New York Times Magazine Writer Profiles Personal Experiences With Estrogen Therapy

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Cynthia Gorney, a writer and journalism professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, discusses both the controversy of hormone replacement and possible benefits related to memory and mood. She also discusses her own medical history, including depression and her personal struggle with "the estrogen question" -- whether individual benefits of estrogen therapy outweigh potential risks. Gorney's article examines perimenopausal mood issues -- such as depression, memory and attention -- as well as the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. According to Gorney, all of these conditions can be linked to estrogen deficiency, and she discusses the possibility that estrogen replacement could be the solution for some women.

Gorney writes that when she began using an estrogen patch for mental health-related issues in 2001, the "prevailing belief about hormone replacement ... was still, as it had been for a quarter century, the distillation of extensive medical and pharmaceutical-company instruction: that once women start losing estrogen, taking replacement hormones protects against heart disease, cures hot flashes, keeps the bones strong, has happy effects on the skin and sex life and carries a breast cancer risk that's worth considering but not worrying about too much, absent some personal history of breast cancer or a history of breast cancer in the immediate family." However, Gorney became concerned about potential risks after the 2002 release of the Women's Health Initiative, which uncovered possible negative health effects for women on hormone therapy. However, Gorney's article pokes many holes in the landmark study, in part because women in their late 40s and early 50s weren't included the study, and she suggests that hormone replacement may be what many women need. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of real data (Gorney, New York Times Magazine, 4/18).


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