In a recent article by Mayo Clinic July 2011 “Bioidentical Hormone Therapy” (BHRT) notes the Endocrine Society defines bioidentical hormones as, “compounds that have exactly the same chemical and molecular structure as hormones that are produced in the human body.” Drugs are very different than the definition noted above. In a book by Thierry Hertoghe, The Hormone Solution—Stay Younger Longer says “Drugs are medically defined as therapeutic substances whose structure and nature are foreign to the human organism. Hormones, then, are not drugs.”
This is significant as HRC Medical uses only hormones that are chemically the same as the hormones we produced when we were 25 years old, in other words, they are bio-available just as they were, which we produced on our own, when our ovaries (or testicles in men) were functioning normally. In a young normally functioning female her ovaries will produce estradiol, progesterone and testosterone. Bio-available hormones are derived from a chemical, diosgenin, from the root of yams.
The reason drugs should be taken only with great care and research is exactly the fact that they are foreign to our body. The side effects are often more lengthy than the positive effects.
These natural bio-available hormones have the same possible side-effects as an excess of the natural hormones we produced would be. If we had too much testosterone we may have pimples or excess hair. If we had excess estradiol we might have heavy periods or sore breasts. If we had too much progesterone we could have increased appetite and fat storage. This is the reason at HRC Medical we are constantly checking your serum blood levels to assure you are not given an excess of any of these hormones.
An example of a drug versus a bio-available natural hormone is Premarin or Prempro, a combination of Premarin and Provera. To explain just one reason for the dramatic side effects of the drug Premarin is demonstrated by the fact that Premarin, produced from the urine of a pregnant mare, requires 13 weeks to be eliminated from the body; whereas, natural bio-available estradiol is excreted in 24 hours. The reason our bodies cannot eliminate the unnatural chemicals found in horse urine is because we do not have the enzymes a horse has. But we do have the necessary enzymes to breakdown natural bio-available estradiol.
Drugs may be life-saving in some circumstances, but when we can do something that is natural for our bodies to process, it just makes sense to take advantage of this.