How Both Men’s and Women’s Health Care Can Benefit from Hormone Replacement

Why Hormone Replacement Doesn’t Deserve the Bad Rap It Gets

I am speaking with integrative gynecologist and holistic women’s health care practitioner, Dr. Felice Gersh on a range of subjects for my podcast. We speak about the medical community’s often perfunctory approach to diagnosing and removing disease, and how this led to her having to self-diagnose her own PCOS. We speak about endocrine disruptors, and metabolic dysfunction and how these can lead to fertility issues, pregnancy complications, and male problems such as gynecomastia among others. We continue this wonderful discussion in part two of the episode. 

Adipose tissue and what it does in the body.

Dr. Gersh speaks about how adipose or fat tissue impacts our health and well-being in so many different ways. Having more adipose tissue can impact how we experience hunger and can result in appetite dysregulation, fat burning in the cell mitochondria, production of the hormone leptin, and so on. Further, it impacts the production of insulin and the way the body regulates blood sugar.

In the episode, we ended up speaking at length about women’s health care, weight loss, and why drastic weight loss can be bad, at times even the sort that follows weight loss surgery. Starvation diets can be catastrophic, she says. When the body loses weight it often loses a lot of the lean muscle mass along with the fat. However, when it regains weight, it may all be fat, and there is a net loss in lean tissue at the end of it. We speak about water fasting and why it isn’t for everyone, as well as something called the fasting mimicking program, or the longevity diet. This, she says could be particularly useful to lose weight in menopause; a time when weight loss becomes all the more difficult and; in some cases, seemingly impossible. 

The case for hormone replacement in women’s health care.

While menopause is a perfectly natural progression in a woman’s life, it does have a lot of troublesome symptoms. These can be alleviated with HRT, particularly bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. While this is not going to replicate how hormones work in a 25-year-old healthy woman, they can help cells do their job properly and ease a lot of the symptoms. 

While we cannot stop the aging process, women can experience better energy levels, more well-being, and less pain and discomfort than with no hormones. Dr. Gersh explains how the whole brouhaha since 20 years about women’s health care outcomes was exaggerated and flawed as well. She explains how studies now show that there is actually a slightly lower risk of breast cancer among women that have undergone certain types of HRT.

So, what about the supplementation in males, who also experience hormonal changes after a certain age? Dr. Gersh shares her insight into this as well; how this impacts the male prostate and how testosterone is not the guilty party in prostate cancer. I end my episode with Dr. Felice Gersh with the promise that she will once again come on to my show to discuss more aspects of holistic health and well-being. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, check out part one and part two of my interview with women’s health care practitioner Dr. Gersh.