Burn Baby Burn Part 2

Posted by Liz on Sep 12, 2008 in heartburn | 1 comment

Regular acid, Heartburn? Have you taken hormones lately? Used OTC products like soy, wild yam or progesterone cream?

If you’re in that postmenopausal state of mind and continue to take prescription or OTC hormones for lingering symptoms, you may be placing yourself at risk for developing gastroesophageal reflux disease, better known as GERD.

A recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that use of estrogens,  SERMS, or OTC hormone preparations in the years following menopause (i.e. “postmenopause”)  is associated with a greater likelihood of GERD symptoms.

Researchers studied data from 51,637 postmenopausal women enrolled in the ongoing Nurses Health Study. 12,018 of women reported having GERD symptoms. What’s more, compared to women who had never used postmenopausal hormones, women who did had a 1.4 times greater odds of developing symptoms.

Here’s some other findings:

• Current users of estrogen had a 1.6 times greater odds of developing GERD symptoms
• Current SERM users had a 1.4 times greater odds of developing GERD symptoms
• Current OTC hormone estrogen users had 1.37 times greater odds of developing GERD symptoms.

The findings also suggested that risk increased with increasing estrogen dosage and increasing duration of use.

The researchers offered no suggestions for dealing with this problem.

I don’t know which is worse as symptoms are waning: continued flashing, sweating,  or a new one – burping?