Customer Reviews

Dr. Susan Love's Hormone Book : Making Informed Choices About Menopause

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I write on January 27, 2000, two days after the embargo was lifted on the National Cancer Institutes new findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, on the role of estrogens alone, and estrpogen -progestin combinations, in breast and uterine cancer. If you have a uterus and take estrogens without progestins you invite endometrial cancer. If you add progestins to the estrogen you avoid the cancer "down there" but substantially increase your chances of getting it "up top" in your breast. The longer you stay on hormones the more your chances of uterine and breast cancer keep rising...and rising.. There's much to consider and under some circumstances taking hormones, especially for the short run might make sense. - See if you can look the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association -- and check out the accompanying editorial by scientists from Harvard's School of Public Health, titled "Postmenopausal Estrogens- Opposed, Unopposed or None of the Above" which concludes that "it is time to reasses...the commonly held belief that aging rountinely requires pharmcological management..." In 1997,Susan Love was excorriated for presenting exactly this reasonably cautious and honest viewpoint in her splendid HORMONE BOOK Meantime, 12 million US women continue to take estrogen alone, while 8.6 take it with progestin. I wish every one of them would read this excellent work., and reconsider. And I personally am exceedingly proud to present a 1999 interview with our heroic Dr. Love in my own new book (with Gary Null) FOR WOMEN ONLY; YOUR GUIDE TO HEALTH EMPOWERMENT.

In preparing to write a book about menopause I reviewed well over 50 menopause books. Without question, this is the most authoritative, most exhaustively researched, most comprehensive, and one of the most accessible menopause book available. The book is also amazingly even handed. If you can have only one menopause book in your library, this should be the one.

This book covers all the bases you'll want to consider when facing menopause. The author discusses many aspects of menopause, including symptoms, treatments (both conventional and alternative), and long-term risk of breast cancer, osteoporosis, and heart disease.

Some of the things I really like about this book: The author dispels several myths (like taking estrogen leads to youthful-looking skin) and pulls the curtain back on the cozy relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and medical research. The reason all the "gold standard" studies on menopause have been done using Premarin, which contains horse estrogens not found in humans, is because researchers get that drug free from Wyeth-Ayerst (the Premarin manufacturer and patent-holder). As the author acknowledges, the collecting the urine that goes into Premarin causes hardship to countless horses and their offspring, and women ingesting the drug get all sorts of serious medical complications. It will be great for women everywhere when medical researchers give equal study to the hormones that are found naturally in human women (which so far seem to be much more benign than Premarin, but being non-patentable hold less potential for financial profit).

Some things I didn't like about the book: The author cites a lot of evidence gleaned from nonhuman studies (done on monkeys, rats, and mice) even though common wisdom holds that animals are a very poor model for humans. (About 80% of the drugs that pass animal tests are later found to be harmful to humans.) She does mention the importance of vitamins and minerals beyond calcium and Vitamin D, but I'd like to see more emphasis given. (See books like The Bone Density Diet or Preventing and Reversing Osteoporosis for more on that.) Finally, she doesn't acknowledge that women without a uterus can also benefit from taking progesterone; in fact she often muddles the (important) difference between progesterone and progestin and falsely implies at times that the harmful effects of taking progestin apply to progesterone as well. (Note: progesterone is natural to a human woman's body; progestin is a molecularly altered compound which can be patented but which acts differently from progesterone in the body.)

Overall, there is a ton of helpful information in this book and the good certainly outweighs the bad. This is a great primer for women who plan to live for a very long time!

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of hormones and alternatives to dealing with premenopause, menopause, and long-term prevention. Details are provided which include alternative approaches, including diet, exercise, etc. It even includes a final helpful chapter on making your own decisions. The only negative thing is that it was written in 1997, and there may be more current information available now. Wish she would release an updated edition.

If you're female, you either have gone -- or will go -- through menopause. You may sometimes have symptoms (hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings) ... or questions. Should you take hormones, or not? Do the benefits of trying to prevent heart disease and osteoporosis outweigh the risk of contracting breast cancer? The answers are neither clear nor universal.

This is a must read for both males and females as Dr. Love handles the issues related to menopause in an unbiased and clear dialogue. Menopause was a hidden passage of life and this book has brought the subject into the open with humor and good taste

I have breast cancer and with all the information hurling at us I don't need confusion with my treatment. There were conflicting information on what to take for breast cancers who has hot flashes from chemo and women who are going through normal course in life. She mentions to take Black Cohosh to prevent hot flashes and than on one Internet site I read Susan Love mentioning that breast cancers should not take this herb. Vitamin E is recommended for anti-cancer but she mentions not for node-positive. These are not just two conflicts. She should have separated the book Hotflashes for Cancer patients and Hotflashes for Menopausal women. People who have never had hotflashes from chemo should keep their mouth shut. I wish these health providers take chemo personally then they wouldn't be recommending it blindly to every breast cancer patients. She mentions Chinese hormones and I have been told by my Chinese practitioner not to take even natural estrogen because of my Breast cancer.

I was looking for something a little more objective.

I was looking for something a little more objective.