Dr. Kathy Maupin and Brett Newcomb discuss why subcutaneous pellet insertion is the most effective method of testosterone replacement therapy, as well as the challenges that physicians face when attempting to administer this treatment.
This is the final podcast in a series focusing on the presentation that I gave at the Age Management Medical Group (AMMG) conference in April 2014 in Orlando, Florida. AMMG is an international medical organization who holds several conferences each year for their physicians. This is a special group of doctors who are interested in cutting-edge research, and healthy aging. I am one of thousands of doctors who practice medicine preventively with bioidentical testosterone replacement. As a group, AMMG seeks out doctors who are using various proven methods to prolong their aging patients’ quality of life so that they can still be active, healthy, joyful, pain-free, and independent for the rest of their lives. I was asked to give a presentation on my work with testosterone replacement in women who are over 40 years old. The resulting presentation was a synthesis of the book that I have written on this subject, entitled The Secret Female Hormone: How Testosterone Can Change Your Life (published by Hay House).
This week, my colleague Brett Newcomb and I discuss information from this presentation in hope of encouraging you to acquire the help you need. We hope that you can find a qualified doctor to treat you, so you can be healthy and live a long health span. In teaching you, we transfer knowledge and the responsibility to seek out and accept treatment that will bring you back to youthful health. The decision is yours. Don’t be just another passive recipient of “father knows best” medicine. Modern, mainstream medicine is still based on treating illness and not on preventing disease and the disability of aging. It’s like a dog chasing a car. Conversely, the doctors who provide age-management medicine are more like a dog who runs ahead of the car, providing exceptional medical treatment to prevent the otherwise inevitable.
In this week’s podcast, I discuss the reasons that I prefer subcutaneous pellets for replacing testosterone in women and men. There are several other methodologies, but each comes with risks in another area so as to make those choices less advantageous and physiologic than pelleta. The success of pellets will make other forms outdated.
Before I saw the overwhelming success of pellet therapy, I used many different methods of administering testosterone to treat various conditions (vaginal atrophy, loss of sex drive, fatigue after hysterectomy, etc). After these trial-and-error treatments, I have found pellet therapy to be the best path forward and have come to believe that only the subcutaneous pellets can accomplish complete resolution of the symptoms that occur due to testosterone deficiency which is what I want for my patients.
We also cover the logic and rationalization that some people use to justify the decision not to take hormones at all. These folks mask their fear of the unknown and take on the risk of disease that may materialize in the future. Their speculation is that nothing is safer than something that they don’t understand, an approach that is illogical. There is a risk in not choosing to take preventive action. For example, at night it is safer to run with a reflective vest than to run without one. When discussing treatment with my new patients, it is frustrating for me to counter challenges that are not logical. Many times, the patient is there to make their partner happy and not for themselves. And, in that case they should not accept testosterone replacement. Sometimes it is a need for control—to take pills or not, slather hormone cream on whenever they want to, or just the fact that they are in control of dosing. This can be a motivating factor in choosing less-effective forms of hormones. However, it is obviously not as wise as leaving dosing to your doctor.
Of course, the patient is ultimately the decision-maker when we are dealing with matters of choice regarding self-care. So, I always accept their decision, even if I feel it is not logical.
Finally, we examine once again the complications of the federal regulatory and state regulatory systems that are often driven by outmoded and outdated considerations of medical “knowledge.” These complications are also often driven by political and/or economic agendas of drug manufacturers and the insurance industry. All of these forces can prevent you from getting the treatment you need.
Listen to this week’s podcast to become informed about what you can do and what you should know to make it possible for you to obtain the care you need.
– Dr. Kathy Maupin
