Three old guys are out walking.
First one says, “Windy, isn’t it?”
Second one says, “No, it’s Thursday!”
Third one says, “So am I. Let’s go get a beer.”
We women go through a lot. Our bodies are constantly changing and in transition owing to the hormone balance that shifts with age and with the environment to which we are exposed. We are chemical beings, and we live in a world that is environmentally hazardous. We have chemicals in our water. Our food supply is damaged from the soil in which it grows and from the acid rain that falls from the sky. Our food is loaded with preservatives and chemicals that our bodies were never meant to assimilate. When you factor in the daily stress we are all coping with—noise pollution, traffic, airplanes, angry drivers—along with major stresses like a death in the family, serious illness, and accidents, it’s no wonder we have so many problems associated with our changing bodies, from PMS to perimenopause to menopause and beyond.
They say in today’s world we experience more stress in a single day than a person in Elizabethan times experienced in their entire lives. Think about that … this is why these transitions have become so difficult. Transitions are a part of aging, and each passage that occurs involves changing hormone levels. How you get through these transitions, or passages—successfully, with your health intact—has to do primarily with balancing your hormones. That’s what we’ll look at in this chapter.
PMS is real. The dictionary description is as follows: “a disorder causing a range of symptoms such as nervousness, irritability, bloating, depression, headache, fatigue, tenderness of the breasts and acne, that occur each month following ovulation and leading up to menstruation: usually five to fourteen days before.” The very existence of this definition in the dictionary proves PMS is a real syndrome!
We are not given sympathy for this syndrome, either, because we are so difficult to be around while experiencing its symptoms. We know inside that we can’t help it when we fly off the handle, but it takes so much effort and maturity to try to cope with it.
If you suffer from PMS, there are two things you can do: The first is to find a doctor who understands bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. So often a blood test will reveal that your “chemical imbalance” is hormonal in origin. This finding makes the syndrome easily rectified.
You have to understand that hormone replacement is not the sole domain of older women. Teenagers with “raging hormones” can feel and act crazy from hormonal imbalances. Additionally, in teenagers with PMS, painful periods and cramps are often a result of a progesterone deficiency. Add to that scenario that they do not yet possess all of their “common sense,” and parents have a recipe for disaster. Getting a blood test to determine the existence of an imbalance and then a prescription for real progesterone, short-term, until the girl is balanced, can save a lot of heartache. If she needs it for a deficiency, then it cannot be harmful, only helpful.
Perimenopausal women experiencing PMS may be suffering from an estrogen deficiency that makes them feel crazy and irritable. This can start in the early thirties and continue for years. Again, a blood test to identify the imbalance and then replacement with real hormones for what is needed can change a person’s life and outlook.
PMS can be so serious that it can ruin relationships and marriages. No one understands it, least of all the woman herself. This brings me to the second thing you can do about PMS: You have to get a handle on yourself. Understand that your hormones are acting up and that the feelings you are experiencing are magnified by the chemical imbalance. Right before your period is usually the worst and most dangerous time. You can experience true rage; then two days later when your chemicals have calmed down, you feel so bad for all the terrible things you have said and done.
I remember being terribly PMS-y in my early thirties. When I think about it now, I was definitely hormonally imbalanced. Remember, I was also on those original birth control pills, and they could make you feel crazy. I wonder how much of my craziness was chemically induced by those harmful pills I was taking. I would do terrible things: throw a beautiful vase across the room, try to jump out of a moving car, cry, or scream, all of which was truly embarrassing behavior. My anger at my husband and kids felt real.
I was extremely stressed dealing with my newfound and tremendous fame and blending our two families. My schedule was crazy. My eating habits had not been formed. I drank a lot of champagne and ate too much sugar. I went out too much, didn’t sleep enough, and prided myself on the tiny amount of sleep I got each night, as though outworking everyone were something to be proud of. In other words, I had zero understanding of my body as a temple to be revered and taken care of. I abused my body and mind during those years, and the craziness the week before my period was always inevitable. I am extremely lucky that my husband tried his best to understand what I was going through. But the truth is, I did not understand it myself, and as a result, I could have lost everything.
Yes, PMS is real, but you have to accept that your lifestyle and diet choices can affect it, good or bad. Poor sleeping habits, poor diet, consumption of chemicals and preservatives, and other bad choices will have a negative effect on your quality of life. Have your doctor order a hormone panel to see if it is imbalance that is making you this way. See a therapist to try to unravel the confusion of your life. I did this because I was in anguish from leftover childhood issues and new issues relative to putting a family together that didn’t want to be together. My therapist helped me change my life and attitudes. I also changed my diet and reprioritized my life.
Hormone replacement has let my true nature emerge. I no longer get PMS. When I do feel irritable or bitchy, I ask myself, What is going on in my life? Is it real stress, can I handle this stress better, or is this chemical? I go over my eating patterns for the prior couple of days to see if too much sugar had been in my diet in any of its forms, such as processed carbohydrates, bread, desserts, or wine. These foods can cause PMS even in menopause, even if you are on bioidenticals. Diet affects your hormones and, thus, your moods. If I find my diet was not good, I will give myself a talking- to and remember that the irritable feelings are from my choices. Then I get a grip. It’s not fun to be around a PMS-y woman, and it’s not right to take things out on others. In the end, the one who loses out the most is you.
Perimenopause, which is the transitional stage from normal menstrual periods to no periods at all, is not given a lot of attention because it’s seen as a precursor to menopause and not the real deal. Perimenopausal women are emotional; yet because they are still getting a period, most doctors toss it off as “nothing serious.” But here is why you should be concerned about perimenopause: You are in a severe state of hormonal imbalance that has potentially dangerous consequences. One day your estrogen goes sky-high, one day it’s low, one day your progesterone levels are off the charts, and the next day they are nonexistent. Perimenopause is about hormonal surges. It’s these surges that are causing new, unexplained weight gain. It’s these surges that are causing mood swings. It’s these surges that can set the stage for cancer, as you’ll learn later in this chapter.
Perimenopause marks the beginning of hormonal decline, and with hormonal decline comes withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms vary in severity from woman to woman, but unexplained feelings, emotions, hot flashes, sleeplessness, lack of sex drive, weight gain, and irritability are all part of the process. The falling hormones you experience in perimenopause are the opposite of what you experienced as you entered puberty, yet there are parallels. Back then, your hormones were building up to get you ready to be a reproductive person. Remember all the crazy feelings you had inside you? Remember that lack of understanding you had when you would suddenly break into tears or that teenage rage that seemed so inappropriate? Except now, in perimenopause, the situation is reversing, so on the way down you are going to experience the same emotional and physical havoc that you experienced when your hormones first started building up. It’s no fun.
You must understand that in perimenopause you’re running nearly on empty. That’s why you don’t feel “right.” As author T. S. Wiley explains, “You still have just enough estrogen to make a thin lining in your uterus and cause unopposed hormonal growth elsewhere in your breasts and body, but not enough to cause an estrogen peak. That’s why your periods are getting shorter and shorter, your breasts lumpier and lumpier, and your mind far less agile. The fact that you don’t peak estrogen with any regularity anymore, and you haven’t since your late twenties, is the hallmark of perimenopause.”
As fully reproductive women, we make enough estrogen each month so that it reaches its peak on the twelfth day, stops the growth of cells, and makes progesterone receptors. Without an estrogen peak, your brain can’t send the signal to release any of the eggs you have left. T. S. Wiley further says, “With no peak of estrogen, there’s no feedback information to shut off follicle-stimulating hormone, so FSH pours constantly, overstimulating your ovaries and ripening all at once most of the eggs you have left. The loss of this rhythm in perimenopause actually triggers the destruction of the rest of your eggs through the action of excessive FSH, using up the remainder of your eggs. At about this time, you begin to feel the heat of hot flashes. That’s how the system effectively shuts itself down for good. This process can take a decade.”
You can find out whether you’ve gone from perimenopause to actual menopause by having your FSH blood tested. An FSH score higher than 5 is the clinical diagnosis of menopause. So have your blood work done and ask your doctor what your FSH score is. You can stop the destruction, essentially achieve feedback, and shut off FSH with estrogen replacement.
Having no more eggs means having no more estrogen, a situation that, of course, leads to no more progesterone either. Since you’ve stopped regularly producing the small amount of progesterone that you would from a normal menstrual cycle, and there’s no steady increase of it either (that is, you’re not pregnant), nature “thinks” that you’re back in “adrenarche,” the increase in activity of the adrenal glands just before puberty. Because your estrogen is so low and you’re producing even more testosterone than before, thanks to your sleeplessness, the pubertal picture is complete.
Wiley goes on to say, “After we reach thirty, nature identifies falling (low) estrogen and higher than normal (rising) testosterone as the beginning … again. This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion on the part of nature. You must be in adrenarche, because nature knows no other template for not ovulating except pregnancy and lactation … unless, of course, you’re a man. Now nature tries to send you on your way to puberty. Only it can’t. The whole point of puberty is to get you to the next level of existence … ovulation. There’s the hitch. That developmental milestone takes eggs, and we don’t have any. It’s too late to start puberty again, but the outcome of puberty, a normal rhythm of estrogen and progesterone in youthful quantities, is something you can achieve with natural hormone replacement. You can try to fool nature by covering the fact that you’re missing eggs if you replace the hormones that they would generate in exactly the amounts and rhythm in which they would occur.”
The important thing to remember is that when you are in perimenopause, you have almost no eggs left, which means you no longer have much estrogen left, either. This is an uncomfortable place to be. Without estrogen, we can’t think, we can’t control our body temperature, we can’t sleep well, we have no protection for our heart, and among many other things, we lose our sex drive. There is simply no sexual feeling. It’s as though the motor has died. Most women are mortified to admit this. And really, no one has to know, right? We can still “do it,” but there is no sensation and no pleasure. Any participation on our part is a loving gesture. We can enjoy the closeness; but without any feeling, it is actually more pleasurable to read a magazine.
This is the unfair part. At this point in life, our men (if they are around the same age) are at their virile peak. They would like to have sex every day and more than once if they can. How can we keep up with them? How long can we go on participating in this intimate activity without getting any pleasure? Add the lack of pleasurable feelings to the fact that without estrogen there is no lubrication, so sex can be uncomfortable, or it can hurt. Additionally, yeast infections and other conditions take hold because of the imbalance that is going on in our bodies.
Testosterone levels fall significantly throughout perimenopause and menopause and will affect desire from an early age. Circulating levels of testosterone play an important role in the psychological and sexual changes that occur in menopause. That’s why women respond positively when testosterone is added to their hormone replacement program. Testosterone helps with problems such as fatigue, poor concentration, depression, inability to have an orgasm, and lack of sex drive.
You have to understand that hormonal imbalance is a dangerous place to be. It is in hormonal imbalance that disease can proliferate. Here is a scenario that I am going to be explaining over and over in this book, because it is very important for you to understand the “nature” in you: The brain considers a fully reproductive woman to be a valuable member of the species. Remember, there really is one reason we are all here (biologically speaking), and that is to reproduce, to keep the species going. When we are reproductive, we make a full complement of hormones. There are no surges and no imbalances. Everything is working perfectly. Each month, we are capable of making a baby; whether we choose to do so or not is up to us and nature. But when we are in hormonal imbalance, the brain thinks “aha, this person is amiss. The hormones are leaving her body, meaning she is no longer making a full complement of hormones. Therefore, this woman is no longer capable of making a baby due to loss of eggs.” The brain now wants to eliminate you because you are no longer a productive member of the species, since we are here only to reproduce so that the species can perpetuate itself, according to biology.
Now, of course, with today’s advancements in medicine and technology, we know this is not the end but the beginning of the second half. But the brain doesn’t know this. The brain knows only that this body is no longer working properly. The hormones that nourish and regenerate the organs and all parts of the body are missing. Here is where it gets dangerous: Cancer, viruses that live in all of us, and other diseases are allowed to proliferate. This is why when a woman hits age fifty, she has a one in seven chance of contracting cancer. She didn’t wake up one morning and find cancer in her breast. It started years ago in perimenopause, during the first throes of hormonal imbalance, when the disease that was hanging around inside her body had an opportunity to grow.
Disease doesn’t develop when hormones are in perfect balance. It doesn’t need to. There is no reason to grow a new “self” (cancer) when everything is in balance. For this reason, you need to take perimenopause seriously. Don’t count on your doctor, either. You have to remember that until the medical establishment catches up, we of this generation are on our own. Unless he or she is one of the cutting-edge doctors, your doctor most likely knows nothing about hormones, perimenopause, or menopause. Your emotional complaints will probably be met with pats on the back, antidepressants, and sleeping aids. At the moment, that is all most of our doctors know how to do. As I have said many times before, it’s not their fault; they were not taught in medical school. But I have to say, I am losing a little patience and am getting tired of defending their ignorance in this area. Let me ask you this: If you were an MD, an OB/GYN, or an endocrinologist, and there was so much chatter about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, wouldn’t you by now have made it your business to find out about it, read up, and take courses to keep up with the times? With all the negative information out there on synthetic hormones, with the alarming reports from the Women’s Health Initiative relative to synthetic hormones, with all the complaints from female patients, I have to say I find it shocking that most doctors in this country are still prescribing synthetic hormones and telling women to use them only as long as it is necessary and then get off them.
Now that you know how important it is to replace hormones with bioidentical hormones, not for a short while but for the rest of your life, you can see how uninformed a doctor has to be relative to the importance of hormone replacement to put you on synthetics and then say get off them as soon as these nasty symptoms subside. This means that this doctor doesn’t have a clue as to the importance of hormones. Hormones are what make us run; without them we die. In fact, if you look up death, it will say “loss of hormones.”
Without hormones, there is no quality of life. Try not sleeping for days or months on end (remember, sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture in times of war), and see how you feel. Try having no working internal thermostat so that your body is in a constant state of “high” all the time, and see how you like sweating. It’s both embarrassing and uncomfortable. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Any doctor who tells you to “tough it out” is doing you a disservice. It means he or she doesn’t get what’s happening to you while in perimenopause. Run, don’t walk, from this doctor. You can continue to go to him or her for your other needs, but when it comes to hormones, you want someone who is knowledgeable and sympathetic.
Here’s something else about what happens hormonally in perimenopause: When estrogen rises without progesterone (in other words, your estrogen is surging higher and higher but with no progesterone to create the right rhythm), this elevation turns off a powerful cellular growth controller called epidermal growth factor (EGF-1 and EGF-2). This particular growth factor is the major player in HER2-neu breast cancer. You need the estrogen rising to high enough levels (in other words, to reach an estrogen peak and then cascade down as it does in nature) to turn off the EGF-1 and EGF-2, or you may end up with cancer. A simpler way to explain this is to understand that imbalanced hormones are at the root of cancer. When you are in perimenopause, your natural rhythm is off; that is why perimenopause is a dangerous time for women.
By the time a woman is in her late forties, she has spent anywhere from ten to twenty years in this hormonal confusion. Most women go from doctor to doctor during perimenopause with myriad complaints. Everything gets treated—from her allergies, to backaches, to depression, to weight gain, to headaches and migraines, to sleeplessness and a hundred other maladies—with some form of drug treatment. The drugs are Band-Aids, taking away the symptoms but never addressing the underlying causes. Rarely does a woman find a doctor who actually realizes what is really happening.
The real problem is hormonal loss. The sooner you start putting back what you’ve lost hormonally, the better you will feel. It’s never too early. If you are low, you’re low. But you will have to drive this train. No one is going to do this for you. This is your life. Start now. Perimenopause is a call to action. Your body is starting to shout at you. It wants help. Please listen, hear the call, and save yourself.
When I discussed this potentially dangerous stage of life with T. S. Wiley, she told me perimenopause is problematic because as far as the brain is concerned, women are hormonally in first-trimester pregnancy range. The specific hormone ratios of early pregnancy are insulin (high) and estrogen (low) and thyroid (functioning). These levels are mimicked in perimenopause. This hormonal environment triggers fetal oncogenes to start flipping on, and oncogenes contribute to the production of a cancer. However, perimenopausal women are stranded with no source of progesterone to give the growth or death command (of the cells) to turn those same genes off, because they don’t have enough estrogen to peak in order to ovulate anymore with any regularity, and there’s no placenta on board. Without the progesterone from the remains of an empty egg sac, their low chronic estrogen is never turned off, either. The state they are in is now life-threatening. This is the backdrop for cancer.
The good news is that bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can rectify the entire scenario of perimenopause. It’s a little tricky and will need constant tweaking from your doctor because of your surging hormones. But a good, qualified doctor will know how to handle this. Stress will change your hormone levels, and the fact that the surges come and go will change your hormone levels. This is the exciting part of this new medicine, however. When you are working with your doctor to balance your hormones during this tricky phase, you should call when you have even the smallest symptom, because every symptom is an indicator that things are not in balance … and balance is the goal.
Actually, menopause should be called egglessness! You’re out of eggs! Once you hit menopause, you’re in serious hormone decline. Hormone decline is exactly that: a decline in you. You cease to be the vital, vibrant person you have been. It’s as though your soul gets sucked out. Women start to experience a variety of symptoms—if you have read The Sexy Years, then you know I call them “the seven dwarfs of menopause”: Itchy, Bitchy, Sweaty, Sleepy, Bloated, Forgetful, and All-Dried-Up.
When all seven dwarfs (or even a few of them) come knocking on your door, it takes away your quality of life. But that’s not all. Have you ever wondered what is going on inside you as your hormones are draining out? That’s the scary part. Symptoms are only one part of this scenario—the big problem is that you don’t feel the effects of internal hormone loss and the havoc it is beginning to wreak on your heart and other bodily systems until much later. There is no way to know if a cancer is forming in your breast, or lung, or brain, or ovaries.
Every woman experiences this passage differently. Some have an easier time than others, but I have noticed—and this is my own unscientific observation—that high-powered successful women often have a harder time of it than others, although there are always exceptions. I know of one woman, for example, who was a major player in the fashion world. Internationally known and respected, she was at the top of her game, with her designs in all the major fashion magazines. Then menopause hit. This woman “took to her bed,” as they say in the South—and I mean literally. She doesn’t come out of her bedroom. She doesn’t bathe. She doesn’t fix her hair or put on makeup, whereas she used to wear the most beautiful fashion makeup. She has gained a tremendous amount of weight. She is depressed and angry. She yells at her husband as though he’s the cause of all her problems. This behavior has gone on for a number of years, and now her husband is leaving her for a younger woman. I don’t believe they would have ever broken up had this not happened. I used to see them all the time, and they were in sync, happy, and creative together.
I feel so bad for her because it was all caused by a lack of understanding of the hormonal system, ignorance on the part of her doctor, and her inability to talk about her problems with someone who could have steered her to the proper doctor. Unfortunately, after a while a woman like this who doesn’t get a handle on her hormone problems becomes too difficult for others to be around. That’s the lonely part.
When I was a girl, women were routinely sent away to sanitariums “for their own good” when these violent reactions to hormonal loss occurred. Just think of all the poor women who were “put away” because of menopause and the lack of understanding. They were drugged, and most of them never came out. This is a big part of why our mothers never spoke to us about this passage. They didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they could no longer sleep, that they were depressed, and that their insides were screaming to be heard. They remained silent, because to be vocal could mean you’d end up in the loony bin; so they “toughed it out.” Women of my mother’s era got fat and lost their shape, they accepted their sexless lives, and they all lived in a place of silent desperation … just getting through each day the best they could.
A woman who is having a violent reaction to loss of hormones can become truly suicidal, or worse—she can even kill another human being. It happens. Look at Andrea Yates. She killed her five children. Perhaps it was schizophrenia, or another mental illness, or the tremendous hormonal drain of progesterone after five babies that created her delusions. If her doctors had been more in tune and understood hormones and their effects, they might have blood tested her; and if, in fact, it was low progesterone, they might have been able to save the lives of those children by putting this woman on hormone replacement until she normalized. I know this is an extreme example, but our bodies do respond in dramatic ways to hormonal change during and after pregnacy, perimenopause, and menopause. This is a tough passage, and women need help, but so far it hasn’t been there for them. The times, they are a-changin’, though. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore!
Yes, I realize there will always be the woman who sails through menopause and hardly notices it. I have a hard time believing that, but let’s say that woman exists here and there. They are the exceptions, and most likely these are women who have high human growth hormone levels for longer. You learned all about this remarkable hormone in the previous chapter. The rest of us have to white-knuckle this passage without assistance. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can make menopause the best time of your life. I know because I am living it.
In my search to get to the bottom of this very difficult passage called menopause, bioidentical hormone replace therapy came like a godsend to me. For the first time in my adult life, I was truly balanced. When your body is working at optimum, the internal concert sings in tune. You can feel it, and once you have felt this way, nothing else will do. We have come to accept the aches and pains and illnesses and stiffness as part and parcel of aging. But we don’t have to.
Once you understand the benefits of restoring your body to its healthiest prime through balance, I can’t imagine you won’t want to go the bioidentical way. While you get to feel good again, BHRT also heads off disease at the pass. It’s such a blessing. So many women have accepted the decline in quality of life as unchangeable, and that is extremely sad. Their emotions and bodies are out of control, and they learn to white-knuckle each day. Life is not meant to be endured; it is to be enjoyed. But how can you enjoy it when you feel awful all the time?
Hormone replacement is really pretty simple; unfortunately, the medical community is still having trouble grasping it. The good news is that, as outlined in this book, many, many doctors are now beginning to get an understanding, and some of them are in full grasp of the necessity to replace what has been lost in the aging process. What a difference this will make in your life! All the feelings of loss of control over your body will dissipate when you are back in balance. As Dr. C. W. Randolph Jr. points out in his book Hormone Hell, Hormone Well: “If you replace what is missing, your body will work better.” It’s that simple.
As time goes by, you will be able to understand your own hormonal needs, and your doctor will encourage you to dose up your estrogen a little or lower your progesterone or other variants. You will figure out what your body needs through trial and error. I know that I need massive amounts of estrogen to feel good and be in a happy mood. My body doesn’t like a lot of progesterone. It has taken me quite a while to figure out my “needs,” but now that I have, I am not so reliant on my doctor. This is a good thing.
The more self-reliant you become, the easier it is to take care of yourself. Once I found the right balance for me, it was bliss. It still needs adjusting from time to time, depending upon my stress levels. That’s just the way it is. Hormones fluctuate all the time. That is why the “one pill fits all” theory of synthetic hormones was such a joke. No woman’s needs are the same as another’s, and no woman takes the same amount all the time. Even when you find your blissful dosage, a world event like 9/11 will upset your balance, and you will have to be readjusted. A near miss in a car will change your needs, as will an argument with your partner. Usually in a daily routine, when one of these crises dissipates, your hormones will settle down; but something like the death of a loved one will change your needs significantly.
No matter what is going on in their day-to-day lives, women are desperate for answers and solutions. For the first time, their doctors have lost a little of their luster. Whereas we used to listen to and respect everything told us by our family physician, now we stand back and question, or at least we should. Too many of us have been patted on the back and told to be good girls and take our pharmaceuticals. When we complain of depression and weepiness, we are given a prescription for an antidepressant. It shuts us up and gives our doctors a solution. They are, after all, very good people who want to help us. But antidepressants are not the answer for menopause. Once doctors understand this, we will all be better off. The answer is hormone balance, and it is worth it for you, the patient, to be patient and do the work to get the balance just right for your needs. Once you are in balance, you won’t be depressed.
Those doctors who “get it” know that the answer lies in bioidentical hormones. Yet despite the fact that there is sound scientific research and clinical data to support the safety and efficacy of bioidenticals, this option for hormone replacement is still not widely acknowledged as a safe and effective alternative treatment. Fortunately, there are several studies ongoing at the moment.
The Women’s Health Initiative cost the medical community the faith of many women. Gone is the absolute trust we once had in our doctors. As with all negatives, maybe this ultimately will be a good thing. By losing faith in our doctors, women have been forced to be proactive about their health. We have been forced to find new cutting-edge doctors. We have been forced to understand that different doctors have different areas of specialization, and just as the “one pill fits all” therapy no longer flies, the one-stop doctor is no longer viable. For hormones, you want a doctor who has chosen to specialize in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Ask the doctor whether he or she prescribes BHRT; if the answer is no, move on. This is your life. This is your quality of life. The longer you wait, the more trouble you will be in. It’s not a game; these are not passages to “tough out.” By not replacing the lost hormones, you are signaling your body to wind down and age faster. Even if that doesn’t bother you, understand that the “winding down” is going to be uncomfortable, painful, and lonely, and ultimately you will probably be very sick. But if you choose bioidentical hormones, plus a healthy lifestyle to support your quality of life, you’ll be bursting with youthful energy and a great quality of life.
COMPOUNDING PHARMACIES
Compounding pharmacies are the best source for finding a doctor who specializes in bioidentical hormones. So many women write to me that there is not a doctor in their area who understands this way of treating BHRT. Your compounding pharmacy is where a doctor in your area will call to fill prescriptions. Usually your local pharmacist will be able to assist you in finding a doctor who understands real bioidentical hormone replacement.
As with so many things in life, it is important to understand that there are “cooks” and then there are “chefs.” Likewise, some compounding pharmacists are better than others. To find a certified pharmacist near your home, access the following website: www.iacprx.org. Or contact the Menopause Institute at (877) 5menopause or www.menopauseinstitute.com.