A Reader Asks: She Is 36, Cycling Normally, and Wants to Know Benefits of Hormone Therapy...

Happy Sunday, Mere here.

Two weeks ago I admitted openly to being publicly absent in the area I work in every single day, and I had been calling it a strategy. It came to a head when a client I have worked with for five years, a woman I actively coordinate hormone therapy for, asked me if I knew anything about bioidentical hormone therapy. That email cracked something open for me. That was the end of the ‘strategy’ excuse.

If you missed it, you can read it [here]. Along with that newsletter I created an anonymous questionnaire where anyone could submit questions, and I committed to working through them as a way to bring more direct education public... to you! The response was exciting! I really want to work through them properly, which means one at a time, with the depth that anyone who has met with either myself or Sarah have come to know well, not a surface level answer that leaves you with more confusion than you started with. At least, that is not the goal.

I am genuinely pumped about this first one and I am going to walk you through it today. That said, if you have questions you have been sitting on and have not submitted yet, the form is still open. Fully anonymous, zero judgment, and I will be pulling from these for the coming weeks.

[Ask Fortify Form Is HERE]

So here we go!!! First one: 

A female, somewhere between 36 and 40 years old, wrote in. She has a consistent, on-time menstrual cycle. She is not on hormonal birth control or any form of hormone therapy. She has had bloodwork done and she understands her labs.

She wants to know two things: 

1. what are the actual benefits of menopausal hormone therapy and TRT

2. How do you choose a delivery method?

I want to be transparent about something before I get into this. I have never seen her labs. I do not know her full health history. I have a snapshot, and it is a specific one, which is why her question deserves a thorough answer rather than a generic one. But I want to set the stage for you here, because context changes everything.

She is cycling regularly. She is young by hormonal intervention standards having zero other context. I do not have any symptoms (this was intentionally done by me). So in theory all is well…or is it? I don’t really know. 

So you see in this limited clinical scenario the answer could not possibly be a simply "yes, start hormone therapy" or "you're fine, come back in ten years." The answer is layered, and it depends on variables she may or may not have already accounted for when she looked at her labs.

Both are worth a full answer, so I am giving each one its own piece. This week I am going into the benefits. Estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone, what the research actually supports versus what gets overstated, and then I bring it back to her specifically because her age and clinical picture make this a more nuanced conversation than most people expect. Delivery methods get their own blog in two weeks, picking up right where this one leaves off.

This week's blog is [LINKED HERE].

"A Reader Asks: She is 36-40 y.o. and Cycling Normally: What are the potential Benefits of Hormone Therapy?"

If you are sitting with questions that feel too specific for a newsletter, that is exactly what our 1:1 strategy sessions are designed for. And if you are thinking your workplace, your gym, or your community should be having this conversation, Fortify does public speaking, virtual webinars, and directed Q&As. We have been brought in virtually and it has been a profound experience every time. If you want us for a wellness talk, read more [HERE].

In the meantime, the anonymous form is still open!  [Ask your question HERE.]

Mere & Sarah