Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Anti-HRT movement loses steam

In the summer of 2002 the leaders of a government-sponsored health study (the Women’s Health Initiative, or WHI) garnered tremendous press coverage by claiming that female Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) was harmful rather than beneficial. Millions of credulous women immediately abandoned HRT as a treatment for menopause. Since then, perhaps in retaliation for scathing criticism from other researchers, WHI leaders have gone even further, disparaging nearly every aspect of HRT therapy, and in the process dismissing users’ perceived benefits from HRT as mere delusions or the “placebo effect”. Each of these pronouncements has been trumpeted by naive journalists as further evidence that HRT was nothing but a huge medical mistake.

But there are now signs that the public panic over this issue is subsiding. Women who quit HRT are now returning to it. Having had a taste of life without HRT, they are now once again aware of the benefits it provides — notwithstanding the insulting assumptions of the WHI researchers.

Link to a news article illustrating the attitude of the WHI researchers:

Delusions of Feeling Better

Link to a news article about the return of common sense:

HRT fears ebb for women in menopause

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Many women have suffered health declines as a result of their ill-advised stopping of HRT therapy. This might have been avoided had the news industry done some analysis instead of merely parroting the words of WHI spokespeople. Journalists should have informed readers that the conclusions of this study are at odds with most of the HRT research of the past four decades, and that the WHI study’s conclusions were based on very little testing.

As an example of the most recent WHI claims, we have an Associated Press article (one of many with the same slant) that focuses on cognition:

HRT no help for memory or sleep

On the other hand, there are many research studies that contradict the WHI claims about estrogens and cognition. Here are links to just two of them:

Estrogen and cognitive aging in women.

Mood symptoms and cognitive performance in women estrogen users and nonusers and men.