Health study publicity detrimental to women
Dr. Anne Calhoun is a neurologist friend of mine at the University of North Carolina who specializes in women’s mood disorders. We were talking at our fortnightly continuing education meeting (TMIS) at Chatham Hospital a couple of years ago when she remarked that the Women’s Health Initiative publicity had set women’s health care back 20 years. I’m older, and I added, “No, it set it back 30 years.”
I am now beginning to see the ill effects showing up in my practice that are directly attributable to women stopping their estrogen. Unfortunately, they are older now, and resuming their estrogen at this stage does carry some real cardiovascular/clotting potential complications.
Fortunately, I also have many women without a uterus who have been on their replacement estrogen for decades and who continue to do well.
No one has yet successfully contradicted the landmark study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in the 1970s that showed that “all cause” mortality of women without a uterus on estrogen was one-third the rate of those without estrogen.
Thank you very much for the enlightening article, “Go ahead and eat that grapefruit” (op-ed column, May 18), by Carol Tavris and Dr. Avrum Bluming.
John R. Dykers Jr., M.D.
Siler City
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