However, all hormones, although natural, are powerful substances and to quote my good friend Dame Dr Shirley Bond ‘should not be taken as a preventive, but for a specific and needed purpose.’  She is backed up by a recently published assessment by the American Medical Association (AMA) of the risks and benefits of growth hormone, testosterone, estrogen and DHEA for anti-ageing.

One leading medical authority in the USA who has criticised the use of anti-ageing hormones is Dr. Thomas T. Perls, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.   In an editorial appearing in the Future Medicine journal Ageing Health, he applauds the courage and example displayed by the AMA and particularly takes drug companies to task for their use of the words ‘all natural’ relating to drugs that are exactly the same as hormones prescribed by endocrinologists for specific diseases.

The AMA’s review of the risks and benefits of these hormones in relation to anti-ageing concludes that the risks of these hormones out-weigh the little or no benefits.

Specific problems with testosterone

By the late 1940s testosterone was being touted as an anti-ageing wonder drug and it has specific, and good, medical uses.  For women it has prescribed for low sex drive and depression and the side effects most commonly reported are acne and weight gain – due to changes in bone and muscle.  However there is a theoretical risk that testosterone therapy may increase the risk of breast or gynaecological cancers, and further research is needed on this link.   In 2006 it was reported that women taking a combination pill including estrogen and methyltestosterone (a synthetic testosterone) were at considerably heightened risk of breast cancer. This drug was withdrawn.

For men the risk of testosterone therapy can be problems in urinating and the development of fatty tissue in the breast area.

Whatever you feel about the ageing process it might be wise to discuss any such hormone therapy with your doctor and ask about both the success rate, and the risks.

It involved almost 58,000 women in France over a 12 year period and adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting a link between some female hormones and asthma. French and Mexican researchers found that compared with women who had never used any form of HRT, those who did use it were 21 percent more likely to develop asthma, but the risk was most significant in those using estrogen alone.

Among these women, the overall risk of asthma was 54 percent higher than for women who had never used any form of HRT, the scientists from the Gustave Roussy Institute in France and the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica in Mexico wrote in a study in the British Medical Journal’s Thorax publication.

“There is now a large body of evidence suggesting a link between female hormones, including the use of HRT, the development of asthma and its severity,” Leanne Metcalf, director of research at the advocacy group Asthma UK, said in a commentary on the study.”However this is the first large-scale and long-term study to suggest that it is estrogen-only HRT which significantly increases the risk.”

Experts say asthma is more common in young women after they have started having periods, and hospital admissions for asthma are more common among women than men. Hormones play a part too, as the severity of asthma also varies throughout the menstrual cycle and during pregnancy, but the incidence tends, in general, to fall after menopause.

Dr John Lee said that normally they would disappear altogether at menopause and that to reduce them a progesterone regime should do the trick. My experience is that many women do suffer from fibroids around their thirties and forties and that they can be a real nuisance.

Fibroids are round, firm benign lumps of the muscular wall of the uterus, composed of smooth muscle and connective tissue, and seldom do you just get one. In size they start small and grow to something the size of an orange, but can get much bigger. The most usual consequences are painful or irregular periods and heavy bleeding, often accompanied by pain.

The usual option offered is a hysterectomy and many women, depending on their age, opt for this. If you have a highly skilled surgeon they can just remove the uterus intact, but this is not usually the case.

Prevention is the best option, so tackling oestrogen dominance is the first step because fibroids are produced by excess oestrogen and their growth is stimulated by it. Ensuring that you have adequate supplies of progesterone is a priority, so establish this with a blood or saliva test, and by using natural progesterone regularly you should be able to shrink the fibroids in size without resorting to surgery.

Once menopause is under way the fibroids will begin to shrink naturally, but if you are around ten years or so off your menopause you need to be aware that you are probably having anovulatory (non-ovulating) cycles and so you are producing much less progesterone than before but still the same amount of oestrogen. To check for this, have a blood or saliva test to check progesterone levels the week following your usual ovulation date. A low reading indicates lack of ovulation and the need to supplement with natural progesterone. 
 
If you experience any of the common signs of oestrogen dominance you will want to keep an eye out for fibroids and take action earlier rather than later to avoid surgery.