The next time you go to your doctor and during the course of the visit you talk about hormone replacement (and trust me, there WILL be a time when you DO talk about this!) I would definitely first get his/her opinion of customized BHRT (bioidentical hormone replacement therapy). If they have any of the following responses:
-“You know that isn’t approved by the FDA” (everything we make in our compounding lab IS FDA-approved, but because we don’t dose for the masses, but instead customize for just ONE, WE are under the strict regulation of the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy)
-“It is very expensive.” (false. we, too, bill insurance companies for our monthly Rx)
-They hand you a paper of “talking points” about bioidenticals (usually with the FDA stamped somewhere on there and stating that “bioidentical” is a marketing term….which it is not. It is a medical term), please ask your doctor for a clinical study supporting what philosophy THEY subscribe to. If it is an “FDA-approved one”, I can guarantee, they won’t have any studies. The studies that have been done on the synthetic drugs masking as hormones have studies that show they have serious health risks (cancer, stroke, blood clots) associated with them. WE ACTUALLY HAVE CLINICAL STUDIES AND CAN PROVIDE THEM ON THE SPOT. (google Fornier and the Cohort study)
-they tell you that hormones, especially estrogen, will cause breast cancer (the FDA-approved Premarin-horse pee- might, but topical estrogen that is prescribed after checking existing levels and uses physiological dosing that is balanced with progesterone does NOT cause breast cancer.) As a side note, oral estrogen of any kind can raise the risk of blood clots. We never recommend oral estrogen-either bioidentical or synthetic.
-want to prescribe you an anti-depressant as your first line of defense against depleting hormone levels after the age of 35, when in actuality, if they would just check your progesterone levels (preferably using saliva), we could actually replace those with progesterone and thus prevent the issues that come with depleted levels: sleeplessness, depression and anxiety….then I would seriously consider finding another doctor!
I am hard-pressed to find even a handful of women who are not on an antidepressant.
Look around you. Start asking your friends, neighbors, relatives, anyone. It boggles the mind the number of women in their 30’s, especially their 40’s and beyond, who go to their trusted health professional with symptoms of a hormone imbalance (sleeplessness, depression, anxiety) and they leave the office with a prescription for an antidepressant. No one is checking hormone levels. No one is questioning the current standard of care in our country that is dictated by big-pharma.
Why is this? It is no longer OK to go to your doctor and accept his word as law and not question him. Ask for studies. Push for answers. The good doctor, the one who really is FOR women, will listen and recommend books you can read; (Natural Hormone Balance by Dr. Uzzi Reiss; the Wisdom Of Menopause by Dr. Christine Northrup); and will even develop a strategy with you for hormone replacement. Hopefully, it won’t involve the synthetic drugs masking as hormones that are FDA-approved: Premarin, Prempro and Provera. The bottom line is that YOU have to do your homework and become educated. That way YOU will be in charge of YOUR journey. Maybe this will keep you OFF an antidepressant for a hormone imbalance! It might even get you progesterone to help you sleep again, get rid of your depression, decrease your anxiety AND balance your estrogen dominance to prevent breast cancer! Who knew?
