Hormone Secrets: Feel Great and Age Well Using the Bio-Identicals

Preface

If you do not know by now that corporations have disfigured healthcare, you have been living under a rock. For example, hormone therapy is claimed to be hazardous, but a century’s science and experience prove its value. When these natural substances are low or absent, replacing them may be the safest and most effective treatment we have. In contrast, drugs are foreign substances that cause side effects and worse.

Hormone supplementation potentially treats or improves:

Longevity: Low levels of thyroid, growth hormone, estrogen, testosterone, and DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) are linked to premature death.

Cancer: Estrogen, DHEA, testosterone, progesterone, melatonin, and human growth hormone (HGH) all have protective effects against cancer.

General health: In women under age 60, long-term estrogen replacement therapy decreases strokes, blood clots, colon cancer, diabetes, and macular degeneration. It reduces the likelihood of tooth loss, depression, osteoporosis, and death because of bone fracture. Breast cancer is unaffected, contrary to common opinion. Avoidance of estrogen was estimated to cause 50,000 excess deaths over ten years in a Yale study.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD): When long-term care costs are included, this is the most expensive ailment of all. Estrogen decreases the chances of getting AD significantly when it is started within 10 years of menopause.

Heart disease: Over 40 observational studies have shown that giving estrogen to women reduces coronary artery disease, heart attacks, and deaths. When men have higher levels, they have less heart disease. Giving natural estrogen to deficient men improves cholesterol but does not increase blood clotting.

Depression: Estrogen, DHEA, progesterone, testosterone, and melatonin all have antidepressant effects. Thyroid has been studied and used for depression for over fifty years.

Obesity: Thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, DHEA, and human growth hormone reduce unhealthy belly fat and promote weight loss.

Bio-identical hormones are the same as those found in humans. These are safe, affordable, and have few side effects. But since these natural body substances cannot be easily patented, they are barely profitable for big Pharma. So the drugmakers concoct proprietary imitations from chemicals or animals. Their prices are extortionate.

Stories have been spread that hormones such as estrogen and testosterone cause cancer, heart disease, blood clots, and other diseases. With few exceptions, these are false. And for insulin, growth hormone, and others, we have allowed the drugmakers to exorbitantly increase their fees using proprietary manufacturing. The result is that hormones are overpriced and difficult to prescribe. Doctors are pressured to use toxic, expensive patent drugs instead. These trends are squandering our resources and costing us years of healthy life.

Part I

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Why Listen To Me?

Iam now retired, but I spent the last thirty years in private practice performing cosmetic surgery and sometimes assisting with my patients’ medical care. Most of the women I worked with who were over 50 years old suffered from poor sleep, fatigue, hot flashes, muscle wasting, and irritability. They were all looking for a way to feel better and a lot were taking antidepressants. Many thought that I could improve their spirits with surgery, and sometimes they were right. But since they had hormone deficiency symptoms, surgery alone was not the best solution.

Most plastic surgeons operate on a string of depressed people without considering why they are so miserable. My patients were trusting me, and I wanted to help, so I took training.

For nearly two decades, I offered appropriate candidates hormone treatment along with their procedures. Those who listened to my advice were usually grateful. Some were not interested, and I respected that as well.

I knew women had doubts about hormone replacement. I also knew that patients never take at least a third of their prescriptions, even vital ones like kidney transplant anti-rejection drugs. Since hormone benefits can take weeks to be felt, I used long-lasting, inexpensive testosterone pellets implanted under the skin. If my patients didn’t like this idea, I offered it as a cream. Testosterone transforms into estrogen, so they received this as well.

When I saw them a month later, most were thrilled. I then suggested they consider adding progesterone, estrogen, vitamin D, and sometimes thyroid, DHEA, and melatonin. If their finances were tight, I showed them how to inject themselves once a week with testosterone. (Each shot costs only $2 for women and $10 for men.) I followed blood tests, symptoms, and physical exams, and customized therapy based on patient responses.

I saw a few women who felt terrible in their mid-30s. Blood tests showed they were in premature menopause and had estrogen and progesterone levels close to zero. After they began treatment, they felt great again. Many of my patients brought in their friends and husbands, and they responded as well.

Hormone replacement should be a feel-good story. We have overwhelming proof that it is safe and effective. Most hormones are affordable, and tens of millions of people have used them. Thyroid has been available since the late 1800s, and insulin, estrogen, and testosterone for nearly that long. These treat or prevent heart disease, depression, impotence, diabetes, some cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

But misinformation is everywhere:

✪ Doctors and patients know that estrogen causes breast cancer and blood clots, testosterone causes heart disease and prostate cancer, and that human growth hormone (HGH) is practically poison. These ideas are false.

✪ We have been led to believe that insulin’s high price is justifiable. Wrong.

✪ Mainstream medicine says that thyroid disease is relatively uncommon and hazardous to treat. This is also incorrect—it may afflict a third of mature women and is under-treated because of doctors’ economic turf wars rather than unusual risks.

Hormone therapy is a strange opera with many twists and bizarre characters. To navigate it, patients need physician-level knowledge—a tragic situation. I studied this subject for a decade, but you can learn the basics in a few hours with no prior background.

Journalists think every issue has two sides. Law and news stories, for example, are rarely black or white. But medical care is right or wrong, and I challenge you to find the truth here. I present:

✪ What the science says.

✪ Opinions of independent experts.

✪ The collective physician experience of nearly a century.

✪ My patients’ opinions about their treatment. Their words are not scholarly, but they are meaningful and convincing.

Scan this QR code with your camera for one of the best testimonials:

To understand the controversy, you must also learn how the corporations purchased the scientific debate using our public healthcare money. Since then, they have gotten filthy rich peddling questionable drugs for insurance payments. The benefits of hormones for aging were discredited during the same period. The consequence is that we are not using hormones to prevent disease for most of the people who would benefit—at least a quarter of the population. The standard that developed instead was to wait until health declined, then chase the resulting illness using astronomically expensive patent drugs with noxious side effects.

The monstrous economic scrum we call healthcare ruined medical science. The studies about hormones, along with the rest, are stuffed with bias, pretentious jargon, apples-to-oranges comparisons, and complex, dimly understood science. You may initially think they are impossible to interpret and that you cannot come to any conclusions. But if you consider all the evidence, you will see through the fog.

What are my qualifications? Four years ago, when I was 63, I cut my surgical practice to half-time and started researching. I previously thought the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had integrity, the other healthcare players were principled, and that the medical literature was reliable. I soon understood that finances rule everything and that we have given a blank check to the medical industry. They have become wealthy, arrogantly entitled, and even power-mad. They have acquired the journals and academic medicine and are fabricating medical standards to boost sales. Patients are a distant priority for them.

All the harmful practices and chasing after wealth shocked me. My award-winning book, Butchered by Healthcare (2020), grew out of my efforts to understand what was occurring. It is the background and companion to this work and will help you fact-check and fill in gaps. My frequent references to it may seem promotional, but trust me—no one makes money on books that expose medical wrongdoing.

This is a podcast introduction.

Healthcare is a patchwork Frankenstein’s monster—part miracle, part corruption, and deformed by commercial interests. Somehow, it still walks, but I cannot put lipstick on it.

Note: I wrote this book with the collaboration of Robert L. Morgan, APRN, a colleague who had a huge hormone practice (I owe you, Robert). I used the first person for easy reading.

Robert Yoho

Pasadena, CA

RobertYohoAuthor.com

June 2021

FOR POWER READERS

✪ Skip or scan anything that is too technical for you and browse out-of-order based on your gender and interests.

✪ Delay studying healthcare corruption until you understand hormone basics. Medical care is a pay-to-play industry infested by misconduct, and seeing how bad it is can be overwhelming.

✪ The e-book has links to references. The Resources section has hundreds more and some lectures.

✪ To convince you I did not cherry-pick sources to manufacture conclusions, Appendix C has over 50 references about a narrow but pivotal area—the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease with hormones. I could have done this for any topic in this book.

✪ Try not to feud with me over small trees in this forest. If some disagreement kidnaps you and you quit reading, you will lose your chance to understand the ecosystem.

Three Blue's Clues—practical rules of thumb—will help you interpret science writing.

✪ If you do not follow the reasoning, it is likely a lie used to sell something. You are as smart as the storyteller, so do not let them fool you. (This also applies to lawyers and financial advisors.) Never be seduced by detail at the expense of your intuition.

✪ The updated Golden Rule: Those with the gold make the rules, so finding the funding source is telling. If you consult outside references, you will find the sponsors at the end of each paper. Their ethics may not pass a sniff test.

✪ Controversy, confusion, and extravagant claims about small numbers prove that whatever it is does not work. Never fall into the trap of believing, reasonable people disagree or the science is developing.

Although academics deride Wikipedia, it might be the most reliable remaining medical information source. But never forget that it is under constant attack by industry ghostwriters.

Not even China, whose leaders try to rewrite history, can hide from web crawlers. Although ten percent of links disappear every year because of link rot, virtually everything that was ever seen on the Web is still alive and well on the Wayback Machine Internet archive. Just copy the bad link (the web address at the top of the browser) and enter it at archive.org. Then look for the backed-up copies and select the date to review. You can also save any URL free at another of their pages. These are Internet superpowers that are handy to have in your bookmarks.

I cite some references that are behind paywalls, but blasting through most of these is easy. If you copy the link into the Sci-hub.st website browser, you can download academic articles free. This is a piracy website based in Russia and using it is against the law, so I give you this information for entertainment purposes only. But some academics publicly thank the Hub.

Chapter 2

Learn A Few Drug Names

To understand this book, you only need to remember a few bio-identical hormone names— estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroids, which include porcine, T4, and T3 . If you read outside sources, you must learn others. Return to this reference chapter as needed.

Hormones work by attaching to receptor molecules in the human body, and since the natural ones are identical or nearly identical to those made by our glands, they fit like the real thing. Manufactured medicines are foreign substances never found in the body’s ecosystem that are made from animals or chemicals. These do not match as closely as the bio-identicals, do not work as well, and have side effects. They are still useful in a few circumstances but should never be taken long-term. I call them counterfeit or fake to help you sort out the issues.

For example, progesterone is bio-identical. In contrast, Provera is a synthetic progesterone imitation. It raises the chances of migraines, weight gain, heart disease, breast cancer, depression, and irregular bleeding. Pregnant women taking it get more miscarriages and their babies have more congenital disabilities.

Drugmakers invent sexy copyrighted brand names for their profitable patented compounds. This allows patients to harass doctors by saying, I saw an ad for… Pharma also creates chemical names that are hard to pronounce and remember. The brand Celebrex, for example, is the chemical celecoxib—try saying that one. The advantage for the manufacturer is that when medications go off patent and are sold as generics, the chemical is more difficult to recall than the recognizable brand.

The drugmakers use the names to confuse. Progestin, progestogen, and Provera, the artificial ones, sound like natural progesterone. And Premarin, the horse-urine estrogen (this name was from PRegnant MAre’s uRINe), gets mixed up with Provera, the synthetic progesterone. These strategies work, so the doctors are just as bewildered as you are:

✪ Many journal articles make no distinction between bio-identical progesterone and progestins/progestogens such as Provera. They call both of these progesterone, which implies there is little difference.

✪ Likewise, medical articles call many related substances estrogens, which is accurate but fools both doctors and patients into thinking that they are all alike. Technically, estrogens include bio-identical estradiol, the counterfeits such as Premarin, and the other relatively weak human estrogens, estrone and estriol. These last two are bio-identical but are almost inactive and cause some health issues.

✪ Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) sometimes refers to treatment with bio-identicals and sometimes to treatment with the counterfeits!

PATENT, GENERIC, AND COMPOUNDED DRUGS:

When a patent is granted, the drugmakers get a twenty-year monopoly. This allows them to charge shocking prices, especially when insurance pays and the claim is made that the drug is lifesaving. These are so expensive that only an insurance company writing blank checks ever buys them. Because of this, generics are now ninety (90) percent of all drugs consumed in America.

Generic manufacturing is permitted after proprietary medications go off patent. These drugs may then be given a new trademarked name by the latest manufacturer. In theory, generics are cheaper because market demand and costs determine their price instead of the monopoly. But since insurance pays for 80 percent of all US medicines, cash prices for all drugs stay relatively high. The original manufacturers also continue to sell their brand even after patents expire.

When a patient buys a generic, they will get whatever her pharmacy bought from the wholesaler. These companies scour the international market for the cheapest choices and dump them on the domestic retailers. Estradiol generics, for example, are often quite weak. And when cardiac medications are improper, illness or even death can result. These issues are common.

US hormone physicians who figure all this out usually prefer compounders. These pharmacies manufacture medication for individual patients and are forbidden to manufacture in bulk. They must use the chemical name rather than a brand. Compounders have only their reputation for quality and service to compete against the full manufacturing and advertising might of the patent and generic drugmakers. The compound market is only a few percent of all drug sales, but if they were allowed to make whatever they