Hormone Replacement Therapy
This is interesting … HRT and breast cancer are in the news again today.
The Seattle Times reported yesterday that “Researchers from Seattle and three other locations across the country say that their study of breast-cancer rates among more than 200,000 women — all of whom received regular mammograms — showed cancer rates fell significantly after U.S. women began abandoning menopausal hormone therapy about seven years ago.”
You know … I took birth control pills for years. Though there is no proof that my doing so had any causal effect on my body (my diagnoses), I can’t help but wonder if messing with my own body’s hormonal system didn’t have dire consequences.
What do you think? HRT and birth control pills working against us? Just hype and misplaced concern? Let me know.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:25 am
I am hesitant to lump HRT with birth control pills. Do you know any reliable sources of information on a possible link between BC pills and breast cancer? They have lowered the hormone dosage in BC pills a lot. Being pregnant plays havoc with hormones, too, so which is worse? I am using the pill right now even though I had DCIS - I just think at this point in my life being pregnant would be harder on my health - financial and otherwise - so I am willing to take the risk. Two doctors I have consulted both gave me the okay. But I admit I still worry about it.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Chris, thanks for joining the conversation! My oncologist told me (reassured me?) that my use of birth control didn’t ’cause’ my cancer — and I’ve not read anything specifically to say that the two are related. I think that is why we do worry … because we just don’t know!
August 20th, 2007 at 7:40 am
I am not convinced that anything we do specifically causes breast cancer. I used the pill for 2 years and had difficulty with pregnancies (2 miscarriages, and 2 normal births). There is no “history” of breast cancer in my family, I ate well, treated my body well and yet I still developed breast cancer. I was someone who didn’t deal well with stress, so if anything, I would point my finger at stress and what I did to my body by putting it into over drive. But did that “cause” the cancer? Who can really say. I don’t even think researchers can say for certain. Cells change and something in our bodies made our cells change. Perhaps we were programmed that way from birth in our genetic code. Having breasts seems to be enough reason to develop cancer. So I don’t worry or stress about “why”. And that helps me as I move forward so that I don’t stress and worry “will it come back”. There are just some things we don’t know, can’t know and might never know.