Patient's Shocking Experience with 'Functional' Medicine | Hormone Replacement vs Optimization

I have a patient that came in on oral, and she was actually seeing someone who claimed to be functional, and it's sublingual. And I say, well, that's still oral. She said, but it's sublingual. And I said, okay, I get it, but you're swallowing some of it. And her estrogen levels are through the roof and the numbers are off. And I checked saliva as well. And so we're converting her to a topical. But orals should not be done. In my opinion, topical is the way to go, and that's the safer way because you don't carry all those other risks that we were talking about. And I don't think you're getting the same value when you're looking at these labs to talk on the serum. I mean, besides FSH and LH and pregnant alone and dheas, although you're not necessarily using it for dosing, it does give insight, in my opinion, especially with, like, total and free testosterone and then seeing whether or not that's getting to the cell by looking at saliva.