No More Periods?
The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge Issues
About Hormones and Women's Health
by Susan Rako, M.D.

Amidst today's avalanche of worrisome breaking news, the publication of this important book in the service of women's health deserves our best efforts to bring to the public its good news - that nature and women's bodies have a wisdom that can be trusted - a wisdom that must be protected from manipulation.  The fact is that drugs designed for menstrual suppression will be competing in a market currently valued (as presented in "information for investors" on the website of one pharmaceutical company) at more than $2.2 billion annually.  NO MORE PERIODS?  The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge Issues About Hormones and Women's Health (Harmony Books, Publication date:  May 1, 2003) by Susan Rako, M.D. is a call to sanity from a woman who has become known as a devout defender of women's health rights.  Dr. Rako, who also authored the landmark book, The Hormone of Desire, warns:

"Tampering with the hormonal climate of healthy menstruating women, including teenage girls whose lives stretch ahead for decades, for the purpose of doing away with their periods is, in a word, reckless.  Manipulating women's hormonal chemistry for the purpose of menstrual suppression threatens to be the largest uncontrolled experiment in the history of medical science."

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Rako takes on the growing anti-menstruation movement in medicine and shows the fallacies and dangers it masks.  She addresses the huge information gap and the serious health crisis that threatens the enormous population of healthy girls and women from adolescence to perimenopause.

Dr. Rako is an experienced, effective speaker, prepared to present and discuss the crucial information from medical archives that has to this point been little publicized and is critical to protecting women's health.

• The birth control pill has now been shown to be an active PARTNER to the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) in causing cervical cancer, which presently kills more than 6,000 women each year - man of them young women.  Non-stop use of the Pill will put more women at risk for this cancer.
   
• "The shot" (Depo-Provera) stops women's periods and thins their bones in the process.  Depo-Provera has been shown to be a risk factor for osteoporosis, even in young women.
   
• There are blessings of "the Curse" and of the normal menstrual cycle that contribute far more to women's longevity than they or their doctors realize at present.  The regular monthly bleed reduces excess stored iron, which has been shown to be a major contributor to arteriosclerosis, heart attacks, and strokes. 
   
• Suppression of the normal menstrual cycle throws a "hormonal monkey wrench" into women's complex chemistry, with troubling effects on virtually every organ system in the body - disruptions in the immune system, depressed sexual libido, sensitivity, and response, and alterations in brain chemistry and mood balance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SUSAN RAKO, M.D. is the author of the groundbreaking book The Hormone of Desire:  The Truth About Testosterone, Sexuality, and Menopause, which brought her to international prominence as a preeminent authority on testosterone deficiency  and supplementation for women.  An expert in the field of women's health and women's health rights, Dr. Rako is a Boston-based psychiatrist who has been in private practice for thirty years.  After graduation from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she trained and taught at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts Mental Health Center.  Dr. Rako is at work on a collection of essays and stories from her life. 

NO MORE PERIODS?
The Risks of Menstrual Suppression and Other Cutting-Edge
Issues About Hormones and Women's Health
by Susan Rako, M.D.

Published by Harmony Books

Publication date:  May 1, 2003  ◊  ISBN 1-4000-4503-7
Price: $21.00  ◊   Pages 192