The Estrogen Elixir

The Estrogen Elixir PDF Author: Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801886023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
In the first complete history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Elizabeth Siegel Watkins illuminates the complex and changing relationship between the medical treatment of menopause and cultural conceptions of aging. Describing the development, spread, and shifting role of HRT in America from the early twentieth century to the present, Watkins explores how the interplay between science and society shaped the dissemination and reception of HRT and how the medicalization—and subsequent efforts toward the demedicalization—of menopause and aging affected the role of estrogen as a medical therapy. Telling the story from multiple perspectives—physicians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, government regulators, feminist health activists, and the media, as well as women as patients and consumers—she reveals the striking parallels between estrogen’s history as a medical therapy and broad shifts in the role of medicine in an aging society. Today, information about HRT is almost always accompanied by a laundry list of health risks. While physicians and pharmaceutical companies have striven to develop the safest possible treatment for the symptoms of menopause and aging, many specialists question whether HRT should be prescribed at all. Drawing from a wide range of scholarly research, archival records, and interviews, The Estrogen Elixir provides valuable historical context for one of the most pressing debates in contemporary medicine.

The Estrogen Elixir

The Estrogen Elixir PDF Author: Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801886023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book

Book Description
In the first complete history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Elizabeth Siegel Watkins illuminates the complex and changing relationship between the medical treatment of menopause and cultural conceptions of aging. Describing the development, spread, and shifting role of HRT in America from the early twentieth century to the present, Watkins explores how the interplay between science and society shaped the dissemination and reception of HRT and how the medicalization—and subsequent efforts toward the demedicalization—of menopause and aging affected the role of estrogen as a medical therapy. Telling the story from multiple perspectives—physicians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, government regulators, feminist health activists, and the media, as well as women as patients and consumers—she reveals the striking parallels between estrogen’s history as a medical therapy and broad shifts in the role of medicine in an aging society. Today, information about HRT is almost always accompanied by a laundry list of health risks. While physicians and pharmaceutical companies have striven to develop the safest possible treatment for the symptoms of menopause and aging, many specialists question whether HRT should be prescribed at all. Drawing from a wide range of scholarly research, archival records, and interviews, The Estrogen Elixir provides valuable historical context for one of the most pressing debates in contemporary medicine.

The Estrogen Elixir

The Estrogen Elixir PDF Author: Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
In the first complete history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Elizabeth Siegel Watkins illuminates the complex and changing relationship between the medical treatment of menopause and cultural conceptions of aging. Describing the development, spread, and shifting role of HRT in America from the early twentieth century to the present, Watkins explores how the interplay between science and society shaped the dissemination and reception of HRT and how the medicalization—and subsequent efforts toward the demedicalization—of menopause and aging affected the role of estrogen as a medical therapy. Telling the story from multiple perspectives—physicians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, government regulators, feminist health activists, and the media, as well as women as patients and consumers—she reveals the striking parallels between estrogen’s history as a medical therapy and broad shifts in the role of medicine in an aging society. Today, information about HRT is almost always accompanied by a laundry list of health risks. While physicians and pharmaceutical companies have striven to develop the safest possible treatment for the symptoms of menopause and aging, many specialists question whether HRT should be prescribed at all. Drawing from a wide range of scholarly research, archival records, and interviews, The Estrogen Elixir provides valuable historical context for one of the most pressing debates in contemporary medicine.

Estrogen Matters

Estrogen Matters PDF Author: Carol Tavris
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
ISBN: 0316481181
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
A compelling defense of hormone replacement therapy, exposing the faulty science behind its fall from prominence and empowering women 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, Estrogen Matters sets the record straight on this beneficial treatment and provides an empowering path to wellness for women everywhere.

Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything PDF Author: Randi Hutter Epstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A guided tour through the strange science of hormones and the age-old quest to control them. Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research, and humorous details, Aroused introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies. Epstein exposes the humanity at the heart of hormone science with her rich cast of characters, including a 1920s doctor promoting vasectomies as a way to boost libido, a female medical student who discovered a pregnancy hormone in the 1940s, and a mother who collected pituitaries, a brain gland, from cadavers as a source of growth hormone to treat her son. Along the way, Epstein explores the functions of hormones such as leptin, oxytocin, estrogen, and testosterone, demystifying the science of endocrinology. A fascinating look at the history and science of some of medicine’s most important discoveries, Aroused reveals the shocking history of hormones through the back rooms, basements, and labs where endocrinology began.

Moods, Emotions, and Aging

Moods, Emotions, and Aging PDF Author: Phyllis J. Bronson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 144222102X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Despite the backlash against hormone replacement therapy, the depletion of natural hormones in the female body continues to be a problem for women at middle age and beyond. Remedying the problem has proved difficult for women and doctors who are unaware of, or reluctant to prescribe, bioidential hormones—those that match identically the hormones made naturally in the human body. Moods, Emotions, and Aging: Hormones and the Mind Body Connection explains the vital link for women between hormones, mood, and wellness. It outlines the dramatic hormonal shifts that women undergo in the years before menopause, and presents an approach to combining bioidentical hormone therapy with nutrients to achieve mood balance during midlife and beyond. Phyllis Bronson explains the differences between synthetic and bioidentical hormones, and offers vignettes of women who have used bioidentical hormones to help them deal with the changes that accompany natural hormone loss. This is a groundbreaking book for general readers written by a scientist who is able to take the mystery and the hype out of the hormone controversy. It is intended to empower women, along with their doctors, to make better and more informed choices about their health and well-being as they approach a time in their lives when things can seem like they are spinning out of control. The link between hormones, mood, emotions, and overall wellbeing is a powerful one, and when women are aware of it, they can take steps to bring themselves into better balance physically and emotionally. Here, Bronson shows them how.

Bio-Identical Hormones and Telomerase

Bio-Identical Hormones and Telomerase PDF Author: Dr. Hiroshi Demura
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450255760
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
As we grow older, many of us experience a tremendous amount of frustration because something inside us doesnt work the way it used to. Nutrition experts tell us to eat certain kinds of food some claim free radicals are the sole cause of aging, and that the only way to longevity is through antioxidant supplements. Fitness gurus tell us the only answer is exercise. When we do exercise or go on a diet, we feel a little betterbut not much, and not the way we felt when we were younger. We exercise or diet twice as much to stay at the same place, and even that is a challenge. The story has been the same throughout history, so we wonder if we should continue to fight the battle, or if we should just learn to grow old gracefully. Improvements in medical technology and new knowledge about exercise, nutrition, and rest are all part of the solution to remaining young and healthy. However, we continue to see some people who do not take particularly good care of themselves, yet are aging more gentlyand we know instinctively that parts of the anti-aging puzzle must still be missing.

Prescribed

Prescribed PDF Author: Jeremy A. Greene
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421405067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
The first authoritative look at the history of the prescription itself, Prescribed is a groundbreaking book that subtly explores the politics of therapeutic authority and the relations between knowledge and practice in modern medicine.

The Cult of Youth

The Cult of Youth PDF Author: James F. Stark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108484158
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The first account of anti-ageing and rejuvenation in modern Britain, exploring hormones, diet, electrotherapy, exercise and skin care.

Pharmageddon

Pharmageddon PDF Author: David Healy
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520275764
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This searing indictment, David Healy’s most comprehensive and forceful argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine, tackles problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many anti-depressants, attributes our current state of affairs to three key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.

Sex Hormones in Neurodegenerative Processes and Diseases

Sex Hormones in Neurodegenerative Processes and Diseases PDF Author: Gorazd Drevensek
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1789230144
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The book provides chapters on sex hormones and their modulation in neurodegenerative processes and pathologies, from basic molecular mechanisms, physiology, gender differences, to neuroprotection and clinical aspects for potential novel pharmacotherapy approaches. The book contains 14 chapters written by authors from various biomedical professions, from basic researchers in biology and physiology to medicine and veterinary medicine, pharmacologists, psychiatrist, etc. Chapters sum up the past and current knowledge on sex hormones, representing original new insights into their role in brain functioning, mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. The book is written for a broad range of audience, from biomedical students to highly profiled medical specialists and biomedical researchers, helping them to expand their knowledge on sex hormones in neurodegenerative processes and opening new questions for further investigation.