Women's Health Initiative
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Search complete. 380 mentions across 209 episodes found for "Women's Health Initiative".
Oct 27, 2026
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
We have to stop the blame and the shame.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
So back to the Women's Health Initiative.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
I want our listeners
Mary Claire HaverHOST
to understand that study was with a very specific type of hormone therapy, which was the most popular form back in the 90s when we were starting this study.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
Exactly.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
And synthetic, we, you know, we now know that synthetic progestin is going to carry, we think, a higher breast cancer risk than a non-synthetic.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
And it's important to note that the Women's Health Initiative study, and we're going to, you know, for patients who had not been diagnosed with breast cancer, and so I know we're going to talk about the breast cancer studies.
Eleonora TeplinskyGUEST
Yeah.
Nikolina LaucGUEST
And they're not ideal because they have the old form of HRT, unfortunately.
Nikolina LaucGUEST
But one large cohort that we already analyzed, but we haven't written a preprint, it's the Women's Health Study, not the WHI.
Nikolina LaucGUEST
It's a nurse's study.
Nikolina LaucGUEST
So it's very well controlled.
Mandy RyleHOST
So if you're like me and you're doing the hormones and you still have pain, Listen to this.
Mandy RyleHOST
A large study from the Women's Health Initiative found that women receiving estrogen alone reported only slightly, slightly.
Mandy RyleHOST
I looked at the study.
Mandy RyleHOST
It was a very, very small difference, slightly less joint pain than women who were receiving a placebo.
Ronald HoffmanHOST
reduced in recognition of the fact that some of these studies that put us off hormone replacement therapy for women were erroneously performed and interpreted.
Ronald HoffmanHOST
Women's Health Initiative study says number one culprit Uh, and now we're recognizing that hormone replacement therapy for women is a less dangerous and be more beneficial and that undertaking it, you know, not so much when you're, you know, 75 years old, cause maybe that's shutting the barn door after the horse gets out, but undertaking it at or near the time of menopause can really forestall a lot of bone loss.
Ronald HoffmanHOST
It's a unrecognized tool.
Belinda BeckGUEST
Yeah, it's a classic throwing the baby out with the bathwater sort of story with certainly the Women's Health Initiative terrified everybody because it seemed like the hormone therapy was associated with a bunch of really bad side effects.
Belinda BeckGUEST
Heart disease,
Ronald HoffmanHOST
breast cancer, all that stuff,
Belinda BeckGUEST
So it is an individual conversation to have with your doctor depending on your circumstances, but it is no longer the prior – the date of all that it used to be.
Belinda BeckGUEST
And I think we do need to keep an eye on it, though, because you talk about creep with treatment.
Prudence HallGUEST
I think another misconception is that, well, if I start taking hormones, I will get breast cancer or I will decline and get cancer.
Prudence HallGUEST
They go back kind of to the Women's Health Initiative in 2001 that has been torn apart and looked at, and it actually was just not a very good study.
Prudence HallGUEST
Terrible study.
Prudence HallGUEST
Yeah, pretty bad study.
Sharon LemoineGUEST
We have done a lot of work to dismantle the myths out there of bad research.
Sharon LemoineGUEST
I'm referring to the Women's Health Initiative and started in the mid-1990s.
Sharon LemoineGUEST
In early 2000s, they thought they saw a uptick of the incidence of breast cancer and stroke and had that press conference, scared everybody.
Sharon LemoineGUEST
And so it's taking a lot of time to look back at that research and say that this was not correct.
Karl NadolskyHOST
So, yeah, I mean, can you...
Karl NadolskyHOST
Tell us about are you do you mind telling us more about your real personal story, how you went through and maybe we can then sort of shift that into how the pendulum has swung from the you know, the women's health initiative before we were even practicing medicine that scared everyone away from menopausal hormone therapy when it seemed like everyone was on it back in the day to then now the pendulum, of course, like you just said, it basically swung too far to the other direction.
Amanda ThebeGUEST
So I went into my 40s a little bit smug.
Amanda ThebeGUEST
I was like, yeah.
18 MINS LATER
Karl NadolskyHOST
So it's not that everyone has to have menopausal hormone therapy per se.
Karl NadolskyHOST
And there are absolutely established benefits.
Karl NadolskyHOST
And probably a lot more people should be on menopausal hormone therapy than have been since the Women's Health Initiative.
Karl NadolskyHOST
And that's definitively treating the vasomotor symptoms, which leads to better sleep, which leads to better just kind of general well-being.
Esther BlumHOST
They're not looking at your lifestyle.
Esther BlumHOST
I heard when the FDA congressional hearings took place just a week or two before I've recorded this podcast, There was literally a doctor on the panel, one of the original doctors from the Women's Health Initiative study, and she advised women to eat a low-fat diet.
Esther BlumHOST
I was so enraged just hearing that.
Esther BlumHOST
That's not proper advice.
31 MINS LATER
Esther BlumHOST
Here's a good rule of thumb.
Esther BlumHOST
Here's something to think about.
Esther BlumHOST
If you are over 60, or if you're more than 10 years past your last period, the risk picture changes in that Women's Health Initiative study, older women who started oral estrogen years after menopause had a higher rate of heart attack and stroke.
Esther BlumHOST
That A, it was not statistically significant, but it was increased in the first years of treatment.
Cynthia GeyerGUEST
But the formulation really, really matters.
Cynthia GeyerGUEST
Even in the Women's Health Initiative, for women who'd had a hysterectomy and only took estrogen, there was actually a reduction in breast cancer risk.
Cynthia GeyerGUEST
So something about-
Mark HymanHOST
That's fascinating.
7 MINS LATER
Mark HymanHOST
It helps blood sugar, insulin signaling, mitochondria.
Mark HymanHOST
So there's so many benefits that I think it's coming kind of more into the swing.
Mark HymanHOST
Because I remember when we were practicing at Canyon Ranch, that's when the Women's Health Initiative came out.
Mark HymanHOST
And it was like everybody was on hormones.
Michelle BeccioHOST
The hormone groups were studied back in 2022.
Michelle BeccioHOST
The WHI, they use progestin.
Michelle BeccioHOST
And progestin is actually a lab-made drug that is designed to act like progesterone in the body, but is not effective.
Michelle BeccioHOST
Progesterone, right? And they were mixed.
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