Sylvie Demers argues that, on the contrary, female hormones are valuable allies for good cardiovascular health. She also questions the need to take medication once morest cholesterol, because he too is, according to her, an ally in this area.
Heart attacks: women too
Sylvie Demers has been a family physician and researcher for twenty-five years, a biologist and doctor of experimental medicine, a leading authority in female, male and transgender hormone therapy. First of all, she provides figures in her book that send shivers down your spine: according to Statistics Canada, 31% of Canadian women’s deaths are caused by cardiovascular disease. Same proportion among our neighbors south of the border: a third of the deaths of American women is linked to cardiovascular disease, according to the American Hart Association. In Europe too, one woman in three dies of a cardiovascular disease, according to the Cardiovascular Research Foundationand it is the leading cause of female mortality in France.
Thus, women are 50 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than from breast cancer. The popular belief that cardiovascular disease only affects men is totally wrong.
Protective hormone therapy
Dr. Demers protests once morest the fact that we refuse to prescribe hormone therapy to women who have had an episode of cardiovascular disease (angina, heart attack, TIA, stroke, thrombosis), who have family histories and genetic predispositions to these diseases, or who have predispositions or risk factors such as obesity, overweight, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure, etc. And this under the pretext that taking estrogens at menopause would increase the risk of cardiovascular disease .
“Contrary to the dominant discourse, I will show you in this book that female hormone therapy at an adequate dosage plays an important protective role once morest cardiovascular disease. writes Sylvie Demers, especially since it does not increase the risk of breast cancer. The doctor believes that one of the current problems on this file of hormone therapy comes from the lack of adequate training of doctors: “The training of doctors is greatly deficient in this area. she specifies.
In her book, Sylvie Demers also tackles this widespread practice in today’s medicine of fighting cholesterol, with the prescription of cholesterol-lowering drugs, especially statins: “I will therefore give a very important place to cholesterol, whose reputation I will completely restore. You will indeed discover that, like the female hormones, cholesterol is an essential and invaluable substance for the maintenance of good health, both cardiovascular than general”. She argues on this subject that leading specialists and several scientists share her opinion.
These laboratories that make the law
Sylvie Demers regrets that doctors are “at the boot” of pharmaceutical companies, without taking the time to properly inform themselves regarding the drugs they prescribe. We know the power of the lobbies of these companies.
“We will understand in this book that female hormones and cholesterol have been demonized and that the beatification of statins must be stopped. It’s not statins that women need as a remedy to prevent cardiovascular disease, but their female hormones.” says the doctor in the introduction to her book. A book which is another stone that the specialist launches into the great pond of medicine, following the one Feminine hormones: Rethink your healthpublished in April 2008.
Hormones in the blind spot of medicine
Sylvie Demers denounces the fact that female hormones, which are the most complex in the human body, have been in the blind spot of medicine for too long, whereas they play an essential role in our organism during the first decades of our lives. of women and following, when they become scarce due to menopause.
I fight once morest the guidelines of learned societies which I find very patriarchal and very paternalistic. Women are greatly infantilized.
Sylvie Demers
“There is something very misogynistic regarding the approach we have to women’s health, because we teach women to be afraid of their hormones. They are told that female hormones give cancer, cause It’s a negative view, while we have a positive view of testosterone, the male hormone, she points out.
The best way to prevent problems is to have a balanced hormonal balance and good lifestyle habitsexplains the clinician. Good lifestyle habits are not controversial. But having a balanced hormonal balance, yes. The problem is that female hormones are not taken into account in medicine and it is a serious problem in preventive medicine, because it must be taken into account. I’m not saying that all health problems are due to the lack of hormones, but we pretend that it has no repercussions to lack estrogen and progesterone “.
The menopause in a few figures:
- 12% of the world’s population will be in menopause by 2025
- 1% of women will go through the menopause prematurely, before the age of 40
- On average, perimenopause begins at 45 ans
- You have to go 12 months without having your period to be considered in menopause.
- On average, hot flashes last between 6 and 24 months and 75% of postmenopausal women have
- We are currently listing 50 symptoms of menopause
- It is estimated that approximately 10 to 15% people who have a uterus will have few or no symptoms, 70 to 80% weak or moderate symptoms and 10 to 20% strong symptoms
- With the increase in life expectancy and the average age of menopause, women are now passing 40% of their life in menopause
(Figures taken from the special issue of the magazine Vero on menopause)
Dr. Demers took five years to write this book and she is not at all worried regarding how it will be received by the medical community, because she does not hesitate to rush into stretchers and undo paradigms: “I write because I have things to say, it’s a matter of integrity, even if no book is sold, I’ll be glad I wrote it. But it’s just that I realize that there are things that don’t work, that don’t make sense, so I can’t keep my mouth shut,” she confides.
A #MeToo of hormones
In fact, Dr. Demers has never been silent, and she is one of the specialists interviewed in the LOTO-MÉNO tele series, by host Véronique Cloutier, broadcast in spring 2021 (see Terriennes chronicle). A series that has a major impact in this whole file: “Huge! It’s a MeToo of hormones, it’s a tsunami in my life exclaims Dr. Demers. It’s incredible the enthusiasm that this has aroused among doctors, nurses, I admit that I am overwhelmed”.
This series had a double impact: on the one hand, it liberated women’s voices, shattered this ridiculous taboo which silenced all questions directly or indirectly related to perimenopause, premenopause and menopause. “Women have liberated themselves from all of this; they talk regarding it openly, in social media, in the media, with each other,” rejoices Sylvie Demers.
Second impact, this series aroused interest in the medical community: doctors and nurses flocked to the clinic of Dr. Demers, in Gatineau – near Ottawa, the Canadian capital. “I have trained two hundred doctors and 200 nurses so far, and I have 400 doctors and 400 nurses on standby, says Sylvie Demers. And when I say doctors, I’m talking regarding generalists, but also cardiologists, interns, gynecologists, psychiatrists, endocrinologists, etc. There is incredible interest and all doctors lack training. That’s why in January 2023, I’m going to close my clinic to devote myself to this training”.
Treatments covered by the Quebec state
But the most significant impact was at the government level: on May 26, 2022, under pressure from the documentary and a petition initiated by Sylvie Demers and signed by nearly 280,000 people, the Quebec government accepted that the costs of hormone therapy are covered by the state. In France, hormone replacement treatments are already fully covered by the Primary Health Insurance Fund. This was a major breakthrough for women in Quebec, where these treatments being quite expensive, many might not afford them.
I am proud to be a woman. We are advantaged, we women, biologically. We are greatly advantaged and it must be said!
Sylvie Demers
A huge victory for Dr. Demers: “I fight for women who want to take hormones and for whom their doctor refuses to prescribe them. I fight once morest the guidelines of learned societies which I find very patriarchal and very paternalistic. Women are infantilized enormously. I am an activist so that, in the case of hormone therapy, just as for contraception or abortion, it is up to the woman to decide; the role of the doctor is to prescribe the safest possible hormone therapy without moral judgment”.
Sylvie Demers’ second fight is to ensure the training of medical personnel to be able to offer hormone therapy to women who want it. Among the doctors and nurses she has already trained, several can give this training in turn.
Sylvie Demers is giving herself the next two years to set up a training chain that will be able to operate at full speed and fill this serious training gap among medical personnel. After which, the doctor wants to devote herself to writing to compile the results of the research she has been conducting for decades: “Because you have to publish, I took note of everything during my practice in my clinic and I discovered incredible things that I can’t wait to reveal”.
Important nuances
Dr. Demers warns that hormone therapy is not a magic formula that will solve all women’s health problems either, and would like to point out that it is not at all a “marketing stunt” in favor of hormone therapy, that it is not paid by anyone to promote its advantages.
Yes, she preached for a long time in the desert, but she held on thanks to the support received by her patients during her twenty-five years of practice in her clinic, by their encouragement, their thanks for having finally found a normal life, to feel, once more, good in their life and their female body: “I always believed that it would change, I never got discouraged, I always thought that one day we were going to reach this breaking point”.
And the doctor concludes on the happiness of being a woman: “We always show the dark side of femininity, menstruation, PMS, etc., but I am proud to be a woman, we are advantaged, we women, biologically. We are greatly advantaged and it must be said !”
