YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY?
Essentially,


It depends on your age and what your goal is. Are you trying to conceive? Going through perimenopause? Are you 70-80 years old struggling with bone density?
Once the goal is determined, your functional gynecologist will want to examine your comprehensive history. You might be asked what the timeline of events was that lead you to this point. It’s important to determine what the CHIEF COMPLAINT is and work back from there.
YOUNGER PATIENT
- If they are cycling and have cyclical symptoms like headaches
- May want to do a saliva hormone test because it’s the easiest to collect versus drawing bloodwork multiple times throughout the month
- Urine or saliva test to map out the cycle and pair symptoms with labs
- At what point are they having these symptoms and is their estrogen/progesterone low or high
- This can be very helpful for younger patients and patients trying to achieve fertility
MIDDLE AGED PATIENT
- We want to see if their progesterone levels are optimal or not and they usually peak a week after ovulation
- Can do saliva, urine or bloodwork a week after
- Bloodwork is more cost effective but urine lets us see more than hormone levels
- We see cortisol levels, how liver is eliminating and detoxifying estrogen
- We look for estrogen dominance
OLDER PATIENT
- The goal here would be to protect bone and brain health so we would look at bioidentical hormones and evaluate if they were the right solution for you
- If so, we would start conservative with a gel or cream.
- If those weren’t working, we’d move on to patches, oral progesterone, lozenges or pellets (for estrogen and testosterone).
- The main goal here would be to find the right provider because conventional gynecologists still use synthetic hormones.
- It all depends on your goals, your budget and what you want to achieve.
HERE’S THE TAKEAWAY:
Comprehensive testing is so helpful in personalizing care. There is value in all types of testing. There are people who understand hormones and aren’t afraid of them. Listen to your body and the cues it’s sending you. Get your body back in balance so that it can do what it needs to do!
I want you to know is that you don’t need to keep suffering, even if you are quote-on-quote “older” like me! 100 years ago women were dying in their 50’s and now it’s the prime stage of life. We still have hopes and dreams and goals and your hormones should not get in the way of your kick-assery, am I right?!

In health and love,
