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An eye-opening discussion and review of mental health case histories with Alyssa Burns-Hill, PhD takes practitioners through the hormone looking glass for a deeper understanding of depression and mental illness.  From Burns-Hill's perspective, mental health is not just the preserve of mental health professionals, but a global health problem that all specialists – from family practitioners and psychiatrists, to neurologists and social workers – ought to be concerned about. She points to the 2010 Global Burden Disease Study that identified the most predominant mental health problems as depression and anxiety, which are symptoms physicians see in practice every day. Yet...

A Recipe for Beating (and Preventing) Breast Cancer The latest research on natural progesterone and breast cancer clearly indicates how important it is for women to maintain healthy, normal levels of progesterone that are in proper balance with estrogen. Doing so could not only increase many womens’ chances of recovering from breast cancer – as the latest research indicates – but could also help them to avoid getting breast cancer in the first place. As Dr. John Lee and Dr. David Zava point out in their book, hormonal imbalances have reached epidemic proportions in most developed countries over the last...

 A large team of scientists working on multiple continents published a research study that came to startling conclusions about breast cancer and natural progesterone. The team determined that unlike synthetic progestins, which increase breast cancer risks, natural progesterone has the potential to slow the growth of many breast cancer tumors or even shrink them. While this finding is stunning, it is not new. It is one of several conclusions about progesterone that Dr. John R. Lee, M.D. and Dr. David Zava, Ph.D. made more than a decade ago when they co-wrote the book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You...

Trusted and reliable contraception is a monumental achievement of the last century. It is very effective at preventing pregnancy, oral contraceptives, generally referred to as "the Pill," are commonly prescribed to women of reproductive age. Apart from contraceptive purposes, the Pill can also be used to treat gynecological disorders such as irregular or excessive bleeding, polycystic ovarian syndrome, severe menstrual cramping, acne, and endometriosis-associated pain, and their use has been associated with a reduced risk of endometrial cancer.  The small print – side effects Since its approval for contraceptive purposes 55 years ago, major changes have been implemented in the...

Interpretation of hormone testing using saliva, dried blood spot, or serum can be tricky when women are using oral, patch, or other hormonal contraception methods. The types of hormones in these contraceptives are synthetic, and although they may be close to the molecular structure of our body's own estradiol or progesterone, they are not bioidentical. While bioidentical hormones used as supplements react in the same way as our endogenous hormones to the specific antibodies used during hormone testing, non-bioidentical hormones aren’t recognized by these antibodies so they are not measured by the same test. How does hormonal contraception affect test...