But Grandma Never Took Hormones . . .
Women concerned about whether hormone replacement is "natural" often argue that previous generations seemed to have gotten along fine without it. This is a very good point, and again speaks to the confusion created by the drug industry and the medical establishment. Pharmaceutical companies have worked hard to induce a fear state in which women begin to think their bones will turn to dust and their hearts will stop working if they don't take their prescription drugs for the rest of their lives. These claims are indeed worthy of a good deal of skepticism, especially if the drugs come with significant expense, side effects, and cancer risks.

However, there is still good reason for you to pay attention to your "hormonal health" by balancing and replenishing with plant-derived hormones. Why? Because you and your grandmother may be different in very important ways.

First, we don't really know the exact state of your grandmother's health. Just how healthy is she? Just how active is she? How does she look for her age? And given the reticence of previous generations on matters pertaining to their bodies, it would be hard to know what she may or may not have suffered during menopause. "The Change" has only recently become a topic of public or even private conversation. Also, we don't know what her diet consisted of. If she ate a healthy, preservative-free diet concentrated on fresh vegetables and fruits, then she got a plant-hormone-rich infusion all her life and didn't need to supplement. If she was active and worked her body regularly, then she got enough exercise to keep her bones strong and healthy.

But now we're talking about you, her granddaughter. If you've lived on processed foods and your dietary habits run to Häagen-Daz, coffee, and hamburgers on the run, if you don't move that body of yours but instead spend most of your day behind a desk, if you're supermom juggling a career and family, if you diet incessantly, yo-yoing up and down, if you've taken lots of antibiotics and prescription drugs, then you can't compare yourself with your grandmother. Genetics is only one factor, and may not be the biggest influence. Sure, if you and your grandmother are both lucky genetically, then she may have sailed through menopause and so might you, but there is no guarantee that this will happen to you. A whole different set of contemporary factors comes into play. For starters, your grandmother didn't have to fight off the onslaught of the pollutants of our present environment. She did not grow up on a diet of commercially grown food lacking in nutrients--especially essential minerals--and, unfortunately, very rich in pesticide residue, drugs, and chemical contaminants. And no previous generation has faced today's unique stress levels.

But this does not mean that your body is not biologically and genetically prepared to live to a ripe old age.

Living Longer . . . and Better
An insidious idea has taken hold in the menopause literature: We are told that because women are living longer than ever before (supposedly without precedent in human history), a woman's body after fifty is, so to speak, hormonally unprepared to live very much longer and cannot protect itself against the ravages of old age. This idea has been embraced by the medical profession to justify putting women on permanent HRT beginning at age fifty.