Getting old is when getting a little action means you don’t need fiber today.
Aging can be difficult. But it doesn’t have to be. Bioidentical hormone replacement makes aging and its stages simply “passages,” and enjoyable ones at that. When your hormones are replaced in perfect balance, you look, feel, and act younger, plus you are protected against some of the worst diseases and effects of old age.
“Bioidentical” means biologically identical to human hormones—exact replicas of what we make in our own bodies. Made from soy, wild yam, and other plant extracts, bioidentical hormones are synthesized in a lab to exactly replicate human hormones. Bioidentical hormones are not drugs, however. They are completely different from synthetic hormones, which are made from the urine of pregnant mares and have nothing to do with what we make in our own bodies. In times past, your doctor would simply give you a prescription for Premarin or Prempro—a one-pill-fits-all type of regimen—and tell you to have a nice life. On these synthetic hormones, you would get fat and/or have brittle bones, lose your sex life, and get depressed and bloated, among other symptoms. Great, huh?
These synthetic hormones are not hormones; they are drugs that have been proven to be harmful to our health by creating hormonal imbalances. Synthetic hormones do not replace lost hormones. Instead, they simply cover up some of the nastier symptoms of menopause and other issues related to aging. Remember, hormonal imbalance is an opportunity for disease to proliferate, especially cancer. This is why synthetic hormones are dangerous to our health. It’s not just me saying this; read for yourself the Women’s Health Initiative 2002 and get backup for this statement.
Again I say this: I am not against pharmaceuticals. I willingly take drugs as a last resort when necessary, and any of us who have gone through a major illness know the blessings of pharmaceuticals. But when it comes to hormones, I believe (and many doctors concur) that the pharmaceutical companies are working against us. According to Dr. C. W. Randolph Jr., “The big drug companies have twisted and manipulated the idea of hormone replacement to capitalize on a business opportunity.”
For background, synthetic hormone replacement started fifty years ago, even though bioidentical hormones existed. This was the first tragedy for women. By 1970, HRT was a common term. We didn’t know about bioidentical hormones because no drug company was interested in them: They were not patentable (because they were natural). Without a patent, there was no profit. As women started to live longer, the drug companies knew they would have female customers waiting in the wings. And were we ever … we would take anything so the hot flashes would stop, so sleep would come back as a nightly event, so the depression and weepiness from lack of sleep would subside. “Oh yes,” we said. “Give them to us.” So we started downing these synthetic hormones and exclaimed for all to hear that we felt great again. (Well, relatively.) At least the hot flashes calmed down. At least we were sleeping pretty well. But why were we getting fat? Must be part of aging, we surmised. We accepted high blood pressure as part of aging; we accepted breast and ovarian cancer as simply the unlucky lottery. We all prayed we wouldn’t end up a statistic of those dreaded diseases.
The drug companies were ecstatic. Oh boy, these were expensive prescriptions that a woman would take for life! Yippee! What a financial bonanza! Then came the baby boomers … they were really going to need hormones, because this group had decided to outwork their parents. Yep, this was a stressed-out group. Hooray … another bonanza for the drug companies. After all, stress blunts hormone production, and we were not going to change our stressful lifestyles. It got even better for the drug companies. Younger and younger women were running out of hormones because of their stressed-out lifestyles. “Superwomen” we called them. This meant more revenue for the pharmaceutical companies. We baby boomers decided early on that we wanted more: a better life, so our children could have all the things that we never had—TVs in their rooms, all the toys you could dream of, swimming pools, and private schools.
As we baby boomers entered this passage, we willingly downed our synthetics. We didn’t even give it a thought. After all, we were well introduced into the world of chemicals. Chemicals were in our food. We had already embraced fake food and fast food filled with chemicals. We thought nothing of taking our synthetic birth control pills. They told us the pills were safe, and we believed them (by the way, who are “they”?). We decided to not breast-feed our babies. What were we thinking? Breast-feeding is nature’s antidote to immunizing our babies and ourselves from the destiny we are now experiencing. Lactation and the production of prolactin are natural wonders, but we decided it would be better to have careers. Gloria Steinem (well-meaning though she was) told us so. We burned our bras, and we had fewer children. Some of us waited so long that we destroyed all chances of conceiving. But we had big careers and big houses, and our children had everything they ever dreamed of.
Over the decades, the pharmaceutical industry touted the praises of synthetic HRT as the female fountain of youth. From a business perspective, the drug companies were winning, but we were losing big-time. But then the double nature of synthetic HRT started to be exposed. What was happening to us? By 2002, breast cancer was an epidemic. Statistics changed dramatically. At the turn of the century, the statistics indicated that one in ninety-one women would get breast cancer. In 2002, the stats were one in eight. One in eight! Did you hear me? Why? What had changed?
Then came the really bad news. Mounting clinical evidence began to emerge that taking HRT long-term was dangerous because it manifested more chronic health problems. No one mentioned that these so-called hormones they were reporting as dangerous were not bioidentical, “real,” natural hormones, but the deadly synthetic hormones being pushed on us by our doctors because of the influence of the pharmaceutical companies. In her book The Hormone Solution, Dr. Erika Schwartz says, “You must understand that it has been proven that once broken down in our bodies, conjugated equine (Premarin) becomes toxic to the very DNA that keeps us healthy or makes us sick.”
So we women started getting sick … in greater and greater numbers, everything from breast cancer to autoimmune diseases, and we also started gaining weight. The new statistic on overweight adults in America is now 65 percent and rising.
Yet as I write today, doctors all over the country are still prescribing synthetic hormones. Why? Because most of the information the doctors receive is fed to them by the pharmaceutical companies. Very little instruction on hormone replacement and prescribing hormones is given to our physicians in medical school. There is no way for doctors to learn about another method unless they look outside the “standard of care” to find a better method, as the doctors interviewed in this book have done. No drug company is going to say about synthetic hormones, “Hey, this is dangerous stuff.” No way. So for the last fifty years, the drug companies have been “pushing” the one-pill-fits-all regimen of HRT. They have ignored the fact that each woman’s body has a genetically predetermined hormone balance that directs the interaction of all her sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and others) uniquely for her.
So here we are today, with recent clinical studies showing that synthetic HRT can be more harmful than helpful and can foster many long-term, and potentially terminal, health concerns. According to Dr. Randolph, “The pharmaceutical industry had misinformed physicians. If drug companies were truly patient advocates, they would educate the medical community about hormone testing and natural bioidentical hormone therapies.”
But this is about business. I don’t like it, but the pharmaceutical companies have a bottom line—a big bottom line, I might add. How can you blame them? Business does not have a conscience when so much money is at stake. A patented “one pill fits all” is a lot easier to distribute, and it is certainly much easier for the doctors.
By 2002, Wyeth-Ayerst’s top-selling synthetic HRT drugs accounted for approximately 70 million prescriptions and $1 billion in yearly sales revenue. Even though it’s such big business, women are suffering and dying from synthetic HRT. Instead of proving to be a safe and effective solution for women suffering from symptoms of hormone imbalance, synthetic hormones actually unlocked doors leading to health dangers. The problem with synthetic HRT is that it is not an exact fit for the human body’s hormone receptor sites. It doesn’t fit. Just like the glass slipper didn’t fit Cinderella’s evil sisters’ feet, the “glass slipper” of synthetic hormones doesn’t fit!
No wonder that in all the alarming reports on HRT, it is never mentioned in the media or in the actual studies themselves that they are talking only about synthetic hormones. These reports never strive to clarify the difference between synthetic and bioidentical hormones. They don’t want us to know that something else exists; they don’t want us to know about nonpatentable bioidentical hormones. But you must know the difference if you are to make an educated choice, and you must know the difference if you are to stay in the game and remain vital and healthy. This is your life we are talking about.
As consumers, our health is at stake. We must look outside the pharmaceutical protocols at safe, real hormone replacement. I cannot say enough about bioidentical hormones. They have changed my life and given it back to me. These hormones have allowed me to enjoy this passage better than any of the previous ones. Yes, I have some wrinkles, and I’m not twenty anymore, but I really don’t care. I’m frisky and vital and energized. My brain is working perfectly, my health is great, my cholesterol is perfect, and my insulin levels are at optimum. I’m “the elder of my tribe,” and I’m digging it. I have never had so much fun.
Thus, the beauty of bioidentical hormones is that they are natural hormones. You see, bioidentical hormones have a molecular structure that exactly matches the molecular structure of the hormones produced by the female body. According to Dr. C. W. Randolph:
Bioidentical hormones enter the bloodstream and look and perform just like the original hormones they were designed to replicate. Bioidentical hormones are molecular keys that the body can automatically recognize and utilize. In other words, bioidentical hormones are the perfect fit for a woman’s genetic hormone receptor lock. When used for hormone replacement, bioidentical hormones enter the bloodstream, attach to their appropriate receptor locks, and safely and effectively reestablish optimum hormonal equilibrium. Bioidentical hormones replace what is missing so that the female body has what it needs to feel and perform the way it was originally designed.
I ask you, when the fit is this perfect, why would you take a drug when there is a nondrug exact-replica hormone exactly as your body once made?
Replacing lost hormones is an art form and must be embraced not only by the patient, but by the doctor as well. You have to find the right doctor, and you have to find a doctor who is willing to put in the time it takes to achieve balance. Each person (women and men) has different needs.
As I explained in my book The Sexy Years, I started on my bioidentical hormone replacement therapy with my dear friend Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, a Western-trained endocrinologist who has dedicated herself to helping her patients achieve hormonal balance. I will always owe her a deep debt of gratitude for helping me turn my life around. She got me off sugar, and she taught me about the importance of keeping my adrenals intact. She taught me about the insulin connection and the effects of high cortisol. She taught me the importance of healing my metabolism. After the merry-go-round of going from doctor to doctor, I felt that I had finally found “home” when I sat in her office for the first time. Finally, here was a doctor who “gets it.”
Through Dr. Schwarzbein, I discovered that the miserable existence I was experiencing was physical, not emotional, and that putting back the hormones I had lost in the aging process could alleviate my uncomfortable symptoms. Sure enough, within a short period of time I began to feel good again, and by the end of the year I felt wonderful—maybe better than I had ever felt in my adult life. (Incidentally, Dr. Schwarzbein is no longer taking patients but has decided to devote her time and energy to teaching other physicians the correct way to prescribe hormone replacement therapy.)
With bioidentical hormone replacement, your doctor may or may not take a blood test at first. If you are complaining about symptoms, it will be pretty evident to your doctor that by your age, you are in hormonal decline. After about three months, your doctor will take a blood test, approximate your hormone levels, and prescribe the same amount of estradiol every day of the month (this is referred to as “static dosing”) and, on days 18 to 28, a static dose of progesterone to approximate what your body once made when you were making a full complement of hormones. At the end of each cycle will come a period. I discuss different forms of bioidentical hormone replacement in detail at the end of this chapter. The Menopause Institute is a good place to get set up with bioidentical hormonal replacement (see Resources, this page).
Now, you’ve got to know that there’s no free lunch. It’s not as simple as taking your hormones every day; you must be attuned to your symptoms and your stresses. Exercise is a major component, the quality of the food you eat is important, the amount of food is crucial, plenty of sleep, fighting the environmental effects, and a happy life are all part of reversing the aging process.
So if you are considering bioidenticals or just starting to use them, remember that they require patience. You may make many phone calls to your doctor to complain of various symptoms, so he or she can tweak your dosage or the delivery system you use to take the hormones.
Here is a pretty serious example of what I am talking about: A woman I know is experiencing severe hormone loss. She calls me crying on a regular basis. She goes into a dark place, and the only way out for her is to contemplate suicide. I encouraged her to get to one of my doctors, in this case a gynecologist in L.A. who treats with BHRT. Some cases are tricky. This woman is now on bioidenticals, but in the beginning stages. She feels great for three weeks of the month, but when the week of her period comes around, she goes to that dark place where she wants to kill herself. She has no recollection of how good she has been feeling during the other three weeks. This darkness takes over, and the woman runs away—literally. Last month, she was found in a small town two hundred miles outside of Los Angeles but does not remember how she got there. Her husband then has to calm her down enough to get her to her doctor’s office. While the answer to this instability is achieving the correct ratio between estrogen and progesterone, this patient is very “tricky” chemically, so it takes some time to get that ratio. Getting this woman regulated is possible, but her symptoms at present are so severe that there is worry she might not survive these dark phases. Her doctor hopes she will stay with it until she is regulated. Otherwise, she possibly faces a life of emotional pain and most likely antidepressants.
This case illustrates patience, especially when symptoms are this severe. But when you can’t sleep night after night after night, you’re sweating and hot flashing constantly, the result is depression and weepiness. How could you be anything else without sleep? And because you are not getting the proper sleep, your cortisol levels are sky-high, which in turn raises your insulin levels to the moon, and now you get fatter and fatter. That causes more depression, more weepiness.
The lack of sleep causes high insulin, which makes you crave processed carbs—cakes, pies, bread, cookies, chocolate—the only pleasures of the day. Eating carbs like this all the time can lead to diabetes. Incidentally, I’ve heard many doctors say that they would rather have cancer than diabetes; that statement should give you some insight into the dangers of high insulin and high cortisol.
Now are you getting the picture about the importance of replacing lost hormones?
Without patience you will get frustrated and probably walk away from all of it, but I am telling you the only loser in this will be you. I can’t say it enough or in too many different ways: Without hormones your body begins to disintegrate. Without hormones the diseases of aging begin to take hold. It isn’t normal to have high blood pressure. It isn’t normal to have aching bones. It isn’t normal to lose your sex drive. It isn’t normal to have memory loss. It’s normal only if you are no longer a reproductive person.
Once again: The idea of HRT is to “trick” the brain into believing that we are still functioning, reproductive beings. What? you say. That doesn’t sound right—why trick our brains into anything? Well, what do you think you are doing when you have heart bypass surgery or a hip replacement? You are “tricking” your body into believing that you still have a perfect heart or that your bones are still young and strong and not falling apart because of lack of hormones. If we weren’t going to live so long, then let the chips fall; however, technology will keep us alive until we are ninety or a hundred years old. Don’t you want quality of life for those years? Or do you want to be the one who is gradually disintegrating in front of everyone’s eyes?
Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy offers extraordinary benefits for men and women, but the public remains shockingly ignorant about the readily correctable effects of diminishing hormones. The doctors in this book clearly distinguish between desirable bioidentical hormones and the thoroughly discredited side effect–prone synthetic versions. Working with a Western-trained antiaging doctor is the new way to develop and periodically reevaluate your hormonal needs. A doctor who understands can individually customize the dosages that are perfect for you in order to ensure optimal balance among all the various hormones.
That is the goal. When you find hormonal balance individualized just for you, your body sings. You will feel the best you have ever felt. That has been my experience and the experience of millions of my readers.
This balance doesn’t come easily. If there were a way to give you a sneak peek so you could feel what it is like at optimum, you would be more than willing to do the work to get there. A lot of people get impatient and give up too soon. It takes time to lose hormones, so it’s going to take a little while to “tweak” until balance is reached. Your doctor can only approximate the dosage for you the first time based upon talking to you, then after a couple of months having your labwork done. Sometimes doctors get lucky, and the song begins immediately. Sometimes the song is off-key. Even though you are feeling better, you know it’s not exactly right. That’s when you want to start talking to your doctor about how you feel. It is important to be in tune with your symptoms. Remember those seven dwarfs: Itchy, Bitchy, Sweaty, Sleepy, Bloated, Forgetful, and All-Dried-Up.
Having symptoms like the seven dwarfs is an indicator that your system still needs tuning. But oh my, when all these symptoms go away, the result is heavenly. Here’s a list of what to expect: energy, vitality, creativity, brainpower, strong heart, loss of wrinkles (yes, adequate amounts of estrogen plumps up the skin), perky breasts, a vagina that’s moist and ready, renewed sexual desire, and sleeping through the night. Plus, you don’t itch, and you aren’t bitchy. You don’t have hot flashes, so Sweaty says good-bye; and best of all, if you are eating correctly, your excess weight starts to melt away.
For men, your grumpiness dissipates. You get your energy back. Your libido wakes up. You want to go out, have fun, and continue working. That fat around your belly now has a chance of going away, provided you are eating correctly and exercising in moderation. I will go into detail about men’s hormonal needs in chapter 12.
Teenagers can also get relief from the mood swings and horrible cramping that accompany weight gain. Of course, they have to watch their carb intake, but many doctors I have talked to, like Dr. Erika Schwartz, believe in bioidentical hormones for teenagers who are heavy bleeders and victims of raging hormones.
Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is a huge antiaging opportunity—the true fountain of youth that can keep your insides young. What a concept!
Once you are in the care of a good doctor who has chosen to specialize in bioidentical hormone replacement or a good antiaging doctor (there are referrals at the back of this book), you can get to work optimizing your entire hormonal system. First, your doctor will get rid of the uncomfortable symptoms from major and minor hormone loss. This is no small task. Again, it takes time and patience. The good news is that you will start feeling better almost immediately, but just know that the best is yet to come. Once you get there, you will want to continue with this type of medicine because you will realize just how joyous and vibrant life can be. You will never look longingly at the young people. In fact, my husband and I are often amused at the fact that most people are probably not making love on Saturday afternoons as we often do. Alan and I have completed our child rearing, and as hormonally balanced people, we are “in the mood” more often than not. It’s a beautiful thing, and believe me, with what I know is going on in our home, I don’t ever worry about younger beautiful women. In fact, I love being around them myself! They are having a great time, and so am I. They may have better skin, but I have wisdom. I prefer the trade-off.
When it comes to replacement, optimal is the operative word. So often a patient goes to his or her doctor and asks for a hormone panel (through blood work) to be done. When the results come back, he or she is told that everything is normal and there is nothing to worry about. “Normal” for what? “Normal” for a fifty- or sixty- or seventy-year-old person? You don’t want normal for your age. A fifty- or sixty-year-old is in hormonal decline. Yet that is how most doctors treat their patients in this country. They figure if you are “normal” for your age, everything is okay.
Optimal, on the other hand, describes hormonal balance for a person who is much younger and at his or her healthiest prime. That’s what you want—not hormones that are declining. The goal of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is for you to enjoy vibrant good health throughout a long lifetime. This means that most of the standard reference ranges must be discarded in favor of optimal ranges. Working with a qualified physician to measure, assess, and correct your medical tests is strongly recommended. Obtaining the best results means working with a doctor who understands the difference between normal and optimal and is willing to take preemptive action against aging. If your doctor doesn’t understand this, you need to find another doctor for your hormonal needs.
If what I have said so far has convinced you that bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is the way to go, if you are convinced that BHRT is the true fountain of youth, then let’s look at your options. You have two choices: static dosing or rhythmic cycling.
With static dosing, your doctor will most likely start you on low-dose bioidenticals according to your symptoms. After a couple of months he or she will order a blood test, approximate your hormone levels, and prescribe a static dose of estradiol every day of the month. On days 18 to 28, your doctor adds in a static dose of progesterone, based upon your labwork. This regimen is designed to match what our bodies once did when we were making a full complement of hormones. It brings about a period at the end of each cycle (at the end of the month). This approach is how it happens in nature and is used by some of the cutting-edge Western doctors (but not all of them) to replicate nature. Based upon the research I have done and information from the dozens of doctors I have interviewed, I will go on record and say that I believe cycling in this fashion is not an option but a necessity if we are trying to mimic normal physiology.
So far, static dosing sounds simple, but here is the complex part. As you will read in chapter 16, stress affects and blunts hormone production. So if you are going through a stressful period in your life (and all of us are stressed regularly in this country), it changes your needs. To compensate, you may need to dose up a drop or a fraction of a milligram or dose down. If the stress is severe, you may need to have another blood test to determine where your levels are. This is what I mean by the “art form” I mentioned earlier. It is important that you work closely with your doctor and communicate your symptoms so he or she will adjust your dosages until you get it just right.
Rhythmic cycling is a new concept in bioidentical hormone replacement, but one that is based upon the ancient cycles of nature. In fact, it goes all the way back to early man, who was attuned to the planet in a way that is completely inaccessible to us in the modern world.
There were no executives or career women at that time—just people living in tune with the cycles of the moon and the tides, reproducing as often as was possible, and then seeing that each baby occupied a year of a woman’s life, followed by breast-feeding for another couple of years.
It was all so perfect back then. In summertime, early humans ate all the abundant carbohydrates that were available, danced, and made love by the light of the moon. Women menstruated to the cycles of the moon, and we fattened up in the summer with all of the abundant food. Then winter arrived, and darkness came earlier. We had no more carbohydrates, we ate meat, we went to sleep earlier because there was no light, and we could stay warm with one another. As women, our bellies grew with the baby we had made during the summer months. We lived off the fat supplies that we had accumulated by eating all the carbohydrates in the summer, and we slept more. With spring, we gave birth. The sun began to shine, and the process started all over again. Simple.
This was nature working at optimum before we got involved and messed with it. When electricity came, it was declared a miracle, but it also changed our rhythms. Now we could stay up as late as we wanted. Without the proper amount of sleep, the work of all the healing hormones—which normally happened from getting enough sleep each night—was disrupted, so we slept less. Stress became a part of our lives and blunted our hormone production. We stopped cycling to the lunar calendar, we had fewer children, we breast-fed less, and in general we became weaker as a species.
In ancient times, women cycled to the rhythms of the moon. Our bodies would produce estrogen in increments: The first three days was one amount; the next three days another amount (each woman required or made the amount perfect for her); and by the twelfth day, our estrogen would peak, which happened to coincide with the full moon. Then the receptor sites opened to receive progesterone, and the lining would shed. As the estrogen fell, the progesterone would rise until it reached its incremental peak, only to rebuild the lining of the uterus to be ready next month to start this process all over again. According to T. S. Wiley, “That is the beginning of life. Anything else is death.”
Rhythmic cycling exactly mimics our healthiest prime, which would be us when we were our reproductive selves, when our hormones would rise and fall in peaks … a rhythm. Without a rhythm, the body perceives things as “not exactly right for reproduction,” and it is in this imbalanced state that disease cells can begin to go wonky. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy given rhythmically appears to be an important way to avoid cell proliferation and thus keep organs intact. Rhythmic cycling is using the model of early man when our bodies were operating at their prime and we were our healthiest.
Rhythmic cycling is worth looking into. It resonates. It makes sense. We do ebb and flow as human beings with the moon and the tides. It would make sense that our cycles would do the same. As a young woman, when I was cycling naturally, there were days I felt light and free, and there were days I felt heavy and intense. Some days I would be in a perfect mood; other days I was not. These were my rhythms, or cycles. A few days before my period, I would feel bloated or cranky—signs of chemicals moving around in my body.
To cycle rhythmically, you need to work with a doctor who understands how to do it. (See Resources, this page, for the names of doctors who prescribe rhythmic cycling. You can also check out the Wiley Protocol or ask your compounding pharmacist. The Wiley Protocol website and the number for the Professional Compounding Center of America are also in the Resources.)
This protocol must be prescribed by your doctor. It sounds complicated, but really it is as simple as looking at the calendar that accompanies your prescription. You look at the date of the month, and it shows you what amount to take that day. That’s all it is. The thinking has been done for you.
As I said earlier, I felt that it was important to try this protocol on myself so I could report to you my findings. I have been cycling rhythmically for almost two years as of this writing, and I have to say I feel great. I have no bloating, nor have I gained weight. In fact, I am experiencing weight loss, but I am also injecting HGH, which promotes weight loss. My weight is exactly where I want it to be at this age: 127 pounds at five feet five. For the last few years, my weight had been around 137, even 140 at times, although I have always eaten correctly and exercised. A lot of that weight gain I attribute to my radiation treatments for breast cancer. I know that it takes seven years for complete cell turnover, so that weight was most likely induced by hormonal imbalance created by the radiation treatments, even though I have been on bioidenticals.
I am enjoying quality of life cycling rhythmically. Both ways have given me back quality of life. Because I was on birth control pills for twenty years, I can honestly say that the way I feel on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is the best I have ever felt in my life. This is all such a personal choice, and just being on bioidenticals is a step in the right direction.
T. S. Wiley is knowledgeable yet somewhat controversial. Some doctors will react with horror at such amounts. But according to Ms. Wiley, it’s not the amounts, it’s the correct ratio that makes you feel good, and the ratio between progesterone and estrogen must be correct.
I have spoken to a lot of women and doctors about this protocol. Some women cannot stop rhapsodizing about how they feel on this protocol. They love it, they love life, and they have their sex drives big-time.
Other women feel it is too much work and stop the protocol. There is such rampant fear of hormone replacement because of the alarming reports that have come out on synthetic hormones that these amounts seem to be crazy. Yes, the Wiley Protocol advocates large dosing, but we are talking about bioidentical, not synthetic HRT. That is a big difference. We are talking about real hormones. We are talking about regular blood tests and striving for perfect balance. If this protocol interests you, look into it. Do your homework, and then you can make an informed decision. The problem with these passages and transitions is that our doctors are so poorly informed that you are really on your own.
In the interviews with doctors that follow this chapter, it is important that you read carefully and absorb what each of them is saying. Every one of these doctors is on to something. What you can learn about aging well, antiaging, detoxification from the environmental pollutants, and bioidentical hormone replacement therapy will set you on a path of joy and good health.
But I’ll say it again: No one will ever care about your health the way you do. No doctor can understand your body as you do. No one will lose out as much as you do if you don’t make the right choices for yourself. This book is meant to empower you with knowledge. We have to question our doctors. No longer do we have to take their word as gospel. In this era of specialization, you, the patient, now need to understand how your body works, what is happening to it internally as the years pass, and what you can do to reverse the destructive process brought about by the environment, bad diet, and poor lifestyle habits and choices.
Think of your body as a finely tuned machine. You have to feed it the right fuel, the best fuel, and you have to take care of the engine and give it regular fine-tunings. This is just common sense. You will be the recipient of negative consequences if you put into your body chemicals and bad oils (that is, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, artificial food, and poison), if you don’t sleep properly and long enough, or if you load up with pharmaceuticals without thought about the effect they are having. If you don’t think good thoughts, if you wallow in negatives, what do you think will manifest?
We are what we eat, think, and drink. We need sleep to give us the fuel to have the energy to live and love. It’s really all up to you, and what you put into yourself from this point on will have a direct effect on who you will be and the state of your health down the road. There are no “lucky ones.” There are only people who understand that we can live a long time and be productive in society and within the family structure while they are alive. This isn’t rocket science … just good common sense.
Hormones are the “juice of youth.” This is what we have all been looking for, and they are real and natural and available. We are lucky to be alive at this time. Our daughters will certainly have an easier time of it, because by then bioidentical hormone replacement will be the accepted way of dealing with aging. We are the pioneers, and we are blazing the way for the next generation … once again.