Bioidentical Hormones - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

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identical hormones synthesized from plants make the most sense. The original hormone
substances, before they were changed in the lab to be patentable, in pharmaceutical HRT
came from animals and plants, too.
Human beings, like all animals, have receptors in brain and body cells to receive
everything that the planet has to offer, from nicotinic receptors to cannabis receptors.
"Natural" hormones are made from molecules called phyto- estrogens that, despite their
name, are synthesized into natural progesterone first and then tweaked into testosterone
and eventually estrogen. The source of these plant-derived hormones is most likely soy
beans or Mexican yams, but unlike progestins (the artificial molecules served up by
pharmaceutical companies as the real thing), the unpatentable natural version fit perfectly
into human receptors.
Hormone replacement therapy from plants was never dangerous. Real, natural
hormones synthesized from plants have been known throughout history to be safe and
effective birth control and death defiers. Only when drug companies got into the act did
our lives get shorter and more painful. Hormone replacement from nature's bounty
directly to our receptors was as natural as child spacing through lactation. Women always
knew how to take care of themselves and each other. Women have always self-medicated
with plants for contraception, beauty products and hormone replacement.
It's All Downhill from Here
While estrogen and testosterone levels slide steadily downward from twenty-six
years of age on, when human growth hormone slows, the biggest difference between a
woman in her twenties and a woman in her late thirties is in the levels of progesterone
she can produce.
In a normal twenty-year old, the act of ovulating -- which produces progesterone,
once a month for fourteen days -- is dependent on a system of feedback loops between
the ovaries and the brain which are regulated by levels of estrogen.
Estrogen production is directly dependent upon the number of eggs a woman has
left every month after ovulation, deducted from the finite number we are born with.
Ovulation uses up about 150 every month in an effort to produce one "good" one. From
conception until puberty, eggs are destroyed by a genetic clock. As fetuses, in utero, we