Fun Easter promotion: Easter eggs for general practitioners

In the week of March 25 to 31, the week before Easter, a large group of women in the Netherlands will bring their doctor a gift in the form of a bag of Easter eggs.

This gift is accompanied by an invitation to explore the possibility of helping women with their hormone therapy.

Women in (peri)menopause want their hormones back

This fun campaign aims to attract the attention of a large target group: women run out of eggs from the age of 35, causing a significant deficiency of three essential hormones: estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. But where you can only buy Easter eggs in the store, women can't just buy hormones. It must be prescribed by a doctor, but he is often not fully aware of the options available.

Women receive all three hormones naturally while their ovaries are working. Estrogen is the most important, but progesterone and testosterone are also essential for various processes in the body.

Until recently, the prevailing view was that menopause was something you “should get over.” But after extensive research (especially in the United States and the United Kingdom), it has become clear that a deficiency of these hormones not only causes serious complaints such as hot flashes, night sweats, lack of libido, anxiety, joint complaints, skin problems, hair loss and stomach complaints: Long term, a deficiency also means an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and dementia, among other things. Moreover, the transitional phase is a permanent phase that never goes away. The body continues to need hormones until old age.

Therefore, it is important for women to have free access to the body's hormones. For better health, but also to avoid social failure, remain fully employable and avoid high health care costs.

However, in the Netherlands, many general practitioners are reluctant to prescribe hormones in the correct doses. This is due in part to an older Global Health Initiative study conducted in 2002, according to the project group We want our hormones back. The results of that study (“hormone therapy increases cancer risk”) were disproved only a few years later by the original researchers, because the wrong target group and the wrong hormones were used at the time. However, doubts raised by the original investigation remain. Doctors therefore often use conservative guidelines for NHG, which preferably prescribe synthetic hormones for a maximum of 5 years.

Project group We want our hormones back I'd like to draw attention to this topic with this fun Easter campaign. They hope that GPs will take the time – along with some delicious Easter eggs – to study the information available and delve deeper into the body's abilities to help women on an individual level.