You asked the question at the end of the appointment, the way you ask something you have rehearsed.

And the answer contained the word cancer, said quickly, and something about risks, and then the appointment was over.

You felt the drop in your chest. You said of course, that makes sense. You put your coat on.

Then you went home and did not sleep properly for another four years.

You were not given a decision that day. You were given a headline, and you were given eight seconds to react to it.

A couple of years ago we did a weird lab experiment.

We took an extract of Italian Kiwis…

Applied it to a cluster of melanin cells (what dark spots are made of)...

And watched as the melanin cells MELTED before our eyes.

18 months of further lab work followed.

Until we perfected a simple, at-home treatment that “melts” away the appearance of dark spots in as little as 15 days.

Here's the really crazy part…

It’s 20 TIMES more effective than the common ingredients you find in dark spot creams…

And doesn’t cause any burning or skin irritation.

The Women's Health Initiative randomized 16,608 postmenopausal women to estrogen plus progestin or placebo, and stopped early in 2002 after an average of 5.2 years.

The hazard ratio for invasive breast cancer was 1.26. That is where the twenty six percent increase that circled the world came from.

Now the same finding in the form nobody printed.

Eight additional invasive breast cancers per 10,000 women per year.

The trial also found, per 10,000 women per year, seven additional coronary events, eight additional strokes, eight additional pulmonary emboli. And six fewer colorectal cancers, and five fewer hip fractures.

Those are the actual magnitudes. They are not nothing. They are also not what you were led to picture when someone said the word cancer and looked at the clock.

After years of constant bloating, stomach cramps and adult acne that wouldn’t go away, I was so desperate I would’ve tried anything.

That’s how I came across a bizarre “neon root”, recommended by a doctor.

I took it before bed and by morning, my bloating was completely gone. I woke up with a completely flat stomach!

By day 3, the stubborn acne on my face completely disappeared. 

If you want to clear your skin and fix your gut by tomorrow morning, you need to see this:

In 2017, JoAnn Manson and colleagues published 18 years of cumulative follow-up on 27,347 women from the WHI trials in JAMA.

All-cause mortality was 27.1 percent in the hormone therapy groups and 27.6 percent in the placebo groups.

No increase in all-cause mortality. No increase in cardiovascular mortality. No increase in total cancer mortality.

That result arrived to almost no coverage, into a world that had already made up its mind fifteen years earlier.

The average woman in that trial was in her sixties at enrolment, more than a decade past her final period. She is not the 49 year old reading this, and risk profiles differ by age and by time since menopause.

And the trial tested specific preparations. The range of formulations and delivery routes in use now is wider, and they do not all carry identical risk profiles.

Both of those cut in the direction of nuance, which is exactly what was removed.

Do this, at any appointment, about any treatment. Say the sentence.

Please give me that as absolute risk. Out of a hundred women like me, or per ten thousand women per year.

A relative risk with no baseline attached is not information. It is a feeling with a percentage sign on it, and you cannot make a decision with it.

Write your own risks down before you go. Family and personal history of breast cancer, clots, stroke, liver disease.

Write the other column too. What the symptoms are costing you, how long you have had them, what your bone and sleep and working life look like.

Then ask what the different routes and preparations mean for your specific risks, and ask for a review date rather than a verdict.

This is a real decision with real risks and it belongs to you. It just has to be made with the actual numbers in front of you, which is the one thing nobody arranged.

You were never given a choice. You were given a headline.