I think this is the part that probably concerns them:
(bolding mine)
It may not be that the bio-identical hormones are dangerous, per se, but replacing the conventional medical treatment with some kind of quackery would be a bad idea.
i think this has a lot more to do with doctors’ natural aversion to playing god. we’ve known for ages that we can use hormones and all sorts of things to enhance our bodies without too bad a side-effects. i mean we give the stuff to all our animals, for chrissakes. yet no one even discusses giving it to humans, and we ridicule people who take steroids. it’s ok if you have some wasting disease, but impermissible if you’re healthy.
this is an ethical issue
i’m not arguing it for it or against it. i think that once we begin toying with the ingredients that make us human, it’ll be soon that we destroy ourselves. (not by some accident or some “omg image what could happen” scenario. by purpose)
I did kind of wonder about that in the extremely negative reaction to Jose Canseco’s book where he was touting steroids as a virtual health elixir.
I’m a 48 year old man, strong and in good health, but the joints are a little creaky some mornings. Why would a testosterone (or whatever) steriod like supplement be bad for me if taken in moderation?
I’m not sure what she means by “bio-identical hormones,” but I know one can get formulations of estrogen and progesterone - very similar to the synthetic versions women take to reduce symptoms of menopause - that are called “bio-identical.” Those, at least, are not quackery, unless one is claiming that they are a fountain of youth. Most people should know better than to go to Suzanne Somers for health advice, though.
Isn’t she the one who also had breast cancer and refused to treat it with conventional medicine?
Actually she had a lumpectomy and radiation, which are conventional medicine. But she chose not to have chemotherapy, and used some kind unconventional treatment instead of that.
Are these really identical? Hormone mimics are a serious threat to animal and human health, since they bind to receptors blocking actual hormones from doing so. I’m not familiar with the term “bio-identical” (after 10 years in biology), so I’m not certain whether these are mimics or not.
It sounds like the term someone would come up with because production of the actual hormone is patented, so producing one that has the same effect but a different synthesis or chemical structure would produce a “bio-identical” one? I’m just stabbing in the dark here though.
Does anyone have a definition handy for “bio-identical?”
The term “bio-identical” is not a scientific one. It relates to the fact that many people believe that a pure synthetic substance is different from the same substance isolated from a natural source. Your body (or any other biological system) cannot tell the difference. A synthetic hormone has exactly the same effect as the natural one, although there could be differences due to the dose or the way it is administered.
