What to Know About Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy for Women

A woman's estrogen principally is called estradiol. There's really three major estrogens.

Estrone, estriol and estradiol. And estradiol is, when we think of being, is the chief estrogen for women.

So any form of estradiol would be.

A bioidentical estrogen, even though it's made synthetically.

So the bioidentical estrogens. In a woman, the predominant hormone is testosterone. In a woman, it's testosterone.

You have about 20 times more testosterone than estrogen.

And a man has about 10 times more testosterone than a woman does. But a woman has 20 times more.

Testosterone than she has estrogen.

Estrogen is more of a minor hormone. Even though it's extremely powerful, it's more minor in terms of its concentration in the blood. And then progesterone is one that comes and goes during a cycle and opposes.

Estrogen on uterus, but also works on every other organ.

So right now, if we look at testosterone, there's really not a, like a.

Common synthetic form of testosterone.

There's some that anabolic steroid abusers use.

We don't really see those too often.

There's estradiol, which can be a patch.

An oral tablet, or a palate palate put on the skin.

And there's progesterone that can be a topical cream or oral tablet.

Typically, oral tablets are used because it's more protective of the uterus.

And those are the three forms of bioidentical hormones in women. We even go as far to say even in thyroid is a bioidentical thyroid.

Which is actually from a pig. They take a pig's thyroid. It's called armor thyroid. That's a bioidentical one, too. It's the same composition that we have.

So the common method to treat women's menopause in health care is using a bioidentical estrogen. There is a commonly available progesterone.

It's called prometrium.

But doctors tend to prescribe the synthetic ones.

I think that's just our patterns. We do that even though there's health risks associated with them.

So you can go to the.

Get your doctor to write your prescription for estradiol.

And prometrium, which would be bioidentical.

Estradiol, typically is a patch, and prometrium would be a tablet.

And then you're missing testosterone. Well, testosterone is available in different forms.

From patches and creams to shots to pellets.

But for women's health, the pellets are most appropriate. They give you the most consistent blood levels. They don't have the side effects associated.

With topicals and injections, and the levels are very predictable.

So we use pellets, and because we're.

Using a pellet of testosterone, we put a pellet of estrogen in because it's very convenient. You don't have to use a cream or a patch now and then take the oral progesterone.

So in our practice, we do pellet.

Therapy, but we use a pellet of testosterone. It's about 1 milligram per kilogram, typically about 6 to 12 milligrams of estrogen for most women, and then 200 milligrams of progesterone at night. And that dosing works for the vast majority of women, and that is a bioidentical hormone replacement.