Dr. John Lee's Hormone Balance Made Simple

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

The information herein is not intended to replace the services of trained health professionals nor be a substitute for medical advice. You are advised to consult with your health care professional with regard to matters relating to your health, and in particular regarding matters that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Copyright © 2006 by the Estate of John R. Lee, M.D., and Virginia Hopkins

All rights reserved.

Warner Wellness

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

Warner Wellness and the Warner Wellness logo are trademarks.

First eBook Edition: August 2006

ISBN: 978-0-446-55451-0

The "Warner Books" name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Also by John R. Lee, M.D., and Virginia Hopkins

What Your Doctor May NotTell You About Menopause

What Your Doctor May NotTell You About Premenopause

What Your Doctor May NotTell You About Breast Cancer

This book is dedicated to those doctors who love the practice of medicine so much they have the integrity to admit when something isn't working, the passion to search for a better way, and the courage to speak the truth when they find it.

Foreword

This is the last project that Dr. Lee and I worked on before he died. It was possible to complete this book without his physical presence because much of the information has already been said in print, either in our books or newsletters, or on our website, not to mention in the thousands of letters and e-mails we both answered over the years. Hormone Balance Made Simple is the first time all of this information will be compiled into one source. It is just what the cover implies—a simple, straightforward guide to using natural hormones.

Dr. Lee was a passionate advocate of using commonsense and simple, straightforward solutions to create and maintain optimal health. We felt it was important to write Hormone Balance Made Simple because so much of our mail is from women who are aware of their hormonal imbalance and want to get started on a program before delving into the biochemistry of their mood swings and the inner workings of their ovaries. They just want to know, in simple terms, how to use supplemental natural hormones, and how to individualize their hormone regimen for themselves. This book has those answers.

Women also frequently write because they're using natural hormones but don't feel it's helping, or their initial problems eventually return. Asking a few simple questions usually reveals the cause: (1) they're taking too high a dose, (2) their timing is off, or (3) they have constant overwhelming stress in their lives combined with poor eating and exercise habits. This book will also address those issues.

Many women write because they want to use natural hormones with the guidance of their doctor, but the doctor doesn't have the necessary information. I have yet to meet a medical doctor who actually sat down and read What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause who didn't turn on a dime and embrace Dr. Lee's protocol—the concepts are literally that obvious, both intuitively and factually.

This book is in no way a replacement for our other books, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause, and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer, which are wonderful, intelligent, useful classics that will add greatly to every woman's knowledge and understanding of her body. You will want to refer to the other books for a complete understanding of how and why Dr. Lee's program works if you have a serious hormone-related health problem such as endometriosis, PMS, infertility, breast cancer, or osteoporosis, in order to become educated about the underlying cause. If you're tired all the time and want to know how to support your adrenal glands, then you'll want details on how you can use diet, hormones, and other supplements to get back on your feet. If you suspect that what you're eating is derailing your hormone balance, then you'll want to know in detail how different types of foods can hurt or help. If you've got osteoporosis, then you should be treating it on many levels, from hormones and supplements to specific kinds of exercise. If you've had breast cancer, you'll want to know more about what might have caused it and how to prevent a recurrence. All of this detailed information can be found in our other books, along with hundreds of supporting studies, research, and case histories.

It's notable that since Dr. Lee first wrote his self-published book for doctors back in 1993, hundreds of studies, including the huge and now-famous National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative (WHI), have thoroughly validated his stance on progesterone and conventional hormone replacement therapy. Much of this new research can be found in the revised and updated (2004) edition of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause.

However, if you just want the ABCs of using natural hormones, this is the book for you. Enjoy!

Virginia Hopkins

Acknowledgments

Pat Lee, Dr. Lee's widow, would like to acknowledge that she and Dr. Lee's friends and colleagues will continue his work.

Virginia Hopkins would like to acknowledge the many doctors and researchers who have put their careers on the line to make bioidentical hormones available to women. Dr. David Zava has been untiring in his dedication to continuing Dr. Lee's work. It would not have been possible to complete this book without him. Helene Leonetti, M.D., and Kenna Stephenson, M.D., doggedly pursue their research projects with bioidentical hormones in spite of enormous challenges. Robert Gottesman, M.D., is a true healer and a true friend whose clinical insights have added greatly to Dr. Lee's work. C. W. Randolph, M.D., reminds us all just how rewarding a medical practice can be when it's based on a caring, informed and natural approach to women's health. Sharon MacFarland has invested time, expertise, and financial resources far beyond anyone else in the industry to fight for a woman's right to choose natural alternatives in medicine.

Introduction

The Life and Work of John R. Lee, M.D.

John R. Lee, M.D., was internationally acknowledged as a pioneer and expert in the study and use of the hormone progesterone, and on the subject of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for women. He used transdermal (cream rubbed on the skin) progesterone extensively in his clinical practice for nearly a decade, conducting research that showed that it can help reverse osteoporosis.

Dr. Lee died at the age of 73, in October 2003, of a heart attack. He often mused that he felt blessed to have lived so long because many of the men in his family had died of heart attacks in their forties and fifties. His own father, also a medical doctor, died at the age of 49.

Until his death, Dr. Lee kept a full schedule, giving talks and teaching worldwide, and writing his best-selling books and monthly newsletters. Dr. Lee was gratified by the thousands of women who wrote and called to tell him how dramatically their health had improved when they followed his recommendations, and by the hundreds of clinicians and researchers he corresponded with who had integrated his work into their practices and research with great success. Dr. Lee was thankful that his analysis of the problems with conventional HRT were finally validated by the medical establishment during his lifetime. Dr. Lee's wife Pat, and his friends and colleagues will carry on his legacy, as will the millions of others whose lives he touched over the years.

Dr. Lee had a distinguished medical career that included graduating from Harvard and the University of Minnesota Medical School. After he retired from a 30-year family practice in northern California, he began writing and traveling around the world to speak to doctors, scientists, and lay people about progesterone. Dr. Lee also taught a popular course on "Optimal Health" at the College of Marin for 15 years, for which he wrote the book Optimal Health Guidelines.

Dr. Lee had a family practice in northern California when, in the early 1970s, he began seeing many menopausal women with health complaints who weren't able to use estrogen because of a high cancer risk, heart disease, or diabetes. About that time he attended a lecture by Raymond Peat, Ph.D., who claimed that estrogen was the wrong hormone to give to menopausal women and that what they really needed was progesterone. Dr. Lee was so influenced by this lecture that he took a list of Dr. Peat's references and checked them out. Sure enough, Dr. Lee became convinced that the research was pointing in a new and important direction in hormone replacement.

Focus on Progesterone

Dr. Lee began recommending that his menopausal patients try using a progesterone cream called Pro-Gest and found they were delighted with the results. These women reported relief from such menopausal symptoms as hot flashes, night sweats, and insomnia, and they also reported relief from a wide array of other symptoms as diverse as dry eyes, bloating, irritability, gallbladder problems, osteoporosis pain, hair loss, and lumpy or sore breasts. As a result of this overwhelmingly positive feedback, Dr. Lee began to collect detailed data on these patients and began to research progesterone more in depth, gathering studies from his local medical library and communicating with scientists around the world to discuss their work. He suspected that progesterone had a positive effect on bone health and ordered bone density tests for his patients who were taking progesterone. Within a few years he realized that these women were gaining significant bone density—particularly the more elderly women who had the lowest bone density to begin with.

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You

Dr. Lee was so convinced his clinical experience with progesterone could have a major positive impact on the health of menopausal women that he retired from his family practice and devoted his time to giving talks and writing about natural progesterone. He self-published a book for doctors called Natural Progesterone: The Multiple Roles of a Remarkable Hormone, sold it out of his garage, and was soon engaged in a voluminous correspondence with hundreds of women, doctors, and scientists worldwide.

A few years later a medical writer named Virginia Hopkins, who was herself suffering from early menopausal symptoms, came across Dr. Lee's book. She called him to say, "You need to get this information out to the millions of women who are suffering from these symptoms. How about if we do a book together?" Dr. Lee agreed to the plan, and his second book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, was published in 1996. This book is a "translation" of the medical language in the first book and expands significantly on the original information. The menopause book sold better than anyone at Warner Books had dreamed it would, and by the fall of 1998 nearly half a million books had sold, almost entirely by word of mouth. The book, now a classic in the genre with over a million copies in print, was extensively rewritten and updated to include research that has come out since the publication of the first edition.

Progesterone Cream Takes Off

Meanwhile, a successful progesterone cream industry was developing, and soon dozens of companies began selling progesterone cream. It literally became a multimillion-dollar industry within a few years. Why? Because progesterone cream really works to alleviate the symptoms of estrogen dominance and menopausal symptoms in general, and conventional medicine has failed to address these concerns in a safe, effective manner. Women have intuitively known for decades that they were being "mistreated" by the medical profession when it came to HRT and have enthusiastically embraced this intuitively obvious and safe solution. Again, the bottom line is that for most women, progesterone supplementation works very well when used as directed, and it is safe. There have been articles claiming that progesterone is not safe, but it is important to note that the research these claims are based on has always been about the synthetic progestins, not on natural progesterone.

Talking to Premenopausal Women from Thirty to Fifty About Hormone Balance

As Dr. Lee traveled around the world giving talks and attending conferences, he soon discovered that at least half of his audience members were premenopausal women from their mid-thirties to late forties. These women suffered from a long list of symptoms, including PMS, fibroids, fibrocystic breasts, weight gain, fatigue, endometriosis, irregular or heavy periods, infertility, and miscarriage, which they intuitively knew were due to hormonal imbalance. When they tried progesterone cream, they often found that it worked wonderfully well to alleviate their symptoms, and Dr. Lee began to collect stacks of mail from women who had avoided hysterectomies, lost weight, had fibroids shrink, found relief from PMS; and some women had finally been able to conceive after years of trying. This experience led him to write the book What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause: Balance Your Hormones and Your Life from Thirty to Fifty.

The Difficult Subject of Breast Cancer

Another subject that came up repeatedly in Dr. Lee's talks and in his mail was breast cancer. Why was everyone looking at the cure and not the cause? How were hormones involved? Was conventional HRT causing breast cancer? To answer these questions, Dr. Lee and Virginia Hopkins teamed up with breast cancer researcher Dr. David Zava to write What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer. Dr. Zava's many years in the laboratory brought an expertise and depth of knowledge to this book that isn't found elsewhere. Though controversial, this important book challenges the very foundations of the breast cancer industry and carefully explains the underlying causes of breast cancer—from hormonal imbalance and insulin resistance to stress and diet.

Hormone Balance for Men

Along with letters from women about their own health, Dr. Lee received a lot of mail about hormone balance for men. Over the years, he collected research and opinions from clinicians on the subject. Finally in the year before he died, Dr. Lee self-published a booklet called Hormone Balance for Men, which is available online at www.johnleemd.com and www.hopkinstestkits.com. This booklet covers such topics as how men's hormones really work, what really causes prostate cancer, and how to safely supplement with natural hormones.

Continuing Dr. Lee's Remarkable Legacy

Dr. Lee's dedication to and research on natural hormone supplementation have changed the lives of millions. Through his books, tapes, videos, and website, he continues to help those seeking hormone balance. His wife, his friends and his colleagues will carry on his remarkable legacy, as will the millions of others whose lives he touched over the years. The most meaningful way to remember John R. Lee, M.D., and carry on his work is to educate others, one-to-one, and give them the gift of optimal health, as he gave us. Hormone Balance Made Simple makes Dr. Lee's knowledge more accessible than ever before.

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The Hormone Basics