> Ardeith writes:
> Menopause is the next big money maker for the drug companies....
> Some 3.5 million female baby-boomers are just entering the
> Change lately, and they are ready candidates for prescriptions
> for HRT.....so they can remain young and sexy looking.....
> Sorry, ladies, but Ma Nature did not intend you to remain
> young and sexy looking into your fifties and sixties....Ma


First of all, HRT does not necessarily enrich the drug companies. You can
take natural progesterone, for instance, and this has no patent on it and is
in no way proprietary.

The drug companies promote phoney chemical analogs that are not natural
hormones and cause a lot of harm, IMHO. But that does not make natural HRT
bad or undesireable.

Second, I think a lot of women do need HRT in the form of natural hormone
progesterone. It keeps them from being too moody and depressed (important),
it prevents osteoporosis, and has a lot of other benefits (helps promote
healthy sleep patterns for instance).

It is more than post-menopause, it is peri-menopause also, quite a length of
years. Why shouldn't women help themselves?

Nature never "intended" for women to be comfortable post-menopause. After
reproductive utility is over, nature intended perhaps for women to get old
and die. But that doesn't mean that we all should give in to what nature
intended. Healthy, natural HRT can help women live more happily through
middle age and old age.

--Richard