Helen Pensanti, M.D.
Helen Pensanti M.D. began her practice with traditional office gynecology. In her fourth year of private practice, she became alarmed at the serious side effects her patients experienced from synthetic hormones.
Dr. Pensanti refused to write another prescription and diligently searched for an alternative. Her television show "Doctor to Doctor" booked guest John R. Lee M.D. When Dr. Pensanti met Dr. Lee he became her mentor and friend. "It was as if Dr Lee handed me a baton and said ‘Now run with it Helen, it's your turn,’ explains Dr. Pensanti.
Dr. Lee’s best-selling book, What Your Doctor Hasn't Told You About Menopause, mentions Dr. Helen Pensanti who learned everything she could from Dr. Lee about Phyto-Progesterone and began treating her patients accordingly. Eventually Dr. Pensanti began manufacturing her own phyto-hormones in 1994.
"The biggest difference between my cremes and other phyto-progesterone cremes is that I refused to put Black Cohash and Dong Quai into the formula,” says Dr. Pensanti. “Black Cohash and Dong Quai are estrogens and mixing them with the plant progesterone would cause some women to have two periods a month. As a trained physician in female physiology, I knew that combination would not work."
Dr. Pensanti spoke out against synthetic hormones on her weekly national TV program “Doctor To Doctor.” Her voice went out across America explaining that synthetic hormones were dangerous and that they could cause breast cancer, stroke, and heart disease. The standard of care for the treatment for PMS, Perimenopause, Menopause and Osteoporosis was the use of synthetic hormones. Dr. Pensanti became an "activist" against synthetic hormones.
On July 9, 2002, when The National Institutes of Health stopped the study of women on synthetic Estrogen and synthetic Progestin, Dr. Pensanti was vindicated. The Institutes concluded that a combination of these drugs demonstrated a 29% increased risk of Breast Cancer, 26% increased risk of a first time heart attack, 41% increased risk of strokes and double the risk of blood clots to the legs and lungs.