What s the difference between synthetic HRT and natural?
These are terms you ll hear so often — and it can get really confusing (so what else is new when it comes to early menopause?!?) Anyway, here s a brief explanation of the terms as they re usually used: Natural HRT refers to estrogens and progesterone that are actually man-made — but from natural plant sources. Most important, they are naturally ocurring and bioidentical to the hormones your body makes. In other words, they don’t just mimic your hormones; they have the exact same chemical structure as the hormones made by your ovaries. (Natural estrogens include Estrace, Estratab, and all of the estrogen patches such as Climara, Vivelle, etc. Natural prescription progesterone includes Prometrium and Crinone.) Synthetic HRT is, as you d expect, hormone replacement made from synthetic sources. But (here s where it gets tricky), Premarin — which is made from a natural source (horse urine) isn’t technically considered a “natural” because it isn’t exactly the same as the estrogen that is
