Realilty check on menopause

I was talking to a friend of mine today, who happens to be a pharmacist, and we were musing over how easily women give up when told that they do not need treatment or invalidate the things that they say they are experiencing. If a man feels that he is not receiving appropriate treatment or his provider is not listening to him, he is willing to find someone who will help him.

My friend sees it every day. She fills prescriptions for men. No problem. Bio-identical, rub it on the skin, levels are never too low, and all is good. She knows that treatment for men is based on clinical studies and the lab values for normal hormone levels are similar for men of all ages.

It's not so easy for women.

She fills prescriptions for pills for women, which is beyond comprehension because everyone who wants to provide effective treatment knows pills are the unhealthiest way to go. She also fills prescriptions for hormone products for women she knows are way too low dose to be effective.

She knows that treatment for women is whatever the provider decides and very different most of the time. The lab values for normal hormone levels vary between labs, can be based on as few as 5 women, and have zero as an acceptable hormone level. The FDA says bio-identical hormones are not safer than other types of hormones, so why does my friend only dispense bio-identical hormones for men?

Why is it that men's gonadal replacement is standardized and women's gonadal replacement is so haphazard? Think about it. The gonads in men and women produce the same hormones, just in different levels. So, wouldn't it make sense for the replacement to be similar?

It became very clear to both of us that if clinical trials for women were supposed to be helpful then they would be. For instance, studies like the Women's Health Initiative recruited women with the promise of HRT yet didn't replace all the hormones or even do one hormone test, ever. Think about it, a hormone replacement trial that didn't bother to measure any hormone levels. No hormone tests, no information to work with. Pretty straight forward.

Ladies, you have obstacles in your way. If clinical studies were meant to be useful, they would be.

So where does that leave you?

Tell your doctor that you want what your gonads (ovaries) would be doing for you if they were still working. Estradiol, testosterone, progesterone, dhea. Then go to my website(http://www.diamondrf.org/education/recommendedlevels.php) for the levels and print out the page. You don't need a study to know that you are better off with all that your organs did for you, including your gonads.

If your doctor still refuses to appropriately treat hypogonadism, move on and don't look back. It's your life and you deserve a healthy life. Think about it



for ourselves... for our children... for our grandchildren...