Hey men…..don’t run away from this section…..it’s about you, too!
It is beyond me why some women choose to be miserable while going through peri- and/or menopause. Hey, if you want to endure the night sweats, the daily hot flashes, the memory loss, irritability, etc., go for it. But if you want freedom from that ugliness, do your research again. But, of course, who has time? So that’s why I’m writing about this….my gift to YOU!
When I was 47, the hot flashes started as well as the night sweats. I was NOT going to just “deal with it”. So my first discussion with my GYN was him telling me he could put me on a low dose of a birth control pill. Are you kidding me? That would have been the WORST thing he could have done. That’s when I changed doctors.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Synthetic hormones….such as Premarin and Progestin….have killer side effects because they do not mimic what occurs naturally in your body. Here’s a typical scenario: Doctor puts woman on synthetic hormones. Doesn’t work and woman goes back in. Doctor increases the dose of estrogen. Still doesn’t work. Woman goes back in, frantic. Doctor puts her on anti-depressant and pats her on the back….still on the same hormones. In 10-20 years, woman now has either breast or cervical cancer, or both…..or worse, dies from a stroke caused by the estrogen use.
A gift from nature….and a life-saving one at that: Bioidentical Hormones (aka “natural hormones”). In a nutshell, these are hormones that mimic the body’s own production of hormones; i.e. they are not manufactured in a laboratory nor do they come from animals. They are plant-based. Did you know that Premarin, a synthetic drug, is made from horse urine? Ah, just what you want floating around in your body.
Here’s my step-by-step:
- Get the reference book: What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause by Dr. John Lee. Any bookstore.
- Get your hormone levels checked for estradiol and progesterone (for men, testosterone) using the blood spot method (serum blood samples drawn from veins do not accurately measure hormone levels – more info below) through ZRT Lab, which you order and do at home….before you start taking anything, to establish baseline. Unfortunately for us older folks, saliva testing accuracy starts to decline. I know every regular doctor (not those specializing in alternative medicine) pushes for vein blood testing but that is not accurate. The most accurate method of obtaining hormone levels in the body is with 24-hour urine collections.
- Find a doc that will work with you in prescribing bioidentical hormones (the book has a website if your own doc won’t do it….I had to go through 3 docs to find one who would)…..or….you can go through a local compounding pharmacy and ask for some names of physicians who place orders with them.
- Dr. Lee’s book recommends a progesterone cream. I tried that and it worked for a while but the hot flushes came back. I didn’t like the cream because you get it on your hands and that could be transmitted to anyone you touch, which is not a good thing for guys. Also, I had a dryness problem that was corrected with estradiol but you have to work with a pharmacy who knows how to make it up in the right ratio to progesterone (progesterone dose is always higher than estrogen). Progesterone is the key anyway. NEVER go on estrogen alone….and most of the time, you won’t need estrogen because your body continues to make it even if you don’t have your ovaries anymore.
- THE best option I found was a sublingual (under your tongue) tablet or troche (like a lozenge that melts between your cheek and your gum). If you take a synthetic hormone, you swallow a pill. That pill gets broken down by the liver and the majority of it is destroyed/filtered out. That’s why a synthetic drug has a much higher level of drug in it, versus the sublingual method where much lower doses are needed.
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- March 2023 update: Stop the presses! Hold everything! I just learned some critical info about the use of melt-in-your-mouth hormones. When you use this method, your gum tissues and bone absorb a high dose of hormones regularly. I had been doing this for 23 years and learned the hard way about how these sustained high levels will cause gum recession and bone loss in the lower front part of the jaw. The correction: I went back to a cream (transdermal) and all is well. NO hormone imbalance symptoms! Yay! The info to follow is everything I’ve learned about progesterone transdermal hormone creams:
Progesterone Creams
- 500-1,000 mg/oz
- Total Daily Dose goal: 20-30 mg
NONE of the following:
- Wild yam
- Mineral oil
- Parabens
- Stearal konium chloride
- PEG 8 Stearate, PEG 100 Stearate, Polyethylene Glycol, Polysorbate 60, or Polysorbate 80
- Triethanolamine
- Propylene glycol
After researching 12 different over-the-counter creams, these two seemed to be the best:
| Product | Mg/Oz | Jar Size | BID Dose to achieve TDD | Price
(as of 2024) |
Comments |
| Oasis Serene | 750 mg | 2 oz
60 ml |
1/8 tsp x2 = 31 mg
1/16 + 1/8 = 23 mg |
$37.95
$12.15 shipping —— $33.95 x3 |
Too much cream and doesn’t rub in well; contains herbs/oils/vitamins
One jar lasts ~8 wks. |
| Kokoro Balance Crème
Purchase at Sprouts |
546 mg | 2 oz
60 ml |
1/8 tsp x2 = 22 mg | $30 | One jar lasts 5 wks. |
This is what I researched in 2016:
Urine Testing
- Larger amounts of hormone appear in urine than in blood or saliva
- Good measure of how much of a specific hormone is available on that particular day
2021 Update: You can use the Dutch Test to collect urine samples on filter paper over a 15 hour period. This is the most accurate method. If your doctor does not understand this, find a naturopath MD to work with you. That doctor can order the test for you and the lab ships the supplies to your home. Super easy.
Blood Testing
- Serum measurements account for hormones bound to carrier proteins and small amounts of unbound hormones.
- Progesterone measured by serum levels is mostly a measure of progesterone that is not going to be used by the body
- Serum measurements do not take into account the insoluble hormones carried by the red blood cells, which are separated out from the serum, and which may have a higher hormone concentration inside the cell. Others counter this argument with the explanation that, even though very small amounts of hormones are found in the serum, it is only the hormones in the serum that are available to other tissues in the body, so the measurement is accurate and appropriate.
- Unlike a urine test, this type of blood sample is just a snapshot in time. The levels of the various hormones in the bloodstream can change from moment to moment and from day to day.
Saliva Testing
- Saliva tests tend to be more accurate with younger people than with older individuals because, in general, they have higher levels of hormones available.
- When measuring the hormones of a menopausal woman, for example, saliva tests are at their limits of sensitivity. This is due to the fact that the amount of hormone available for measurement is so small that test results may be inconsistent or inaccurate.
- Similar to blood tests, each saliva sample represents only a snapshot. Some commercial labs offer saliva test kits for collecting several samples throughout a day or throughout a month, so that they have more data to evaluate. Saliva samples are noninvasive and easy to collect with such frequency.
- Proponents of saliva tests claim that only the “free” hormone is filtered from the blood into the saliva and, therefore, these tests are an accurate measure of the hormone that is biologically active or available to other tissues. But there is still some difficulty in evaluating the results of hormone supplements with some dosage formulations because the impact is far more dramatic in saliva than it is in blood or urine.
http://www.zrtlab.com/saliva-questions
http://meridianvalleylab.com/about-hormone-testing
I have been symptom-free since I started supplementing in 2000!!! My uterine polyp went away as did my breast cysts. Happy as a clam! Oh, and an added bonus: Once you start taking bioidentical hormones, no more monthly period!!! How cool is that!!! At our age, we have no need to produce eggs to become pregnant. What does this spell? F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Everybody take a deep breath and say Ahhhh!
Just a little side note as an FYI: Health insurance companies generally do NOT cover medications from a compounding pharmacy so be prepared to pay out of pocket. SO WORTH IT!!! You ask why. Ah, the 64-million-dollar question. And the answer is…..because it’s all part of the healthcare political mess. Big pharma (aka large scale pharmaceutical companies with their hands in the political pot) makes deals with insurance companies. They want their synthetic drugs used. So to persuade patients to go that route, they “encourage” insurance companies to cover only synthetic drugs. It’s all part of the thing where if you can’t patent something to ensure a nice chunk of return on your dollar, it isn’t even a consideration….even if the bioidentical substance is safer and/or is more effective. Oh, to further clarify…..you cannot patent a naturally occurring substance (anything “bioidentical” or “natural”). Yeah, it’s a racket. So what else is new?
(FYI: I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 25 years and have seen a lot…..the good, which is most of the time, the bad, and the ugly.)