UPCOMING

HOT FLASH HAVOC EVENTS!

KINSALE, IRELAND:

SATURDAY, JULY 7 @ 5 PM

CARMELITE FRIARY CENTRE

http://kinsaleartsfestival.com/event-category/screenings/

Irish Premiere screening and introduction by Writer and Producer, Marnie Inskip O'Neill a multiple award winning filmmaker, writer and international investigative journalist.  She currently commutes between New York City, where she maintains a residence in Delgany, County Wicklow where her husband and her three children live.  In her long career she has also worked as a producer/reporter for ABC News in New York and Rome, Fox Broadcasting, DBS and RAI (Italian State Television).  Marnie now has her own production company, Inskip Productions. And now, thanks to Marnie, HOT FLASH HAVOC's writer and producer, we have "crossed the pond".  Congratulations Marnie!

 

ATLANTA GEORGIA: 

THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012

Emory Rollins School of Public Health

1518 Clifton Rd

Claudia Nance Rollins Bldg Rm 3001

FOR TICKETS PLEASE GO TO:
http://drtanyamdhotflashhavoc.eventbrite.com/

 

TUCSON, ARIZONA:  TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012

THE LOFT CINEMA

3233 EAST SPEEDWAY, TUCSON, AZ

www.loftcinema.com

 

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI:  THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2012

BAPTIST HEALTH SYSTEMS

Table 100, 100 Ridge Way, Flowood, MS

Call 601-948-6262 to register. Online registration is not available.

www.mbmc.org/

 

PHOENIX, ARIZONA:  SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

ARIZONA SCIENCE CENTER

600 E WASHINGTON ST. PHOENIX, AZ

infor@azscience.org

  

Dates to be announced for 2013:

Santa Monica, California

Morristown, New Jersey

Ottawa, Ontario 

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International Menopause Society Update: 

The Women's Health Initiative study and Hormone Therapy - what have we learned 10 years on?  NOTE: Two of these doctors are in the movie HOT FLASH HAVOC.

STATEMENT FROM: International Menopause Society - 22nd May, 2012

In July 2002 the publication of the first Women's Health Initiative (WHI) report caused a dramatic drop in Menopausal Hormone Therapy (HT ) use throughout the world. Now a major reappraisal by international experts, published as a series of articles in the peer--reviewed journal Climacteric (the official journal of the International Menopause Society), shows how the evidence has changed over the last 10 years, and supports a return to a "rational use of HT, initiated near the menopause".

The reappraisal has been carried out by some of the world's leading experts in the field, including clinicians who worked on the original WHI study. Summarizing the findings of the special issue, authors Robert Langer, JoAnn Manson, and Matthew Allison conclude that "classical use of HT" - MHT initiated near the menopause - will benefit most women who have indications including significant menopausal symptoms or osteoporosis.

Dr. Robert Langer, Principal Scientist at the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine, Jackson Wyoming, was the Principal Investigator of the WHI Clinical Center at the University of California, San Diego.

He said:

"With 10 years hindsight we can put the lessons learned from the WHI HT trials into perspective. In some ways we've come full circle - studies in recently menopausal women that suggested protection against major diseases led to testing whether that would carry over to older women who have even greater risks of heart attacks and fractures. That hope proved false. Unfortunately the results were wrongly generalized back to women like those who inspired the study. Information that has emerged over the last decade, shows that for most women starting treatment near the menopause, the benefits outweigh the risks, not just for relief of hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness, but also for reducing the risks of heart disease and fractures".

 Langer continued:

"Overgeneralizing the WHI results from the women who were -- on average, 12 years past menopause to all postmenopausal women has led to needless suffering and lost opportunities for many. Sadly, one of the lessons from the WHI is that starting HT 10 years or more after menopause may not be a good idea, so the women who were scared away by the WHI over this past decade may have lost the opportunity to obtain the potential benefits."

Professor JoAnn Manson (Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA), who has been one of the WHI Principal Investigators since the study started, said:

"An important contribution of the WHI was to clarify that, for older women at high risk of cardiovascular disease; the risks of HT far outweighed the benefits. This halted the increasingly common clinical practice of prescribing HT to women who were far from the onset of menopause. Unfortunately, these findings were extrapolated to newly menopausal and healthy women who actually had a favorable benefit: risk ratio with HT. The WHI results point the way towards treating each woman as an individual. There is no doubt that HT is not appropriate for every woman, but it may be appropriate for many women, and each individual woman needs to talk this over with her clinician".

The authors note that the initial press reaction, following the lead of the WHI press release, over-emphasized a relatively small increase in breast cancer, so distorting the overall view of the report.
 

WHI researcher Professor Matthew Allison (University of California, San Diego), said:

"It is important to put the results of the WHI trials into context. That is, being obese, not exercising or excess alcohol consumption confer higher absolute risks for breast cancer than HT use."  

How to Pre-Order a DVD:

Get yours ordered today: 

In case you can't get to one of the Hot Flash Havoc screenings, you can pre-order the DVD online through www.hotflashhavoc.com.
 

We will ship it out to you later this summer.....

Article from June 25, 2012:

 
 Written by Mache Seibel,MD Founder www.DoctorSeibel.com; Co-author, Save Your Life: What to Do In A Medical Emergency

Are you in menopause and afraid to take estrogen? It's been 10 years since one of the most significant papers in women's health was published -- a study on the risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women. The WHI papers scared the hell out of women and many of their doctors (see below). But during the 10 years since the study was published, new studies have disproven many of the findings. But harm was done for women; the fear prevented many women from taking estrogen that could have prevented terrible symptoms, and those women suffered. I want to help you make sense of these important studies.
 

First, let's look at what the studies were supposed to do.
At that time, estrogen plus progestin (notice, not progesterone which is the natural hormone, but progestin, a synthetic substance that the woman's body responds to similarly to how it responds to progesterone) were being recommended for all women in menopause to lower the risk of heart disease as well as treat symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness. Postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79 (mean age 63) were given different formulations of the most common estrogen and progestin medications in use at the time.
 

Giving hormones to older women, they thought, would lower their risk of heart disease and so the study didn't take into account how old the women were, how long it had been since they started going through menopause, or if they were at risk for any other diseases. Hormone Therapy (HT) was considered both good and safe.
 

There were two hormone studies that were started about the same time. The first involved giving some 16,000 women either estrogen or progestin (Prempro -- the most commonly used hormone of this type at the time) or placebo. That study was stopped three years early because the risks were greater than the benefits. Not only did HT not protect women from heart disease, the study reported an increased risk of blood clots, stroke, heart attack and breast cancer. There was however, an equally lower risk of colon cancer and risk of breaking your hip.
 

The second study also followed a large number of women. But this group of women had their uterus removed (hysterectomy) as well as their ovaries. Women who have their uterus removed do not need to take progesterone or progestin -- only estrogen. Once again, the study was stopped early because the women taking estrogen had an increased risk of stroke compared to those who took a placebo. However, compared to the women in the first study who took estrogen and progestin, these women who took estrogen only didn't have an increase of breast cancer or heart disease.
 

Postmenopausal women threw away their estrogen in droves and endured a very challenging window of time. It was so challenging, in fact, that many of my patients who initially went off their hormones called me up and within three to six months wanted to get back on them. But in that year after the WHI was first published, between 25 and 72 percent of women stopped taking HT.
 

Over the past decade since those initial WHI studies were done, many of their conclusions have changed. Here are my thoughts on the highlights:
* Estrogen and progesterone, now called HT instead of HRT, is still the most effective treatment for symptoms related to menopause.
* HT is a very reasonable and safe treatment for menopausal symptoms for many women, but it can't be the only treatment we offer. Some women, especially those with a history of breast cancer or uterine bleeding or blood clots or who smoke, should talk with their doctors about alternatives to HT.
* If you want to go on HT or consider going on it, there seems to be a critical window of time to start -- the closer to the onset of menopause the better. Ten years after menopause, it may be too late to start HT.
* Treatment must be individualized and not assume that "one size fits all."
* Estrogen taken through the skin seems to be less of a risk for blood clots than estrogen taken by mouth.
* HT works great for preventing osteoporosis or thinning of the bones
* Estrogen only may reduce (not increase) the risk of breast cancer.
* Estrogen may reduce the risk of stroke in certain subgroups of menopausal women.
 

If you are interested in taking estrogen and/or progesterone or want to consider it as a possible treatment for your symptoms, talk with someone who is knowledgeable about these medications. It isn't the same as going in for an antibiotic -- it will take time for the health professional to understand your personal risks, explain what the benefits and risks are for you, and provide you with an explanation of your options. When I see patients for these types of discussions, I allot nearly an hour to go over everything. Make sure you find the right person to work with you.