Bioidentical Hormones for Menopause: What’s Real & What’s Just Marketing

In this episode of Gyno Info, I’m breaking down one of the most confusing topics in menopause care: “natural” hormones, “bioidentical” hormones, online supplements… and those pricey saliva (spit) tests.

Let’s clear this up.

When I say true bioidentical menopause hormone therapy, I mean species‑specific human estrogen and progesterone — the same hormones your ovaries actually make. These are prescription medications, regulated, evidence‑based, and often covered by insurance.

What I don’t mean?
Internet creams. Compounded mystery blends. “Natural” hormone boosters. Plant extracts marketed as menopause cures.

In this episode, I explain:

• What “bioidentical” really means (and how the term gets misused)
• Why “natural” is often just a marketing word

 • The truth about red clover, soy, Mexican yam & other plant‑based products
 • Why supplements are unregulated, often mislabeled, and sometimes contaminated
 • Why symptom swings in perimenopause can trick you into thinking an herb “worked”

Menopause symptoms fluctuate. Hormones fluctuate. Marketing does not.

My goal is simple: help you understand what’s evidence‑based, what’s safe, and what’s just clever branding.

If you’re navigating hot flashes, mood swings, brain fog, or conflicting advice online — this episode is for you.

Subscribe for more real, science‑backed women’s health information.

You can write to us at Questions@GynoInfo.net

And follow us on Instagram @gynoinfo

Transcript

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Welcome to Gyno Info, Frank Talk with Dr. Burkey, the podcast dedicated to teaching everyday women what they need to know about their body and how it works to successfully deal with the healthcare system and communicate with their doctors. Each week, I'll provide you with new information and practical tips about gynecology and women's health care. I want to prepare you for your doctor's appointments by teaching you what to expect, what information your doctor will need to know from you, and what questions you will need and should ask her so you can be confident and make the most out of every visit. GynoInfo will give you the knowledge you need to take charge of your health and do this in a clear and frank way that you can understand without having a medical degree, one episode at a time. So now let's begin. Hello. Welcome back to Gyno Info, the podcast about women's health in normal everyday language that normal everyday people can understand. No special medical words and definitely no doctor speak. A special welcome to those of you who just discovered us and are listening for the very first time. Please all take a moment now to subscribe to GynoInfo. This will help you get back to this episode in case you have to interrupt it in the middle and would like to finish it later on. This week I'm going again to talk about something that has to do with menopause. Today I want to speak about something called natural or bio-identical hormone treatment. On the one hand, those words are what you would call a no-brainer, something that is so absolutely clear that you need no-brain to understand it. Of course, you do not want to use a treatment that is unnatural. You want the hormones you take to treat your menopausal symptoms as close as possible to the natural hormones your ovaries used to make. And nowadays, you can get exactly the same, the identical estrogen and identical progesterone that your ovaries used to make with a doctor's prescription at the pharmacy. That would be the true bioidentical hormones. Natural hormones for human females. And because it is a legitimate and government-approved medication for the treatment of menopausal symptoms, your health insurance will pay for it if you're lucky enough to have one. On the other hand, the words natural and bioidentical are often nothing more than meaningless marketing words. They are tools used to rip off women, to cheat women, to mislead women, to make women buy stuff that is at best useless and does not help them at all. More often than not, these products are more expensive than the real menopause medications and never paid by any insurance. But they can actually also harm women, not just by continuing their suffering because they do not really help more than just a sugar pill, a placebo, but because many of those so-called bioidentical products sold on the internet as magical menopause cures can have harmful things in them. They may be contaminated with harmful poisonous stuff. And then these products can also hurt women because they don't have substances in them that would be necessary and that they claim are in them. So women take these products hawked on the internet, thinking that they're getting a substance that is listed on the label, but that's actually not in it, or in a totally different amount. So you may wonder how this is even possible. It is possible because these products are sold as natural products, as nutritional supplements, the same as vitamins, rather than medications. And because they're not sold as medications, they are not controlled by the government the way real medications are. They do not have to prove that what they say is in them really is in them. They do not have to prove that nothing else is in them other than what is listed on the label. They do not have to submit any scientific studies to the authorities showing that the products actually work the way they claim to work, or other studies proving that these products are not harmful, nor do they have to list any side effects and show how common those side effects are. They do not have to give a list of indications, diseases or symptoms that are treated by the product, and also not a list of contraindications or warnings about who should never take these particular products. All the things that the government demands before a real medication can be sold on the market. Just read the small print. Somewhere on the bottle it says for sure, helps with rather than treats menopausal symptoms. Or tell your doctor if symptoms persist, or other such legal disclaimers that let the products be labeled and sold as nutritional supplements and foods. And as food supplements, they can basically claim whatever they want. And nothing happens to all these people lying through their teeth, making tons of money by ripping women off. And nothing happens to the internet influencers that get paid to push these products on their infomercials. No real information, but lots of marketing. And the two most important and damaging marketing words and tools used to do that are called bioidentical and natural. You may have figured out by now that I absolutely hate those two words. And it's a no-brainer to figure that out. The word that I do like is species-specific hormone treatment. Treating women not with plant products like extracts from red clover, soybeans, or Mexican yams, because women are humans, not plants, just like they're not fish or birds either. Women are not red clovers, not soybeans, not Mexican yams, even as the products being pushed on them are from natural red clover and natural soybeans and natural Mexican yams. Women are of the human species and should get hormones specific to the human species, species-specific hormones. Women should be treated with hormones as identical as possible to the human hormones that their human ovaries produced before the menopause. The point of in time when their ovaries stop working altogether. Or the perimenopause, when the ovaries start slowing down and becoming unreliable in their hormone production. True bioidentical human hormones identical to the ones made by human ovaries. When the natural species-specific human hormones are no longer produced by the ovaries, symptoms like hot flashes, night sweat, mood swings, joint pains, brain fog start. But also diseases like bone loss leading to osteoporosis and hardening of the arteries leading to heart attacks and strokes may begin to develop. They begin to happen. And physical symptoms like vaginal dryness leading to pain with sex and irritation of the bladder leading to incontinence and leaking urine, and predisposing you to urinary tract infections, bladder infections. All these symptoms and diseases can be treated and prevented with real species-specific human hormones, with the true bioidentical hormones, just that they are usually not called that because the word bioidentical has been stolen by the marketers of quackery. For women, with real reasons for not taking those human hormones, rather than imagined reasons that they were talked into by the internet lies, they're now effective, real treatment alternatives available. The key word here is effective. The planned products sold on the internet are not effective, or at most minimally effective in the range of the placebo effect, the sugar pills. Sometimes it might look like they help, because during the perimenopause, hormone production by the ovaries goes up and down. So of course the symptoms come and go as well. If a woman happens to have just started on some herbal product, she will think it was the herbs that helped. And the actually useless product gets the credit for something that it had nothing to do with. It was the ovaries kicking in again for a while that made the symptoms go away. And the herb just got the credit. And because the plant products sold on the internet are not effective, I say that they're a rip-off and exploit women. They always harm their wallet and sometimes harm their health. This is why insurance companies refuse to pay for them, just like they refuse to pay for saliva tests. It is also why every single menopause, hormone, and other gynecological professional organization in the world has an official statement, without the exception, recommending human hormones, the true bioidentical medications for treatment and prevention of menopausal symptoms and diseases, as their first choice. As a second choice, they recommend effective other prescription medications, some of which recently became available. They all point out that plant products are poorly controlled by the authorities and have very poor quality scientific evidence for supporting their use, and that studies can only show some mild effectiveness for some of the symptoms, and none at all for the disease prevention, osteoporosis, heart attacks, strokes, dementia. It is also why every single menopause hormone and gynecological professional organization in the world has an official statement about the uselessness of spit tests. Spit tests or saliva tests are another internet moneymaker for a lot of companies and fake menopause exports and quacks, and a gigantic money loser for, unfortunately, still too many women who get talked into paying for spit tests by people who are not legally allowed to do blood tests, the tests that really tell you something. These fake menopause practitioners are not seriously trained and are not licensed medical providers, and for that reason cannot draw blood tests. So they sell spit tests to their clients who really are their victims in this case, especially financial victims, because these tests are not paid by insurance, so the prices are not controlled, so they are ungodly expensive and are not worth anything. To my mind, saliva and spit tests are for diagnosis, what so-called natural bioidential internet menopause products are for treatment. A gigantic money-making lie that harms and exploits women. This brings me to the end of this episode. I talked about both spit tests and herbal medicines and true bioidentical real hormone treatments and effective non-hormonal treatments for those who truly cannot take hormones in several of my previous podcasts. You might want to look through them and get informed. This is what this podcast is all about. GynoInfo wants to inform you, and then you make your own choices. And if you have any further questions about what I talked about today or any other issue having to do with women's health or medicine in general, please don't hesitate to send them to me at questions at gynoinfo.net. Again, that's questions at gynoinfo.net. And if you like this episode, please give us a lot of likes and share it with all your friends, family, coworkers, enemies, anybody you can think of. And please also make sure that you click the subscribe button wherever you listen to or watch GynoInfo. You can now watch us also on Spotify. And by clicking the subscribe button, that will help you to get back to it easily whenever you want. And the more people subscribe, the easier it will be for others to find us. Thank you. Until next time. Until next time, thank you for listening. And remember that you and your health are super important and deserve your full attention. Don't ever put off contacting your doctor because you're scared or embarrassed when something feels wrong about your body. Doctors are here to help you, not to judge you. And also, regular well-woman visits are always a good idea that you should make time for. You deserve it, and you owe it to yourself, and you owe it to your body and your health. This podcast is part of Pridehouse Media, hosted by me, Dr. Burke, produced and edited by Josh Rosenzweig. Original music composed by Nell Balaban. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show. Stay connected and join the conversation by following me on Instagram and Facebook at gynoinfo and on LinkedIn at gynoinfopodcast.