Hello Diane,
I have only been on the list for a few days and I have decided to get
off of it because I cannot deal with 98 e-mails a day! But before I
leave I wanted to answer your original question, is HRT beneficial to
women with early stages of PD? Here is where I first heard about that:
The Johns Hopkins Medical Letter, Health After 50 was given to me
because of this item in their November 98 issue:
"Estrogen replacement may be helpful for early Parkinson's Disease
(PD). Researchers followed 171 postmenopausal women with mild PD
symptoms. None had ever taken levodopa, the standard PD drug; 42 had
been on hormone replacement therapy at some point. After two years,
there was less disease progression in the hormone replacment group."
I asked my neurologist, who is also at Columbia (NYC)where this
abstract or as he called it, pilot of a pilot study was done about
this. He said that even though it was a very small population that was
studied, there was a hint that the findings could be true.
So, although I went through menopause without HRT, using Primrose Oil
for hot flashes, I decided to start HRT--I will actually start the
estrogen/progesterin tomorrow--because of the hope that it might be
helpful with PD. I am going into my second year since diagnosis, and am
presently on 2mg of Mirapex and 10 mg of Selegiline a day. Still in the
early stages. No tremors, just the stiffness like Billy Graham seems to
have.
I wanted to give you this information, because I felt your question
went astray with people talking about how they felt about horses and not
how HRT--what ever kind you chose--could be helpful for PD.
Good luck to you,
Dina Walker
