Oestrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Improves Women’s Well-Being, Lengthens Their Lives-and Doesn’t Raise the Risk of Breast Cancer

A compelling defence of hormone replacement therapy, exposing the faulty science behind its fall from prominence and empowering readers to make informed decisions about their health.For years, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was hailed as a miracle. Study after study showed that HRT, if initiated at the onset of menopause, could ease symptoms ranging from hot flashes to memory loss; reduce the risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and some cancers; and even extend a woman’s overall life expectancy. But when a large study by the Women’s Health Initiative announced results showing an uptick in breast cancer among women taking HRT, the winds shifted abruptly, and HRT, officially deemed a carcinogen, was abandoned.Now, sixteen years after HRT was left for dead, Dr. Bluming, a medical oncologist, and Dr. Tavris, a social psychologist, track its strange history and present a compelling case for its resurrection. They investigate what led the public — and much of the medical establishment — to accept the Women’s Health Initiative’s often exaggerated claims, while also providing a fuller picture of the science that supports HRT.A sobering and revelatory read, Oestrogen Matters sets the record straight on this beneficial treatment and provides an empowering path to wellness for women everywhere.

Reviews of Oestrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Improves Women’s Well-Being, Lengthens Their Lives-and Doesn’t Raise the Risk of Breast Cancer

This book is long overdue. Having spent over two decades advancing women's health, I was appalled by the Women's Health Initiative's efforts to sensationalize and distort their own findings to promote an anti-hormone-therapy agenda. Personally I have been taking HRT for over 25 years and have no intention of stopping. I hope Estrogen Matters draws enough attention to counter the fears and misinformation about HRT that so many women, and their physicians, still hold. * Phyllis Greenberger, MSW, former President and CEO of the Society for Women's Health Research * How could one flawed scientific conclusion become a persuasive juggernaut that changed the practice of women's health worldwide? In their fascinating account, Bluming and Tavris challenge that conclusion and unpack the reasons for its remarkable impact. * Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion * Well written, insightful, and hard hitting, Estrogen Matters successfully rebuts the billion-dollar, government-led study known as the Women's Health Initiative, which claimed that hormones for post-menopausal women are harmful. That study was wrong. It turns out estrogens do matter for women's health. * Vincent T. DeVita Jr., MD, Professor of Medicine, Yale School of Public Health and Yale Cancer Center * This book is long overdue, and I salute the authors for their courage and effort (and their clear, witty writing). I believe it is an ethical imperative for all clinicians who treat women in menopause or women with breast cancer to alert their patients to this book. It will not only improve women's quality of life, but also, on balance of probabilities, extend women's lives by delaying death from all other causes. * Michael Baum, MD, Professor Emeritus of Surgery and visiting professor of Medical Humanities, University College London *