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Can HRT Prevent Cancer? Hormone Replacement Therapy with Carolyn Zaumeyer - E83
37 Plays2 months ago
Millions worry about declining energy, fading focus, and the looming risk of age-related diseases - especially cancer - as the years go by. For decades, the belief that hormone therapy could actually increase cancer risk has kept people fearful and searching for answers, even as they suffer through preventable symptoms.
But what if that old advice was wrong? Unpacking the latest research and firsthand clinical experience, this episode explores whether hormone therapy can actually protect your health and even reduce the risk of major diseases like breast and prostate cancer, all through the perspective of a true pioneer who’s challenging everything we thought we knew.
With over 30 years of expertise in women’s health, Carolyn Zaumeyer, Nurse Practitioner and founder of LowTE Florida, is a nationally recognized leader in the field of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). Recently named one of the Top Ten Bioidentical Hormone Providers in the U.S., Carolyn has dedicated her career to helping individuals restore vitality and feel their best at every stage of life. She is also a prolific author, with three books to her name—including her most recent title; "Are You Hormone Curious? The Science of Hormone Therapy for Men and Women Explained"—and more than 150 published articles focused on health and wellness.
“Because as your hormones decline, you lose that energy, you lose your motivation. You don't feel like working out, you know, you just don't feel good. And so you kind of just retreat a little bit.” - Carolyn Zaumeyer
In this episode you will learn:
- Why bioidentical hormones differ from synthetic options, and how they're used for health and aging.
- What common signs and feelings lead people to seek hormone therapy.
- The role of lab tests and personal symptoms in finding the right time to begin treatment.
- How hormone pellets work, who uses them, and the typical process for starting therapy.
- What research says about the effects of hormone therapy on bone, brain, heart, and cancer risks.
- Misconceptions around hormone therapy and advice for finding skilled practitioners.
Resources
- Connect with Carolyn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lowte_florida
- Read Carolyn’s book, ‘Are You Hormone Curious?’: https://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Hormone-Curious-Explained/dp/B0F16SD6JH
- Learn all about Carolyn’s work at LowTE Florida: https://lowteflorida.com
- Listen to her radio show, ‘Let’s Talk Hormones’: https://lowteflorida.com/lets-talk-hormones
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
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Transcript
Introduction to Hormone Therapy Benefits
00:00:00
Speaker
It can help with prevent cardiac issues. So it actually helps rebuild bone, arthritis, Alzheimer's. Some reports show up to a 50% decreased risk of Alzheimer's using testosterone therapy.
00:00:11
Speaker
Breast cancer, we have 35 to 40% decreased risk of breast cancer using in our testosterone pellets and prostate cancer for guys. It's very protective for the prostate.
Meet Carolyn Zalmeyer
00:00:26
Speaker
This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
00:00:39
Speaker
Carolyn Zalmeyer, thank you for joining us today on the Home of Healthspan. I am very much looking forward to a conversation that I think as we were touching on before we started recording, I've gotten a lot of questions about, including right before this call, somebody said, hey, there are four people I want to send this episode out to immediately.
00:00:56
Speaker
But before we get into all that, how would you describe yourself? I'm a woman that is passionate about bioidentical hormones. And I came to that honestly through trial and error as time went on.
00:01:12
Speaker
a lot of people refer to me as a pioneer in nursing and in the hormone space because I was one of the first here in Florida to do what I do And I'm currently ranked number one in Florida for what I do, the hormone pelleting
Transition to Bioidentical Hormones
00:01:25
Speaker
system.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I've been told on number two of the nation, but I don't know how to validate that. So... I'll take it, though. Yeah. So when you say, I mean, pioneer in the space and and you've gotten a number one employer, potentially the second in the country.
00:01:37
Speaker
How long have you been doing this? I've been writing hormones for almost 40 years. I know i I started when I was 12. No. yeah yeah Yeah, I would have thought six so. Yeah, no, but I started back in the day of the synthetic hormones, the Premarin and the Provera, until there was this huge study that blew those out of the water. And then I had to dive into the bioidentical hormones.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I've been using the hormone pellet system, which I truly love because it gives you more of a continuous dosing rather than the ups and downs of the other delivery methods since 2013.
Addressing Misinformation
00:02:09
Speaker
And I've treated over people.
00:02:13
Speaker
So i've I've been busy. Yeah. And so may I ask, and we'll we'll get in the mechanics, but I'm really curious because it's been in the news a lot lately, right? the The Women's Health Initiative and the direction. So it sounds like half of the time you were practicing was before they published that in 2002 and kind of put the kibosh and scared people off. But then you kept continuing after.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so what was it like before? And what's it been like after having to uneducate? There's one thing about educating people. And then there's a separate thing of uneducating them about wrong science and helping them. So what were those two phases like?
00:02:50
Speaker
Well, the first part was really interesting and refreshing, and that's what really kept me going on studying, because I kept i was working for a gynecologist when I first came out of school and i was I knew I needed to know more. So I shared a desk with them and reviewed charts, learning his treatment programs, the whole bit. And I kept seeing this theme with the menopausal women of psych referral, psych referral, psych referral. I'm like, no, no, no. So finally, I bring a big handful of charts to them. This is back in the day of paper charts. And I said, listen, all these ladies can't be nuts. And he says, oh, yes, they are. They're kicking, screaming, s sweaty, miserable. Their lives are a mess or their relationships are a mess. They need to get their lives together. They need to go see a psychiatrist. And I said, no.
00:03:31
Speaker
Can I have those ladies? And he says, sure. And so I started with the Primer and then Provera and then the Prem Pro,
Impact of the 2002 Women's Health Initiative
00:03:38
Speaker
the old synthetic conjugated estrogen, and really got very positive results and comments from my patients like, oh, my gosh, I like myself better. My husband likes me better. Life is better.
00:03:49
Speaker
And it was all positive. And I didn't see any major health issues with the group of women that I was dealing with. So we kept going. And then in 2002, the Women's Health Initiative, boom, knocks hormones out of the water. Over 80 percent of American women went off their hormones. And then um I knew i got to find something else. And I didn't even know what a bioidentical hormone was to the point that I had to search it out to what is it.
00:04:15
Speaker
And the bio stands for biology, meaning it's plant derived. And our products are from wild yams or soy. The identical is referencing the chemical structure of the molecule in the product is exactly the same as what our bodies produce.
00:04:28
Speaker
So when we bring it back in, our bodies are just kind of convinced we're naturally producing more and more hormones. So it kind of turns back the clock to where you really felt well. And then the education part of it. In the beginning with the permanent provera, the women were very easy because they were so miserable. They just wanted to feel better. So that was ah easy. But after the Women's Health Initiative, then everybody's like, you know, what hit the headlines was that estrogen causes breast cancer.
00:04:52
Speaker
It doesn't. It never has, was it doesn't. It's been disproven a hundred times over. So um it's just hard because I run into it every day. Well, I read on the internet, I've been researching this. Oh, I saw this and you need to read this article. you know And most of the articles are regurgitations of the study, the 2002, which is a synthetic hormone, the wrong delivery system, which was oral. And then also um they didn't adjust, they didn't personalize it Everybody was on the exact same dose where I'm able to fine tune it and personalize it
00:05:25
Speaker
I could be wrong, but wasn't it the the absolute risk went from like one in a thousand to 1.5 in a thousand? Yeah. Even what they published. So it was like, hey, it it increases by 50%, but it's 0.5 per thousand. But then even that was wrong. It wasn't even true for the other reasons you said.
Timing and Assessment of Hormone Therapy
00:05:41
Speaker
So yeah it was just bad all around. Right, because when they dissected it out, you know, there's one arm of the study of women with no uterus that didn't have to have the synthetic progestin. And that turns out that progestin was the devil, not the estrogen.
00:05:54
Speaker
So the women that didn't have the progestin did great. They actually had a reduced risk of breast cancer. So it was just like. Much less cardiovascular risk. ah All the other. Bone, brain, everything. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker
So that was interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, but you've kind of weathered the hormonal winter in in moving to bioidenticals and and helping people with that. And so I guess, like I mentioned, this is something that comes up all the time. I don't know if it's my age group, um but whether it's women that are perimenopausal, like getting ahead of it, whether it's men saying, oh, you know, I don't have the same energy. Should I look at TRT?
00:06:32
Speaker
Should i look at things like that? You talked about it was easy early on because people were so miserable. They got to that point. Right. When is the right point to do it? Because do we have to feel miserable or is it a baseline and kind of taper into it as well? Well, you want to know there's a deficiency there before you actually treat it. And i do have some young people and I think childbirth thanks to testosterone in women and really makes them feel poorly.
00:06:58
Speaker
And so my youngest is probably in her late 20s. My oldest 82. And so I've got everything in between. When a person finally surrenders and says, hey, I think I need some help, you know, then we get going with it. But what the studies are showing is that the earlier you started, like before menopause, if you started, you know, like within, you know, five, 10 years before your menopause, you get more of a benefit for the bones and the brain and the breasts and all that.
00:07:23
Speaker
So to get the most benefit from it, you start earlier. But a lot of people don't want to surrender to it till they feel miserable. when you're starting earlier, is it based on subjective experience? Is it based on having a baseline of what's natural for you, right? Look, if if we were all testing our hormone levels at 18 and then 24 and then 29, so we can see once they started going off, is that how we should do it? Or is it saying, look, it kind of doesn't matter. It's more your subjective experience. If you're saying, I just don't have the same get up and go. I feel a little laggardly. Like, is that when you do it? How do you?
00:08:02
Speaker
I kind of combine it. You know, I want to see the labs, you know, just to see where we're at. And then i also want to hear what your experience is because just little slight corrections, you know, may make all the difference. And it may be your thyroid. It may not even be your sex hormones, a testosterone, estradiol.
00:08:19
Speaker
And I look at, you know, vitamin D and B12 and kidney, heart, liver enzymes. I do a very comprehensive blood test in the beginning just to know that you're healthy. and to see whatever else we can tweak at the same time. Because I took a deep dive into thyroid early on because I realized that the symptoms of a sluggish thyroid, even though it's in the normals, but on the low end, can mimic the same symptoms of low hormones. So I don't want to fix one thing and have you still not feeling your best. So I like to look at the big picture. Then I also want to look at your symptom list as to what are your top three? What are we trying to fix here? And see what we can do to do that.
00:08:56
Speaker
and so Who is a typical profile? i mean, you just gave a wide range, right? to 82. But ah if not an age, a feeling or a question someone has that they should be going to someone like you or their physician saying, right hey, I want to have X looked at, you know, right what what is what is it that's going on in their life? And then what should they be saying to their practitioner? Right.
00:09:22
Speaker
The number one reason people seek me out is fatigue. They're tired of being tired because as your hormones decline, you lose that energy. You lose your motivation. You don't feel like working out. You know, you just don't feel good.
00:09:35
Speaker
And so you kind of just retreat a little bit. like men will fall into the chair with a remote and they don't want to go out. They don't want to do anything. You know, women that will lose ah the zest for the gym and making good food choices. So really just checking in with yourself and how are you feeling? are you How's your sleep? How's your mood? You know, how's your relationship?
00:09:54
Speaker
You know, how's your thinking? Is it, do you feel like you have a brain fog? You know, there's so many different things that relate to hormones because we have receptor sites for these hormones all throughout our body. So it can be something, so you know, simple as just like brain fog and, I've lost my focus. I can't you know work on my projects the way I used to. you know That could be a clue. The energy. I know for me, I've been on the hormone pellets for over 15 years. And the first thing that I noticed, because I wasn't really paying that much attention because i was working so darn hard, but I realized that I got the second half of my day back.
00:10:27
Speaker
Before I had optimized my hormones, my goal, I was working hard all day. I knew was doing a good job at an insurance-based gynecology practice and I was burning and churning. But by the time I got home, my goal was to feed and walk my dogs, put my jammies on, pour a mug of wine and hit the couch. I was just exhausted.
00:10:45
Speaker
And I remember laying there talking to God saying, you know, was I put on earth to work? Because that seems like that's all life is that's all I'm doing. It's okay. I'm doing a good job. But if that's my mission, it'll all I'll take it. But then, that you know, within two weeks after ah my formals were optimized, I wanted to go out. I wanted to do the things on that list of things to do at home, you know, fixing up the house and stuff. And so it just really was a game changer for the energy for me in the late afternoon.
Hormone Replacement Methods
00:11:11
Speaker
It's funny things like that that shift. I mean, for me, I had a similar late afternoon thing, I mean, 10 years ago, and it was it was very tire related. Like if if I was eating a ton of carbs at lunch, then I would just kind of fall off the cliff. And so learning what to feed myself and and having different energy levels.
00:11:28
Speaker
um you You touched on something about the lack of energy, the food choices, the lack of desire to go to the gym. And there's somewhat of a chicken or egg there too, I imagine, in that if If you are making better food choices and going to the gym, you can naturally boost some of these positive hormones.
00:11:50
Speaker
But if you're already lacking the ability, the motivation to do it, then you can't kickstart. And so you might need this ignition, right? And that's kind of the idea of like, look, this isn't to replace all doing those good things. It's to ignite.
00:12:03
Speaker
You're taking that first step so that you can go make those lifestyle and behavioral changes. Yeah, because when I do the first consultation, it's free over the telephone after you do your labs. I go over, what are you doing for our exercise? And people are embarrassed to say, I'm just not exercising. You know, I just don't have the motivation. I don't have the energy. i just don't care anymore. You know, and so I'm like, let's try to get that back, you know, and so that'll be part of our goals. But I'll also have the other people that are pushing through it, that are doing their exercise, making their good food food choices, but not having the physical results.
00:12:35
Speaker
to benefit from it because if you don't have an optimal testosterone, you can't build muscle. You can tone and keep what you have, but you can't build anything. So working out three hours in the gym is not going to do that much for you is unless you have your hormones optimized.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah. Is there... a downside, right? What I understand from men in TRT especially if you overload it, it can kind of mess up your ability to keep producing it yourself. And so you really have to keep an eye on that.
00:13:06
Speaker
Well, it depends on where you are in the lifespan. Like if you are still in the place where you may want to reproduce, you may want to have children, then there's different ways of treating the testosterone versus what I do. Because what I do shuts down the sperm production, you know, so it's like a male birth control. Sometimes like that. Yeah. Some women like that, too. yeah like So, um you know, it just depends where you are in your lifespan and what you're trying to do. um and But some of the negatives would be not really much for a men.
00:13:41
Speaker
What we use is a pellet and it's just compacted hormone and a little pellet that goes underneath your skin on your backside. And as your blood supply passes by, it picks up the little micro pieces of the hormone and gently raises your hormone levels up during the first four to five weeks and then holds them steady for men five to seven months and for women three to five months. So you don't even have to think about it. So that's a big one. Rather than taking a great big needle of of testosterone that's as thick as honey and trying to jam it into your leg, you know, You know, twice a week. Yeah. No, sign me for that. Not.
00:14:12
Speaker
Or even gel, right? That if you have to be really careful, you don't want to go play with your kids having not washed your hands properly. and Right, right. And there's some studies that show that if you use the gels religiously for a year, the highest it'll get your testosterone is to 600.
00:14:28
Speaker
I know that clinically men feel better when it's over 800, if not a thousand, or even closer to 1500. And there's no harm in that. There's absolutely no contraindications for testosterone. for men or women. The only people we don't touch are people that are undergoing active cancer treatments.
00:14:45
Speaker
If you've had your prostate out and you're, you know, six months out and clear, we'd absolutely treat you. You know, so there's different, you know, health issues that we do discuss. It's not like we just go blind in like, oh, everybody gets testosterone. You know, we go through your medical history, try to be safe with what we're doing.
00:15:01
Speaker
And so on that, I just want to for listeners, go through the process. So as I understand it, maybe it's someone saying, hey, I don't have the energy I used to have. I want to go get this checked out.
00:15:15
Speaker
And that's coming to someone like you, depending what state they're in their practitioner to get blood work done to get, hey, let's get a baseline panel. Yeah.
00:15:25
Speaker
Then it's consulting with that practitioner to say, okay, here's our hormone levels. We'd really like to see this testosterone or estrogen, whatever it is in these ranges.
00:15:37
Speaker
And so this is now what the treatment looks like, the treatment plan and in our path. And then with these pellets, you would then come in if you're going on this. And it sounds like for men, you may come in twice a year to replace and women maybe once a quarter or three times a year. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And what we do is on our website, lowteflorida.com, we have a patient packet that you can fill out electronically. And then our patient coordinator gets in touch with you and will forward you if you're out of state a prescription for your labs. And then once we have everything together, you can schedule a free consultation with me. It takes about 20 minutes over the telephone and then decide whether it's right for you or not. The important thing is if you're not going to be working with me and you're going to have your labs drawn, you need to be sure you're going to somebody that knows how to interpret them.
00:16:26
Speaker
It's not taught in medical school. It's not taught in nursing school. It's something you have to go outside to learn. And just a weekend course doesn't cut it. You want to find a provider that's well-educated, has good experience, find somebody that's been treating you know patients for years, not just a couple of weeks.
00:16:43
Speaker
And, you know, because things, ah hormones are very powerful and you need to know what you're doing. You can't just throw them in there because I'll get patients that, oh, I tried hormone therapy. It didn't work for me. Or I tried the pellets and they didn't work. And I'm like,
00:16:56
Speaker
Did I do it? And they're like, no, give me a shot, you know, because I've had very, very good success. I've got ah about a return rate for the second pellet, meaning it's worth coming in laying down, getting cut because it's a tiny little incision, laying some money down and and following the process. But
Lifestyle and Hormone Interaction
00:17:15
Speaker
people feel so. so much better. It's very rewarding for me because what we do is we test your labs another four weeks for men later after the treatment and women six weeks. Then I personally call them and and review their labs line by line, find out where they're how they're feeling, go over their symptom list. you know What did we fix? What didn't? See how we can tweak it.
00:17:36
Speaker
And if they need more, because I'm very conservative with my first dosing, I give that to them for no charge. I just want to get them to the happy place, healthy and comfortable. And so for out-of-state people, it sounds like a lot of this can be done out-of-state. It's only when you're putting the pellet in, they would need to come physically in, but they can do the labs, do the consultations all remotely. Yeah. And one of the wild things, as I realized, is that I have an international following. I have a woman from Nigeria that comes every three months, one from Romania, two from Scotland, one's a TV actress. I've got two from Hawaii. I've got them from all over the United States that make a way of
00:18:14
Speaker
trekking over to me to get their pellets. And I'm like, i know there's somebody closer to you. and they're like, yeah, but it's not you. You know, so you got to find somebody that you feel comfortable with that's going to take good care of you. To your point, I mean, ah hormones are a powerful weapon tool they they can impact. And so I would imagine it's not that different than surgery, right? Yeah, there may be a surgeon close, but if they do this kind of procedure three times a year versus this person that does 20 a week, I probably want the person that's done 20 a week that really knows what they're doing. And you've been doing it for 40 years. You have that. She really knows how to dial it in.
00:18:48
Speaker
I do about 15 to 20 procedures a day. Yeah. So this is what I do, you know, so yeah I kind of got it. And so for, I could be wrong, but these different life stages, are the goals different for the people coming in? So someone in their 20s and 30s versus 40s to late 50s versus 60s to 80s, what is the objective? It depends on the patient. It goes and all goes down to when you fill out that patient packet, there's a BHRT checkoff sheet for your symptoms.
00:19:23
Speaker
And yeah everyone is different. And, you know, what are your top three? Is it the fatigue? Is it libido? Are things not working in the bedroom? You know, is it your ah mood? or Are you snappy? You know, are you falling asleep in front of your computer? You know, we go through a lot of different things and it works differently for everybody, you know, because it's interesting because if I give the same amount of hormone to a woman that's 5'5", 110 pounds, and then another woman, the exact same size, the labs will come back completely different.
00:19:53
Speaker
So it really depends on their body, their receptor sites, how it receives the hormones, how it processes. So it's a process of getting them balanced out and dialed in But i usually can do it within one to two visits where I've got them really good.
00:20:07
Speaker
okay And i mean, once you start, so say you dial it in and you're saying, hey, say it's a man, li if we're talking testosterone and you're dialing and you're like, look, you're going to feel better at 800, you get
Testosterone and Cardiovascular Health
00:20:21
Speaker
to 800. Is it just figuring out each time you're coming in the right dosing to maintain that level?
00:20:27
Speaker
Or do you say, okay, 800 was great when you were 40. Now that you're 58, like maybe 700 is the right, or do we still want to keep it around 800? Yeah. I think the happy place for men, no matter what their age is over 800. Okay. But I have some guys that would prefer to run a little bit lower. And I have some guys that want to run higher. they just feel better? Or what makes them want to run lower high? The ones that tend to want to go lower, maybe older, and their cardiologist is scaring them.
00:20:55
Speaker
You know, because I had one patient, you know, it's very rare, but I did hear of a patient that had a heart attack. And all the cardiologists in the hospital were telling him was because he had a high testosterone. They never even measured his testosterone.
00:21:07
Speaker
Okay. But it's because of the testosterone, because we've had five others that were on testosterone that had a heart attack. It's actually very cardioprotective. It helps with the heart. And and there's clinical data on that. there There's research. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I wrote my book. Are you hormone curious?
00:21:26
Speaker
It gives the studies. It backs up the science of what I've been saying for all these years, because I tell people when I do their consultation that it can help with prevent cardiac issues, osteoporosis. It actually helps rebuild bone, arthritis, Alzheimer's. Some reports show up to a 50% decreased risk of Alzheimer's using testosterone therapy.
00:21:46
Speaker
Breast cancer, we have two researchers producing studies showing a 35 to 40% decreased risk of breast cancer using in our testosterone pellets. And prostate cancer for guys, it's very protective for the prostate. Where years ago, we were taught in school that a high testosterone causes prostate cancer. ah Your testosterone is the highest when you're in your late teens, early 20s. How many of those guys have prostate cancer?
Safety and Misconceptions of Hormone Therapy
00:22:10
Speaker
Zero. It's a low when it flips into the dihydrotestosterone. And do you think it was the Women's Health Initiative? what why Why this fear around it? Is it people associate with steroids and gym rat? Like what has led to this...
00:22:27
Speaker
belief system. It's just misinformation. I mean, he'd go on TikTok, go on Facebook. There's an expert, supposed expert spewing all this up. I you know have to defend myself to of so many people because they're saying, well, I saw it on TikTok that you know estrogen causes breast cancer. and No, it doesn't. you know Show me a study. There's not one study that shows that estradiol causes breast cancer. Not one.
00:22:51
Speaker
You know, so it's just it's it's my battle, my life, but you know, dealing out, working with the myths and misconceptions of bioidentical hormones. But I certainly wouldn't be doing something that causes cancer or promotes cancer or anything like that. and It wouldn't be a good business model.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, that would that would be a terrible business. I like killing your patients over time. No repeat customers. Speaking of the repeat customers, I mean, this is this is something I think once you start, you need to continue, right? there's At that stage, once your body stops, especially postmenopause, there's no way to naturally produce what you need on the back end. Exactly. once it Once it goes down, it's not coming back up on its own, you know, for guys and girls. And it's really in how you want to age.
00:23:41
Speaker
You know, I've had ladies that would come to me and say, oh, I want to age naturally. OK, let's take an apple, leave it on the counter for a three months. Go take a look at it. Is that how you want to age? It's not how I want to age, you know, so naturally these are natural. This is a
Quality of Life Improvements
00:23:57
Speaker
natural way. We're just basically bringing you back to where you used to be, you know, turning back the clock.
00:24:03
Speaker
The natural thing to me is a bit of a funny one because it's like, well, I if you went to childbirth, right, like pure natural, we're not going to do it. right like Yeah. But do you remember what? mortality was for mothers and children for most of home human existence. like If we go to that, a lot of us would be dead. The average lifespan when it was all natural was 40 because we all died as children from infectious disease.
00:24:27
Speaker
Surgery and transfusions and all these things aren't you know, what our Paleolithic brethren had, maybe they're things that we've learned that are the ingenuity of humans to allow us to to live better and longer better.
00:24:44
Speaker
Well, what's interesting for me is what I see in my own family is my mother had the benefit of hormones, thanks to Carolyn, all throughout her lifespan. She's 91. She's very clear in the head.
00:24:56
Speaker
She's singing in the choir, learning new music every week. She's driving her golf cart around with her dachshund and doing water aerobics. My father passed at 86 with dementia, and he didn't have the benefits of testosterone. If he had had testosterone, I don't know if that would have been his exit.
00:25:12
Speaker
You know, because he was physically he was playing tennis till he was 82, you know, but then, you know, the dementia came in and that was the end of it. Yeah. i mean, this is one of those things that, It can be geroprotective. You said maybe 35, 40, 50% reduction. So people can still think of stories of, well, I know this person who took it and still got dementia. Like, yeah, it's not saying you're guaranteed not to, but it's reducing your risk of getting it. Well, it's the same with breast cancer. People are going to get breast cancer with or without hormones.
00:25:40
Speaker
But the studies show that over 60% of the women diagnosed with breast cancer have never taken hormones. But if it's coming down the pike, it's coming down the pike is the way I look at it. It takes seven to 10 years from the time the cells start to go bad before you can actually get diagnosed with breast cancer.
00:25:57
Speaker
So I pellet you today, three months later, you get breast cancer. Oh, the pellets caused it. Yep. Caroline gave me breast cancer. Yep. but Not. That's not how science we yeah yeah m works.
00:26:08
Speaker
This is is really interesting. I mean, you you certainly, you shared the book and and showed it. I do want to flag for our listeners. It is actually available for free on Carolyn's website.
00:26:19
Speaker
We'll put it in the show notes. But this is just a taste of this topic that, I mean, especially right now with the removing of the black box warning and everything, it is in the zeitgeist. People are asking about it. Men, women, all different ages.
00:26:35
Speaker
There's something separate from how we age naturally over time. And maybe look, there's things that we now learn with hormones that we can change the curve and and change how we feel. I think there's a separate thing. I'd be curious your take on.
00:26:49
Speaker
We are aging differently. Like 20 year olds now have what a quarter of the testosterone levels and sperm count and everything of our grandparents. There's something going on, whether it's sedentary lifestyle, it's the nutrition, it's microplastics, whatever it is, something's in the water. Something's going on societally.
00:27:06
Speaker
that requires this if we're going to live our best lives, it seems. That's exactly it And, you know, because some people say, well, how long should I do this or can I do this? And I'm like, forever. It's as long as you want to feel well.
00:27:19
Speaker
And once you try it once, you'll realize what it gives back to your life. You know, you get your mojo back, feel good. Get your sex drive back, your energy, mood. You know, ah joint pain is really for many people. Things work better in the bedroom. You know, but you think about relations more and then the fireworks are even brighter. So it if it it's ah it's a good thing. It's a happy hormones and there's no harm in it.
Zalmeyer's Practice and Global Reach
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
mean, I equate it a bit to whether it's knee surgery or hip surgery, something like that, where you don't want to wait until you're totally incapacitated. but You're losing good quality days and years every day you wait yeah to go optimize your life.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yeah. and And like you said, you're not going to start getting this back yourself. Sure. Exercise makes you feel good. Your endorphins kick in and it can actually raise your testosterone up a couple of bumps on on the lab test. But that's kind of like transient. You know, it's like, oh, good for a minute. And then, oops, I'm not there. But I've had young guys um in their early 30s. I had this one that that I remember his testosterone was much lower than his father who was, I was treating as well.
00:28:26
Speaker
And um it was just like, holy Mac, he played football. He had a concussion that can lead to low testosterone. Really the pesticides are really getting zeroed in on as being hormone disruptors as well as the microplastics and all that. So our exposures of what we are in nature and our food and all that, I think have a lot to do with what you were talking about, about how we're not aging the same way as our parents did.
00:28:51
Speaker
And it can be cumulative, right? So our parents may have not been exposed to certain things till they were 40. And then if if we're getting in, our kids are getting it from day one. then how does that compound over time? I mean, it's it's truly concerning.
00:29:04
Speaker
Well, Carolyn, this been a fantastically helpful episode to me. I can't wait. I'm going to jump on the phone right after and share some of the learnings with some people in my life.
00:29:15
Speaker
But for people who want to learn more about you, want to learn more about what you're doing and this whole space of HRT and bioidentical HRT, where can they find you and and all that you've shared?
00:29:28
Speaker
My website is low, L-O-W, T as in Tom, E as in Edward, Florida spelled out, dot com. And on there, you can gather more information. I have a lot of information on there, a lot of blogs and just information on hormones themselves and then the bellotherapy too. And then my book, I go into, um i really...
00:29:48
Speaker
I've gotten excellent reviews from people that have read it saying that it's very easy to read and it's user friendly, that I take each section and divide it down into each hormones. What are their benefits? What's going on? And um to get the book, read it. And then if you have questions, reach out. You know, we'd be happy to help you.
00:30:07
Speaker
Thank you so much, not just for today, but for your work over the past 40 years and i did gathering that ah hormone replacement therapy winter that hopefully we're kind of getting out of and people are going to be less scared and more receptive to things that are going to make their life better.
00:30:23
Speaker
Perfect. Yes. Well, thank you so much for the interview. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:30:41
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.