Hormones as a risk? Contraceptive pill, hormone replacement therapy, menopause

What is the role of hormones in cancer development? The safe prevention of unintended pregnancy will remain for many women over many years of her life an issue. Accordingly, many use the "pill", a collective term for drugs based on hormones that suppress ovulation and / or prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

Go through with the aging of not a few women, then a phase that is associated with a more or less pronounced decrease in its performance: the menopause. Until a few years, the administration of hormone replacement preparations was in the industrialized countries as a common method for the treatment of so-called climacteric complaints.
The pill is now considered one of the safest contraceptives. Hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms are now regarded very critically, however: they significantly increase the risk of breast cancer in healthy women. Even for women who were already diagnosed with breast cancer, so other ways to relieve symptoms in the foreground. Herbal products containing so-called phytoestrogens, however, belong not to do so.