which promotes red blood cell production. Some physicians prescribe growth hormone (GH), yet another bio-identical hormone.

However, much progress still needs to be made in therapeutic replacement of adrenal steroid hormones. The most commonly prescribe “replacements” are Prednisone, prednisolone and triamcinolone, (instead of bio-identical cortisol) and Florinef (instead of bio-identical aldosterone). The third major grouping of adrenal steroids, the “adrenal androgens” (whose major metabolite is DHEA) have no patentable, synthetic replacements yet, so they're simply ignored in most endocrinologic practice.

Actually, “progress” in replacement of adrenal steroids may be the wrong term. What's really needed here is “back to the future”, to the late 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s, when bio-identical cortisol and adrenal cortical extract (ACE) were the dominant and effective adrenal steroid therapies.

SEX STEROID THERAPIES

Although male hormone therapy is now mostly bio-identical, when it was first introduced in the 1940s, the patent molecule methyltestosterone was almost universally prescribed. But when methyltestosterone was observed in the 1950s to cause liver cancers and cardiovascular disease, it was dropped, and male hormone therapy (even with bio-identical testosterone) was largely neglected until the 1990s. Even today, a substantial (but fortunately shrinking) proportion of physicians still believe that bio-identical testosterone—the same molecule present in male bodies for hundreds of thousands of years—causes cardiovascular disease and possibly liver cancer.

We are at a similar juncture today with women's hormone therapies. The 2002 report from the Women's Health Initiative (USA) and the Million Woman Study (UK) both reached the same conclusion: using non-bio-identical hormones causes more harm than good. But even though the answer is right in front of us, waiting to be used, medicine is still reluctant to grasp the obvious: Women's hormones are what belong in women's bodies!

It's a purpose of the Bio-identical Hormone Society to promote this obvious fact. We know that human hormone therapy should exactly replicate human molecular configurations, quantities, routes of administration, and inter-relationships with other hormones as are found in healthy, normally functioning humans. We know that this applies to women's hormone replacement therapy as well as to all other hormone replacement therapy.

It's also the purpose of the Society to promote close measurement and monitoring of bio-identical hormone therapy for women. Physicians have done this all along for bio-identical insulin therapy by measuring blood sugars and hemoglobin A1c, for bio-identical thyroid (albeit partial) therapy by measuring T3, T4, and TSH, for testosterone therapy by measuring serum testosterone and monitoring the PSA. But women's hormone therapy has gone unmeasured for over four decades because there are no “normal” levels of equilin (70% of horse estrogens, Premarin) and patentable, synthetic medroxyprogesterone (Provera) in women's bodies with which to compare. It's well past time to return to monitoring by measurement of what's being done in this area of hormone replacement, too.

If you're not a physician, this all may seem obvious. If you are a physician, and it's obvious, join us! Come to one of our seminars, and learn not only from the most recent scientific research about bio-identical hormone replacement, but also from the physician with the longest clinical experience (twenty-three years) with bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and it's measurement and monitoring for women and men. And if you're a physician to whom bio-identical hormone replacement seems like a foreign concept, come to our seminars, too. You'll find that we're “on board” as you are with bio-identical human insulin, thyroid, testosterone, and erythropoietin…and that bio-identical hormones for women (as well as bio-identical adrenal steroids for both sexes) aren't really so strange after all.