Sue Richards, regular Canadian gal, heats up as her reproductive Best Before Date expires.
Monday, 3 March 2008
It’s time for a weeks worth of seriousness dear blog readers.
Besides being a natural stage of a woman’s reproductive life cycle, menopause is a major cash cow for the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. The latest pill to ‘win’ FDA approval is Wyeth’s new antidepressant Pristiq.
I say ‘win’ with great intention. Getting a new drug approved by the FDA is a game played by Big Pharma using large bags of money and a massive team of well paid lobbyists that push, push, push their drugs through the system.
This is wrong and dangerous and we all need to wake up and realize that not all ‘dealers’ lurk around playgrounds. The growing menopause community of babe boomers, aka YOU, are the latest target for the legal Drug Lords of our times.
According to Dr Erika Schwartz, “the new drug provides a lucrative new revenue stream for Wyeth. How lucrative? Well, on the day it won FDA approval (February 29) Wyeth stock soared 2.5% while the rest of Wall St tumbled 315 points.”
So now we have yet another lucrative anti-depressant on the market - this one supposedly designed to deal with hot flashes.
Call me hormone happy but does this not imply that symptoms of menopause are linked to symptoms of depression?
And how ironic that a national health story about the ineffectiveness of anti-depressants swept the world just last week. Apparently the good old, harmless placebo ’sugar pill’ gets you the same results as the addictive, lifer anti-depressant.
So what besides money is Pristiq about?
Be very wary my menopausal girlfriends. Danger lurks in our playground.
Sue Richards
PSSST: For more of the politics beneath this approval, read Dr. Erika’s blog post.
Menopause Tags: My Menopause Blog, my menopause blog,Sue Richards, peri-menopausal, menopause relief, guelph blog, baby boomer, womens health news, menopause symptoms , pdrecovery , Parkinsons .
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Full disclosure - I’m doing PR for Dr. Phuli Cohan, an internist who was singled out at an anti-aging conference 10 years ago as a “bad example” of aging. That got her to research the value of natural hormones (no pills) as a treatments for menopause, and ever since, her patients no longer get exhausted in mid-afternoon, suffer hot flashes, lose their sex drive and all the rest.
I’d like to send you Dr. Cohan’s book, “The Natural Hormone Makeover” and more details about how she and her patients successfully “punctuate life without a period”. Would you send me your email? Best, Sherry
March 5th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Sue & Sherry,
After the recent report that sugar pills are as effective as antidepressants and that 52% of the female suicides in Sweden in 2006 were on antidepressants, you are right to stay off these dangerous drugs. Many friends of mine found that when they balanced their hormones they were no longer depressed. No pill needed.
Steve Hayes
http://novusdetox.com
March 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Hormone replacement can help to fight depression in menopausal patients. In my opinion taking hormones with the same molecular structure, as our own, is much better, then taking antidepressants (if it is possible). Also the recent study, published in New England Journal of Medicine found a bias in publishing results of antidepressant trials: favorable results were much more likely to be published, then negative. This means, that antidepressants are not as effective, as we might think. Therefore, before starting a woman on antidepressant, we should at least check her hormone levels. This should not be applied to pure psychiatric cases, when use of antidepressants is warranted and necessary. Each case should be handled individually under physician’s supervision.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Over and over, I’ve found that many menopausal women suffer from various degrees of depression. Yet, when the Venuses and I acknowledge this as NORMAL and likely transient, it takes such a load off. If it worsens or continues, we recommend herbal supplements, diet change, exercise, and counseling. Bioidentical hormones may help if these options do not. (Obviously, clinical depression will need different, skilled intervention.) But for most of us, we are women, we can handle most anything as long as we know it is normal and not forever. The best therapy we menopausal goddesses have found is each other -women supporting one another through the change. By the way, we’re glad to see you back, Sue.