Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (18 page)

Think of your body as a finely tuned machine. You have to feed it the right fuel, the best fuel, and you have to take care of the engine and give it regular fine-tunings. This is just common sense. You will
be the recipient of negative consequences if you put into your body chemicals and bad oils (that is, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, artificial food, and poison), if you don’t sleep properly and long enough, or if you load up with pharmaceuticals without thought about the effect they are having. If you don’t think good thoughts, if you wallow in negatives, what do you think will manifest?

We are what we eat, think, and drink. We need sleep to give us the fuel to have the energy to live and love. It’s really all up to you, and what you put into your
self
from this point on will have a direct effect on who you will be and the state of your health down the road. There are no “lucky ones.” There are only people who understand that we can live a long time and be productive in society and within the family structure while they are alive. This isn’t rocket science … just good common sense.

Hormones are the “juice of youth.” This is what we have all been looking for, and they are real and natural and available. We are lucky to be alive at this time. Our daughters will certainly have an easier time of it, because by then bioidentical hormone replacement will be the accepted way of dealing with aging. We are the pioneers, and we are blazing the way for the next generation … once again.

CHAPTER 6
G
LORIA:
A F
IFTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD
S
UCCESS

I first met Gloria several years ago. She is a fantastic aesthetician. My regular treat to myself is to have her work her magic on my face. I have been a client of Gloria’s for a couple of years. You can’t help but be struck by her beauty: long sun-streaked natural wavy hair, beautiful olive skin, and green eyes, a combination of Italian and Swedish heritage. The combo is striking
.

The day I first met her was not our best day together. I could tell she was agitated. I had no idea why, but it was not exactly the vibe you want when you are getting a facial. As she began “slapping” my face around, it was clear that she was not in a good mood. She was full of complaints and bitchiness. It was when she said to me, “No man will ever take me out more than once because I am such a bitch. Plus, I haven’t slept in four years,” that I knew I was dealing with a severely hormonally imbalanced woman. It was stealing her life from her
.

I said to her rather tentatively, “You don’t know me, but I think I could help you.” I sent her to Dr. Prudence Hall, a gynecologist in Santa Monica, California. (Read her interview on
this page
.)

Wait until you read Gloria’s story. If this doesn’t convince you to embrace bioidentical hormone replacement, then I will be at a loss
.

SS:
Yours is such a success story that I can’t wait for my readers to hear it. One of the things I feel is so remarkable about your story is your family history.

Gloria:
Well, my grandmother was the first one that I knew of in the family to have severe menopause symptoms. My mother didn’t have them as bad, because, as I am educating myself, I realize that when you have eight children like my mother, and you are pregnant and nursing that long, your menopause is not as severe. So that’s what saved my mother. She did go through symptomatic menopause, however, because I remember her sweating all the time. She had other symptoms, but they weren’t life stopping like they were for me. Also, my mother stayed home to raise her children. Even though she was very busy, she was still within her safe environment while going through the “change,” whereas I was a businesswoman. I had my business to run, and I had to work with people every day. I was expected to be at my optimum every day. Giving facials, I can’t afford to have daily mood swings. My customers come here to relax and get beautiful, and they expect me to be up and in a good mood and creative. All of a sudden, feeling happy was almost impossible, and I didn’t understand why.

SS:
Is this what happened to your grandmother?

Gloria:
My grandmother’s curse was that she and my grandfather were one of the wealthier couples in her community. They survived the Depression. My grandfather was a hardworking immigrant who was able to be successful a few times in his life. That he could provide my grandmother with whatever she needed became her curse.

SS:
Why?

Gloria:
Because he had the money to send her to whatever doctor she wanted to go to, and the more they did for her, the crazier she got.

SS:
What were they doing to her?

Gloria:
They gave her different drugs. I don’t know which ones, though, because no one wrote anything down in those days. She was on drug after drug to try to suppress her menopause symptoms, and this triggered her pituitary gland to grow. Her body became bloated. Her features became abnormal as a result of the medications that she was on. Her nose got huge, her hands swelled, and her legs and feet couldn’t fit into any shoes. No shoes were big enough for her. She
used to be tiny. If you could see her wedding picture, she was a very small woman—maybe ninety-three pounds.

SS:
What was her mood like?

Gloria:
Just angry all the time. I was the only one who had the patience to even want to know her. Otherwise she was secluded and reclusive and lived behind huge walls with a big dog.

SS:
Would people talk about the fact that she hadn’t been like that prior to menopause?

Gloria:
Yes. My grandfather adored her. When they were young, they were so happy. Extremely talented. She was an artist and one of those people who could make anything. She had gardens that the whole neighborhood envied. When menopause hit, her whole life fell apart.

She gave up her zest for life. She could no longer paint because her hands were too swollen. She couldn’t get out into the garden and work because she was physically in pain, sore, and swollen, and not feeling well. She could barely walk. She still did a little cooking, but no more sewing, whereas before, she used to crochet beautiful doilies.

SS:
Would it be fair to say that menopause sucked the soul out of her?

Gloria:
It stole her life. Then the doctors got to her and made things worse, much worse. My poor grandmother went into menopause, and then to top it off, my grandfather died. She was only forty-three at the time.

SS:
So let’s go to you.

Gloria:
I don’t know why, but I always had a feeling that I was going to take after my grandmother genetically because I am physically most like her. I’m the only one out of five sisters who was small and blond like my grandmother. All my sisters are five feet seven inches, with dark hair and features.

SS:
What was your first symptom?

Gloria:
My moods. I started noticing that people were telling me that I was a bit touchy at times. Touchy, and maybe a lack of patience, nervous, tense. People would say to me, “You don’t have to be so uptight; it’s not a big deal.” But I wasn’t able to let things bounce off me the way I normally would. I was starting to become a sponge, absorbing everything: Everything went in, everything was personal.
That was probably the beginning. Then one day I was sitting in a restaurant, and all of a sudden, I stopped talking and said, “Oh my God. I think I just had a hot flash.”

Next, I started gaining weight. I used to be kind of a babe, but I had gone from a size two to a size ten just in a matter of a year. Before, I was the kind of person who never had to watch her weight. I once had a doctor put me on a diet of three malted milkshakes a day just to keep my weight on. I was so thin that if I turned sideways, you wouldn’t be able to find me.

SS:
Must have been a shock to change that quickly.

Gloria:
Right. All of a sudden, I had to start watching my weight. I had always been into exercise, but now exercise became this difficult chore.

SS:
Had your vitality been drained out of you?

Gloria:
Yes, just everything. No matter what I did, I didn’t know myself anymore. I would eat less and gain weight. It was all screwy. Everything I knew about myself was no longer valid. If I exercised for two hours a day, it didn’t do a thing. Before if I had done that, I would have been in Olympic shape. I was ready to just throw in the towel. I felt like I was ready to go over the edge. I was almost there when I met you. I was feeling despondent.

When I met you, I was already on antidepressants—a very high dose of Effexor. I was given the prescription because a friend of mine who was a therapist said to me one day, “You’re not going to make it. You need to be on something.” So she took me to a doctor who gave me the prescription.

SS:
Were you still having your periods?

Gloria:
I was pretty much done. It had been almost two years since I had had a period.

SS:
And if you don’t mind my asking, what happened to your sex drive?

Gloria:
What sex drive? I think this is also what started to cause the depression. It started happening to me at age forty-three. I felt like somebody struck me down in the prime of my life. I was a single mother, and I was just getting to the point when my daughter was old enough that I could start to have some sort of life of my own again. I
had made my daughter a priority while she was young. I didn’t want to have a revolving door with men with a little daughter at home. So I waited until she was in high school, and I thought, Okay, now I can start dating again. That’s when it hit. The idea of someone coming near me was repulsive. And then you walked into my day spa.

SS:
I guess there are no accidents in life.

Gloria:
You called Dr. Schwarzbein for me, and even though she was no longer taking patients, you talked her into treating me, along with Dr. Prudence Hall.

SS:
Yes, because Dr. Schwarzbein is now only teaching, but she has passed on to Dr. Hall all she knows. Dr. Hall has access to Dr. Schwarzbein whenever she wants information.

Gloria:
When I started feeling good again, I was like a kid in a candy store. I was in love all over the place. I wanted to love everybody. I was just so happy to have my mojo back.

Dr. Hall got me started on bioidentical cyclical static dosing of hormones. So I was taking the same thing every day and adding in progesterone on days 18 to 28. At first, it was helping, but not much, not enough. I remember you saying to me that I was getting there, but I had to be patient. I had been at absolute zero on everything. At first I wasn’t on testosterone, so I still didn’t have any sexual feelings. My mood was improving. I had a boyfriend at the time, so that should tell you something, but it was strange to have no feeling.

Then I found out that the compounding pharmacist had given me the wrong dosage. I thought I would kill him. I had lost time. I wanted to feel good, and this held me up. We got the dosage right, and then things started changing rapidly. The effects were almost immediate. In twenty-four hours, I started to notice the difference.

SS:
What was different?

Gloria:
The first thing you notice is that you can actually sleep at night. And the hot flashes aren’t there anymore. You wake up in the morning, and your first thought is a good thought. And you know, life is so wonderful that I just want everyone to know that it’s not your environment so much as it is your physiological state. You can have a good time doing almost anything if you are healthy and well. We don’t even know what that is anymore because we’re
moving so far away from it in this drug-riddled world that we live in. We are getting so far away from nature that our bodies are almost in a constant state of immune defense response. You couple that with hormone imbalance, and I don’t know how anyone can live a good life.

Then I read about the Wiley Protocol, and I thought it made total sense to cycle with the rhythms of the lunar calendar. So that’s what I am doing now, and I feel unbelievable. I hang a calendar on the wall and I write what dosage I am supposed to take every day and each morning I look at it. What’s so hard about that? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

SS:
Yes, I have written about the Wiley Protocol in this book and explained for my readers the essence of rhythmic cycling.

Gloria:
I’ve also had Dr. Hall add in a little testosterone, and I was just so “Oh my God!” I just have to thank God for my three dogs and all the time it takes to care for them, or else I would have been out there preying on young men all day. (That’s a joke!)

SS:
Like T. S. Wiley says, “It’s nice to be alive while you’re alive.”

Gloria:
You can say that again. My alertness is so much better. My body is even getting better. I’m losing that tire around my middle. I’m actually feeling my hip bones again. I feel so lucky. It got so bad for me that I now have seen both sides. And I don’t ever want to go back over to that other side again. Now I’m coming back. I get to reverse all the stuff that was going on. I’m never depressed anymore. Never! And when I think back on it, I was depressed a lot when I was young, so I’m beginning to realize that I was probably never completely hormonally balanced.

SS:
Well, it sounds like in your family history there may be something that is hormonally off.

Gloria:
I think so, but the only thing to cure it is to have fifteen children, which we are not going to do these days.

SS:
But I don’t think women understand the value of pregnancy and nursing and what the birth control pill did to us.