Oprah, Suzanne, Women's Rights & Mortgage Squatters

Oprah: If you missed Oprah's recent shows on HRT - the most recent being an interview with Suzanne Somers and a couple of doctors, yesterday — I'm sure you can go to her website and play some interesting catch-up. I think she's got some Internet Q & A sessions going, too.

And make no mistake, Suzanne Somers is not the ditzy, dumb-blonde character she played on that sitcom, Three's Company, or was it Three's a Crowd?, oh so many years ago. Anyway...she's one smart cookie. Savvy, intelligent, resourceful, practical, and not afraid to get out there and stand up to one "authority" after another, holding her ground and fending off bullshit flack from conservative medical establishment people who pronounce that because she's not a doctor or scientist, she doesn't know what she's talking about. What a load of crap. She has educated herself very well, she has just written her third or fourth health-related book, and she knows plenty.

Equal Pay for Women (the new bill that Obama just signed): Fantastic, of course, but when I excitedly brought it up at my writing group last night, someone said, "Hold it, hold it! This doesn't mean women are getting equal pay, it means they now have the right to SUE for equal pay."

Oh. Right. Of course. Silly me. Yeah, we've come a long way baby. Uh-huh.

Mortgage Squatters: A few minutes ago I caught a news segment featuring a woman Senator whose name I didn't catch, talking about how she's taking the lead in a movement that is urging every homeowner who has been foreclosed on to STAY PUT. She's furious about the Wall Street bailout fiasco, and is telling homeowners not to budge from the homes they are supposedly losing. Why the f....k, she says, should those a......holes get bailed out, but not you?

She's trying to help people learn how to get good legal representation from property lawyers who know the ropes because, she says, 99.9 percent of homeowners haven't got a clue how all this stuff works, how they could have been bamboozled, and how they can fight back, legally.

Sounds right to ME.

Finally, we are hearing some logical, straightfoward, common-sense talk coming from a few politicians. We're so accustomed to listening to nothing but double-talk gobbledygook, it's shocking to hear stuff that actually makes sense. Shocking when a few more people finally admit out loud that the emperor has no clothes, and the Wall Street CEOs are crooks beyond belief. CROOKS.

Oh, and as for the news commentators who bemoan Wall Street's "poor PR,"  I say, "Poor PR? Who cares about whether they have any PR savvy? The point is, they are corrupt, greedy, arrogant, immoral crooks. There's nothing complex about this. It's simple. It's glaringly obvious. Why can't more people see it and SAY it, loud and clear and without qualification?

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One more thing. Here's an email that just came to my Inbox:

Oprah Winfrey Continues BHRT Discussion

Dear Jane,

Yesterday, Jan. 29, dozens of women joined in the audience and on webcams for part two of the BHRT debate on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”  Suzanne Somers, a long-time advocate for bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), shared her story with the “Oprah” audience.

Robin McGraw, Dr. Phil’s wife and a BHRT patient, and Dr. Christiane Northrup, renowned author and speaker, started the conversation a couple weeks ago when they joined Oprah to talk about BHRT.  Women across the country wrote in to “The Oprah Show” wanting more information on how to take control of their menopause symptoms.

Somers shared her experience being treated by her physician with BHRT to alleviate her menopause symptoms.  She also demonstrated her daily regimen of compounded medications and dietary supplements. "By replacing my hormones with bioidentical hormones, I got my life back. I got my health back, I got my figure back, I got my happiness back," Somers said.

Oprah stressed that women “have the right to demand a better quality of life” and they should all do their research.

However, positive praise of BHRT was also met with harsh criticism when Dr. Lauren Streicher, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and a practicing ob-gyn at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, expressed her dislike for compounding pharmacies.

To be certain, Dr. Streicher’s commentary was the most grievous offense contained in the episode on compounding pharmacies.  She misstated facts and presented a distorted picture of pharmacy compounding and how the profession is regulated.  Today IACP sent a formal letter to the producers of “The Oprah Show” to dispel the untruths presented by Dr. Streicher.  

Hoping to clear up the confusion about compounding pharmacies, Dr. Mehmet Oz visited Central Pharmacy in Santa Monica, Calif., where he interviewed Sharon Steen, owner of the compounding pharmacy. Steen estimated that 90 percent of the medications her pharmacy compounds are BHRT. A pharmacist and technician demonstrated how a hormone cream is prepared.

At the end of the show, a taped segment featured a woman who shared her struggles with menopause on part one of the BHRT debate that aired Jan. 15. Robin McGraw escorted the woman to have her hormone levels checked. It was determine that she needed BHRT, and only nine days later she was noticing the difference. "The side effect from the bioidentical hormones is a big dose of joy. It's fantastic,” she told Oprah via webcam.

To view segments and read about what was discussed on the show, click here.

IACP Responds to Oprah
Today, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP) responded to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with a formal letter correcting the misstatements made by Dr. Lauren Streicher on the show.

Click here to read IACP’s letter to Oprah Winfrey and her show producers.

We will keep you updated on further developments.

Sincerely,
P2C2

Comments

[no prescription hydrocodone]

This is a very informative article. I'm glad I discovered your blog. I will definitely promote this blog among my circle of friends.?

[Jill]

Saw Part 1 and 2 on Oprah. Am so glad that the conversation has been started openly with such a wide audience! It's a start. Thank God! Got the same email from P2C2 as well. Oh, and there was a live webcast Thurs. night with Dr. Northrup that people called or emailed questions for her to answer. It was pretty good, too. You can see again on demand on Oprah.com. Reading the message boards on Oprah.com about bioidenticals was interesting to say the least......wow. I sure hope we are on the road to getting women to stand up and demand the care we deserve. It just makes me cry to hear story after story of wasted years....and then I get angry again....

[Jennifer D.]

Hi, Jane:

Thanks for noting this entry and the previous one on FB. I have read with interest. It's been four years since my surgery, and I only just now got the okay from my oncologist about using Estrace or the E-string (to alleviate the predictable result of surgical menopause). Granted, I haven't pursued the topic very vigorously myself, but this makes me wonder about what other misconceptions I may hold about my health as a cancer survivor. Sigh...