Ever since the Women's Health Initiative, a black cloud has hung over hormone replacement therapy. Now a Bellevue woman is behind a crusade to change that. Her premise: women in the study were taking the wrong hormones and the real goal should be to prevent menopause altogether.

The last thing Beth Rosenshein expected to face in her early 40's was premature menopause.

It “was a complete surprise ...a very bad surprise,” she said.

Not only for Beth, but also for her husband Leon.

"When Beth went through ovarian failure, things changed,” he said. “We lost our connection. The intimacy was gone and that was really hard on me and hard on the kids.”

Take synthetic hormones? Not Beth. Nor does she like the term menopause -- too soft. Beth prefers calling it organ failure. She says it's no different than when women's thyroids shut down and they are given bio-identical hormones to compensate.

"Think about hypothyroidism,” she said. “People are given treatment for the duration of their lifetime because it's very important to treat hypothyroidism. Well, here we have hypogonadism, and it would simply make sense that replacement of those hormones would make a woman healthy.”

With a background in bioengineering and two patents for medical devices, Beth set out to find bio-identical hormones for menopause. After accumulating several filing cabinets worth of research, she's settled on custom-mixed topical creams from a compounding pharmacist.

Dr. Jonathon Wright is no stranger to bio-identical hormones. He's been prescribing them since the 1980's. As for Beth's book about preventing menopause altogether, he says the theory does has some merit.

"If one can keep the hormones from going all the way to the bottom before we bring them back up again, then that's probably better for the tissues over time,” he said. “Now I got to agree with anybody that says, yeah, we need to study this further to see what all the parameters are.”

He also advocates testing hormone levels before and during treatment.

KING

Beth Rosenshein recommends custom-mixed topical creams from a compounding pharmacist.

Dr. Robin Kroll does not. She says current guidelines call for short-term use only to treat hot flashes and night sweats.

"Our goal is to get a women through those five years after menopause when those symptoms are most prevalent,” she said..

Seventy of women will stop having those symptoms after five years. However, she does prescribe bio-identical hormones. The difference is these are FDA-approved brands.

“It comes in multiple doses so we can adjust dose according to response,” Dr. Kroll said.

She said women take additional risks when they use compounded versions.

Beth plans to continue until she finds something that works better.

"It is inconvenient, but it's definitely worthwhile,” she said. “I mean I have my health back, I have my family, my life, the life we built together. It's absolutely worth it. It’s what life is all about.”  

As for the safety issues of long-term use, the University of Washington is participating in a nationwide clinical trial comparing synthetic HRT with a skin patch containing bio-identical estrogen, but the results of that study won't be known for several years.