The Hormone Truth: What Every Woman Needs to Know

The Truth About Bioidentical Hormones

Podcast with Dr. Hugh Wegwerth

https://www.drhughwegwerth.com/post/the-shocking-truth-about-bioidentical-hormones-and-why-women-deserve-better 

What This Episode Is About

In today’s podcast, Dr. Hugh talks about something important that many women are confused about — bioidentical hormones.

You’ll learn:

• What they are
• Why they’re safer than you’ve been told
• How they help your brain, bones, mood, and more
• Who should use them — and who should not

Why Hormones Matter More Than Ever

• Women today are living longer than ever before
• You might spend 40% of your life in menopause!
• Hormones like estradiol, progesterone, DHEA, and pregnenolone help keep you sharp, strong, and feeling young

What Happens When Hormones Drop?

Without enough hormones, women may experience:

• Hot flashes
• Trouble sleeping
• Brain fog or memory problems
• Mood swings or low mood
• Vaginal dryness
• Low sex drive
• Weight gain or blood sugar issues

The Real Difference: Natural vs Synthetic

Natural Hormones (Bioidentical):

• Made to match your body exactly
• Come from plant sources
• Fat-soluble (better for your cells)
• Examples: Estradiol, Progesterone

Synthetic Hormones (like Premarin and Progestins):

• Made from horse urine or in labs
• Water-soluble (harder for your body to use)
• Linked to more side effects

The 2002 Study That Scared Everyone

• A big study in 2002 used synthetic hormones in older women
• Most were already in menopause for 10+ years
• Results caused fear, but data was misunderstood
• Newer research shows starting early (perimenopause) is much safer and more helpful

What the Science Says Now

When taken early, even synthetic estrogen helped women:

• Lower their risk of heart disease
• Reduce breast cancer
• Improve memory
• Cut risk of diabetes
• Prevent bone fractures

Who Should Be Careful With Hormones?

You may not be a good fit for hormone therapy if you:

• Smoke
• Have uncontrolled diabetes
• Had blood clots or heart disease
• Are very sedentary or have autoimmune issues

Good News: You Can Get Started Safely

Over-the-counter options (no prescription needed):

• Estradiol cream
• Progesterone cream
• DHEA supplements
• Pregnenolone capsules

Only testosterone needs a doctor’s prescription.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What the 2002 hormone study got wrong
• Why bioidentical hormones are different and safer
• When to start hormone therapy
• How to feel better, sharper, and stronger — naturally

Want the full research?
The PDF is linked in the show notes or visit Dr. Hugh's website at www.drhughwegwerth.com.

Remember:
Where there’s hope… there’s healing.
You don’t have to suffer anymore. Let’s get you better.

Transcript

0:01

Hey, community, this is Doctor Who. And today, what I want to go over is bioidentical hormones. And I also want to go over the safety of bioidentical hormones, especially for women, because at the end of the day, women have been basically completely mismanaged in my viewpoint when it comes to hormones and when it comes to bioidentical hormones. My wife is 46 years old and we have her on progesterone, DHEA, and pregnenolone, and she's very youthful in these hormones are very, very critical. So I'm going to go over the safety because at the end of the day, there's there's a risk for everything. And you have to determine if you know what is your risk tolerance. Are you willing to try bioidentical hormones to feel better, to decrease your symptoms, to be more youthful, to save brain brain function and preserve bone? So everything at the end of the day has its risk tolerance. Walking across the street has a risk tolerance. But what this webinar is going to be about is giving you the truthful information, not scare tactics. So you can actually determine if bioidentical hormones is something that you'd be interested in doing and, uh, restoring youthfulness. Okay, so here we have the safety. And one thing I just want to kind of go over is life expectancy in today's society. Obviously, life expectancy has gone up tremendously in the past, you know, 5000 years. So when we look at this is when we're looking over here in 1929, the average woman lived to be 77 years old. Now, if you look at this right here, this middle part right here, or more like the orange is the pre and perimenopause. So you can see it goes from here all the way up there. And then you have basically this little dot here which is called menopause. And then up in here You're basically postmenopausal, which is right in here now. Back in 1929, the average woman here was in menopause for 26 years. So the average woman was in menopause for 26 years now. Let's talk about today and today's society. And now we have a woman living to 89 years old and they would be in menopause. You know, 43% of their whole entire life are here, basically 40%. So really what menopause really represents is basically the your ovaries and you stop producing hormones. Now when you talk about symptoms and you talk about vitality, what the research shows is that hormones are very, very critical for vitality, right? So if you have robust hormones, you're just going to be more youthful because hormones equate to vitality. Now, if you look at this graph right here, you're going to see that we have menopause up in here or excuse me perimenopause. And then down here we have menopause. Now this is DHEA. This is a hormone. Testosterone is a hormone. Progesterone and estradiol are hormones. And you can see as we age, right. You can see as we age they start to diminish. And then in here estradiol right here really between anywhere it could be between 40 and 53 years old. Estradiol is, you know, all over the place. It's all up and up and down. Now, as you'll see here, is as your hormones start to decrease, what happens to your symptoms, your symptoms start to go up. This is why hormones are very, very critical for basically every single function in your body. And if you want to maintain youthfulness, your body needs a set amount of hormones. Now, when God designed us right when we go back. Just let's go back 500 years. Uh, people were not living to the length of time that we are currently living at. So we're we're living especially women, right? Especially women are living much longer in this state of condition that they have no hormones. Now, if you look at these symptoms when it comes to ladies. Right. So you can experience a hot flashes, night sweats, bone loss, mood imbalances, basically female atrophy, irregular bleeding, uh, cognitive decline, low libido, metabolic dysfunction, memory loss, sleep disruption and blood sugar dysregulation. So these are all the symptoms that can happen when you start to go through menopause and you start to decrease your God given hormones. Now, what I want to do right now is I want to go over some terminology. There's a lot of confusing words out there. So if we understand the terminology, then you'll just have better certainty of what's actually happening. So the first thing we're going to be covering is what we call estrogen therapy. Now there's there's two types of, um, terminology out there. Okay. So the first one here is going to be premarin. Now premarin comes from horses urine. It's horse estrogen. So it's horse estrogen where we're getting premarin. And this is basically you know, that's what women were taking 20 years ago. And they still take it today, even though there's a other viable option, which is the God given bioidentical hormones, which is what we call estradiol. Right? So I'm going to be going over a study where they used Premarin. And that was in 2002. And if you recall, if you're listening to this video, you're probably around my age. I'm 52 years old. So, um, in 2002, this big study came out. Lots of people Ladies were on hormones. They were on synthetic, which means not God given, not bioidentical. And they scared a lot of women to this day. And doctors from recommending hormones and in particular bioidentical hormones. So we just compare and contrast premarin is basically equine, which is basically horse urine. And this product right here, premarin contains up to ten different estrogens. So this is what they were giving ladies in oral form pills. Now contrast this to estradiol which is your God given natural hormone. And you can see the differences in here just when it comes to like the structure right here. So we have this structure which is the horse urine. And then we have God given right here. Now a big big big difference. I mean there's a lot of big differences. Is the premarin here is actually water soluble, and estradiol, the god given estradiol, is fat soluble. So what does that tell us that tells you like man made is water soluble? God given is fat soluble. That right there tells you like something's not working right. Something's not working with the laws of Mother Nature. Now you can Google this. This is all available on the internet. But, um, basically here I just want to go over this thing. Premarin right here was coined from pregnant Mars or basically female horses urine. That's where they get this. And these are all the different right in here. All these things right here, all these things right here are the different estrogens that are in that product. So you can see there's lots of different estrogens that are within this product right here. And this is just another analogy is oil and water do not mix just when we talk about bio identicals. So bio bioidentical hormones would be right here would be the fat soluble and this would be man made. The synthetic premarin right in here. That's what we're talking about. Now let's go on to a couple different things here. We're going to compare and contrast this in here bioidentical to Non-bioidentical or what we call Premarin right here. So estradiol God given. These are all the different things right here that estradiol has been has been shown to help right here. Okay. So you can see in here that it's been um, estradiol can treat vasomotor spasms, which is just a fancy word for saying hot flashes. Okay. It can help prevent bone loss. Um, it supports vaginal lubrication, especially when ladies get older. The estrogen is really what keeps the vagina lubricated. So when you start to lose estrogen, basically you can lose that, uh, critical like mucous membrane in here. This is the hippocampus. What's the hippocampus? The hippocampus is, is is a part in your brain, in your memory that has to do with short term memory. So when people when ladies go through menopause, what happens to their memory. It starts to get, you know, where did I park? Where's my keys? They start to do, uh, memory problems. It lowers the risk of heart attacks and heart disease. And estradiol is synthesized from plants. So we have to come up with a substance which is a plant, and then we can change it into bioidentical, the exact same structure that God put in your body. Now let's go over Premarin. So this is what it's been shown for FDA approved right here. Now what I want to get here. Here, from what I really want to go over, is some of these products can have 60 plus different ingredients, right, that have a whole bunch of different molecules and a whole bunch of different estrogens. And these right here are all these different estrogens that can be in premarin, which is the oral pill that you're actually taking. Now let's go over the progesterone therapy terminology. So in here we have this down in here which is what we call progestins. So progestin is made by humans in a lab. It mimics progesterone which your body makes naturally. Right. We kind of went over these things. Now same thing here. Progestin which is man made is water soluble. Right. So look at this progesterone which is right here which is God given is fat soluble. So again we're talking about two different structures. One is man made which is water soluble. But we don't want that. We want God given, which is fat soluble. So just based on that chemistry, right. Knowing that's one water soluble and one fat soluble, that should tell you that there's major problems when it comes to progestins and what this does in the human body. Now in here what you can see. Okay. So in here you can see the difference. There's the progesterone and progesterone God given. And progestins which is man made. And you can look at these different activities within the body. Now I like this kind of graph right here. It kind of sums everything up. So um so over here we have the God given progesterone. And over here we have the man made progestins. In here, uh, progestins can cause headaches ringing. Thins. The uterine lining, which you definitely don't want. May cause irregular bleeding. Increases mood, uh, mood issues, depression, anxiety. A bunch of different things. Right now, if we look over here, God given because we want to focus on that, reduces headaches and migraines, prepares the lining for pregnancy. Now, obviously, if you're going through menopause or you are menopause, you probably don't want to get pregnant now. But what progesterone does is this is like in the second half of your cycle. So when you get your period, that's day one. The first 14 days would be dominantly estrogen and then days Bay day 15 to day 28 is progesterone. Progesterone is what really gets the lining stable and ready for pregnancy. So I've just kind of summed this up because premarin They both start with P's right premarin and progestin. They both start with P, so there can be some confusion. And you know, they both start with P. So it's kind of confusing. So what I've done here is. Okay so what I've tried to do here is just just just lay it out. So it's really simple. So you can see that. And the way I remember it is Progestin is Pro that stands for progesterone which again is man made. And then premarin Marin m a r m a r m a I n stands for a horse. Now let's get over this. Let's go over this study right here. And this really shook the world. And this is a 2002, if you can remember, back in 2002, lots of women were taking these medications. They were oral, right. So they were the synthetic estrogen and the synthetic progesterone. And then this broke. And um, at the time, I actually believe that these medications were actually the most abundant prescribed medications for ladies in the United States. So I want to kind of cover this study, because since then, there's been a dramatic shift in the analysis of the data of this study and doctors and you probably are afraid to take any bioidentical hormones because of what happened in 2002. And you have that same opinion. This is 23 years later. So my opinion, one of the most devastating things that has happened to ladies in this country is this study that came out in 2002 and didn't have the proper analysis. And I'll go over that, like if this was a man, right? Men have been getting testosterone for, you know, decades, right? And, uh, women just are not privy to the same privilege as men are when it comes to bioidentical hormones. And that's really quite a shame. So here's what happened as this study in 2002. There was lots of ladies that were involved in this in this study. Now some of the problem was I'm just going to go over some basic things. The age of these ladies that were in this study was age 50 to 79. That was the average age or I'm sorry, that was the the range of the participants. The average age is 60 or was 63 years old. Now why is this so significant? Because 63 year old, 63 year old women have been probably in menopause for over ten years. This is this is where the problem comes in. The average woman in the study was 63 years old. So they've been menopausal. They've had no hormone production for a minimum of ten years because the average woman goes in menopause at 52. Now let's say they would have went menopause at 45. That would be that would be an additional seven years, right? So when it comes to the population, the population really wasn't, um, really proper for when women should start to use bioidentical hormones. And this is where all this new data has come out. So this right here, this summarizes the trial right here. So what we're talking about is you can see here, if we narrowed down the data for ladies that were between 50 and 59, the most, um, ideal sweet spot to start bioidentical hormones is actually when you're in perimenopause, when your hormones are starting to fluctuate because you can start to level these out. This is what the scientific research is showing right now. So if we isolate these ladies that were just that were in this range 50 to 59. So we're not looking at the ladies that were 63, we're looking at women that had more recently diminished their hormone production. Now this right here. If you want to look at this study right here, the link is right down here. Right. So if you're listening to this on a podcast, somewhere in this podcast, in the description, there's going to be a link to my website where I'll have this PDF. If you're watching this on YouTube, um, there's going to be a link to my website where you can get this information. So let me go over this very, uh, thoroughly here. So what we have here is we have 10,000 women in this study right here, which is what they call C. So this is basically just horse urine, right? And this is women, 10,000 women that just took the horse urine. All right. That just took premarin. And then they had another study of basically 10,000 women that took basically C, which basically stands for the the horse urine Premarin and End. Poor man. Oh, there's a lot of terms in here. But this group took the horse. Estrogens and the synthetic progestins up in here. This group just was on estrogens. Now, what I want to show you here is when you look over here, you can see here it says increase risk. And then down here it says decreased risk. Now this line right here that that yellow line right here. Anything above this line indicates that there is significant risk for the individual. And as you can see, none of these things went over this line when we're talking about women that were in the range of 50 to 59. So for example, here in this women that were just taking the synthetic estrogen. Now remember we're talking synthetic estrogen. We're not talking God given. Imagine if this was bioidentical. God given. The stats would probably be a lot uh, Are a lot better than this. So 11 women had decreased coronary arteries. Five women had decreased breast cancer. You see the negative three there? Three women had less colorectal cancer. Eight women had overall less cancers. 16 women had there was less 16 less women that had overall fractures, 26 less women that had diabetes. And these were the women that were just taking estrogens. Now there was a couple of things that increased. There were five women that had deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Now with everything, you got to weigh the pros and cons. So when you look at this actual study and you actually see this, and I would encourage you to go down here and click this reference and go to this reference article. I've read it, I've read the whole thing. It's pretty impressive. Now let's go down here. So this is Basically synthetic estrogen. That's Qi and PMA, which is the progestins, not God given. Now look at this. You can see here there's a few more incidents of things. But nothing crossed this yellow line, right? Nothing crossed this yellow line right here. And you can see how many decreased fractures there were. Decreased death from any any cause of death, decreased diabetes. So when you look at this study more with more precision, you can actually see the women got huge benefits because they're narrowing down the range. You don't want to really start a woman on bioidentical hormones when they're 75 years old. They've already been in menopausal state probably for 65. Could be 20 years. So the sooner you start, what the research shows is, the sooner you start in perimenopause. So my wife, just assuming the age she's in many, many perimenopause, that's why we've put her. I've put her on progesterone, DHEA and pregnenolone and things to support her adrenal glands and she feels a lot better. It it provides, um, what I would say some youthfulness in your body. Now, there are some risk factors involved with this. So in here PT stands for hormone therapy. So these are the low risk factors. Over here we have intermediate risk factors. And then we have high risk factors. So the medium and high risk factors if you have these things in here you may not want to start hormone replacement therapy such as diabetes smoking. Right here stands for hypertension. So I put a little key in there right. Sedentary lifestyle autoimmune disease hyperlipidemia like high cholesterol high triglycerides. If you have your blood work, you want your triglycerides to be less than less than 100. There are over 100. It probably tells you you have some kind of, um, abnormal metabolic syndrome starting to happen right here. Metabolic syndrome, high sugar levels, all these things here. And then this is the very high risk is if you've had any kind of past problems with venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, congenital heart disease. And down here you can see I made this category right here. Anything with atherosclerosis cardiovascular disease right here. You want to avoid using these bioidentical hormones. And then once again I just wanted to show you these right here God given estradiol. And then you can see progesterone. Progesterone God given. And I also came up here just so you can see like these are not the same. Right. So this is God given right here. You see this structure. And then you can see progestins man made. You can see this structure is quite a bit different right there. Right. So it's different. It's not the same. It's different. So if we can get something that's bioidentical let's stick with what's bioidentical. Same thing with up in here again this is estradiol. This is God given right. And you can see this right here. This has a big that's stands for sulfur. And sodium has a sulfur and sodium molecule right in here. So in my opinion that uh, you got to weigh the pros and cons to every, um, everything that you do. Right? Walking across the street, there's a risk factor. A risk factor taking vitamin D, there's a risk factor. There's a risk factor in everything every single day. So these are all the things. If you have any of these things, you definitely should not try and take bioidentical hormones. Now one of the things with the identical hormones, you can get this over the counter. Like you can get estradiol cream that you rub on. You can get progesterone cream that you rub in, rub on. You can take you can get DHEA over the counter. You can you can take pregnenolone, which is the mother hormone, over the counter. The only thing you cannot get is testosterone without a prescription. And there's ways that you can actually increase your testosterone with certain products. And in other webinars I will be discussing that. So here's what this study says right in here. I'm just going to read this right in here. So it says at the end it says women who take estrogen and synthetic progestins. Now they're talking about synthetic here. They're not even talking about man made. This is synthetic. Uh. I'm sorry. This is this is synthetic. They're not even talking God given natural, right? They're talking synthetic hormones. So at the women who take estrogen and synthetic progestins may have a small increased risk of the diagnosis of breast cancer. Okay, what does that mean? What? What is a small increased risk? So what does that. Because you want to know what that actually is. And this is the critical line. However this increased risk is of similar magnitude to the risk of breast cancer for women who are overweight or drink 1 or 2 units of alcohol each night. So this is crazy. So taking these, uh, synthetic hormones, we're not even talking God given. It's the same thing as being overweight or drinking two glasses of wine. And how many women are overweight and drink two glasses of wine and don't even think anything of it every single day? Lots and lots of people do that. Why? Because there's just no education on what's actually happening and what the actual truthful information is when it comes for you to restoring your hormones and your vitality. And in my opinion, like that's really, really important. Okay. So with that being said, is, uh, remember is where there's hope. There's hope. And if you're looking for some help, reach out because you can get better. There's no need for you to continue to suffer and not be well. Take care. Bye bye.