May 15, 2015

The right hormones, the wrong kinds

When I say menopause is a "hormone problem," everyone thinks estrogen. If they are really savvy, they also think progesterone. But that is very very far from all there is to the issue.

From what I know now, it's all these hormones:


  • insulin
  • leptin
  • cortisol
  • estrogen
  • progesterone
  • thyroid
  • testosterone
  • DHEA
  • pregnenolone


And those are just the ones I've researched. There's plenty more.

Happy to do the wrong thing


It was only a period of a few years where I was whipsawed back and forth over my supply of female hormones, both natural and external. First they used birth control pills to control my serious endometriosis, until I reached my late thirties and they refused to give them to me any more, even though I still, you know, had the condition. This resulted in an ovary going so cystic it had to be removed, and I was plunged into menopause suddenly and unnaturally. Then they dragged their feet about giving me hormones, and when they did, it was horse hormones.

I was beginning to suspect they didn't know what they were doing.

It looks good, but you can't hammer anything with it
There's a growing body of literature about the effects of the usual Hormone Replacement Therapy, and it's tending towards the "bad" side of the curve. Yet, taking them solves many of the sleep, temperature control, and mental problems of menopause.

Make no mistake, these symptoms can be life-destroying.

Yet, with all the fuss about the heart attack, stroke, and cancer risks, no one seems to ever grasp the fact that we have a lot of evidence about HRT -- that applies to women taking horse hormones.

We don't have a lot of evidence about women taking bio-identical hormones. Though what we do have indicates it works a lot better.

If we contrast what we know about women taking horse hormones and women taking hormones more like what their own bodies manufacture, it's easy to come to a clear conclusion that it's better for women to take the bio-identical variety.

At least, it's easy for me. When I think like a scientist. To a doctor, this is distressingly ridiculous. Hormones are hormones, is what they think.

I think they are missing something very big indeed.

Adrenal Fatigue


Medical misconceptions about hormones are absolutely rampant. If they were bedbugs, the hotel would have to be nuked from space.

Take the equally widespread, and misunderstood, condition known as Adrenal Fatigue. When I got my first round of HRT, I did have immediate relief from the insomnia, mood swings, cotton-brain, and general mayhem I was constantly struggling with. But it was less than a year after that when I began having these same problems coming back at me with some new wrinkles in them, like bone-crushing fatigue and the ability to get a case of twice-as-bad of whatever bug was going around.

I found that my symptoms matched the information on the Adrenal Fatigue website of Dr. James. L. Wilson. His perspective and advice were extremely helpful.

To me this means it's at least a "syndrome" and by following his recommendations I did get better, so there's also a "treatment." But medical science is extremely scornful of this phenomenon. And so many people struggle on their own, with their doctor flourishing their "normal" lab tests.


Thyroid Scandal


Thyroid difficulties seems to be one bullet I managed to dodge, but those who do suffer from it often have no idea that all their disparate symptoms might be connected to thyroid issues. It doesn't help that thyroid and menopause issues often overlap, one aggravating the other, and the symptoms can come from either source.

Thyroid problems are extremely common, especially in women, and can be brought on by hormone disruption, pregnancy, low iodine, high estrogen, raw food diets, soy consumption, and stress.

Many blood tests use two standard deviations to define blood test norms. By definition, only the lowest or highest 2.5 % of the population is in the abnormal (treatment) range. This does not work well if over 2.5 % of the population has a problem. For example, it is estimated that as many as 20% of women over 60 are hypothyroid. --Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum on Hormonal Issues

A recent study, Thyroid Disease Is Far More Widespread Than Originally Thought, puts the number of undiagnosed, at risk, thyroid patients at thirteen million. (Yes, that's million with an "M".)

Much too much of the time a thyroid patient finally gets diagnosed by requesting the proper tests instead of the standard, unhelpful, one that most doctors look at.

The trouble with lab tests


According to Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum,  a chronic fatigue specialist in this helpful video, doctors are trained to look at lab results, not symptoms. In his practice, he addresses patients with inadequate thyroid, adrenal, and ovarian/testicular function and says he doesn't go by lab tests. He goes by what the patient feels like.

How can we feel so absolutely awful and our doctor thinks we're normal? Dr. Teitelbaum explains it this way:

Pretend your lab test uses 2 standard deviations to diagnose a “shoe problem”. If you accidentally put on someone else’s shoes and had on a size 12 when you wore a size 5, the normal range derived from 2 standard deviations (~95% of people have a shoe size between say 5 and 13) would indicate you had absolutely no problem. You would insist the shoes did not fit although your shoe size would be in the normal range. Similarly, if you lost your shoes, the doctor would pick any shoes out of the “normal range pile” and expect them to fit you.

That's how your doctor thinks you only think you are sick.

But that's only the first set of hurdles to overcome when we have a hormone issue of any kind. Even once we are diagnosed, doctors offer synthetic versions of the hormones we are lacking.

Like my experience with Premarin, such an approach can fix some problems. Then create more.

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