June 8th ‘s cover story in Newsweek magazine criticizes Oprah for recommending alternative medical treatments. It goes further lambasting Suzanne Somers and implying that she is a wacko. They poke fun at and cynically present her health routines as ridiculous. I have a great deal of respect for Suzanne Somers and Oprah. They are both courageous pioneering type women who use their celebrity in positive ways to help others. If they didn’t disclose alternative styles of medical treatments and technology, who would, Newsweek?
Just opening the front cover of the June 8th issue quickly tells you who runs THAT show. There are four major advertisements by large pharmaceutical companies in this issue alone. Not surprisingly, one of which happens to be Wyeth, the pharma-giant spending millions of dollars lobbying congress to shut down mom and pop compounding pharmacies. “Why”? you might say. Hmmm, maybe it has something to do with the plummeting sales of their notorious products Premarin and Prempro, the drugs shown in the Women’s Health Initiative study to increase the incidence of stroke, heart attack and breast cancer in users. Actually, this is the only hormone product proven to cause these diseases, yet this is the same company working diligently to have Estriol removed from the market. Estriol is the only hormone shown to PROTECT women from breast cancer. This is very confusing! Why would a drug company want to remove a drug from the market that helps women while their own product has been shown to be harmful and it is still being marketed and sold? This would be a really good question to ask the editor of NEWSWEEK magazine. A magazine that is accepting large amounts of money from Wyeth while publishing articles criticizing women who want to take bioidentical hormones and not Wyeth’s disease causing products. Could there be a connection here?
Duuuuh!
I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek years ago for similar reasons. This is not a news magazine. It is a platform for wealthy advertisers to express their opinions and influence public sentiment. There is virtually nothing in their cover story about Oprah that I agree with. There is not enough room here on this blog site for me to fully express my opinions.
There has never been any data to prove that bioidentical hormones are harmful, like Prempro. Bioidentical hormones are not “synthesized” as the article contends. I would even question the credibility of the expert references cited. such as Doctor Nanette Santoro a reproductive endocrinologist. She specializes in helping women get pregnant. I doubt she sees many women who come to her for menopause. She states that the idea that menopause is a hormone deficiency disease is “discredited”. I wonder if she thinks menopause is an antidepressant, sleeping pill, and pain medication deficiency disease then.
One major point that the writers Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert continually keep missing is that the hormones and especially Suzanne Somers goals are to “restore youth”. This is absolutely not the intention of replacing missing hormones. It is to bring back health. It is well known that the incidence of major illnesses like heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis and did I say Cancer, all increase dramatically after menopause. Young women with super high hormone levels are virtually immune to these diseases. The incidence of heart disease alone rises so dramatically after menopause that the risk to women equals that to men.
My orientation to replacing postmenopausal hormones in women is not to keep them young, but to keep them healthy. Aging does not have to be synonymous with disease. We cannot stop the aging process but we have more options to preventing disease than ever before.
Despite the efforts by Big Pharma and their mouthpiece, Newsweek magazine, the truth will be told, by courageous, intelligent women like Suzanne Somers, Oprah and Robin McGraw. A pioneering spirit built this country and it is still alive today. Big advertisers and publishers may have the loudest voice, but at the end of the day the facts will be known and the truth will win out. It always works that way.