What if you want to use “bioidentical estrogens?” Does it come in various forms? And are all bioidentical estrogen products created equal? In this tutorial, I’ll present the bioidentical estrogens for managing your menopause and explain how they differ. It will be as easy as 1, 2, 3.
– Yes oh gosh i have to remind myself to speak english and not spanish it speaking so much spanish lately welcome to menopause barbie you’re joining me for menopause your management your way now and for the rest of your life this is tutorial number 32 and today we are discussing bio-identical forms of estrogen now why is that important why are we discussing that
Because that’s where everybody’s talking about so you’re hearing about it people are writing about it there are talk shows about it everyone’s talking about bioidentical and since we’re talking about estrogen specifically in this part of the tutorial series today it’s only about bioidentical estrogen a few tutorials ago and 23 i taught you about bioidentical
Hormones in general today we’ll focus on only the hormone estrogen so you’ll find this material on pages 123 to 125 of the book and on pages 27 and 29 of the outline notes that’s how you can follow along okay for purposes of review you might recall that i taught you that bioidentical means identical to the molecules in the human body and because they’re identical
To the molecules in the body they fit better with your own molecules remember those puzzle pieces i showed you well here they are again here you have a human molecule and here you have a bioidentical molecule and the fit is perfect okay so non bioidentical hormones don’t fit as well so here is a non bioidentical hormone me and my puzzle pieces you know and
See how it doesn’t fit quite as well it’s kind of a loose fit so that is the idea behind bio identical hormones think of the bioidentical hormone as a perfect fit now for some people that perfect fit works better but not for all but in any case bioidentical hormones are really popular so we’re going to talk specifically about bioidentical estrogens since we’re
On the topic of our favorite hormone estrogen okay in the human body there are three types of estrogen we have as strong as strid i all and s try all and they all have different roles so to keep them straight all you have to remember is one two three that simple oh one is for own own means one two is for estradiol dye means two and three is for astral tri means
Three so as strong with the own for one is the main estrogen during menopause and it’s produced by your fat cells so just remember one for menopause estradiol die for two is most important during your reproductive years when you’re having your minstrel cycles and it’s the most potent of all three types of estrogen let’s try all try for three is the main hormone of
Pregnancy and it’s produced by the placenta and it’s the weakest of all three estrogens so just remember three for pregnancy so what you have so far is as strong from menopause estradiol for when you’re having your menstrual cycles and it’s trial for pregnancy see always simplify things own die try is all you have to remember own die try it’s as simple as one two
Three you know this reminds me of julie andrews in the sound of music when she’s teaching the kids sing and she sings the first three notes just happened to be doremi one two three owned i tried i’m so weird but anyway that’s easy way to remember it okay so the goal with bio-identical estrogens for menopause is to mimic the ratio of estrogens that you had in your
Body before menopause so before menopause you’re three estrogens in your body existed in the following proportions you had extra 10% estradiol 10% ns trial 80% bioidentical estrogen preparations can come in one of two formulations i should say they usually come in one of two formulations they can actually come in any formulation there’s one called tri s so three
Triest consists of three estrogens it’s ester own 10% estradiol 10% ns trial 80% so it’s exactly like you had in your body before menopause so it mimics what you had during your reproductive life alternatively there’s a biased formulation and that one consists of two estrogens and in that one a strong 0% the estradiol is 20% and the s dry all is 80 percent now
Notice that the s trial is the largest component of both of those formulations it’s 80 percent in both of those and it’s the weakest of all three types of estrogens now there are many proponents of bioidentical estrogen that claim that the s trial this 80 percent week one produces less risk and fewer side effects than the other two estrogens and many proponents
Of the alternative and complementary medical medical world claim that s stri y’all the 80% weak one is less likely to cause cancer than the other two estrogens but those are just you know people’s preferences and their hypotheses you can actually have any number of other formulations depending on what your needs are so here i have one that’s a vaginal applicator
For estradiol and it has 70% estradiol and 30% s trial so this one actually is almost reversed compared to biased you know bias is the reverse of that with 80% s trial this one only has 30% s trial so you’re seeing that there’s this big range and lots of options with these things now if you opt for bioidentical estrogen to manage your menopause your formulation
That you get from the pharmacy can conform to results of your estrogen hormone lab tests or it can conform to your symptoms of menopause or it can mimic your pre menopausal estrogen levels so with bioidentical estrogen you can get it in many many forms there are pills pills there are skin creams there are skin gels this this is one that is a gel pack a little
Gel squares and there are magical creams so it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and if you remember from tutorial 23 there are also some pharmaceutical products that are bioidentical even though they’re manufactured by a drug company so as i explained earlier in tutorial 23 any of the non oral estrogens that consist of estradiol that’s the to estradiol
Our bio identical so here we have bioidentical estrogen and a skin patch here’s climb era i have a few of them i have why build not skin patch and i have medieval skin patch all three of these are skin patches that consist of estradiol then there are skin gels here we have dividend here is extra gel both of these are gels there are nothing but extra dial there
Are skin lotions here you have a straw rest resorb it’s a lotion estradiol and there’s even a mist spray eva mist which is estradiol we even have vaginal creams here’s one called s trace and not only do have vaginal creams there are vaginal rings here is a femme ring and this one is an s string they don’t vary much they’re both rings that you put in your vagina
And finally we even have vaginal tablets these are vagisil vaginal tablets all of these products that are pharmaceutical products that are manufactured by a drug company consist of estradiol estradiol is one of the hormones that is in your body therefore it is bio-identical now patches creams and lotions are all absorbed more directly because they go straight
Through your skin now why is why does that create more direct absorption well that’s because if they go from your skin to your bloodstream they don’t have to travel through your digestive tract pills have to go through your digestive tract and get degraded into a form that your bloodstream can absorb but these hatches creams and gels they all just go straight
Through your skin well what does that do well that allows the dosages of patches creams and lotions and gels to be as much as ten times lower than the dosages of pills so the higher dosage pills are associated with higher rates of blood clots strokes and heart attacks and it’s related to the fact that they have to be decorated degraded in your digestive tract
Now despite the fact that bioidentical estrogen are more identical to human estrogen they aren’t necessarily better a review of medical literature didn’t find any proven advantage of bioidentical estrogen over other estrogens and there really aren’t any studies that compare the side effects of bioidentical estrogen to non bioidentical estrogens so if you opt for
Non pharmaceutical the non-pharmaceutical bioidentical estrogen then you have to go to a compounding pharmacy to get them because a regular pharmacy doesn’t make compounded bioidentical formulations a regular pharmacy will sell you the pharmaceutical products but not the compounded barment bioidentical products that i showed you at first now there are people who
Refer to bioidentical estrogen des designer estrogens or custom compounded estrogens and those aren’t really accurate descriptions but because of those descriptions they’re usually more expensive and because they’re more expensive and they’re considered custom and all of that sometimes your insurance company won’t pay for them so be aware that if you choose to go
To a compounding pharmacy and get a custom compounded bio identical product your insurance may not for if you get a pharmaceutical product that happens to be bioidentical insurance usually does pay for that so the big question is is is bioidentical estrogen better than other estrogens you know i really don’t like words like better or worse what i like is options
And so all of these give you many options and that is the great thing and the other great thing is that you don’t have to be and have to answer the question of whether bioidentical is better for anyone other than yourself your opinion is the only one that matters and you have to limit your opinion to your own situation and you know even if your brain thinks that
They’re better or worse your body may not agree so if you like the idea of by identical estrogen try it and see how it works for you if it’s a safe option okay so now you see that everyone’s talking about these and i’m gonna bet that you know a lot more than all these people who are out there just saying bioidentical bioidentical now you understand a little bit
More about what bioidentical estrogen really is and you understand it’s the 1 2 3 s trone estradiol as style just remember doremi 1 2 3 owned i try so next time we’ll talk about synthetic estrogen in the next tutorial thanks for coming i hope this is clear and fun and i’ll see you then bye
Transcribed from video
Bioidentical Estrogens for Menopause – 32 By Menopause Taylor