Dr. Joshua John-Ram SchacterDr. Joshua Schacter, DO FAAOS, is America’s Holistic Orthopedic Surgeon, with nearly two decades of surgical expertise.

BRCA1 Diagnosis: My Wife's Hormone Therapy Transformation

2 Apr 2026 · 2 min

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1:53

In this first‑person video, Dr. Joshua John‑Ram Schacter recounts his wife’s experience after a BRCA1 mutation was discovered when she was 32. Within a year she underwent five surgeries and entered surgical menopause at 33, leading to severe symptoms—brain fog, skin changes, loss of libido, and fear of fractures. When she asked her oncologist about hormone replacement therapy (HRT), she was bluntly told it would be fatal, leaving her with a false dilemma of dying from hormone‑related cancer versus breaking a hip. The couple then sought an integrative/functional medicine practitioner who initiated HRT at age 34. The therapy dramatically restored her vitality, sexual function, and bone density (DEXA comparable to a healthy 35‑year‑old). Dr. Schacter uses the story to argue for individualized, evidence‑based care rather than blanket refusals from conventional oncology.

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We've been married for 29 years, and at the age of 32, we received a diagnosis of BRCA1. Everybody knows what that is? That's bad shit, right? And so at the age of 33, she entered surgical menopause. She had 5 surgeries in 11 months. And I had to watch my vital, vibrant, beautiful wife sort of collapse into this cave of brain fog, and poor motivation, her skin dried up, she didn't want to have sex. That's a problem. Right? But really she felt desperate and she felt like she didn't have any options. And when she went to her oncologist and said, "I feel like crap. I don't really want to live this way. And I'm reading about hormone replacement therapy and you never talked to me about it. Can I get some hormones?" What did her oncologist say? Oh no, you can't do that. You'll die. And she's like, I'm gonna die miserably like this anyway. What about fracture risk? And her oncologist said, do you want to die now or do you want to break your hip and die? And she's like, well, that seems like a kind of a crappy choice. So we looked and we looked and we searched and we found an integrative functional medicine person who was willing to do her hormone replacement therapy. And at the age of 34, she started that process and it's changed her life. And watching her respond to hormone therapy and respond to the strength of these treatments and see the way that it improved her vitality and improved her quality of life— and by the way, she's not dead. She's doing just fine, right? She's strong. She's healthy. Her DEXA scan is that of a 35-year-old. She's doing great. To use our medical chops than just to pass out a pill and tell people no, right? We got better ways to do that.