Remefemin

evilelf

Does anyone know anything about this?

Anonymous

I don't recommend it for breast cancer survivors:

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20081111/black-cohosh-tied-to-breast-cancer-spread 

Typically I like more solid data on the good or harm, but in the case of breast cancer, I don't like to take chances.

FloridaLady

Feel free to do you own research. Internet or other alternative sites might be helpful.  Don't let any one person monitor your research.

FloridaLady

The controversy over Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) rages on. Over 40 million American women are within menopause age, and in five years the numbers will increase to over 60 million. In the search for safe ways to reduce menopausal symptoms and discomfort without HRT, many have embraced black cohosh -- used traditionally as a remedy by Native Americans, and by Europeans since the 19th century.

A recent study found that Remifemin black cohosh extract reduced menopausal symptoms by 70 percent in 12 weeks, including hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, irritability, and related occasional sleeplessness. A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology (2005;105:1074-83) found that Remifemin significantly reduced menopausal symptoms. The results were similar to recent hormone replacement therapy study results showing Remifemin is a safe and effective alternative to HRT.

"Remifemin is clearly the world's most clinically tested black cohosh product, with over 15 clinical trials that demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the product," says Mark Blumenthal, Founder and Executive Director of the American Botanical Council. "Almost all of the scientific literature on black cohosh was conducted on Remifemin including recent clinical trials showing no estrogenic activity of the product." Remifemin is completely hormone-free, without plant-based estrogens that can affect breast and uterine cell growth. It is safe for women with a history of breast cancer who cannot take estrogen.

"Smart German chemists have been working on Remifemin for over 50 years," says Yale University School of Medicine Clinical Professor Mary Jane Minkin, MD, who recommends Remifemin as a standard alternative to HRT. "While its mechanism of action is unclear, black cohosh is one of the few products that seems to relieve hot flashes. Twenty percent of patients sail through menopause without problems, but eighty percent have varying degrees of symptoms, some severe," she explains. "I talk to everyone about Remifemin, along with lifestyle issues like healthy diet and exercise. I respect the personal preferences of my patients, many of whom do not want drug intervention." Dr. Minkin is author of A Woman's Guide to Menopause & Perimenopause (Yale University Press 2005).

Not all black cohosh is the same. Most products in the market lack the standardization and research that can ensure efficacy and safety, and multi- ingredient compounds can potentially create problems from drug interactions. "Remifemin, with over 90 scientific papers, is the most researched black cohosh product in the world," explains Matt Schueller, Senior VP Marketing for Enzymatic Therapy, Inc., exclusive distributors of Remifemin in North America and one of the first to introduce standardization to the U.S. supplement industry. "Comprising a proprietary, standardized extract (uniform dosage) of pure black cohosh root called RemiSure(TM), it is the #1 OB/GYN-recommended non-prescription menopause therapy."

Anonymous

Whenever faced with a choice between a small benefit and a large risk, I'll choose to avoid the risk.

Anything that has been shown to cause tumor cells to metastasize is a little too risky, for the benefit of maybe easing a hot flash here and there.

evilelf

Thanks ladies, I'wasn't sure I was reading the info right but to my alas I was. I'll stick with the hot flashes and irratibility

FloridaLady

Again you say much and know so little. Where does it show possiblity of mets going up?  Did you read something I didn't? 

07rescue

I think the jury is still very much out on black cohosh and many other supplements. Murine (mouse) studies are very limited in their relevance to humans, as so many failed drug trials have proven. So many drugs that look very promising in mice are found to be utterly useless, or harmful, in humans, that I give very little credence to them. Black cohosh may or may not add a small degree of risk of recurrence for people who already have breast cancer, according to a study done in mice??? I don't buy that one at all. 

Many women suffer extremely debilitating vasomotor symptoms that destroy our lives, not "a few hot flashes", so minimizing the devastation of those menopausal symptoms offends me. People have to make up their own minds, based on the severity of their menopausal symptoms, whether to accept the risk of treatment for them, or not. So far there is no known, completely effective or safe treatment  for hot flashes, only a few treatments, with side effects and risks of their own, so it remains a complex decision to make, worthy of doing one's own research and independent thinking. 

Anonymous

Women have been going through menopause since we were covered with fur. It is not a disease that needs to be treated. It's a natural process. Only when they discovered that they could make money off of it did it become common to be "prescribed" things to "treat" it. 

I'm sure some women have a much more difficult time. That is always the way. It's not like there aren't alternatives that may be as effective and safer.

If you want to take it, by all means do so. No one is forbidding it. 

07rescue

Surgical or chemo induced menopause is not "natural" and women haven't been going through it "since we were covered with fur". Most women died by 30-40 years of age, often from complications of childbearing, and never went through menopause. Our bodies are not well adapted to living long periods without estrogen and other sex steroids.

Surgical and chemo induced menopause is about as far from "natural" as it gets, and can be far more severe due to the precipitous drop in hormones, and for quite a few women can be totally disabling. Minimizing the suffering and disability produced by those life altering changes that many women experience is really offensive to me. Not being able to sleep from continuous hotflashes and estrogen deficiency, with brain fog, memory loss, orthopedic pain and disability, vaginal atrophy leading to chronic cystitis and infections, new onset migraines, increased cardiovascular risks, etc., are all major health issues that require medical attention.

In the study of the historic use of botanical medicine there is a very extensive literature documenting the needs of women searching for treatment of menopause symptoms, none of it just started with capitalism, it started out of real need for help. 

desdemona222b

Surgical and chemo induced menopause is about as far from "natural" as it gets, and can be far more severe due to the precipitous drop in hormones, and for quite a few women can be totally disabling. Minimizing the suffering and disability produced by those life altering changes that many women experience is really offensive to me. Not being able to sleep from continuous hotflashes and estrogen deficiency, with brain fog, memory loss, orthopedic pain and disability, vaginal atrophy leading to chronic cystitis and infections, new onset migraines, increased cardiovascular risks, etc., are all major health issues that require medical attention.

I don't think anyone is "minimizing" the effect of estrogen loss, and oopherectomies certainly aren't natural, but HRT isn't "natural," either, and they have done studies that indicate HRT does not address heart disease and osteoperosis, which is what the medical community used to think - I had a radical hysterectomy at 39 and I was told that was the reason I needed the HRT.  A study came out several years ago indicating that all it does is alleviate hot flashes.

I had to abruptly stop the HRT in 2002.  I take anti-depressants to control the hot flashes, and I can tell you that they work just as well as HRT - the added bonus is they don't fuel ER+ cancer.

For what it's worth, I had a bone scan done 4 months ago and my bone density is excellent and I don't even take calcium supplements, and I'm 55 years old.  Had an echocardiogram a couple of months back as well and my heart is in very good shape in spite of the radiation therapy and no HRT.

Vaginal atrophy can be taken care of with Premarin cream - my onc told me to use it sparingly, but I stopped using it altogether.  It isn't the horror scene a lot of women think it is, it really isn't.  Things just aren't that different for me at all. 

Deirdre1

Well, it "really isn't" for desdemona22 but obviously all of our bodies are different and it CAN be disabling or at the very least incredibly difficult!  That is why there are alternatives complementary approaches.  Women (very often it is women only) are allowed to "suffer" anything under the heading of nature and yet do you recall the little blue pills for men because their "natural" ED is hard on them (no pun intended) and it certainly helps the women these men are connected to as well..  We can't stop looking and testing the bounds of medicine because we think something is "natural".  I'm sure years ago women died of breast cancer but it was considered "natural" so nothing was done??  Well I'm for looking at anything that might help, prolong, or enhance our lives.. with the only exception being harming other's lives!

desdemona222b

No, deirdre, I DID have debilitating hot flashes that almost made me pass out, but HRT isn't necessary to address that.

Deirdre1

desdemona222b said "it isn't the horror scene a lot of women think it is, it really isn't"

What I said was it wasn't for you but it is for many women and your experience is YOUR experience you can't make that judgement for another women. 

desdemona222b

I was referring specifically to vaginal atrophy.  They scare you to death with that stuff, and it's really not as life-destroying as they make it out to be.

I'm not trying to make a judgement for other women - I'm trying to point out that the only symptom HRT addresses is hot flashes, that HRT feeds ER+ cancer, and that there are other ways to cope with hot flashes other than HRT.  Also trying to say that these horror stories you hear about how your body is just going to fall apart without estrogen are quite exaggerated.

Both of my grandmothers, and all four of my great-grandmothers before them had no HRT (obviously) and they lived to be in their 90s.   The notion that HRT is going to keep you healthy is nonsense.

desdemona222b

And since we're talking about hot flashes, here's an interesting article that indicates you may just survive longer if you do have hot flashes:

Breast Cancer Recurrence In Women Without Hot Flashes May Be Reduced By Diet

A secondary analysis of a large, multicenter clinical trial has shown that a diet loaded with fruits, vegetables and fiber and somewhat lower in fat compared to standard federal dietary recommendations cuts the risk of recurrence in a subgroup of early-stage breast cancer survivors - women who didn't have hot flashes - by approximately 31 percent. These patients typically have higher recurrence and lower survival rates than breast cancer patients who have hot flashes. The study team, led by researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, along with six other sites, including the University of California, Davis, reported its results online December 15, 2008, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The results come on the heels of a report last year on the findings of the original study, the Women's Healthy Eating and Living Trial (WHEL), which compared the effects of the two diets on cancer recurrence in more than 3,000 early-stage breast cancer survivors. That study showed no overall difference in recurrence among the two diet groups.

"Women with early stage breast cancer who have hot flashes have better survival and lower recurrence rates than women who don't have hot flashes," said Ellen B. Gold, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences and first author of the study. "Our results suggest that a major change in diet may help overcome the difference in prognosis between women with and without hot flashes."

"Our interest in looking at this subgroup came because hot flashes are associated with lower circulating estrogen levels, while the absence of hot flashes is associated with higher estrogen levels. Reducing the effect of estrogen is a major treatment strategy in breast cancer," said the WHEL study principal investigator John P. Pierce, Ph.D., Sam M. Walton Professor for Cancer Prevention and director of Cancer Prevention and Control at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. "It appears that a dietary pattern high in fruits, vegetables and fiber, which has been shown to reduce circulating estrogen levels, may only be important among women with circulating estrogen levels above a certain threshold."

About 30 percent of the original group of 3,088 breast cancer survivors did not report hot flashes at study entry. The women had been randomly assigned to one of the two diets between 1995 and 2000 and were followed until 2006. About one-half (447) of the "no hot flashes" group were randomized to the special, "intervention" high-vegetable fruit diet while the other half (453) was given the generally recommended diet of five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The team found that those on the intervention diet had a significantly lower rate of a second breast cancer event (16.1 percent) compared to those eating the government-recommended five-a-day dietary pattern (23.6 percent).

The dietary effect was even larger (a 47 percent lower risk) in women who had been through menopause.

According to Pierce, another possible mechanism has been proposed recently for why this diet may have affected only 30 percent of the WHEL study population. Women with estrogen receptor-positive cancers usually receive hormone therapy (tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors) aimed at combating the effect of circulating estrogen. However, more than 30 percent of these women appear to have a gene-drug interaction that prevents them from getting an effective dose of this therapy.

"This hypothesis says that if the endocrine therapy is working, no further reduction in estrogen levels would be needed," said Pierce. "If your genes are preventing you from getting a therapeutic dose, then following this rigorous dietary pattern may reduce estrogen levels enough to reduce risk." Because this is speculation, he said, the research team will be using biological samples collected throughout the study to further investigate the mechanisms behind the study diet's protective effects.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133215.php

07rescue

This thread was all about Remifemin, not HRT, why hijack the thread like this? Why is it that when people talk about conventional allopathic medicine no one attacks others' choices of surgical procedures, chemotherapy regimens, or radiation courses, but over here on the alt/comp board people do readily attack one another's choices? 

Also, why attack other women's report of the debilitating nature of their symptoms? Why do people feel they have the right to basically say, "Suck it up, it's not so bad, get over yourself" with women considering alternative treatments, but not on boards about chemo side effects, etc.? It is no more welcome here than there, and it is by no means supportive, which is what these message boards are supposed to be about. I find it really offensive, diminishing, and rude behavior, which is unhelpful and not in keeping with the spirit of the message boards.

Hot flashes are a symptom of estrogen deficiency, and everyone is looking for a treatment that will ameliorate hot flashes selectively, without increasing the risk of breast cancer proliferation. Estrogen receptors all over the body are selectively acted apon by many substances, most notably Tamoxifen. That is what the discussion about Remifemin and other possible agents is all about - finding an agent that will selectively reduce hot flashes without increasing the risk of breast cancer. The jury is still very much out on Remifemin, in my mind, because the only studies we have to go by are basd on mice, who are notoriously misleading in their responses to experimental drug agents as can be applied to humans. There are countless expensive drug investigations based on wonderful results with mice that turn out terribly different when tried in humans, and that legacy of great disappointments cannot be lightly dismissed.

I refuse to put great stock in mouse experiments, whether the results are positive or negative, they simply don't mean much. We simply cannot say anything for sure yet.

desdemona222b

Wow, jeez - none of that was my intent.  Florida Lady brought up HRT first and there were remarks about hot flashes, so I thought the whole thing was about some form of it.  I do think you're a little extra sensitve about this, not sure why, but I'm not here to fight or attack anyone. 

desdemona222b

Hot flashes are a symptom of estrogen deficiency, and everyone is looking for a treatment that will ameliorate hot flashes selectively, without increasing the risk of breast cancer proliferation.

But you do realize that they have found a treatment to ameliorate hot flashes, don't you?  Prozac completely did away with my hot flashes. 

07rescue

Prozac does not work for everyone, it is not a cure for hot flashes, it helps a minority of women who take it. Prozac also interferes with the action of Tamoxifen, so it is contraindicated for women who concurrently take Tamoxifen, which is a major impediment for many women with breast cancer.

Telling me I am being hypersensitive simply gives credence to my argument that somehow women who invade the alternative and complementary board to attack our choices seem to feel it is appropriate to minimize and insult out report of symptoms and difficulties with breast cancer and it's treatments. I will object to having my own issues with treatment minimized here, or on any other board, you have no right to do that to me.

desdemona222b

I'm trying to reason with you, and I thought I was being helpful because you seem to be extremely frightened of the effects of estrogen loss.  Do you think I was never afraid of the same things you are?  I was trying to reassure you, but no matter what I say you just go ballistic on me.  Anyway, I have no interest whatsoever in participating in this thread anymore because I'm not here to attack anyone, and you take absolutely everything I say in the most negative manner possible.  I have better things to do with my time than wrangle with you, so I'll just bow out.

desdemona222b

Last post - I appreciate the information about Prozac - didn't know that.

Here's an article on it:

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3313491/Anti-depressant-drugs-'make-breast-cancer-treatments-less-effective'.html

07rescue

I am not "frightened" by the effects of estrogen loss- I detest them. They are crippling for me and many, many other women who have taken AIs. A great deal of research documents the joint damage that results from estrogen deficiency, it destroys quality of life, along with the often catastrophic vasomotor symptoms that accompany abrupt surgical menopause. Just because you haven't yet experienced the life altering effects of estrogen deprivation over an extended period of time doesn't give you the right to rudely attack others for our report of symptoms. You can interpret that as "ballistic" as much as you want to, I am always going to object strongly to you or anyone else putting people down for having symptoms. This board is for support, not insulting people. If you are here to insult people, then I am glad you are leaving.

Anonymous

Well, that's categorically rude, and is thus reported.

07rescue

I've reported plenty of your rude, insulting, attacking posts and will continue to. And when I see people come onto this alternatives board and get nasty - insulting, and viciously attacking and belittling women who post here - I definitely will object, loudly and clearly. I don't accept the double standard I see here, over and over, where women are very kind to other breast cancer patients unless they are interested in alternative care, after which they are subjected to all manner of insult and insensitivity.

Most people who look into alternative care are people who have already been through everything conventional medicine has to offer, and are here because they have not been well served by it, so now they are desperate for anything that might help. Many people simply feel they have nothing to lose. Insulting and belittling people for their concerns only reflects badly on the poor character and mean spiritedness of the attacker.

If you stop attacking, I will stop objecting, it's that simple. Problem solved.