Lack of Hormone Replacement Therapy a Likely Cause
Suicide is on the increase among middle-aged Americans - up nearly 20 per cent from 1999 to 2004.
The rate is even higher for women. For those aged 45 to 55, the rate leapt 31 per cent.
The New York Times describes it as "a surprising and baffling public health mystery." (February 19, 2008), but there are two clear and unmistakably explanations for this disturbing trend.
First: The huge increase in the use and abuse of prescription drugs - from anti-depressants, pain killers to Ambien to Viagra. We are bombarded with TV commercials extolling their dubious benefits, urging us to ask our doctors for prescriptions and leaving us with the impression that these powerful medications will solve all our problems. They won't. In fact, they create new problems which require additional medications, depressed and foggy thinking and diminishing quality of life. So we reap the reward of the pharmaceutical industry's greed.
Second: The sudden drop in the use of hormone replacement therapy in the wake of the Women's Health Initiative in 2002. The threat of heart attack, stroke and cancer scared many women and their doctors away from products like Wyeth's Premarin and Prempro. Rightful choice. But did anyone look at the effects sudden drop of hormones causes in women in mid-life?
The Government and big pharma abandoned these women - never explaining that hormones are crucial to their health and wellbeing - and never helping them seek out safe and effective alternatives to supplement and replace the hormones their bodies made naturally when they were younger.
Instead women suffering symptoms of menopause are presented with brutal options: Keep taking the synthetic products which have been shown to cause deadly side-effects, go on anti-depressants - or go cold turkey. What happened to bioidentical hormones, conventional methods used all over Europe for decades with high degree of success and safety? They are being vilified and victimized by the politics of money.
And we are surprised and baffled by this tragic outcome?
What we don't need is another 5 years of research to figure out what is really going on. We already have 6 years of wasted time behind us in the matter of hormones for women.
What we do need is the truth and doctors must take their role as helpers and healers seriously and honestly!
|
