Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (4 page)

The environment and our unhealthy lifestyles have certainly taken their toll on all of us, but with a few simple changes in the way you approach your health and lifestyle, you can expect a longer and healthier quality of life. Wouldn’t you want that?

Bioidentical hormone replacement is a big part of this change. Nutrition and lifestyle habits are the others. It’s important to understand the dangers of our habits and the changes we need to make to undo this damage in order to enjoy good health and longevity. It requires understanding that as we live longer, it is up to each one of us to make changes in the way we approach our health to have quality of life, a better life, a disease-free life. The fountain of youth exists; that secret elixir we’ve been looking for is available if you are willing to make some simple life changes. It is about stopping the clock, and it’s the new way.

I have interviewed the most forward-thinking doctors in America so you can have a “one-on-one office visit” with them through the pages of this book. I have asked the questions I believe we all would like answered. The doctors in this book are cutting-edge and Western-trained physicians. They have come to realize that as the sickest people on the planet (right here in the United States), we have been handling our declining years in ways that are not working. By restoring your hormones to optimal youthful levels, by strengthening the weakest organs and glands, by restoring your energy, you can be rejuvenated inside and out. The antiaging benefits of hormone replacement are rapid and dramatic. Most people I have spoken with regarding bioidentical hormone replacement regimens say they “wouldn’t dream of going back to the way they used to feel.”

What you will learn about hormones and health from these medical professionals is life-changing. I’m talking about minor hormones, which are key to our well-being: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and others. You’ll also understand the crucial importance of strengthening your major hormones: adrenaline, thyroid, insulin, cortisol, and others. You’ll see that this new medicine
these doctors are practicing works to build up our biochemicals and strengthen our weakest organs and glands.

You will learn about the importance of detoxification to rid our bodies of chemicals and heavy metals from the air and water we drink. This information will help you to understand the importance of having a strong, clean liver, which is the clearinghouse of the body. With a healthy liver, you get the full effect of the nutrients from the food, hormones, and supplements you take. You will realize more than ever before the crucial role diet plays in health. Once you really get this, you will think twice before you eat that preservative, chemical-filled nonfood you have grown so accustomed to tasting. Nutrition is crucial to antiaging. There is no hormone or pill that will be able to reverse bad eating habits and an unhealthy lifestyle. This is a total program. You can be the winner. The more you put into it, the better the outcome.

This is fantastic new Western medicine, but unfortunately the medical establishment (including our medical schools) is slow to jump on this new, fast-moving train. That is why I have gathered together these doctors for you. Most likely there is not a doctor like these doctors in your community … yet. It is worth a trip to another city to be a patient of one of these fine professionals, because after an initial visit, most of the follow-up you will be doing with him or her will be through blood work and phone calls.

You can’t imagine the change one of these doctors can make in your life. But you must remember this: It is up to you to be an informed patient. This book will give you that information. You must know your stuff, and you must have questions ready that you want answered when you are with your doctor. We are living in a new and changed world; we
are
on our own. Your beloved doctor, whom you have been seeing all your life, can still be your doctor, but if you want to be internally young and healthy, it is important to read every interview in this book and truly grasp what these cutting-edge doctors are teaching. If any one of these physicians appeals to you, look up his or her information at the back of this book and try to schedule an appointment. I have asked all of these doctors that if they cannot see you to please recommend another doctor like themselves who can.

I believe in the near future the mainstream medical establishment will catch up. I am seeing evidence of it. It takes curiosity and a release of ego on the part of a doctor to admit that possibly there is a better way. Fortunately, all over the country doctors are realizing that Western medicine’s “standard of care” has for the most part become inadequate and outdated relative to our daily modern lives. We live in a different world. The medical protocols of fifty years ago no longer apply; we did not have the stresses, the pollution, or the technology of today.

Yet sadly (for the most part) the medical establishment has neither been taught nor understands the major health improvements and quality of life that can result from bioidentical (natural) hormone replacement. Today’s world is a pharmaceutical society. We have an ailment, we go to our doctor and he or she gives us a drug. But we are part of the problem. We want a prescription when we go to the doctor’s office, or else we don’t feel we got our money’s worth. Did you know in parts of Asia, the only time you pay your doctor is when you are well? If you get sick, it means the doctor did not do his or her job, and there is no charge for the treatment.

As a rule, drugs don’t heal; they simply abate. Yet often we are put on certain drugs for life. Drugs make us feel better; and, of course, it’s important not to abuse prescription drugs—they have their purpose and are godsends for pain, infection, and mental illness. These conditions are legitimate reasons to take drugs. I would not want to live in a world without pharmaceuticals. But each drug has its consequence. Often we need to take another drug to eliminate the consequence of the last drug, and so on and so on.

Up until now, aging has been a downhill process. Even our doctors tell us gently, “Well, what do you expect? You’re getting older, these things happen.” I’m here to tell you, “Not so!”

This new medicine substantially slows down or reverses the aging process. You don’t have to die sick! It is possible to live a long life with good health, but you have got to start now. The earlier you embrace this type of medicine, the easier time you will have of it. Aging is happening earlier and earlier. Young men and women are experiencing hormonal loss in their twenties, thirties, and forties owing to
environmental pollution and stress. This coming generation will be in poorer health than the present one, and that is hard to believe. Did you know that we are the sickest nation on the planet? Women of my generation in this country are ill from years of excessive chemicalization. Wait until you read about the consequences of the high-dose birth control pills we were given and how they are now thought to be connected with the skyrocketing rate of breast cancer. We have been chemicalized for decades, but we now have the opportunity to reverse the damage that has unknowingly been done to us.

It is never too early and it’s never too late for women and men of all ages; I did not start this process until I reached my fifties, but at this time I have substantially reversed the aging process in my body. Hey, it’s true, cells die. There is nothing any of us can do about that. Even so, the possibility of keeping these cells healthy and restoring vitality, vigor, sexuality, and creative thinking is pretty exciting.

Until now, women in their seventies and eighties have felt that once they are on the other side of menopause, there is nothing that can be done. They accept their weak hearts, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, dementia, inertia, and total loss of a sex drive as part of the deal. Their doctors have told them so. These women have bodies that have adjusted to their hormonal loss, and because they are no longer suffering from the most obvious symptoms, they think they are okay. Because these women are no longer plagued with hot flashes, they don’t realize that internally they are experiencing complete body failure due to hormonal decline. That’s why we get sick as we age. Hormones have a powerful influence on your body and on how you look and feel. They are the body’s way of communicating chemically among the cells, effectively telling them what to do. Your hormones affect virtually every function in your body. Without hormones you cannot sleep, you can’t think clearly, your health deteriorates, your weight goes out of control, your sexuality diminishes, your skin gets sallow and dry, your hair loses its luster, your eyesight diminishes, your body temperature becomes impossible to regulate, and on and on and on. Without hormones you slowly die, and the picture is not pretty. As a society, we have accepted sleeplessness at night as part of aging. We have accepted dry skin, thinning hair,
wrinkling, bone loss, foggy thinking, heart problems, and cancer as normal when we get older. In essence, hormones affect everything we do. From the minute we are born, our hormones play a major role in how we grow, age, and die.

But guess what? The second half of your life can be better than your first half. A better life, a healthier life, a life of youthful energy, comes from embracing this new medicine, and bioidentical hormone replacement is a big component. Remember, I’m not talking about the dangerous synthetic hormones, which I will discuss at length in this book.

The second half of life can be wonderful. I know it because I am living it. This new approach to health gives you back your lean body, shining hair, and thick skin, provided you are eating correctly and exercising in moderation. This new medicine allows your brain to work perfectly and offers the greatest defense against cancer, heart attack, and Alzheimer’s disease. Don’t you want that?

Life is supposed to be enjoyed. This book is about accepting the coming years, but without sickness. Why should you care? you ask. After all, we live, we get old, we get sick, and then we die, right? What’s the big deal? It’s been going on forever. Aging is just something that happens to all of us, right? Well, now there are two ways to age—the old way and the new way.

The old way is obvious, and it is clear that it is not working. We don’t need to have a virtual pharmacy in our medicine cabinets to keep us hanging on to life. What kind of life is it if you are living in a wheelchair with tubes up your nose? What kind of life is it if you can’t remember anything because of severe hormonal loss? What kind of life is it if you are riddled with heart disease, PMS, osteoporosis, thyroid disease, sexual dysfunction, a heart that no longer works, a brain that has become foggy, or one of the many cancers that most of us can expect to have at some point?

Recently, I was talking with a physician about the alarming statistics relative to breast cancer. Those statistics have recently been readjusted and show that one woman in eight will contract this disease. She said most women feel it is not a matter of “if” but “when” a woman would get this dreaded disease. That’s a pretty sad statement—indicating that women are starting to think that this disease is
inevitable, and with good reason. Did you know that at the turn of the century, the statistics were that one in ninety-one females would get breast cancer? What has changed?

First, we are living longer, the environment is wreaking havoc on our health, and our lifestyle habits are bad. Most people know that you don’t put inferior product into the gas tank or engine of your car. Why don’t we realize the damage we incur from the chemicals, drugs, trans fats, and other poisons we are putting into our bodies? What are we thinking? Everything we put into our bodies is some sort of fuel. Would you willingly put the cheapest inferior fuel into your body if you realized that the results of this poor product you are feeding yourself is the reason you are in such bad health? I am not talking just about junk food and sugar, I am also referring to the chemicals, drugs, and the poisons that are part of our everyday lives.

As a result, new diseases are cropping up everywhere. Who heard of lupus thirty years ago? Now just about everyone you talk with knows someone with lupus (an autoimmune disease). There are now strange skin conditions, such as flesh-eating disease, and diseases due to bad lifestyle and eating habits. How long is it going to take us to understand that our bodies need better care? For the most part, most of us do take better care of our cars than we do ourselves!

The new approach to health and aging is to balance our lost hormones with bioidentical hormones, strengthen our major hormones, and detoxify our livers and glands from the outside environmental pollution that is making us sick. Eliminating stress, valuing a good night’s sleep, and supplementation with vitamins and herbs to make up for the lost nutrients in our food due to acid rain, chemicals, and overworked soil are also important components of antiaging.

Once you embrace this new approach, you won’t believe how great you can feel when the symphony of a well-working body is in concert. Your body should sing. Yet most of us live in internal discordance. We don’t have our priorities straight. We live in an environment of constant stress, and we medicate ourselves with sleeping pills and antidepressants to make us feel well enough to carry on our sorry existences.

You don’t want to die sick, do you? You don’t want to get fat,
shrink, lose your energy, your sex drive, and your brain, or contract any of the diseases that seem to be part and parcel of aging, right? You don’t want to end up with bones too feeble to hold up your body. You don’t want to walk around with an oxygen tank attached permanently to your back because of the choices you made as a young adult. Nor do you want to contract one of the new mystery diseases like antitrypsin deficiency, an incurable emphysemalike condition that is fatal, which is caused by unknowingly breathing in chemicals that are in the environment. I just lost my literary agent to that one. You don’t want to lose your energy, lose your sexuality, or be put out to pasture by your family much the same way they do old horses because you are in the beginning or advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, do you?