Hormone replacement therapy seems to be a hot topic these days. It's controversy has everyone from Oprah to Susan Somers speaking out. So today, Lindsey Rogers went to some local experts to try and sort out fact from fiction.

Every day in the U.S. about 3500 women enter menopause, but symptoms of hot flashes, night sweats, irritablility, low libido, and even depression can begin up to fifteen years before a woman ends her menstrual cycle. Harvest Drug Pharmacist Ginger Pino, said hundreds of Texoma women are turning to hormone replacement therapy to ease discomfort, but the treatment is getting a lot of national heat, and Pino said she knows why.

Ginger Pino said, "It's lack of education in all of us. It's lack of education in the public. It's lack of education with the doctors who simply don't have time to specialize outside their normal practice." There are essentially two types of prescription hormone therapies. One is through the use of synthetic drugs which replace hormones with synthetic substitues. Those are available commercially in predetermined proportions.<

Pino said, "Women, if you think about it, we don't even have the same shoe size. Why would we be able to take the same medicine as everyone else available, and sometimes only four strengths sometimes less than four. So that doesn't lead to what my body needs specifically." So pino recommends instead, natural bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

These hormone replentishments are the same chemical structure as the ones your body made before menopause.

"If you think you have a hormone imbalance, the first thing to do is get one of the tests. You just fill this tube half way with saliva and mail it off. It's easy and you can do it from the comfort of your own home." The pharmacy will then receive results from the testing company and send them to your doctor. From there, Harvest Drug can compound a customized drug prescribed by your doctor, that's specific to your body's needs.

Lindsey Rogers, KAUZ News.

For more information, you can pick up a harvest hormone report at Harvest Drug, or go to the links section of our website and click on the hormone replacement link.