Could it be true: a “natural” form of hormone replacement therapy with none of the risks of traditional hormone prescription medication, but all the benefits for menopausal women, from reducing hot flashes and night sweats to relieving moodiness and painful intercourse?

What’s more, says actress Suzanne Somers, the unofficial spokeswoman for “bioidentical hormones,” these “chemically matched” hormones can combat the aging process, eliminate headaches, reduce anxiety, improve your memory, increase your libido, get rid of body odor, and fight fatigue.
 
Unfortunately, these claims are too good to be true, warn experts at the Food and Drug Administration, North American Menopause Society, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and Endocrine Society.

Dispelling 'hype'

The organizations seek to educate consumers, dispel marketing hype around such hormones, and set the record straight on what’s true and what’s not about hormone replacement therapy, or HRT for short.
 
To fully understand what bioidentical hormones are and why many women are asking about them, look to July 2002 when the Women’s Health Initiative, a major research project involving thousands of women, showed hormone replacement therapy may raise the risk of heart disease, breast cancer, stroke, blood clots, and dementia.

As a result, millions of women stopped taking traditional prescription forms of HRT. 
 
“Many women made a move off traditional HRT because they were concerned about their health, but they have gone into the bioidentical market as guinea pigs,” says Dr. Wulf H. Utian, executive director of the North American Menopause Society and professor emeritus of reproductive biology, obstetrics and gynecology at the Case Western Reserve University’s medical school in Cleveland.

“The science-based evidence and the medical community are all on the same page: We have a major concern about the bioidentical hormone movement. There is no scientific basis to what Suzanne Somers and her second-rate doctors are doing.”

'Custom mixed'
 
Bioidentical hormones are marketed as “custom mixed” to match an individual woman’s hormone levels. A doctor or pharmacist tests the patient’s hormone levels using a blood or saliva test, then prescribes a unique mixture of estrogen, progesterone, and other ingredients to fit the woman’s profile. The prescription is mixed at a compounding pharmacy.
 
Experts contend this scenario poses several problems. For starters, women’s hormone levels change all the time, making the blood and saliva test results questionable, Utian claims.

“In a normal reproductive cycle, the blood levels of estrogen change from moment to moment and from day to day,” he says, adding for that reason, it’s impossible to accurately gauge a woman’s hormone levels.

Doctors using traditional HRT prescription medications instead prescribe the lowest dose to help relieve menopausal symptoms, Utian says.
 
No government oversight

Second, compounded bioidentical hormones are not overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the country’s prescription drugs. As a result, “many bioidentical hormone formulations can be inconsistent in dose and purity,” says the Endocrine Society’s October 2006 position statement.
 
“Essentially, patients are doing an experiment of one,” says Dr. Nanette Santoro, a professor of women’s health at Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y. Women who take bioidentical hormones “are putting an unknown quantity of unknown ingredients in their body,” she adds.
 
What’s more, although no studies have been done reporting the hazards of bioidentical hormones, “this fact is turned around and presented as if this means they are completely safe,” Santoro says.
 
In fact, Utian says, bioidentical hormones have exactly the same potential risks and benefits of traditional, FDA-approved medications. And, he charges, the claim that bioidentical hormones are more natural because they are derived from plants is also misleading: plant compounds are no more natural to humans than mare urine, from which  some traditional HRT medications are derived.
 
So what’s the bottom line? Menopause experts say to proceed with caution. Be leery of marketing claims, question whether results from a large clinical study back up the health claims, ask your doctor plenty of questions, and read as much as you can to be sure you get the complete story about all types of hormones.