EVERYONE who talks about synthetic vs. bioidentical hormones uses these terms incorrectly. This video explains why Premarin® is NOT synthetic and estradiol IS synthetic.
. . . Bioidentical hormones . . . literally everyone i have ever heard talk or write about hormones has used these terms incorrectly. on today that’s all about the imprecise use of these terms. i’m going to clarify, once and for all, the difference between “natural hormones,” hormones.” now i will say at
The outset quite a bit of overlap between those terms. but i don’t feel like it’s helpful . . . i feel like a lot of patients, especially, are confused by the terms. and so i hear a lot of physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants using clarify all 3 of those terms and really help us
All understand how we need to be using those terms. i want to look at some specific hormones from simplehormones.com. i help patients and healthcare practitioners with easy to understand are about hormones and hormone optimization. help you maybe understand a little bit more in regard to hormones and hormone
Optimization confusing because they don’t always line up with the actual reality of what those terms mean. my wife and i had a friend who was a pastor and in grand rapids, michigan. he spent his life with words – words in hebrew, in greek, in german (because a lot of theological texts are written in
German) as well as, of course, in english. and he had a very interesting statement that he said, personally to us. he said that “words don’t have meanings, they have uses.” so that’s always stuck with me – that that words are defined by the way we use them. the oxford english dictionary is word “natural” as defined in
The oed has the derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.” the word “natural” comes from the old french, from the original latin “naturalis,” or quality. the oed talks about “synthetic.” made by chemical synthesis, especially to “synthetic” is from the late 17th century, so that would
Be around 1680 something. that was based on the french and goes back to the latin and it also goes back to the greek. so one of the things that we look at when we look at etymologies and the derivation of words is where did that word first appear. and the word “bioidentical” is a little hard to pin down. the first time
The word bioidentical appeared, at least in pubmed, which is basically a database of published journal articles, was in about 2001 in advanced nurse practitioner in an article entitled a natural option for perimenopause and beyond” by cr walker. so the term “bioidentical” really means “exactly the same chemical
Structure as hormones found in your body.” so, we can look at these hormones in some general categories. what i’d like to look at is some hormones that are actually armor® thyroid is a thyroid replacement hormone that contains a couple of different human hormones and t3 or lyothyronine. armor® thyroid,
Np® thyroid and any of the other brands of thyroid replacement products come from desiccated pork that just means “dried.” so, essentially, in the butchering process of pork, the thyroid gland is removed from the pig and then it is dried and through some process, which is not really a chemical process it’s more of a
Physical process, a fine powder and then it’s added into a tablet form. there are some other ingredients that are added to it to make it into a solid tablet. but essentially, that thyroid medication or those two thyroid hormones are not chemically the dried thyroid gland of pigs. the bottom line is
That armor® thyroid and np® thyroid and other similar, animal-derived thyroid hormones, are “natural” they are not synthetic and they’re also they can’t be considered bioidentical because of the other contaminating hormones that may be in them. the second hormone that i want to look at is called premarin®. premarin®
Also goes by the generic name “conjugated equine estrogens.” now, conjugated equine estrogens are “natural.” they come from a natural source. that natural source, believe it or not, is the urine of pregnant mares. there are a couple of hormone drugs that came on the market probably over 50 or 60 years ago one is
Called perganol® and another is called menopur®. those are hormones that are primarily used in fertility treatments, but they are derived from the urine of roman catholic nuns, with the express permission of the pope. premarin® was developed in the 1940s by basically taking the urine of pregnant mares, drying it,
And creating a tablet. completely “natural” source of hormones. it is completely natural. it does not rely on chemical synthesis. there’s a way that i know premarin® is a naturally sourced product. i have personally taken a premarin® tablet and cut it in half and smelled it. it smells, oddly enough, like
Horse pee . . . very strongly, i might add. now, if that’s not a natural product, i don’t know what is. so, i hear so many people, especially doctors, about premarin® being a “synthetic hormone.” a hormone that comes from a natural source. the natural source where premarin® comes from is the urine of pregnant
Mares. it is not a synthetic hormone. it is not made by chemical synthesis. it is also not bioidentical, found in human ovaries and in human bloodstreams, but only a very small amount. the primary human estrogen is called estradiol and premarin® has maybe 5% estradiol. it also contains a little larger amount
Of a hormone called “estrone,” which is a human estrogen. but in addition to those, it has up to 10, possibly 17, maybe even as high of which are not found in humans at all but are really horse estrogens and metabolites or so-called breakdown products of those horse estrogens. so, the bottom line for premarin®
Is it is “natural.” it is not “synthetic.” in spite of what many, many people will say . . . and it is not bioidentical, which is why there may be some problems. i consider premarin® to be somewhat of a dirty drug. it has a lot of contaminants. we are in premarin® because no one has ever explicitly published
An exact breakdown of all of the ingredients of premarin®. now, that would never happen in today’s pharmaceutical industry, but premarin® is a very old drug, over 75 years gets by, kind of “grandfathered in,” if you will, (supposedly) what the actual ingredients are. so armor® thyroid and premarin® are both
“Natural.” they’re not “synthetic.” but they’re also not bioidentical. ok, i’m going to look at another category of hormones that are synthetic and not natural but they are bio-identical. so, when we take a look at estradiol, that is the most prominent human estrogen. it’s also the one that is the most effective,
The most helpful for things like hot flashes and night sweats and irritability and weight gain. it’s the most helpful for things like vaginal dryness and vaginal atrophy that’s caused by menopause and the loss of hormones. source. all of the estradiol that’s on the market is from a chemical synthetic source. estradiol
Is not natural. it is completely synthetic and it is also bioidentical, meaning that the estradiol that is produced by chemical synthesis is exactly the same chemical structure as the estradiol produced hormone that is not naturally produced. there is people believe, including the majority of doctors that
I listen to. if you hear a doctor on youtube talk about “natural progesterone,” that is really using the language imprecisely, because progesterone is only really available through a synthetic chemical process. it does not come from a natural source. there are no plants and no animals that we can derive progesterone
From. they are not of . . . progesterone is not available naturally. it is only available through chemical synthesis . . . at least not in economically viable amounts. let me emphasize is also . . . not only is it not natural bioidentical. progesterone that doesn’t have any chemical additions to its structure is
Identical to the progesterone made in the corpus luteum, which is a part of the ovary that’s left behind after ovulation. that’s the primary place that progesterone comes from in the human body. now, ethinyl estradiol is a chemically synthesized version of estradiol that has an ethinyl group added to its chemical
Structure. now, what that does is it makes ethinyl estradiol more potent (more powerful) but it also, more importantly, characteristics when it’s given to women. it is actually used as a birth control. ethinyl estradiol is not natural. ethinyl estradiol is only made available by chemical synthesis but it is also
Not bioidentical. medroxyprogesterone sounds a lot like progesterone but we have that medroxy group, which is a slight chemical addition medroxyprogesterone is not natural. there is no natural source of medroxyprogesterone. it can only be produced through chemical synthesis. so it is, by definition, synthetic. it is
Also not bioidentical and because it’s not bioidentical it out in when it’s used in human females. now, what we’ve seen in the women’s health initiative is that women given medroxyprogesterone had an increased risk of breast cancer as well as multiple other things – blood clots and several others. there are
Several studies which illustrate, especially one called the epic-e3n 2000s, that showed that progesterone – synthetic behave the same way medroxyprogesterone does. and, in fact, protects women against breast cancer. i want to encourage all of us to be much more precise in the way we use these terms natural,
Synthetic, and bioidentical and to recognize that there are situations, probably the majority of situations, where the type of hormone that is hormone that is also a bioidentical hormone and it is not from a natural source. now, i’m not saying that natural source hormones are all bad. there can be some use for
Them. in the future, if you hear someone talking about “natural hormones,” better idea of what they should say and what they should mean when they use those particular terms. click the “like” and “subscribe” buttons to get notified anytime i post a new video. hey, thanks so much for watching and i’ll look
Forward to talking to you again very soon.
Transcribed from video
Natural, Synthetic, Bioidentical Hormones | Always Used Incorrectly By Simple Hormones