By Jonathan V. Wright, M.D. with contributions by Christa Hinchcliffe, N.D. and Wendy Ellis, N.D. 

If you’re a woman, your average life expectancy is about 80 years old. That means you’re going to spend more than one-third of your life in a postmenopausal state, facing all the adverse health effects associated with reduced levels of the hormones your body made internally before menopause (estrogens, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, thyroid hormones, melatonin, and others). These effects range from mild but annoying-things like increased fatigue and decreased libido-to serious threats to your ability to lead a normal daily life – osteoporosis, muscle weakness, atherosclerosis, loss of cognitive function, and many more.

And those of you men reading this aren’t out of the woods either. Although your hormones decline more gradually, men face very similar challenges.

But there is a way to effectively prevent many of these problems, “diseases of aging” as they’ve come to be known, and promote longevity in both women and men during the later stages of your lives. The only problem is, many of us are afraid to use it.

Concerns about the risks associated with “hormone replacement therapy” have been a hot topic of discussion, especially over the last few years, since the results of the “Women’s Health Initiative” were released.

Those of you who receive the Health eTips e-letter might recall reading last month about a recent survey conducted by researchers at Stanford University, which found that fewer than 30 percent of women remember this pivotal study. What does seem to have made a lasting impression are the dangers that were uncovered by that trial, namely increased risks of heart attack, stroke, and cancer.

But the HRT in the “Women’s Health Initiative” study used horse estrogens and a “space alien” progestin (not natural progesterone), neither of which have any business being in your body. So it’s critical to make the distinction between HRT using hormones that are completely foreign to human bodies and the kind used in bio-identical HRT (BHRT), which exactly mimic what your body produces (or produced) naturally all on its own before menopause and andropause set in. Unfortunately, the mainstream media – even articles by “leading science writers” – very rarely make that distinction. And, as a result, I get lots of questions about BHRT safety every day, fromNutrition & Healing readers and Tahoma Clinic patients.

Today I’ll do my best to answer them all in one comprehensive article. So let’s start with the question that is typically forefront on everyone’s mind: How do you know for sure that BHRT is safe?

Read the full in depth option here http://ahha.org/BHRT-Article.htm