I was struck by a recent article in Prevention magazine, which looked in-depth at how people’s lives are being adversely affected not by their illnesses, but by all the pills they are being forced to swallow to deal with those illnesses.

And it turns out, there’s a growing feeling among patients and even doctors that many of these pills are simply unnecessary and making lives worse, not better.

Now, I’ve been labeled an outsider for sharing that viewpoint. But it’s nice to see the rest of the establishment finally coming around.

The author, Siri Carpenter, was compelled to write after watching her mother’s once- sharp mind decay in a cloud of pharmaceuticals. The poor woman was taking 32 pills, spread out over five times a day. She had so many meds she needed a toolbox to keep them in.

When she started to drop many of the pills that it turned out she didn’t need, she began to improve considerably.

And she’s certainly not alone. Too many people, especially seniors, take pills for their conditions, and then another set of pills for the side effects brought on by the first round. New conditions appear, new pills are prescribed. New side effects appear, more pills are prescribed. Eventually, many doctors just throw up their hands and conclude that the patient is simply getting worse as they age.

It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s out of control.

Nearly a fifth of all seniors take more than 10 meds per week. Every year, there are at least 1.5 million adverse drug events, according to the Institute of Medicine.

We have less than a million people living here in Montana, and we’re not even the smallest state, population-wise. In other words, there were enough med-related incidents that we could give one to each resident here, and still have enough left over for nearly everyone next door in North Dakota.

And yet I can’t think of anything more avoidable.

We need to get away from the endless cycle of medications, especially those that don’t cure but simply manage a condition perpetually. And we definitely need to stop using meds that require extra drugs just for the side effects.

And we can.

First and foremost, doctors need to order better and more accurate diagnostic testing. For example, 24-hour urine tests can tell us definitively what critical hormones patients are lacking.

Then, instead of prescribing new meds, we can correct those deficiencies. Once that happens, you can put away that toolbox full of drugs for good.

And even better, there will be only one side effect: You get to feel like yourself again.

Do you think customer service has gotten better since companies began outsourcing their call centers to other countries?

Well, me neither.

Now imagine what that same approach would do to medical research. Except you don’t have to imagine it at all – because this is our frightening new reality.

In fact, as of November 2007, a third of all clinical trials were being conducted overseas, in many cases in Third World countries, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. At the same time, fewer clinical trials are being carried out in the United States and Western Europe.

These developing countries are of course less expensive to work in. A top-flight medical center in India charges between $1,500 and $2,000 per case report, a tenth of what even a second-tier institution here in the United States would demand.

But it’s not just cheaper. No, saving money is just a side benefit of moving these studies abroad. The real reason Big Pharma likes working in developing nations is so they don’t have to deal with that pesky FDA oversight so much. Researchers in many other countries can often carry out clinical trials with little to no review at all.

In fact, Big Pharma may have pushed our friends in India just a little too far. The authorities there are investigating the death of a baby involved in a vaccine trial. A baby! The poor child had a preexisting cardiac disorder, according to reports, and never should have been part of the study to begin with.

Still, in many cases researchers seem to work outside of the system. The authors of the report found one study in which 670 researchers in developing countries were asked if local or national health officials had reviewed their work. Nearly half said they did not.

Do you really think Big Pharma hasn’t noticed that?

The FDA is often shortsighted and narrow-minded, but even their imperfect oversight is far better than none at all.

I’ve spent much of my adult life reading and studying the results of clinical trials. And believe me, it ain’t easy.

There’s an art to reading medical reports, because there’s always a devil or two hiding in the details. Some are poorly designed, and in those cases the problems leap right off the page. But in other cases, researchers with dubious motives intentionally try to misrepresent their conclusions and manipulate data.

They’ve been doing that for years with studies based in the United States and Europe, where there is some oversight and scrutiny.

Just imagine what they’re doing now behind your back.

We’re not done with hormones yet.

We know that hormonal changes affect all of us – not just women – as we age. But what many people don’t realize is how we are, to a certain extent, in control of them. Our actions cause their reactions.

A new study, which will be published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, helps make the point, even if the folks who put it together don’t realize it yet.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Bahman Guyron, a plastic surgeon from the Cleveland area, looked at the effects of lifestyle on aging in a novel way. They visited the annual “Twin Days” festival in (where else?) Twinsburg, Ohio, and began photographing twins and asking questions about their lifestyles.

They found that in many cases, one twin looked younger than the other. Usually, a twin who smoked or spent more time in the sun aged more rapidly.

All of the twins in this survey were women, but the larger point – the one the study didn’t touch on – impacts all of us: As we age, our bodies rely on hormones to step in and repair the damage we do to ourselves. When you smoke or put on weight, those hormones start working overtime to fix you up.

And that works, for a little while.

But if you keep up that demand on your hormones, they stop working right. Like a factory where everyone’s always working double and triple shifts without getting a break, eventually the workers stop showing up. Hormone production tails off, your body stops repairing itself, and your lifestyle catches up to you.

In fact, in my experience, hormone depletion is the number one cause of premature aging. I spend a great deal of time at my clinic in Montana helping patients correct the hormonal deficiencies that are literally causing them to fall apart.

So remember: Everything you do to your body today comes with a price you’ll have to pay later on – and it comes back with interest due.

Fast living leads to faster aging, so slow down a little and treat your body well. You’ll find yourself being paid back in the end.

I’ve always worried about the dangers of non-bioidentical hormones. And after you read this, you’ll be worried too.

Non-bioidentical hormones are often given to women to help manage the symptoms of menopause and prevent osteoporosis, but I’ve found them to be as unpredictable and dangerous as a hungry coyote.

Researchers in Amsterdam recently began a study on tibolone, a hormone not available in the United States but widely used around the world. But we’ll never know what the full results of this study would have been. They had to pull the plug on the research early when they realized just how dangerous it was.

The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, included thousands of women who had survived breast cancer. But for them, the fight wasn’t over yet – thanks to tibolone.

As the study progressed, the researchers began to notice an alarming trend among these women: a higher risk of a breast cancer recurrence. Not a little bit higher, but a whopping 40 percent higher than the placebo group.

It’s not just a significant number — it’s a shocking one. I’ve always said the biggest problems with these things aren’t just what we know they’ll do – but what we still don’t know about them. And this latest research bears me out.

You see, non-bioidentical hormones are not shaped like regular hormones, so they don’t attach properly to your genes. Shape is important because once these types of hormones bind to your genes, the consequent vibration delivers the message. However, hormones that have an altered shaped cannot cause the proper vibration. That changes the messages your genes are sending to the rest of your body. And that can lead to these wild, unpredictable, and frightening results.

What will we learn next about non-bioidentical hormones? Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it won’t come as good news to the millions of women who rely on them. And while tibolone isn’t prescribed in the United States, I believe some of the dangers and unpredictability of this product are shared by other non-bioidentical hormones that are commonly used here.

But there’s no reason to even fool with these, because there’s a readily available alternative. They’re called bioidentical hormones, and even folks like Oprah Winfrey have turned to them for help dealing with menopause. These safer, more effective and more natural hormones are, as the name suggests, identical to the ones already in your body. Not only that, but they can be custom-tailored to meet your body’s specific needs.

Sounds good, right? Not to Big Pharma. See, here’s the dirty secret about hormone therapy: the only reason that synthetic hormones exist is because the drug companies can’t patent the bioidenticals. It’s not allowed, because you can’t patent something that’s identical to what’s already in your body. That would be like trying to patent a nose or a toe.

So they had to make up their own kinds of hormones, different hormones, in order to make more money off them. Once again, their interests lie not in the best solutions – just the most profitable ones.

But you don’t have to fall for that old trick. And you don’t have to be a TV star to take advantage of bioidentical hormones. You just need to take a look at the May issue of Health Revelations, where I’ll have all the details for you. If you’re undergoing hormone replacement therapy (or considering it for the future), be sure to give that a read before your next trip to the doctor’s office.  (Click here to sign up for Health Revelations today!)