- With Mayo Clinic gynecologist and obstetrician
Mary Gallenberg, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
Mary Gallenberg, M.D.
Mary Gallenberg, M.D.
Dr. Mary Gallenberg is board certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and medical oncology. She is credentialed as a menopause practitioner by the North American Menopause Society.
An Antigo, Wis., native, Dr. Gallenberg is a consultant in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., and an assistant professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.
Dr. Gallenberg has been with Mayo Clinic since 1990. She was on the Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource editorial board and has been honored for excellence in teaching. She also won a Mayo Clinic Excellence Through Teamwork award.
Symptoms (1)
- Bleeding after menopause: Is it normal?
Treatments and drugs (3)
- Bioidentical hormones: Are they safer?
- Hormone replacement therapy: Can it cause vaginal bleeding?
- Testosterone therapy in women: Does it boost sex drive?
Alternative medicine (1)
- Flaxseed: Can it relieve hot flashes?
Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Question
Bioidentical hormones: Are they safer?
Are bioidentical hormones safer and more effective than traditional hormone therapy for menopause symptoms?
Answer
from Mary Gallenberg, M.D.
No, they aren't. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and several medical specialty groups, bioidentical hormones may be riskier than standard hormone therapy, and there's no evidence they're any more effective.
Bioidentical hormones have become popular in recent years, partly because of celebrity endorsements and partly in reaction to reports of increased health risks with standard hormone therapy. The term "bioidentical" means the hormones in the product are chemically identical to those your body produces. In fact, they are — but so are the hormones used in many FDA-approved hormone replacement products.
Marketers of bioidentical hormones say their products have these advantages over standard hormone therapy:
- They're derived from plant chemicals, not synthesized in a laboratory. Some FDA-approved products (Estrace, Climara patch and Vivelle-Dot patch, and Prometrium natural progesterone) are also derived from plants.
- They're produced in doses and forms that differ from those in FDA-approved products. Some bioidentical hormone products are available without a prescription, but most require a prescription. Also, for many nonstandard combinations, you need to go through a compounding pharmacy. Compounding pharmacies specialize in making medications customized for individual needs, such as inability to swallow solids or allergy to a binding agent in a tablet. However, products from compounding pharmacies have not been subject to the same rigorous quality assurance standards that standard commercially available hormonal preparations have to meet.
- They're custom made for you, based on a test of your saliva to assess your unique hormonal needs. Unfortunately, however, the hormone levels in your saliva don't reflect the levels in your blood or correspond to menopause symptoms.
Some women may benefit from nonstandard doses and forms of hormones in bioidentical hormone preparations, but there is almost no scientific support for an advantage of these compounds over common commercially produced preparations.
Next questionHormone replacement therapy: Can it cause vaginal bleeding?
- Sites CK. Bioidentical hormones for menopausal therapy. Women's Health. 2008;4:163.
- Martin KA, et al. Preparations for postmenopausal hormone therapy. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 9, 2009.
- Bio-Identicals: Sorting myths from facts. FDA Consumer Health Information. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm049312.pdf. Accessed Nov. 9, 2009.
