Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (16 page)

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.

T
HE
N
ATURAL
S
OLUTION

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?

W
ORKING WITH THE
R
IGHT
D
OCTOR

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.